Holy lord.
20 years. Things that I would normally expect to see happen in people in 20 years is that they grow up. No, I'm sorry. That's impractical this day in age. What I'd expect to see happen is that filmmakers look back at their previous works and actually take criticism to heart. JJ Abrams listened when his use of lens flares became problematic. Christopher Nolan shot the action in The Dark Knight a lot better then Batman Returns. George Miller... Well, George Miller is the only director I know who if you give him a bigger budget, he'll actually do a better job. Roland Emmerich looked at the criticism of the first film and to give us more of that. You want one-dimensional characters who exist solely to emphasize how funny they are? Well, every story plot gets one!
Every time an attempt at comedy happens I keep asking myself "Why does this film think it needs to be funny?". There are great ideas in this movie that has the potential to really grab an audience and get them involved. The aliens are a bit smarter in this film than they were in the last one, the effect on the aliens really complimented the practical work done in the first and the effects are wonderful. I don't want to laugh. I want to get excited, scared and involved.
President Lanford *OH MY GOD*. This is the most laughable President of the United States I have ever seen on screen. She is such a bland caricature of what a leader is supposed to be that my Dad and I were laughing at everything line of dialogue that came out of her mouth. Oh no! This big alien thing that isn't doing anything to us and David, who saved the world in the last movie says let's wait and see what happens... and she decides to blow it to smithereens with a line delivery like she was trying to imitate Duke Nukem. And than she says "I hope we did the right thing" and not one minute later we cut to the whole freaking world celebrating this stupid moment with her at the pedestal! It's not until her very last scene where she tells the alien invaders "There will be no peace" where I actually thought the movie was going to make a point about something. After all, "No peace" is what the aliens told us in the first movie, maybe this was building up to something? Nope. It means nothing.
And poor Vivica A. Fox. and Judd Hirsch. They bring these two characters back with absolutely nothing to do except to either get fridged or simply give us even more awful comic relief. At least Judd's role in the first movie gave us some dynamics to the characters, but here he contributes nothing to the film. And where's Constance Spano? I liked her in the first movie. We don't get a single mention of what happened between her and David and instead we get this character played by Lars von Trier regular Charlotte Gainsbourg.
The first movie in my opinion has a lot of genuine great moments, but this movie is just straight out bad. And Liam Hemsworth, you've officially made my "no see" list.
