So the internet would have me believe that there are people in this world that are not excited about Independence Day: Resurgence. That sort of makes sense. If you want to spend your life watching only good movies, it’s not a bad rule of thumb to avoid the ones with exploding world capitals or opening weekend holidays right there in the title. The original Independence Day is a landmark movie for many reasons, but its ability to be understated is not one of them.
Personally, though, I think those people are crazy. I might even go so far as to say that Independence Day: Resurgence is my most-anticipated big budget movie of the year.
It all starts with director Roland Emmerich. While disaster movies may barter in audience cynicism, the films of Roland Emmerich have always aimed for a more sincere sensationalism. Sure, flying saucers destroy world landmarks, monsters rampage their way through metropolitan areas, and ecological disasters wipe out entire cities. Humanity endures. Think of the oft-discussed death of Zara in Jurassic World. Few characters in a Roland Emmerich film die without cause; their deaths are instead a message to those who survive them, either in the form of a grand sacrifice or as punishment for their mistakes (or in the case of Yuri from 2012, both). And since death — personalized death — is not cheap, we are more interested in survival than destruction. It’s not surprising that the trailers for Independence Day: Resurgence suggest mankind has consolidated its survivors into high-tech utopias. Despite the number of apocalypses he’s shown us onscreen, it’s hard to imagine Emmerich making a more conventional post-apocalyptic film. The people in his films will always find a way to bounce back.