How 'Independence Day: Resurgence' Sets Up a Possible Sequel (Spoiler Alert!)
(Warning: This post contains major spoilers for Independence Day: Resurgence)
Back in 1996, mankind declared its independence from a race of conquering aliens in Roland Emmerich’s summer blockbuster Independence Day. Twenty years later in the belated sequel Independence Day: Resurgence, the Earth fights the same battle again, but this time we’re no longer content to play defense. In the cliffhanging closing minutes of Resurgence, the survivors of the second attack declare their intention to take the fight directly to the aliens — who are newly christened as “Harvesters,” for reasons we’ll get to later on —rather than wait for them to mount another army. “We are going to kick some serious alien ass,” declares wild-eyed and wild-haired scientist Dr. Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) just as the movie cuts to black. That’s Emmerich’s way of telling the audience, “Stick around, folks. There’s more to come!”
That may not be a promise he’ll be able to keep. Lackluster reviews combined with mediocre box office forecasts suggest that Resurgence won’t come close to matching its predecessor’s muscular $300 million domestic gross, blowing up any plans for an ID4 trilogy in the same way that these invading aliens like to blow up tourist spots. Still, the elements are solidly in place for a third movie, should Resurgence experience a Warcraft-like boost from international ticket sales. Earth’s battle plan to fight the alien’s on their own turf is made possible by the big revelation that Emmerich introduces midway through the sequel: Humans and Harvesters aren’t the only species in the universe.
Related: The McLaughlin Group Debates Aliens in ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ Deleted Scene (Exclusive)
This discovery is set up early in in Resurgence, when an alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the skies over Earth’s colonized Moon. Not wanting to be caught flat-footed again, the world’s leaders — including the sitting U.S. president Elizabeth Lanford (Sela Ward) — vote to open fire on the ship, over the strenuous objections of global hero David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), who insists that they’re experiencing a close encounter with a new race of aliens. He’s right, of course. When wreckage from the destroyed craft is salvaged and taken to Area 51, David and Dr. Okun — recently awoken from a two-decade coma after surviving an alien attack — come face-to-face with a large sphere that houses the consciousness of an alien species that abandoned biological bodies long ago for a purely virtual existence.
Although this particular alien comes in peace, it also carries warnings of a larger galactic war. Its own race was previously attacked and decimated by the Harvesters, so named because they harvest the energy of other planets to power their own ships. In fact, the reason they showed up on Earth in the first place was to crack open our molten core, a mission they resume as soon as their oversized mothership touches down on terra firma. The sphere goes on to say that survivors of past Harvester attacks have created a “refugee planet,” where they labor to create weapons powerful enough to defeat the energy-hungry conquerors once and for all. The coordinates of this haven are top secret for now, but won’t be if the Harvester queen aboard the mothership manages to get her hands on this particular refugee. And since the queen and her army are en route to a woefully underarmed Area 51, the sphere’s capture seems imminent.
Lest you doubt mankind’s abilities in the face of alien adversity though, Earth’s diminished, but scrappy forces — led by pilots Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) and Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), son of legendary pilot Steven Hiller (Will Smith, who doesn’t return for the sequel) — manage to put a stop to the queen’s plans by blasting her to smithereens. In return, the sphere shares the secret of reaching its hidden fortress: inter-dimensional portals. Armed with human grit and advanced alien technology, this upstart pan-galactic army may just be the Harvesters’ most formidable opponent yet.
Should Emmerich get to make another Independence Day, not everyone will be able to jump to the other side of the galaxy. The events of Resurgence claims the lives of two high-profile cast members: Vivica A. Fox and Bill Pullman. (As previously revealed in the run-up to Resurgence’s release, Smith’s character Hiller perished in between movies in a training accident.) His widow Jasmine (Fox), dies in the initial Harvester attack, while saving the life of a woman and her baby. To make matters worse, her death happens in full view of Dylan, dealing a major blow to his confidence.
Meanwhile, Pullman’s ex-president, Thomas Whitmore, gets to go out in a blaze of glory, one that echoes Randy Quaid’s sacrifice in the first movie. Part of their Hail Mary plan to destroy the Harvester queen requires one brave soul to detonate cold fusion bombs from inside the mothership, a suicide mission that Whitmore courageously volunteers for. But there’s still one fighter left to carry on the Whitmore name: the President’s daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe), all grown up and as capable a combat pilot as her old man.
To be honest, taken on its own terms, Resurgence doesn’t effectively make the case that there should be a third film. Marred by sub-par special effects and disjointed storytelling, it manages to feel significantly longer than the first movie despite being 30 minutes shorter. But maybe moving the action off-world is exactly the shot in the arm the ID4 franchise needs. Certainly, one of the few bright spots of this film is the way Emmerich imagines a parallel 2016 where Earth is unified in the face of a common threat, with all nations sharing in the benefits of technological advances. In that way, Resurgence stands in stark, timely contrast to current Brexit and Donald Trump-dominated headlines, offering a more hopeful vision for humanity’s future in the vein of Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision for Star Trek. And in the spirit of Star Trek, any future Independence Day needs to get out there and explore the final frontier.
Watch a refresher on what happened in the first ‘Independence Day:’
(Photo: Claudette Barius/Twentieth Century Fox via AP)
