Movie review: Independence Day 2 + Star Trek Beyond

I had the chance to watch the latest Scifi movies and well... time for a short review.
If you didnt watch them yet.... close this thread... yes... there are going to be spoilers.

Lets start with Independence Day 2.
Its bigger... with more effects and more... well... ahh... its recycled bullshit.
I really loved Independence Day when it came into the cinemas in 1996 but 20 years later the only thing they managed to do is to recycle an old movie.
The aliens are back... with bigger ship and bigger guns... and an alien queen which is dumb enough to personally try to destroy an alien supercomputer which came to earth to rescue mankind?!?
Yes... yes... thats an idea stolen from Falling skies...but nvm.
Ok... but this time mankind is prepared.... they have reverse engineered alien tech during the past 20 years just to do the same stupid mistakes again.
Yes... first launch an airstrike against the mother ship (didnt work in 1996 and also wont work in 2016) and then try to blow up the mothership with fusion bombs (back in 1996 they tried it with nuclear bombs).
The movie is full of effects and dumb like hell.
Just like in 1996 a brave pilot had the suicide job to carry the bomb with his fighter straight to the (how do I call that thing)... ehmm queen personal luxury liner which ejected from the mother ship. This suicide pilot of course was President Bill Pullment who recently won the Brexit votes.
What other bullshit do we get to see?
Did I already mention the alien supercomputer which travels to earth and forgets to say "hi, please dont shoot at me"? Yeah... that super intelligent computer was instantly shot down by humans.
While this computer and its ship are supposed to be a threat to the original aliens from 1996 its surprising how easy its ship was blown up the earthlings.
I would have expected more from something that is so advanced. Especially I wouldnt have expected a large white ball that gets rolled around by us earthlings.

Even more ridiculous are completely unneccessary scenes such as the dramatic death scene of an unknown scientist.... hell I have no idea who that guy really was... that guy was unimportant... to waste 3 minutes of the movie to see this guy die... geez.
Remember the kids in the 1996 movie?
They are the heroes 20 years later... they of course became pilots just to kick the queens ass.
And now that the queen is dead they will carry the war with the help of the alien super computer to the enemy.... into an intergalactic war with even more queens and even bigger ships and.... ahhh... im not going to watch independence day 3.

Independence Day 2 was aweful to watch... its the same warmed up story from 20 years ago... with some old characters that are doing the same old jokes and comments as 20 years ago and a few new characters which are absolutely uninteresting. There are even many characters in that movie which serve no real purpose (I still dont understand what jeff goldblums dad was doing in that movie). The movie follows exactly the same storyline and structure as the movie in 1996.... its definitely a copy of that.
The bigger is better attitude doesnt fit well... it makes alot stuff absolutely unrealistic.
A space ship with the size of the atlantic ocean (it lands on the entire atlantic ocean) would be so heavy and big that it would cause catastrophc weather events that destoyed the entire planet. Its mass would have an incredible heavy influence on pretty much everything. Its weight would crush the earth crust.
And the drill hole.... oh... I didnt mention the drill hole yet. The aliens were drilling to the earth core to extract it in order to build new ships. Dont worry they were stopped 2 minutes before reaching the core (tzzz... if anyone actually would know how long the aliens need to drill... and we dont even know exactly how big the core really is).
The drill hole was just one mile wide?
Ok... let me say it this way...Its great that the aliens were defeated and that the mothership automatically left earth after the queen was dead.... BUT... a one mile wide drill hole reaching almost down to the earths core would worry me. #supervulcano
Ok... and if not a supervulcano then I would at least be worried about such a large drill hole in the middle of an ocean. Do you know what happens when large amounts of water get in contact with hot magma?
->

To sum it up... meh

Star Trek Beyond

Ok... thats going to be difficult.
Many people consider this movie a step into the right direction... others simply consider it the worst of the new star trek movies.

To a degree this 3rd movie in the alternative Star Trek universe (-> the Kelvin Timeline) goes back to the roots when it comes to showing the different characters and their problems.
Personal problems of the crew... especially with their 5 year mission very early in the movie were shown. Also hard personal decisions they have to make have been put into focus.
Its just my personal opionion since I really like character development in TV shows over a long period of time... for me its always interesting how everything started and how the event change people. And thats what I really like on the new movie.
I also like that there are less stupid jokes than in the previous movie.

Generally Star Trek Beyond is less dark than the two other movies of the Kelvin Timeline and exploration has a bigger role in it. The idea of a peaceful federation that tries to help others returned to Star Trek. Thats good.
Star Trek Beyond is like expected full of action and very nice visual effects. Everything fits very well.

