We Always Knew They Would Come Back
With those words, the first trailer to the Independence Day sequel had geeks hyperventilating in barely-suppressed “I told you so!” gasps. Fat fingers ached in trying to keep up sharing the video fast enough on social media. As of this writing, Independence Day: Resurgence has garnered over 16M views and 72k+ in likes on YouTube.
Continue reading Independence Day Sequel Sans Will Smith Blows up World with First Trailer
Since we are on the eve of the Roland Emmerich release of White House Down/Olympus Has Fallen 2.0/Die Hard 5.2/White House Explodes Yet Again, however you want to call the movie, it’s ample time to address the ID4 sequel. The director has been getting questions about the sequel and who’s coming back, who’s not, and the major news has come out: Will Smith will NOT be return to defend planet Earf.
According to Emmerich via the Hollywood Reporter, Will Smith won’t be coming back for the sequels ID Forever Part I and Part II (get it, ID FORever, that’s so 2 Fast 2 Furious) and not because After Earth crapped its pants commercially and critically (seriously, why do a movie where Will Smith has to dial his charisma from a 10 back down to a 2), but because he’s too big. That’s right, he priced himself out of the action movie franchise that made him. According to Emmerich, the story concentrates on the younger generation that must learn to defend themselves from the alien reinforcements that come back to conquer Earth. Of course, that meant a concentration of younger (read: cheaper) stars for the movie so having Will Smith for a smaller role apparently meant the money wasn’t worth it to overshadow whoever else decided to come aboard. Which is understandable, and Will Smith wouldn’t agree to a smaller role most likely, seeing as he’s pretty picky about his roles, as evidenced with the Django Unchained casting of Jamie Foxx. Regardless, Emmerich decided that he’s too much of a marquee name and it would be “too much”. Yes, because Roland Emmerich movies are usually defined by their subtlety.
However, who will be coming back is your favorite bicycle-riding, computer tech guy know-it-all, Jeff Goldblum and terrific speech giver and fighter pilot President Bill Pullman. According to Vulture, these dudes will be making a return because they need to cover rent. That and I imagine if that if my President was one of the fighter pilots that brought down one of the ships, he deserves a mention in the next few movies. That and I’m sure Goldblum will have some sort of speech about the environment and nuclear deterrents that will provide a subtle message about mistreating planet Earth. Or they just bridge the 20 year gap between the sequels. Who knows. It would be interesting if they bring back Mae Whitman (her?) to reprise her role as the President’s daughter. Heck, just bring back Adam Baldwin and I’d be perfectly content with that.
Regardless, this sequel is coming and I’m sure we’ll see more fun stuff get destroyed. Although I guess since the aliens destroyed everything the first time around, we’ll just have to wait and see on July 3rd, 2015 if they get to destroy the recreations of major landmarks. Just because it’s starting to get really redundant in seeing the White House destroyed over and over again… Bonus though, courtesy of YouTube user CinemaSins, you can experience ID4 all over again…now with glaring errors and commentary!
Independence Day is a movie I genuinely adored as a kid, and ironically love as an adult. It’s got all the best ingredients of a ’90s blockbuster – Will Smith, explosions, aliens and a dog jumping out of a fireball. Sure, there are some Grand Canyon-sized plot holes and, well, everything mentioned here, but it certainly is fun to watch aliens blow up cities.
Gamma Squad reports that Roland Emmerich has been working on scripts for two back-to-back sequels to ID4 since 2009, and in that time Fox has been trying to wrangle Smith into returning to his old role, though Big Willie hasn’t been very receptive to their offers:
“Fox started working on structuring a deal to sign him back in early 2009, but the world’s last bankable action star was seeking $50 million to shoot both ID2 and ID3 back-to-back, and Fox balked at so large a price tag in combination with Emmerich’s own hefty salary demands to direct.”
While no one’s ready to give up on The Fresh Prince yet, Fox has stated they’re willing to go through with production with our without Smith, and that the two sequels will be able to function as standalone movies.
All of this is irrelevant, of course, unless they can bring back Jeff Goldblum…
I wanted to like this movie so much more than I did, but it just wasn’t happening. Not to say I hated it, but it definitely could have used some work. That being said, let’s get to the premise of the whole tale.
Basically this fella wakes up with no memory of…. anything really. This movie probably set the record for the most times that the phrase “I don’t know” was used. One of the things he doesn’t remember is the metal bracelet on his wrist. This bracelet, as we know from the trailers, has the awesome ability to deal out seemingly endless ass whoopings to both aliens and humans alike.
He makes his way to the town of Absolution, a little place run by the Cattle Boss Woodrow Dolarhyde and his imbecile son Percy. Percy doesn’t really run anything, he’s just a downright turd who bullies everyone in the town because of who his father is. Our mystery man as it turns out is really Jake Lonergan, a wanted man for numerous crimes. After he is taken captive by the local law enforcement is when the real fun begins, because that’s when the aliens arrive. Their attack results in Dolarhyde’s dumb ass son, and many other townspeople being taken captive by the invaders, with Jake’s bracelet activating in proximity to their ships. He manages to shoot one down and the wounded pilot is their ticket to finding the captives that were taken.
