Chapin City Blues

Independence Day will always have a special place in my heart. Not only was it the first movie I saw with my best friend, Meester Binx, but it was the first movie we were allowed to see on our own (for a short period, anyway). When its sequel came out in 2016, both he and I rushed to watch the midnight showing (though, it was more like the 11 pm showing because time is relative and an illusion we made up in order to process the world around us).

It’s no secret that Independence Day: Resurgence paled in comparison. The movie retconned several details from the first movie, killed off Steven Hiller before the start, and recast its main characters, who were children in the first movie. The plot was bloated and characters were shoehorned in for – what? – character development? Of course, they had a franchise in mind; although due to the unsuccessful box office we will never see an Independence Day: Forever or an Independence Day: Forever Pt. II.

Still, I enjoyed the movie. I’m probably in the minority that hopes that Disney/20th Century Studios greenlights the third movie, creating the epic final battle in space that Resurgence promised us. 

You can always tell what goes into a movie when watching it. The first movie had heart – sure, no movie is ever written without the hopes of it becoming a major blockbuster, but that takes the passenger seat here. Writers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (who also directed the movie) focused on the story they wanted to tell. Whereas Resurgence suffered from too many cooks in the kitchen. 

Despite the novels and comic books it spawned, Independence Day wasn’t written with a franchise in mind. When the credits rolled, we weren’t gifted with an end credit scene setting up what to expect next.*

Resurgence, on the other hand, suffered from a Batman & Robin production, where it became how much more money they could milk out a franchise than the story itself. It was meant to sell productions, build a cinematic universe, and be more than just the story that we fondly remember through the veil of nostalgia.

What it got right, however, is how it showed where we went as a society after an alien invasion. How the alien tech – which they couldn’t understand in all the years since Roswell – was reverse engineered to push their technology further into the future.

*Not that I have a problem with these types of films. I love and enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even the duds. But comic book films acting like their source material is something that I longed to see as a child. Not to mention how much I love the Fast & the Furious movies more than I should.