The highlight of making the movie was the chance to work alongside the first film’s star Jeff Goldblum. If it’s a hit, if it makes money, then sure I would like to do “Independence Day Three”. He’s also an accomplished jazz pianist who plays with a band known as the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.
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“I was the MIT-graduated, underachieving cable technician, not interested in career glory, an environmental activist who got pressed into duty under extraordinary circumstances”, said the loquacious Goldblum of his character.
Independence Day director Roland Emmerich had the idea for the original ID4 film when fielding a question about his belief in the existence of alien life in 1994. “It’s a thrill to come back and do this guy again”. Pullman’s president figure tries to give another rousing speech to drive momentum that isn’t almost as memorable.
Turns out that Dr. Okun, the mad scientist from Area 51, has been in a coma for 20 years.
The film has assembled a cadre of screenwriters – five people wrote this! – who have given us one flimsy story.
“I hope they exist”, said Emmerich. “It was the first time I ever met him and he has been my career idol forever”.
Joining the cast are Liam Hemsworth as pilot Jake Morrison, who is engaged to Patricia (Maika Monroe of “It Follows” and the criminally underseen “The Guest”), Whitmore’s daughter. “This world is very special to me, and I wanted to do justice to it and the characters”, says the filmmaker.
Watch the Independence Day video essay after the jump.
“I’m not going out there to make friends”, he says.
Of course, most late-in-the-day sequels end up pretty cack, with the returning creatives unable to recapture the initial magic and the film in general too enamoured with the original to do anything fresh. “I couldn’t believe it”. Over the years, I put some ironic distance between myself and the film, but not so much that I couldn’t sit through a couple of scenes when it turned up on TV.
Twenty years have also passed in the movie’s world, and in the time since repelling an alien invasion, Earth has become peaceful and prosperous, repurposing some alien technology into new high-tech transportation and defense.
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I plan on attending the film at my earliest convenience and reviewing it, but the one thing that might interest me more than the movie itself is what kind of people will be there watching it.
