It’s bizarrely easy to forget how bad the blockbusters of the last few years have been given how forgettable most of them have been. Even major releases of long-established and popular franchises have been disappointing at best and outright terrible at worst.
I mean, how many people really remember that Power Rangers came out last year? How many people cared about Dead Men Tell No Tales? How excited were people for that Ghostbusters reboot that came out the other year?
Perhaps the most disappointing sequel of the past decade has been Independence Day 2. I mean, for as fun as the early franchise was, Power Rangers was never really that good. Nobody’s cared about Pirates of the Caribbean since its disastrous second installment tanked the series’ popularity. Ghostbusters was only ever going to work the one time (and no, Ghostbusters 2 doesn’t count).
But Independence Day had a lot of potential. The first movie was exceptional: revolutionary for its time and genuinely holds up just as well today. Although clearly never intended to continue into a long-running franchise, it had a colorful cast of A and B-list stars that were likely to return if one ever did materialize. Although complete, the story remained open to a literal universe of possibilities. And with so much alien tech littered across the planet, the worldbuilding possibilities of a world where super advanced technology was readily available was incredibly compelling.
But then we received the actual sequel to the movie. It didn’t have Will Smith, even in a supporting role. The plot was about as well fleshed out as Destiny‘s and clearly existed for the sole purpose of generating annualized sequels for the next decade or more. The characters felt flat, the world felt insubstantial and its entire runtime felt like a drawn-out trailer for sequels that nobody really wanted to see.
Ultimately, the movie was released to little fanfare and even worse reviews. While it managed to bank some money based on pure brand recognition, it hardly earned what its studio was anticipating it would: certainly not enough to cover its considerable expenses.
Soulless, I think, is the word that best describes it. It was a calculated, commercialized and ultimately cynical corporate product that existed solely to grease the wheels of the Hollywood machine. It was the worst kind of sequel and not even fun when taken on its own terms.
It should come as no surprise to anybody — not those who forgot the movie ever came out in the first place nor the ones that have to endure the memory of its release — that the film’s producer, Dean Devlin, has no plans to make a sequel to the failed action-sci-fi revival. In a recent interview, when asked about the possibility of a third movie, Devlin responded with “I don’t know. I don’t know. Currently, I personally have no plans on doing another one.”
So don’t hold your breath for an Independence Day 3. None of those dangling plot threads left over from Independence Day: Resurgence are likely to be resolved anytime soon.