Latest 'Independence Day: Resurgence' Trailer Wrecks Up The Joint, Again

One of the movies I’m most curious to see this summer is Independence Day: Resurgence. A while back, for another outlet, I wrote a piece about big, blockbuster-style movies that I think could flop like an NBA player pretending to take a charge when they’re released. ID:R was on that list.

I want to be excited for this long gestating sequel. I love the original, it’s one of the movies that made Will Smith one of the biggest stars in the world, and it’s Roland Emmerich, a director known for wrecking up the joint, working at the height of his joint-wrecking powers. But it’s been 20 years. There’s not a lot of star power involved—the lesser Hemsworth brother is the biggest box office draw. I question whether or not there is enough of an audience that still cares to offset the reported $200 million budget of Independence Day: Resurgence.

Adding to all of these worries is the fact that what we’ve seen from from ID:R thus far, hasn’t been all that great. It’s been fine, but it hasn’t exactly set my world ablaze. That said, Fox just released a new trailer, and it actually looks awesome. Maybe all of my worries are for naught. Check it out below.

This latest look at Independence Day: Resurgence gives us a better view of how the world has evolved over the last 20 years. The aliens are coming back, bigger and badder, and there’s basically an entire generation that grew up preparing for war on a scale we’ve never seen. And that preparation has not been in vain, because a battle is coming. This is, however, an even greater threat than before, and a fight we probably can’t win. Of course, as Bill Pullman says, we didn’t stand a chance last time, either.

There are hints here of something bigger going on, some conspiratorial overtones that could provide some greater thematic depth to Independence Day: Resurgence. We’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of those, but I don’t anticipate a whole lot of intrigue or subtlety. But who needs that when you’ve got kickass aliens fights? And already a master of destruction, Roland Emmerich certainly appears to be upping his game when it comes to devastation and chaos.

This trailer even gives us our obligatory Will Smith moment. We’ve known that his Stephen Hiller character has died in the years since the movie, and that moment with the photograph confirms as much. So, if you were holding out any hope of seeing the Fresh Prince fight off an alien threat again, sorry.

Independence Day: Resurgence opens on June 24.