It’s the 3rd of July.and I’m doing my patriotic duty by watching Independence Day.
Last week, I watched the much anticipated sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence. It was not as enjoyable as the first, to say the least.
Aside from its lack of… everything, the primary motivation of the alien race just seemed stupid, almost as stupid as MKS’s aliens in Signs, but that’s another story. It turns out that the primary goal of the aliens’ attack was to get at the molten iron core of our home planet.
Fair enough,they’re after something we most certainly can’t exist without. If you’ve been paying attention to the disaster movies in the interim, such as The Core, you already understand that the EM field generated by the rotation of our core protects us from the destructive radiation of the sun. Without it, our atmosphere gets stripped away and the sun murders everything on the surface of the Earth. That detail is touched on briefly in the movie, but almost in passing. The point is, we need our core.
For some reason, this alien race needs it, too. This movie presents the alien race as one that desperately desires the molten iron in our core to the point of angrily sending a second, bigger, mother ship with a bigger laser drill to get at the precious metal. Except, it’s not. It’s one of the most common metals in space and is easy to find if you’ve mastered intergalactic space travel. Surely if you have the tech to create wormholes in space to travel faster than light, then you can wander around the various nebulae, toss out an electromagnetic net and trawl your way to your fortune in iron. No need to engage in interplanetary piracy.
Now if the Earth had something stupendously rare and valuable, such as a lump of unobtanium large enough to to power five more global conquests, because, as it turns out, there’s a rapacious, mad interplanetary market for the elusive goo, then that might be interesting.
Alas, no. We are given a premise that turns out to less than pedestrian. It’s sophomoric, and disappointing.
Maybe the mothership and its goal should be seen as a metaphor for the studios and their attempt to drill our wallets for every last cent we have. And as it turns out, the metaphor is prophetic. With an estimated budget of $165 million, it has only grossed $73 million. The queen is getting shit kicked out her in the real world as well.
What do you think, fair readers? What are your thoughts on this movie,whether you’ve seen it or not?