What doesnt fit is the complete story because its absolutely not logical and violates the Star Trek "history".
I am totally aware that the Kelvin Timeline is different from the original timeline (Prime Timeline) of Star Trek, but there are massive logical errors in that movie.

The key incident which changed the timelines was the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin in the year 2233. That changed the events and also how the timelines evolved.
Most drastically seem to be the technological changes. The Kelvin Enterprise is alot bigger than the original one from the Prime Timeline.... actually pretty much everything is alot bigger and more advanced in the Kelvin timeline. Well... ok... thats simply explained by "everything in new movies has to be bigger".
The Yorktown starbase in the new Star Trek Beyond movie is about the size of a small moon.... which is a bit... meh.
Honestly... building something like that would take at least a century... not to mention all the resources required to build it. I have no idea how something as big like that could be build in such a short time... and why nothing like that ever existed in the Prime timeline of Star Trek.
But ok... Its something I simply decided to accept that as "choice of art".

What I can not overlook here is the the stupid story plot of the movie.
Infact the crew finds the "wreck" of the U.S.S. Franklin on a planet (after crashing the Enterprise on that same planet).
There is a short moment when inside the ship an overview of a ship section is shown and below it the name of the ship and its registry number.
NX 326
Before that registry number is the insignia of the Federation displayed.
So the Franklin is a federation ship but also has a NX registration. Later in the movie it was told that it was a warp 4 ship and the shape is very similar to the early NX class prototypes of the Earth starfleet (prior the Federation was founded).
Ok... whats the point here?
The point is that this causes a complete mess with the Star Trek timeline.
The Kelvin incident happened in 2233.... that means prior that year all events should be exactly the same as in the prime timeline.
The Warp 4 ships were build prior the Enterprise NX-01 (the first Warp 5 ship) was commissioned.
In 2161 the Federation was founded and in the same year the Enterprise NX-01 was decommissioned because newer, better ships were build. It does not make any sense that a Warp 5 gets decommisioned in 2161 because its considered "old" and then even older Warp 4 ships remain in active duty and get the Federation insignia in 2161.
Thats just nonsense.
Its also said that the Franklin got lost in 2164 in a Nebula. Ok. Doesnt make sense but ok.
Thats 69 years prior the Kelvin incident.
So if it happens 69 years prior the Kelvin incident in the Kelvin timeline the same must also have happened at exactly the same time in the Prime timeline.
And that in return must have triggered exactly the same events that happened in Star Trek Beyond for the Prime timeline.
That means the Bad guy in Star Trek beyond also must have tried to destroy the federation in the prime timeline. But surprisingly nothing about that is known.

I think the story of Star Trek beyond does not make much sense just because of when all the events happened (long before the Kelvin incident).
There simply isnt a logical explanation why in one timeline events lead to a conflict while in another timeline the same events lead to "nothing".
The story of Star Trek beyond isnt well written.
Its an entertaining movie which catches up the problems of the crew but you clearly shouldnt really think about whats happening on the screen.
Its not logical... its even hard to understand what the motivation of the bad guy actually is and how he turned into the bad guy. There are many many open questions and lots of stuff which simply does not want to fit together.

For me its hard to tell if I like the movie or not.
Story wise I completely dislike what I have seen.... but everything else did fit very well together. There was good action... very good effects... there was truely the Star Trek exploration feeling, there was a bigger focus on the characters (the crew also got a more equal screen time -> not only Kirk + Spock) and many interesting ideas.
I guess Star trek beyond would be a good movie if the story wouldnt be so inconsistent.
From the 3 Kelvin Timeline movies I would rank it on position 2 since Into Darkness really wasnt my taste (it felt like a forced try to copy the star trek 2 story).
Btw. Into Darkness also violates the timelines a bit since the launch of the botany bay was prior the kelvin incident and the crimes of the auguments were known in the prime timeline while for some unknown reason the same crimes were no longer known in the kelvin timeline ?!?
Yeah ...well... nvm

Im not exactly sure why... but star trek beyond felt more entertaining than independence day 2.
Maybe despite its story weakness it didnt feel like recycled content.
Star Trek Beyond had plot holes... while Independence day 2 was a plot hole.

Oh... one more thing about independence 2 day.

London got destroyed in this movie.... thats a bit surprising for me, because it already was destroyed in the original movie from 1996.
Of course cities can be rebuild.... thats possible but not in exactly the same way with its famour landmarks and just in 20 years. You know, rebuilding the tower bridge is not as easy as building a new shopping mall or a new skyscaper. It takes time... alot of time.... more than 20 years.... if that would be even your priority after being attacked by an alien species.

hmmm
could be that it might sound like that
I guess I just dont get along well logical mistakes in a story (no matter in which movie)

time travel and alternate timelines are a creative way to tell interesting stories... but if done wrong it can mess up everything.

