The summer blockbuster had gone through many phases throughout the years, with the disaster movie having had its heyday quite a few years ago. Films where the world, and the people in it, are put to the test by some kind of natural or extraterrestrial disaster feel very mid-nineties, a style of movie that has gone out of fashion. During the nineties and the early noughties, Roland Emmerich dominated the disaster movie genre, creating hugely-budgeted and special effects-heavy movies that were meant to make audiences feel as though the world was crumbling around them. However, like the person who continues to tell the same joke years after people found it funny, Emmerich has continued making the same disaster movie over and over again. This Friday, the sequel to Emmerich’s 1996 hit Independence Day, Independence Day: Resurgence, is set to release. And, if it’s anything like the rest of his works, it will be boring, repetitive and as flashy as possible.
*Editor's note: Due to the fact that 20th Century Fox is not screening Independence Day: Resurgence for press in Boston, we will not have a review for it up on Friday. However, we will post one on Saturday.
Independence Day and 2012
Generally, when I write these pieces, I review each of the movies individually. But, I felt like it would genuinely be a waste of time to talk about the two movies I watched this week separately. The two movies are so similar, and my opinions of them so nearly identical, that I don’t think there is any reason I shouldn’t just talk about them at the same time. While one movie is about an alien invasion and the other is about the Mayan prediction of the end of the world, both movies follow an eclectic cast of characters as they deal with the disaster. However, while one of these films embraces the over-the-top nature of the disaster genre and attempts to make the film fun, the other completely flounders as it attempts to be a piece of higher drama.
Many of Emmerich’s movies involve a group of people who know the disaster event is going to happen but are ignored (even though they are experts in their field whom one would think most people would believe), those in power who try to stifle knowledge of the disaster event and the every man, whose normal life is tragically altered by the event. These groups of people come with every cliché in the book, feeling literally copied and pasted from one script to another. Where Independence Day has Jewish scientist stereotypes, 2012 has Indian scientist stereotypes. Where Independence Day uses Will Smith as the cool soldier version of the everyman, 2012 has John Cusack to be the absentee, novelist father. On the surface these characters may seem different, but they serve identical purposes to the plot.
What is interesting, however, is how Independence Day manages to be enjoyable despite its corniness, while 2012 is, at times, nearly insufferable. Perhaps it is because Independence Day has a cast of actors that are far more charismatic, using Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum to make the film entertaining. Or perhaps it is because 2012 seems to take itself far more seriously, trying to inject the constant use of tropes that plague Emmerich’s movies with drama rather than with campy fun. Both movies, however, are far too long for what they are trying to be. There is no need for a disaster movie to be two-an-a-half grueling hours long, and any semblance of enjoyment that I got out of either film dissipated quickly after about ninety minutes.
And there honestly not much else I can say about these films. They are the most generic kind of movies out there; the type of films that play on Cinemax at 3:00 AM. And I’m sure at 3:00 AM, when you are barely conscious or crazy drunk, these movies are either enthralling or entertaining enough to hold at least some interest. But I found little joy out of either of them, feeling as though it were a chore to make it all the way to the end. The characters are one-note, the dialogue cliché, the plot exceedingly basic and the special effects flashy in a way that seems to hope you’ll be distracted from the rest of the movie. I found nothing compelling here, and highly doubt I will ever be compelled by his other, similar disaster movies.
Independence Day Grade: D+
2012 Grade: D-
Many of Emmerich’s movies involve a group of people who know the disaster event is going to happen but are ignored (even though they are experts in their field whom one would think most people would believe), those in power who try to stifle knowledge of the disaster event and the every man, whose normal life is tragically altered by the event. These groups of people come with every cliché in the book, feeling literally copied and pasted from one script to another. Where Independence Day has Jewish scientist stereotypes, 2012 has Indian scientist stereotypes. Where Independence Day uses Will Smith as the cool soldier version of the everyman, 2012 has John Cusack to be the absentee, novelist father. On the surface these characters may seem different, but they serve identical purposes to the plot.
What is interesting, however, is how Independence Day manages to be enjoyable despite its corniness, while 2012 is, at times, nearly insufferable. Perhaps it is because Independence Day has a cast of actors that are far more charismatic, using Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum to make the film entertaining. Or perhaps it is because 2012 seems to take itself far more seriously, trying to inject the constant use of tropes that plague Emmerich’s movies with drama rather than with campy fun. Both movies, however, are far too long for what they are trying to be. There is no need for a disaster movie to be two-an-a-half grueling hours long, and any semblance of enjoyment that I got out of either film dissipated quickly after about ninety minutes.
And there honestly not much else I can say about these films. They are the most generic kind of movies out there; the type of films that play on Cinemax at 3:00 AM. And I’m sure at 3:00 AM, when you are barely conscious or crazy drunk, these movies are either enthralling or entertaining enough to hold at least some interest. But I found little joy out of either of them, feeling as though it were a chore to make it all the way to the end. The characters are one-note, the dialogue cliché, the plot exceedingly basic and the special effects flashy in a way that seems to hope you’ll be distracted from the rest of the movie. I found nothing compelling here, and highly doubt I will ever be compelled by his other, similar disaster movies.
Independence Day Grade: D+
2012 Grade: D-
PS: I just read that Roland Emmerich called the Marvel movies “silly”, claiming his films are more down to Earth. Independence Day features a scene where the President of the United States pilots a fighter jet against a group of aliens. His 1992 film Universal Soldier is about a man who dies in Vietnam and is reanimated as a deadly cyborg. 2012 features an extended scene where Woody Harrelson tells John Cusack about the end of the world with a wacky animated film he made, while constantly eating pickles. Just makes me curious as to what his definition of “silly” is.
Check back every Wednesday for another installment of This Week in Movies!
Last week looked at past Pixar films in preparation for the release of Finding Dory.
Last week looked at past Pixar films in preparation for the release of Finding Dory.
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