Read the harsh early reviews of 'Independence Day: Resurgence'
Stateside movie critics won't get an early look at Independence Day: Resurgence -- and reviews coming in from Europe might explain why.
Roland Emmerich's sequel to his original 1996 blockbuster has been getting "mixed" responses, from middling to downright terrible.
UK-based site GamesRadar said this of the film: "In the end, Goldblum’s Levinson sums it up while talking about the mothership sucking up whole cities from the Earth’s surface: 'What goes up, must come down.' Sadly, he might have been talking about the franchise."
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Time Out London gives it three out of five stars, saying it's "crammed with pornographic destruction and madcap action."
"It's only two hours long," writer Tom Huddleston says. "So it’s goodbye to proper character development and the slow-build tension that made the first film such a thrill, and hello to exposition delivered at double speed and a cop-out ending that makes absolutely no sense."
Empire was a lot more forgiving, calling it full of "outsize silliness," but "less effective" than its predecessor.
"As spectacular as you’d hope from a sequel to the 1996 planet-toaster, and as amusingly cheesy," writer Dan Jolin says. "You’ll enjoy yourself enough that you won’t even miss Will Smith."
Screen Anarchy says the film's special effects are "clunky and silly, but not in a fun way." Additionally, the acting is lackluster -- newcomer Jessie T. Usher has the "charisma of an office chair," and Liam Hemsworth is "woefully drab."
"The original was a fun, campy B-movie with a huge budget, but this sequel is an utter failure in almost every regard," writer Pierce Conran says.
Indepedence Day: Resurgence hits theaters for the rest of us plebeians on June 24.
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Yohana Desta was the senior film reporter for Mashable. She is a Northern Virginia native and an American University grad. She enjoys carefully curating her Instagram account and can often be found reading books, going to concerts, watching movies and learning way too much about pop culture.