Like i said... a good movie for people which dont want to think about story

interesting and probably controveral might be that characters are portrayed a bit different from the prime timeline (or it never was matter of topic in the prime timeline).
Not only the relationship between Uhura and Spock played a big role again but also for the first time a crew member was portrayed as a gay character. Sulu met his family, his man and his daughter. I think that brief scene is very good for the franchise as it displays a great and normal level of tolerance in the society of the federation. Star Trek always tried to show a better world with a better, more tolerant society... so ... yeah... why not. And their daughter will most likely serve on the the Enterprise B just like in the prime universe and the name Sulu will be part of the starfleet at least till the early 25th century (Akira Sulu).

Spock tends to gifts as tracking device... also he is portrayed more human meanwhile which is probably result of his own death (the death of Ambassador Spock -> Leonard Nimoy).
Kirk is a lousy choice for a first contact mission.

Biggest difference between the timelines is that manage the wreck the new Enterprise after just a few years of service while in the prime universe the original Enterprise was meant to be decommisioned after decades of service and later got destroyed trying to find spock.
The Enterprise A of the Kelvin timeline which is shown at the end of the movie appears to be a refit version. Thinner neck, larger nanceles but overall the same shape.

Quote from Huor

I also saw the movie ID4 2 just because i was interested to see how it evolves this time. I love to see special effects. And i was sure that it could have no story or its not relevant at all. The story wasn't relevant in the first movie too.
What i couldn't really understand was the fact that the queens mother ship was affected by entering the earth atmosphere although it has shields to withstand any affect. The hull of such ship would suffer a lot of damage actually and it was also in the movie - what is the shield then for, or did they deactivate the shield when entering the atmosphere, but then why?
Next thing i never understand the logic of drilling to the core to use its power to whatever. What is the benefit of destroying a planet just to develop a civilization? The silver surfer from the fantastic four also drilled holes for the thing that arrived later. Just makes no sense to me. But hey its fiction

The scenes with the queen at the end were cool, although why is the queen that big, while all other aliens are just about human size (if they are out of the environmental suits). Why was it possible to destroy the queens person shield? And why was it possible for such a small bus to evade the queen (was similar to Godzilla with that taxi). And why did the aliens stopped drilling as soon as the queen was dead. If their task is to drill to the core to extract the resources of the planets, why does this change when the queen is dead? Next to that why wouldn't they break through the outer earth soil, it just were a few seconds left... Questions over questions that are kept unanswered.
I think a 3rd movie wouldnt make any sense now.

When speaking of the mothership landing... that ship was big, damn big. If something that big would fly into the earths atmosphere all the air displacement must be gigantic. Result must have been a shockwave that easly could have destroyed EVERYTHING on the planets surface. That of course if that ship wouldnt break apart.

Driling to the core probably was done to get access to the liquid metal. That btw. isnt the worst explanation why the aliens were interested in Earth but not in the moon or Mars. They seem to require a planet with molten core for the extraction. Small planets or moons most likey dont have molten cores as due to their small size they cool off too fast.

I guess the only answer to why the queen was so big is "so they could shoot at it with their jets". Why the queens shield was destroyed all of a sudden is totally unknown to me... it was poof... and gone.
I guess the drilling was stopped automatically because of a security protocol. I think that makes even sense.
The queen was leading the harvest and the death of the queen meant that the invasion failed. Most likely the security protocol had the purpose to kick in if the queen faces a stronger enemy that could not be defeated. Maybe it was designed with the assumption that the other race managed to defeat the queen the remaining drones never would have a chance to win.
So it ordered the mothership to fly back with the remaining hive and rescue whats left to be rescued and eventually put a new queen in command somewhen later.
If its such an automatic security protocol maybe the drones never had the ability to stop it and get the drilling done (even if they wanted and if they were very close to reaching the core).

If there will be a 3rd movie then it will be even BIGGER. Afterall we will face an intergalactic war... we will need BIG spaceships and even BIGGER guns.
And guess what... since that mothership returned to "somewhere"... this "somewhere" will be incredible BIG.

Quote from Portalearth

That wasn't actually a Godzilla movie. Just a big radioactive lizard terrorizing New York City.

what i mean to say is most fans of Godzilla will tell you that Godzilla '98 was terrible and tarnished the Godzilla name

but if you enjoy Matthew Broderick then whatever