Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) - Roland Emmerich

Taking place 20 years after the events of the first film, Independence Day: Resurgence introduces the current state of humanity as one in a state of peace, with the historic fight for earth unifying the world as one collective, harmonious community.  When a new threat emerges, with the same alien race returning to finish what they failed achieving last time, a new generation of humanity is the only thing standing in the way of utter-annihilation.  Roland Emmerich's Independence Day: Resurgence is a big, dumb, lazy summer blockbuster that almost offers a step-by-step guide into how to create the laziest sequel imaginable.  For starters, the screenplay and the plotting of the film feel almost identical to the first film, with the only exception being the pesky character development, you know that actually made the first film compelling escapism.  All these new characters are uninteresting shills of characters from the first film, offering little charisma or depth to make them anything more than set dressing in human form.  The lack of Will Smith is also jarringly apparent, with nearly every other character, small and large, returning except him.  This is particularly a problem because no one in the entire film has even close to the same charisma or charm, leading to an abundance of comedic puns falling painfully flat on execution throughout the narrative.  For those unaware, I'm an unapologetic fan of Roland Emmerich's brand of destruction cgi porn, but Independence Day Resurgence feels awfully phoned in even from a CGI porn/action set pieces perspective, a film that has very little rhythm to its action and drama, with both attributes feeling lazily  rushed.  Independence Day: Resurgence is the worst type of sequel,  a lazy one, being a film that feels like it was rushed to production over a short time frame as opposed to having nearly two decades since the first film to develop a more compelling story that didnt simply copy the worst aspects of the formula.

---