Independence/Warcraft June, 2016

Independence day: Resurgence

To be totally honest with you, dear reader, I really, REALLY loved Independence Day: Resurgence the first time I saw it back in 1996. Yeah, you heard me right. The major problem with the script to Independence Day: Resurgence is that the production company didn’t bother writing a new script; they just used the original script and made a few awkward changes two it. Most of the scenes in this awful “sequel” were burgled from the original script. Yeah, sure, they made a few changes here and there, instead of the “good guys” flying an alien craft to the mother ship, they fly alien enhanced fighter jets to go and . . . piss on mama alien. Yep, flew all that way just to urinate on the alien spacecraft. THEN when aliens get all mad about it and destroy the alien enhanced fighter jets, our spaceship pissers commandeer THREE alien ships and the chase is on just like in the original.

One of the great things about the original was the sense of humor. And of course, this “sequel” has lots and lots of “funny” lines, lines so “funny” that I forgot to laugh. The humor in the original was organic. In Resurgence the jokes are forced onto the script, and most of them have actually nothing to do with the action. There are two characters (I junior fighter pilot and a computer guy of some kind) that appear in the middle of this battle between humans and alien bug-people to tell jokes. No, seriously, they have no reason to even be in this movie other than to come up with some witty little thing to say about what’s going on. And their witty little remarks are “not funny.

Warcraft

As we were leaving the theatre right after watching Warcraft, my friend Khoo said, “Well, the moviemakers had a real problem. They had to please two audiences, the movie goers and the gamers.” That pretty much hit on the head for me. This movie was more video game than it was a thought out movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing video games. But just sit and watch a video game it gets uninteresting to watch very fast. The script for Warcraft is bad; it’s just too thin. Feels more like the first draft and not a complete script and lacks detail. And the actors are really not up to the task. Except for Ben Foster, the entire “human” cast just doesn’t have the vocal chops for the period acting style suggested by the dialogue. The only thing of interest in this movie is the CGI and that’s not enough to sustain the audience’s attention.