Independence Day: Resurgence operates like a machine constantly breaking the laws of thermodynamics; the longer it goes on the faster it gets, running on a never ending supply of stuff happening without any energy or thought being put into it. For all its flaws the first film at least took the time building up its characters and the threat of a real alien invasion. But not here, oh no. Resurgence actually highlights best what is wrong with the vast majority of sequels, and it’s how they think that simply having more stuff happening will make us as an audience be more amused. It’s actually better to have one great action sequence than five lackluster ones.

The movie rushes along from scene to scene without any sense of real pacing, and none of the characters are allowed time to breathe or even mourn when loved ones die in front of them. But really, as the movie speeds by it’s kind of incredible to watch it throw more stuff at the screen. More aliens, more action scenes, and less time with humans. We watch as countless monuments are destroyed just as in the first one, but this time it is thoughtless destruction. It’s a big budget production of mostly CGI and green screen, and even though some of the effects are actually pleasant, you just sit there wondering why you should care as debris flies across the screen.

You know how Finding Dory so very well integrated lovable moments and characters from Finding Nemo while making itself its own great adventure? Resurgence does the opposite. It pulls a Hangover 2. Nearly every scene from the first movie is poorly copied and chucked into this dull ride. Dark looming shadows of the mothership on the moon, a green beam shot at a moon station in the EXACT same way as the capitol was blown up in the first film, a dog briefly in peril, abandoned kids driving aimlessly in the desert, punching an alien, the same confrontation with an alien in a lab who controls the vocal chords of someone to speak AGAIN, A CLOSE ENCOUNTER LINE DELIVERED SO FORCEFULLY BY CAPTAIN HILLER’S SON THAT I GRABBED THE ARMCHAIRS OF MY SEAT TO STOP MYSELF FROM RUNNING OUT OF THE THEATER, a final action scene in the same fucking desert, and those are just the ones I can remember.

Also the aliens have guns. I don’t know about you, but giving the Independence Day aliens guns makes them less scary to me. It actually makes them boring and not very threatening.

The plot of this movie is ridiculous in its simplicity and stupidity, the characters themselves aren’t even sure of it at times. Many of them teleport to locations they couldn’t possibly be at minutes after being hundreds of miles away. During the opening scene of this movie, two events take place simultaneously. One on Earth and one on the moon, and characters in ships are able to be at both places at both events almost instantly following each other. Even IF Earth had integrated alien technology after the first attack, I’m still not buying that those ships can travel at essentially the speed of light. Either that or this movie suffers from a lot of disorientation, because it can’t remember where its characters are supposed to be in any given scene. Somehow David’s Dad from the first movie is back in this one and ends up in the same desert where the last movie ended in a school bus full of children right as the final attack on the aliens is being set up, when right before he is way way too far away to have covered that much ground in that little time.

But that’s what this movie does. It rushes along the whole experience, cutting back and forth around its characters, not caring where or why any of them are where they are. And it ends with, of course, a set up for a third film for a trilogy no one asked for.

There are some enjoyable moments and some alright humor, mostly coming from Nicolas Wright as an accountant who tracks down and follows Jeff Goldblum, and DeObia Oparei as an African warlord who has fought the aliens before. The two of them almost buddy cop it up, and it’s a shame the movie doesn’t give them more time. I’d pay to see just the two of them take on the aliens.

All in all this movie is an unoriginal, boring repeat of the first one, adding nothing new or really entertaining about it. Unless you want to see Jeff Goldblum drive a bus full of school kids as a gigantic alien queen chases them around the desert shooting a massive gun then skip this entirely.

And casting a Chinese pilot to have 5 lines, two in Chinese right before her dad dies, less than 2 min of screen time, and be a half assed love interest to another character just to appeal to the foreign box office was fucking offensively bad

Oh, and they play the same exact main theme music from the first movie in the ending credits of this one, JUST like how the first one did it, as if to tell us they did us right and nailed this sequel. Pathetic.