Bible Based Movie Review: Independence Day: Resurgence

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

They're Back!

Plot Overview

“Today's the Fourth of July,” the dreamer dreams. His vision takes him past stars, galaxies, and a planet that's had a bite taken out of it. Radio broadcasts from Earth trickle in the background of space having traveled this far. Unfortunately, they include a distress call from the mother ship sent as a “burst on X–band frequencies directed towards deep space” when she lost the battle with Earth in the year of 1996.

Since then we've had twenty years of peace on Earth with a “fusion of human and alien technology” that defies our familiar assault weapon bans. Who'd a thunk it? Madame President Elizabeth Lanford (Sela Ward) gives a rousing speech and commends one Dylan Dubrow-Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), captain of a fighting force who lacks a military bearing. She praises his father Steven Hiller (Will Smith) from the first “Indy Day” movie (“Your father was a great man.”) Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), grown-up daughter of former U.S. president Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), tells Dylan, “Be nice to Jake when you see him up there.” Dylan harbors some ill feelings after he almost got killed by Patty's fiancé Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) in a training accident. A peaceful society has not obviated individual tempers.

Jake and his best friend Charlie Miller (Travis Tope) are piloting a space tug towing a “half gazillion dollar weapon” to be installed at the Space Defense Station on Earth's moon. To avoid a tipping disaster, he ends up “kicking in the cold fusion drive.” I don't see this new technology as having a lot of safeguards. They have defense stations also on Mars and Saturn.

Alien prisoners inexplicably start celebrating. Due to a “human- alien psychic residual connection” on anyone who'd had contact with them the first time, several return characters start having troubling dreams, and a comatose Dr. Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) suddenly awakes and covers his wall with gibberish in strange symbols. Guess who's returning with reinforcements! Brilliant scientist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) concedes on their arrival, “I had twenty years to get us ready, and we didn't stand a chance.”

Ideology

African warlord Dikembe Umbutu (Deobia Oparei) had to learn the alien tongue when fighting the invaders the first time (“They were hunting us. We had to learn how to hunt them.”) Cool! That means their symbolic language is learnable. In fact there's one universal symbol that we and they share in common; when Jake was to distract the alien commandos so his buddies could mount an assault, he gave them the finger, filliped them, flipped them off. That got their attention. The (stinky) finger is vaguely sexual.

Umbutu, tattooed according to the number of his victims, had developed a fighting technique of attacking their backs with a Katana sword. He took them from behind. This imagery is getting downright homosexual. The chart of their drill penetrating its way to the earth's core is arguably phallic. The queen of the hive commands the fighting (and drilling.) In ordinary hive colonies, the queen never concerns herself with the hive's day-to-day operations, only with reproduction. Since this queen doesn't reproduce, that makes her a queer queen.

While these aliens are all sharp (masculine) angles and pointy weapons, there's a second alien race—oh, boy!—that's all soft spheroids with a slit in the middle like a vagina. A trigger happy Madame President blasts one to the moon's crater Van de Graff. A Van de Graff generator, of course, generates electrostatic energy through a belt rubbing an insulated tube. Dr. Okun uses his Okun LASER with its “stimulated emission” to open up the sphere, And finally, the sphere speaks with a feminine voice (of Jenna Purdy) telling of her race's virtual existence—she cannot reproduce—and a place she wanted to take earth refugees to, a sanctuary. Like perhaps the Greek island of Lesbos. If the alien invaders are queers, then this other race is Lesbians. Great!

Through contact with a human, this last one had been able to “deconstruct your primitive language” and so speak English. Let's see if we can do the same. General Joshua Adams (William Fichtner), being top in the line of succession after America's leadership took a massive hit, was visibly sworn in on a Bible. Joshua is also the name of a great military leader in the Bible. Adams is the name in the Bible, of the first man (and woman), (Gen. 5:1-2) “In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam.” The human race is heterosexual, supposed to reproduce, (Gen. 1:28) “And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”

Throughout the movie we see various stages of heterosexual coupling: Love at first sight when Charlie sees his “future wife”, fellow pilot Rain Lao (Angelababy), who's niece of their superior General Jiang Lao (Chin Han). First date (“Dinner first.”) Courting over time when Jake sneaks back to earth to be with his fiancée Patty. Patty looking forward to marriage and getting a house. Various family intergenerational relations. A relationship that fell by the wayside when David encounters his old flame Dr. Catherine Marceaux (French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.) Dylan's mother Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox) a nurse aiding the delivery of a baby.

To further deconstruct our primitive language, we encounter Brent Spiney and John Storey playing a pair of gay (i.e. homo) paramours / nuclear scientists at Area 51. John Storey's character raises gay (i.e. brightly colored) orchids. A ship's crew in the Atlantic searching for treasure has a gay (i.e. happy) drunken celebration when they land a lucrative contract. And some school kids in a bus turning off the beaten track have an extraterrestrial encounter that's oh, so gay (i.e. offbeat folly.)

The homosexual couple had some kind of legal status that would allow one visitation rights to the other in a coma. Depending on legal definitions in 1996 when the one went out like a light, or how they could have been modified in twenty years without the conscious ability of one of the partners, it could have been called any number of things. Domestic partnership is most likely, although same-sex marriage had come along in the interim, but not gay marriage, because gay has too many meanings to be used in a court's legal definition. English has so many synonyms, it could also have been a joining of the two as in a writing of Henry Meigs, “If he could believe what he had just seen, JEC had joined [emphasis added] a sequential inference or logic machine with new data-base equipment” (292). Or as author Peter Temple writes of two family groups: “My father used to say we were married to the Armitages long before I married Stuart. He was at Oxford with Stuart's father. They all did law. That was what you did. Of course, the families had almost been joined [emphasis added] before” (31). Or as referenced in this movie, a fusion of two queers, as a “fusion of human and alien technology.” This last could just as well have been, a “marriage of human and alien technology”, or a “joining of human and alien technology.” The primitive English language holds a plethora of synonyms.

Fusion has one particular meaning of the combining of two light atomic elements to produce a heavy element accompanied by the release of energy. It can also mean two of anything melded together. Similarly, marriage has one particular meaning of a human male and a female united together in one flesh producing children. It also can mean two of anything (including homos) united closely together. Fusion in that first sense is statistical; not every pair of atoms in the reaction will join to release energy. Similarly, not every married couple will produce children. Marriage in its second sense, of course, as between two homos will categorically not produce any children.

The dyad “cold fusion” reserves itself, through usage, for that first atomic meaning, for when it's done without needing lots of heat. The dyad “gay marriage” is similarly reserved for that first marriage meaning, actually voted in when the states rejected marriage outright as an arrangement between two homosexuals, the Court's legal definition not determining other usages. A “happy marriage” is a common phrase in English, amenable to various synonyms for happy.

Production Values

This 4th of July offering, “” (2016) was directed by Roland Emmerich again. Its screenplay was written by Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich, and James Vanderbilt. It stars Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldlbum, Jessie T. Usher, Bill Pullman, and Makia Monroe. The actors did okay for underdeveloped characters in a plot that galloped along changing participants as it went.

MPAA rated it PG–13 for sequences of Sci-Fi action and destruction, and for some language. It's pretty much a rehash of the first “Independence Day” movie, no surprises.

Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation

ID is a dumb movie filled with CGI spectacles. If you go into it expected same, you won't be disappointed. I enjoyed it on Independence Day weekend, but I might have picked another movie on another day. I'm easy to please, but in this case it would be easy to say, “Please, not again.”

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years. Special effects: Absolutely amazing special effects. Video Occasion: None of the Above. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall product rating: three stars out of five.