For Independence Day, the missus and I watched last Independence Day's flop, Independence Day: Resurgence because with the neighborhood sounding like Beirut with all the fireworks in the 'hood, we weren't going to bother with something deep. Even by the standards of dumb Roland Emmerich destructo-porn, it looked bad; the reviews were rough; and the Cinema Sins and Honest Trailers seemed sufficient to kill any curiosity in the endeavor.
But we still watched it because I'd picked up a cheap ($2.50) Blu-ray and, yeah, it's pretty terrible. Emmerich has always been the reference point to show that for all his myriad faults, Michael Bay ain't Roland Emmerich, but even Emmerich seems to be phoning in his work here. The original Independence Day was no great shakes despite its cheesy Nineties success and star-making performance from Will Smith (who declined to be in this sequel, his character killed off and replaced by a son who must've gotten his non-charisma from Mom's side), but ID:R doesn't even seem to want to try. I'm not even going to bother recapping the dumb plot, trite conflicts and cheesy story; it's not worth it.
The visual effects occasionally benefit from 20 years of technological advances (just as Earth did after looting the crashed spaceships from the first movie), but a frequently quite cheap-looking as you can tell they shot on empty soundstages and composited in the backgrounds as badly as The Martian did quite well. As laughable as some of the "they survive this" scenes of destruction were in 2012 or San Andreas, it's just ludicrous here.
I didn't watch the extras, but the transfer is clean and the audio booming. There are better movies as movies to show off your home theater with.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
The "They like to get the landmarks" line which closes the trailer isn't in the final movie. Weak.
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