I was primed for an incredible movie night at Independence Day: Resurgence. I had a bomb-ass dinner of homemade bacon cheeseburgers, sweet potato fries, and grilled peaches and pineapples for dessert. When I got to the theater my wife and I had to wait in line to get in which brought me back to the 90's where I'd wait in line for movies like the original Independence Day. As an added bonus the dude in front of me in line was rocking an amazing Nikolai Tesla shirt which seemed weirdly fitting. Myself, I had an amazing LOST shirt of Faraday & Desmond hopping out of a Delorean with a license plate that said CONSTANT. The usher at the IMAX 3D theater gave me our tickets and said "shirt shirt bro!" It really felt like the stars were aligning for an amazing night of alien cinematic goodness...

1. The movie’s set-up is amazing. The first scene is the iconic speech traveling through the cosmos until it reaches the alien planet where some alien phone operator realizes that his boys just got served and he readies the next fleet. Honestly, it’s an amazing opening. After that there is a ton of stuff about how wonderful earth is now. Peace, lots of technology (but the phones are the same, wtf), and badass looking moon bases. I was all in- it was like 30 minutes of amazing big screen spaceship porn (the kind that’s in Avatar, Prometheus, and The Martian) and then of course the movie happened.

2. That set-up is all wasted with story and dialogue so cheesy you could attempt to make an intergalactic plate of nachos. But then you’d fail miserably because there is nothing else in the movie but cheese. All the characters, action sequences, and even destruction just felt boring and uninspired. Even last year’s San Andreas gave better destruction than this! It’s all stupid jokes about nerds learning to fight, scientists without pants, and the glory of peeing in an alien spaceship. It’s so unbearably corny that it feels self-aware but I don’t think it is, and if it is it got me thinking about another classic 90’s movie that is 100% self-aware and cheesy which deserves a sequel/reboot/reimagining much more than Independence Day - STARSHIP TROOPERS!

3. Starship Troopers came out one year after the original Independence Day and is drenched in satire, gore, and sci-fi action. It is still a hell of a ride and got dayuum would a big budget remake be awesome. I was so bored watching Independence Day that I dreamed up a potential cast for “Starship Troopers: Reborn.” Obviously you gotta bring back the mainstays from the original: Caspar Van Diem, Denise Richards, and Neil Patrick Harris. From there you cast the young bucks - I’d go with Gucci Manne, Cameron Dallas, the kid From Kingsman, Bo Burnham, Danny McBride, and Kevin Hart. Finally, I’d have the team leader be played by The Rock who’s pretty much the king of self-aware action- comedy. Yeah, please movie GODS give us a new Starship Troopers movie!!

4. Sorry for that tangent, but here’s what else I was thinking during the soul numbing action sequences in the film - I wish this was a VR video game and I had more control of the camera. There were so many spaceships flying around above gigantic monolithic space structures in the film I really wanted to see more of everything! More exploding ships! More detail on the structures! More fireballs! Sadly I was limited by the “director” and his camera. Here’s hoping the sequel is in VR.

5. Finally, there are A LOT of one-liners in the movie and none of them deliver. Admittedly, the stakes are high here, the original film’s first act is basically all set-up to one the best one liners of the 90’s - WELCOME TO EARF (punch) so anything in the sequel would be tough to match. However, I needed a little more effort from all parties. Even the ones that I remember like “here’s your welcoming party” or something like that were delivered with no energy. Considering a plot point is the alien Queen I was expecting something like “Tea time bitch”, “Fat bottomed aliens are going down,” or even “You ain’t no Elizabeth!” but I got nothing. Yeah, I’m kind of beat up about it.

I was hoping for something as decent as the acceptable Jurassic World and what I got was a shitty mashup of Battlefield Earth and 2012. Maybe not every movie deserves a sequel or a reboot - except STARSHIP TROOPERS, let’s get that going right away.