The group to go after the alien and their people consists primarily of Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), Jake (Daniel Craig) and Ella (Olivia Wilde) who is a rather mysterious woman with a very keen interest in Jake’s past and missing memory. The tag-along company includes a Bartender named Doc who’s wife was taken, one of Dolarhyde’s cattle hands, and a preacher. Doc is played by an always excellent Sam Rockwell, and serves as a bit of comic relief as the man not accustomed to gun play or combat. Meacham the preacher is played by veteran of the screen Clancy Brown, who is a favorite actor of mine. Aside from Pet Semetary 2, Shawshank Redemption and the HBO series Carnivàle, this was the first extended role he’s had in a movie in a very long time, and it was good to see him in it.
I won’t explain anymore about the plot of the movie, so as to not give away any spoilers. The movie suffered from the many amnesia flashback scenes that Daniel Craig had. To me, the whole amnesia aspect only served the purpose of finding an excuse to put the wrist blaster onto Daniel Craig. If you look at it from a standpoint of trying to add depth to Daniel Craig’s character Jake it failed miserably. I like Daniel Craig and think he did a great job in the movie, but his character was just a shell that I really could have cared less about.
Even though Dolarhyde’s son was a complete nincompoop, I still felt more sympathetic towards him because of his past as a soldier and depth of care for his son’s well being. That being said, Harrison Ford did a great job in the role of Woodrow Dolarhyde playing his usual gruff and stern self, but this time with a twinge of crazy to it. As the movie went on I liked him more and more, especially towards the end when he starts to take charge. There was a particularly touching scene with him and a dying somebody. (You’ll know what I’m talking about when it happens in the movie.)
Hell, Even Ella’s background was far more interesting than Jake’s once you find out what it is, but like I said I won’t spoil it for you guys. Needless to say Olivia Wilde was a great actress once more, while also managing to be one of the hottest women on the planet.
Kudos to her!
The aliens themselves were kind of one dimensional, but I did enjoy them. They were definitely scary enough and kind of reminded me of the Independence Day invaders the way their set of little arms emerged from inside of their large outer body. Some people though (Doc Kronner) only thought of our little disgusting friend Kuato from Total Recall.
One thing that I did not enjoy about the aliens was their main reason for being on Earth. Most people would be fine with it I guess, but I just cringed when I found out. I was actually hoping that the aliens were going to have a translator of some sort so as to have some sort of communication with the humans, but they still worked fine as the more primal type of aliens who just like to kick primitive human ass.
I wish Jon Favreau all the luck in the world, but I’m starting to think he may have just got lucky with Iron Man. Iron Man 2 wasn’t that great of a movie, and Cowboys and Aliens was just a step above that. His movies – though shot beautifully – are suffering from something I can’t quite pinpoint. Perhaps the writers (Orci and Kurtzman) were still a bit rusty from writing the piece of shit we call a movie Revenge of the Fallen. So maybe it’s really their fault.
Either way I give the movie a 2 out of 5 bears. Great presentation and cast, but it fell flat on story and utilization of the material. It could have been so much more, because it took out all of the bad from the graphic novel aesthetically, but the story from the graphic novel would have better suited the movie.
A whole lot of people have to be getting burned out on alien invasion storylines. We’ve had more than our fair share of them just in the last six months and still have Super 8 and Cowboys and Aliens coming our way.
Could it be that the movie studios are all alien operations trying to catch us off guard for an invasion? Maybe. But I still think if an interesting new piece of alien entertainment comes our way it can’t hurt to check it out, because let’s face it: We’re screwed if there is an invasion coming.
So now we have Falling Skies, an alien invasion that starts off six months into the whole ordeal. It focuses on the people left fighting on against these invaders and trying to stay unified with most of the civilized world in ruins.
I suppose what sets this alien show apart from the others is that it takes place after the initial attack and invasion. Most of the recent ones and a couple older movies take place over a couple of days since they are only two-hour movies, (Independence Day, Skyline, Battle: LA) so it will be nice to see the remaining humans striving to survive and figuring out what the aliens are after besides kicking our asses over the course of ten episodes.
The effects, like the similarly Spielberg produced Terra Nova, look pretty darn decent for a T.V. show. It seems summer carrying into fall we will have a couple new Sci-Fi shows to sustain us with Falling Skies and Terra Nova since V will most likely be canceled.
So what does everyone think? Does this Spielberg produced project look any good? Is it going to be another War of The Worlds, this time dragged out over ten hours? This could be Spielberg making up for that boring piece of crud. Bore of the Worlds…. heh heh heh.
Sound off below in the comments section or be annihilated!
Grizzly Bomb 