After being one of the biggest and most popular blockbusters of the 1990's, Roland Emmerich is back for most 'end of the world' action. I was certainly nervous after seeing the trailer as I could tell it was not only not going to be as good as its predecessor. But not be a good film in general.
For me Emmerich seems to have lost his touch of giving great action and memorable characters with quotable lines. He did well with The Day After Tomorrow in 2004, missed a great opportunity with '2012' five years later and just went pure silly with White House Down in 2013.
Maybe the 1990's and early 2000's was the right time for his films, and he's past it? I was obviously going into the film with low expectations. I must say, that they were met.
I was surprised to see the opening third go for character development and dialogue. I liked that they tried to give a fair amount of the film for that. But it was not working, and that is a huge fault on the writing department. It ended up being not engaging at all and I ended up not caring for hardly any of the humans characters and was rooting for aliens instead.
It got really messy half way through and I was really unsure how ridiculous they were going to go. However, there were moments that I thought were o.k. in the second half including one funny moment. The rest of the comedic moments I'm afraid were either childish or just did not work at all.
The big final act has some decent moments. But it did not do enough to win me over.
There are countless faults with this one. It's pretty messy in its structure, character development, and to be honest, everything else. There was no tension at all, and you don't feel the stakes and therefore I ended up not caring for how it was going to end. Even the visual effects were not that impressive. In fact, there was probably too much of it for a good amount of the film. You can tell everyone was behind a green screen instead of being on location.
All the performances were pretty forgettable. So I don't think they deserve a mention. There are some appearances of the original cast, which I guess was to nice to see.
One performance that I will mention is Brent Spiner's wacky character. He is back, which surprised me as I thought he died in the first one. Despite questioning his existence, his ridiculousness seemed to be one of the few things that I was clutching to, as his performance was not totally terrible.
I think to sum it up, was that it was trying too hard to be so much bigger and more then its premise, and it blew up in their face. What we ended up with a bit of a mess that looked as if they were making it up as they along.
I try to avoid seeing bad films at the cinema, and I'm afraid that is the worst film I have seen ever at a cinema. But I'm sure another re-make coming out soon could very well take that title away from them.
What is even worse is that they left it open for a third installment, and the premise they went with sounds completely ridiculous.
Rating: 6/10
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