ID:R is likely to remembered in the same vein as Highlander 2, Aliens: Resurrection, or any number of other sequels that failed to live up to their predecessors. While it showed promise in the beginning -- such as showing how humanity had incorporated the alien technology into our lives -- this promise was wasted very early on in the film. While some veteran actors returned for the film, far too many of the younger actors were obviously chosen because they were photogenic, not because they can act (which, sadly, they mostly can't). Will Smith's buoying energy was sorely missed.
The first and foremost problem with the film was the writing. A committee of five wrote the movie, and it shows in the disjointed plot and frenetic pacing of the film. The audience is raced from one plot line to another, leaving unanswered questions that are never truly resolved, hinting at character relationships that are never explored, and feeling more like watching an extended cutscene from an XBOX game rather than a feature film. Characters enter and exit too quickly for the audience to form any type of attachment, such as a station wagon full of kids who randomly weave in and out of the picture.
There is far too much reliance on cheap melodrama; this person has to watch his parents die, then that person does, then this one, until the audience really gets the point that this situation is *serious*. The overall effect was to create a shallow, one-dimensional character pool that might as well have been CGI sprites like the aliens themselves, so little did they contribute to the film. The writing committee even tried to cram in two Presidential rallying speeches instead of the first film's one. There was also the subplot of a second alien species that was nonsensical at best; at worst, it detracted from the struggle between humanity and the invaders.
The direction is the next problem area. Again, the film was marred by too much melodrama with too little substance, and the interplay between human interaction and CGI effects was not seamless, as it should be in modern cinema, but jarring. There were far too many scenes where the CGI team was obviously operating without adult supervision, resulting in overwhelming scenes of chaos and destruction that did next to nothing to advance the plot. For example, while the notion of a spaceship so large it has its own gravity field was interesting, in the end it only served as a pretext to show the Petronas Towers being dropped onto London's Tower Bridge. You know, the kind of wanton destruction usually associated with toddlers playing with sand castles at the beach.
Too many things in the film didn't make any sense. Yes, this is science fiction, but even sci-fi can feel like it follows certain logic. In ID:R, why would aircraft using anti-gravity drives need wings? Why would aliens who can drill through to the core of a planet in mere hours have to resort to an assault on foot of the NORAD bunker at Cheyenne Mountain? Why, assuming that the Presidential line of succession is similar to today's, would the President's entire Cabinet be with her at Cheyenne Mountain, such that the Presidency eventually falls to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? Was there some intricate strategy for fighting the aliens that required the President to have her Secretaries of Education, Agriculture, and Commerce at her immediate disposal? How did one character on a small boat survive a tsunami that appeared to be hundreds of feet high and destroyed massive container ships? Why, after all sorts of ordnance being lobbed at the Mother Alien's shields, did it just take one fighter pilot screaming while shooting to finally breach them? Did the other pilots just not want it bad enough? While I realize that the original ID4 had its own flaws (hacking the operating system of an alien mothership in minutes from a 486 laptop, anyone?), the longer I watched ID:R, the worse it got.
Overall, the film was a mediocre CGI fest with some actors thrown in to make it an official movie. The writing and direction were poor, the pacing was too forced, and a coherent plot was sorely lacking.
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