On holidays, we all have certain favorite movies that we like to return to. At Christmas we all binge It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and dozens of others. Around Halloween we’ll sit down to watch Hocus Pocus or, appropriately, Halloween. On Arbor Day, of course, Swamp Thing. And although the Fourth of July doesn’t quite have the cinematic pedigree of some of those other holidays, there are definitely movies appropriate to watch at this time of year. 1776 is one of my favorite musicals of all time, and my wife’s favorite movie, Jaws, has enough July 4th talk to count even though the film ends several days after the holiday. But of course the most obvious movie to watch in early July is the 1996 blockbuster film Independence Day, the Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin sci-fi extravaganza in which the Fresh Prince, Lone Starr, Cousin Eddie, and Jeff Goldblum come together and summon the power of America to save the world from an alien invasion.
The movie – which I know we’ve all seen – is big, over-the-top, aggressively bombastic, and I love every frame of it. It is FUN, fun in a way that many blockbusters in the years since have forgotten how to be. The special effects are better than most movies we get today, the musical score is an absolute masterpiece, and the final act of the movie has one Big Damn Hero moment after another – and when done well, there’s nothing better than a Big Damn Hero moment. It is, quite frankly, a perfect film for what it is. If Bill Pullman had REALLY run for President in 1996, he would have won in a landslide.
20 years later, a sequel was attempted. Independence Day: Resurgence was…not as good as the original. For reasons that I’m going to get into shortly, the movie felt kind of stale and like it was trying too hard, whereas the original made its sense of spectacle feel effortless. But this year, after rewatching the original a few days ago, I decided to give the sequel another chance. It…still isn’t a great movie. But the tragedy of it is that it had the POTENTIAL to be. The actual STORY is very strong. Let me give you the reader’s digest version of the important stuff that happens in Resurgence:
It has been 20 years since Earth successfully destroyed the invading alien force. In that time, humanity has come together in a way previously unheard of, scavenging the alien technology to create an age of technological advancement that has helped create peace across the planet. Suddenly, another spacecraft appears. Humanity, fearful of a second invasion, attacks first this time, but discovers that this is NOT the same alien race that attacked them before – in fact, our old enemy is PURSUING this newcomer. We again have to battle the invaders, this time with the help of the newcomer, who we learn is an envoy of a coalition of survivors of the Big Bad Aliens, whom they call the Harvesters. We discover that Earth has become famous across the galaxy for being the only planet to ever successfully defend itself against the Harvesters. They are our FANS, and they want us to come into outer space to lead the fight to stop the bad guys once and for all.
If that sounds 1000 percent better than the movie you remember watching back in 2016, that’s because it is. The plot is fantastic – it expands upon the original mythology and elevates the threat, with the promise of exploring a much larger and grander universe that the original film only hinted at. But the final product didn’t deliver on that level. The cast was reduced to a series of Xerox copies of the original characters and the story structure was broken down in such a way that it mimicked the first movie far too comfortably to be satisfying. I always say that if there’s one thing fans want it’s “More,” but movie executives never understand what that MEANS. We don’t want the SAME thing, we want that familiar thing to CONTINUE and GROW and EXPAND. And while Resurgence had all the potential in the world to do that, by reducing it to a copy of the original, it failed.
The characters didn’t help. They tried to elevate the children of Will Smith and Bill Pullman’s characters to the new heroes, but there was none of the sense of heroism from the original. Pullman’s President Tom Whitmore at least got a proper sendoff, but Will Smith died off-screen and the wife Goldblum reconciled with in the original is gone without a trace, replaced by a new love interest. Was Margaret Colin unwilling to return? I have no idea. But we’re stuck with another less interesting love interest in a movie that already has a less interesting love story between Pullman’s daughter and Thor’s brother. (The one who isn’t Loki.) This also largely damages the character arc Goldblum received in the first movie, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a sequel that erases previous character development.
But that spark, man…that spark is still there. And the idea of a movie about the human race joining together with an intergalactic federation to take the fight TO the Harvesters still REALLY appeals to me. So that’s why I’m here today, friends. Since the 20th Century Fox acquisition, Independence Day is now the property of the Walt Disney International Shadow Government and Entertainment Consortium (although they had to be reminded that this only referred to the film franchise and not the actual holiday). That in mind, I want to suggest that they take a chance on a new movie – or maybe even a Disney+ series – to continue the story.
Let’s talk about how to do this, guys. First of all, we don’t want to FORGET Resurgence. The whole point of this exercise is to remember that there IS a solid core of a story there. So instead, I say we do an Evil Dead 2. The second Evil Dead movie had a much greater distribution (and budget) than the first, and since he couldn’t be sure that much of their audience would ever have seen the original, creator Sam Raimi used the opening act of the sequel to make a condensed recap/remake of the previous movie. It is possible to watch Evil Dead 2 without ever having watched the original and not miss a beat. So with ID3, we start with a sequence that runs through everything I just said in my recap, because nothing else in that movie is really necessary for the story that’s going to get told next.
Second, at this point we need an almost entirely new cast. Bill Pullman’s character died in the sequel, and most of the new characters are pretty forgettable. We can try to squeeze in Jeff Goldblum just because he’s Jeff Goldblum and I don’t think it’s possible to look into those steely eyes and tell him “no,” but the one guy we can’t do without? Brent Spiner as Dr. Brakish Okun, whose increased screen time in the sequel is probably the best part of Resurgence. Not only is he the in-universe expert on the aliens, but his long contact with them gave him a sort of psychic link that will be invaluable.
Once we’ve got all that established, we need a ten year time skip. We’re in space now. We are in command of the coalition of survivors, and here’s where we REALLY have fun, because we get to see all of these different kinds of alien creatures. We learn about their worlds that have been destroyed and the society they have built in the wake of the Harvesters attacks. We can tell the story of the war with the Harvesters, and there’s room for a lot more beyond that. What about the previous wars, the ones that were lost? Are there other races out there in need of a rescue? Are there other races out there even WORSE than the Harvesters themselves? There’s potential in every one of these ideas to tell a compelling story. Everybody is all about doing “shared universes” these days – this would be a chance to expand the universe of Independence Day into a sci-fi backdrop as rich and exciting as the best of Star Trek or Star Wars.
IF it’s done right.
That’s what it always boils down to, isn’t it? The truth is, a lot of modern sci-fi is pretty divisive. For everyone who loves The Mandalorian, you can find five people complaining about The Acolyte. Some Star Trek fans refuse to consider Lower Decks canon, some hate Discovery. Picard is that amazingly rare show where virtually everybody agrees it got BETTER in the last season. And the truth is, no matter what would be attempted with another Independence Day, there are a lot of people who will hate it sight unseen and never give it a chance.
But I don’t think that’s a good enough reason not to try.
Everybody knows that the studios are terrified to take a chance on a NEW idea, a NEW IP. They would much rather just try to pump dollars out of the ones that already exist. And since they’re doing that anyway, why not at least TRY to do so with a franchise that still has a lot of unrealized potential?
That’s my thoughts on it, anyway.
Maybe next time I’ll tell DC Comics how to fix the Legion of Super-Heroes. Really, the fact that they haven’t just put me in charge of this stuff yet is ridiculous.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Step one of fixing the Legion is to pretend the most recent incarnation never happened, by the way.
Blake M. Petit 