They are back and after 20 years, the aliens are smarter, stronger and with an aim to destroy Planet Earth. In Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day: Resurgence, the director tries to cook the same dish in advanced apparatus and fails to impress.

Yes, the aliens seem dangerous, the technology seems super cool but the film is too coincidental — aliens seem to have a calendar as they always come back on the American Independence Day!

The flick has more or less the same story as the original — aliens invade Earth, find resilient humans fighting for their planet and an American president winning the day with his speech.

The special effects are way better than they were last year and same can be said of the returning cast members – Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner & Vivica A. Fox – who seemed to have carried their roles well from one invasion to another. New cast members Liam Hemsworth, Jessi Usher, Maika Monroe and Sela Ward (as the current President) try their best to save the world too but whether they succeed or not, you’ll have to watch the film for that.

First of all, the machismo of Will Smith is missing here, the man who punched an alien 20 years back and shouted “Welcome to Earth”. Secondly, the director seems to have left his brain in 1996 because while the aliens and the technology may have gotten better, the man behind the camera didn’t and that’s what cost them the flick. The idea of going back to Area 51 must have been striking in 1996 but in 2016, it’s quite old. Something new could have been done but wasn’t. This film could have been so much better.

The landmarks were destroyed in Roland Emmerich style but so was the confidence of his fans; he left the possibility of a sequel at the end but judging from the result of this flick, that seems far-fetched now. One hopes that the aliens watch the film so that they stop trying to invade the Earth, and save us from another sequel that shouldn’t be made.

Published in Dawn, Young World, August 06th, 2016