Independence Day gets celebrated, again, 20 years too late—I would have been way more stoked for another ID4 within five years of its initial release. Surprisingly, director Roland Emmerich and his collaborator Dean Devlin initially pull off a fun reentry into this dormant franchise. 

The countries of Earth have banded together since turning back alien invaders, utilizing their technology to boost their defenses. President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) has been replaced by America’s first female president (Sela Ward), David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) has become the head of Area 51, and Will Smith’s pilot Steven Hiller is dead. New pilots—Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth), Hiller’s stepson, Dylan (Jesse Usher), and President Whitmore’s daughter, Patricia (Maika Monroe, It Follows)—must step up when the aliens return with a bigger ship and a bigger queen. 

The fun decreases exponentially after the first-act setup of a post-ID4 world. Where the first movie ushered in a new era of landmark-destroying disaster flicks, the sequel is simply another alien invasion movie, and an overstuffed one at that. Not nearly enough time is spent with Goldblum. This sequel’s selling point is its silly inconsequentiality, which left me hoping for the potential third movie sooner rather than later.