Two decades after the freak alien invasion that nearly destroyed mankind a new threat emerges. This Alien mothership is more than twice the size as the last one and once again, the world’s armies must band together to save the world. Do they have enough firepower or will this battle change and will aliens take over?
Genre : SF
Country : USA
Cast :
Liam Hemsworth : Jake Morrison
Jeff Goldblum : David Levinson
Bill Pullman : President Whitmore
My opinion
“Are we dead?
We’re okay.
You peed in your pants?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, me too.”
I never thought I would miss Will Smith in a movie. Well, for everything there’s a first time. And damn, I missed our friend Smith in this sequel of the blockbuster from 1996. Not because of his acting talent or his good looks. But because of his dry humor and his sometimes hyperactive behavior. Smith was honored by the brief display of a picture somewhere in a presidential corridor. His absence in this film was due to a fatal accident during a test flight (Personally I think the paycheck was a disappointment to him). As a worthy successor his stepson Dylan (Jessie T. Usher and fortunately not Smith’s son Jaden himself) is summoned to help.
The big difference with its predecessor, is the total lack of credibility and excitement. In the blockbuster of 1996, the alien invasion was so brilliantly portrayed, that if we ever expect something to happen like this, it’ll look exactly the same. In this movie everything is so over the top and out of proportion, that it starts to look ridiculous. For instance the dimensions of the alien ship. This giant ship covers almost a quarter of the planet. The advantage is that the devastation and ravages are so immense that the images of destruction are really impressive. I’m sure the CGI department was asked to get the maximum out of their computer systems. When those immense landing gears of the colossal spaceship dig into the earth’s surface, it provides hallucinatory images. Quite some mainland is plowed and a huge tsunami hurtles across the continents. Compared to this, the one in “San Andreas” was a tiny wave.
The cast is a mixture of veterans who appeared in the old movie and a new generation. So you can see Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch and Brent Spiner again, as their twenty year older alter ego. Their appearance reminds you again how fast years flew by. Their intelligence is still as fresh and spry as before. Most problems are solved in an instant by shrewd proposals and intuitive inventions. A little too quickly in my opinion. This made it quite implausible. And this way the tension was completely ruined. Furthermore, I couldn’t really appreciate the sometimes corny humor. All in all, this second film is a little bit of a setback. Granted, the images look spectacular. The special effects are majestic (but that was to be expected). And the action scenes are phenomenal. But there was no magical moment in this film. It wasn’t really that impressive. But when you fancy a visual spectacle, this blockbuster should be on your bucket list. I just hope the descendants of those pesky aliens won’t come up with the same idea in 20 years.