AHC: Prevent the Independence Day Sequel from Being Garbage

I would have watched a whole movie just about the machete-wielding African warlord fighting surviving aliens. I feel like the sequel skipped all the interesting stuff and went straight to everyone's boring kids.
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
I, I, I, what? I suppose it's plausible if you think it's reasonable that the alien computers were using an Apple operating system.

That's actually explained in the novelization.

It came about due to the scout ship they got from Roswell kick starting the computing revolution. Its got problems, but at least it's an explanation.

There was a cut scene that was supposed to have that in the movie.
 

Greenville

Banned
I don't mind the idea that in the immediate aftermath of the attack if one of the downed city destroyers has many survivors in it and has to be purged. This could be a film all in itself. The aliens begin to swarm nearby towns and villages and kill the inhabitants. A joint international task force that exists prior to the ESD forming is summoned by the United Nations to eliminate this threat. The initial part of the attack is to napalm the aliens from the air using remaining bombers. This does work to some extent, but some of the aliens have surviving plasma weaponry to down the aircraft which requires ground forces to go into the hull of the downed craft and purge. The alien insurgents ambush these individuals and kill many of the ground forces. Eventually entering the ship, much is learned about the culture of the aliens, such as the fact abductions were happening. Some of the aliens may have ground weapons of their own which survive the crash. Perhaps even the primary weapon of the ship survived intact enough to use as a last ditch effort to fight back which threatens the lives of thousands of innocence nearby. This device is destroyed fully before it can be used again. Even after managing to clear the hull of the craft from air and on the ground, the need to chase more of the alien survivors into some dense environment like a forgotten mining complex, a forest, or otherwise. They have to purge the survivors in one on one combat.

There could even be a television spin-off series where we watch ESD forces hunt down and eliminate the remaining aliens and imprison the survivors at Area 51. This occurs in different locations around the world as more is learned about the alien background. If Roland Emmerich and Fox were more into franchising I could see video games, books, and more with this series.
 
I don't mind the idea that in the immediate aftermath of the attack if one of the downed city destroyers has many survivors in it and has to be purged. This could be a film all in itself. The aliens begin to swarm nearby towns and villages and kill the inhabitants. A joint international task force that exists prior to the ESD forming is summoned by the United Nations to eliminate this threat. The initial part of the attack is to napalm the aliens from the air using remaining bombers. This does work to some extent, but some of the aliens have surviving plasma weaponry to down the aircraft which requires ground forces to go into the hull of the downed craft and purge. The alien insurgents ambush these individuals and kill many of the ground forces. Eventually entering the ship, much is learned about the culture of the aliens, such as the fact abductions were happening. Some of the aliens may have ground weapons of their own which survive the crash. Perhaps even the primary weapon of the ship survived intact enough to use as a last ditch effort to fight back which threatens the lives of thousands of innocence nearby. This device is destroyed fully before it can be used again. Even after managing to clear the hull of the craft from air and on the ground, the need to chase more of the alien survivors into some dense environment like a forgotten mining complex, a forest, or otherwise. They have to purge the survivors in one on one combat.

There could even be a television spin-off series where we watch ESD forces hunt down and eliminate the remaining aliens and imprison the survivors at Area 51. This occurs in different locations around the world as more is learned about the alien background. If Roland Emmerich and Fox were more into franchising I could see video games, books, and more with this series.

There was a novelization about a downed ship and a ground war. I threw it away after Reading it, but it was still better than the movie
 
I, I, I, what? I suppose it's plausible if you think it's reasonable that the alien computers were using an Apple operating system.

At the time the film was out I remarked that it was probably easier to interface a Mac of that era to an extraterrestrial Network than to anything made by Novell or IBM AS/400 on Earth.
 
How about where Whitmore, plagued by his telepathic contact with the aliens way back when, has become a sort of dictator (though not without his supporters) - but let the audience figure this out gradually over the first half of the film instead of hitting them with a sledgehammer about it. Make it a cautionary tale about how power corrupts.

Next, ongoing ground war with the survivors of one of the alien ships also sounds good - could make for some very interesting action sequences.

Have this ground war, an active insurgency by big-gubmint hatin' militia-types and a subservient press that scapegoats the former two in order to suck up to Whitmore be the foundation of his dictatorship.

Lastly, have another alien ship arrive, which triggers a major crisis.

Will Smith and a bunch of other A-list actors perform a daring commando mission against the aliens still on Earth, allowing them to steal the MacGuffin that stops the alien ship.

They then find out Withmore had actually started being mind-controlled by the aliens after the new ship arrived or something (basically any crisis between our hero squad and their former boss), they try to stop him, but fail. However, their failure allows the public to see Whitmore for who he actually is, and massive protests bring down his administration.
 
Have a new alien fleet intercepted by a human fleet at Jupiter.
Massive space battles with nukes going off city destroying energy bolts flying everywhere and the Aliens win. Followed by the desperate defence of Earth orbit.
Earth wins by distracting the Aliens with a cyber attack designed to shut down all the power safeties on their reactors.It fails but the humans suspected it would fail,the real purposes of the attack was to interfere with the Alien's long range sensors.
A barely working prototype human interstellar vessel uses the distraction to approach undetected and ram the alien mother ship at interstellar speed, knocking it off course and into the moon.(big explosion)
Heros live,well most of them,and celebrate their victory on Thanksgiving day.
 

Greenville

Banned
Really I can see a sequel film where it's a few years in the aftermath of the War of 1996. Like 2001. Many of the aliens survived the crashing of the downed city destroyer near Area 51 and have caused an insurgency there. Captain Hiller (Will Smith) has been assigned back to help in an assault to eliminate the survivors with what remains of the American military. Their first attack begins with scouting the debris of the fallen ship and seeing where survivors have mostly gravitated towards. After several of their craft is attacked by anti-aircraft plasma discharges from surviving alien weapons they know it not safe to attack from the air as most remaining aliens are hiding in what remains in the hull of the ship. With the shortage of overall personnel, Hiller still teams up to join the ground convoys going in using explosives to clear their way through the ship remains.

Ground parties with new American soldier characters from Fort Irwin near Las Vegas must enter the craft heavily armed. Many of them are ambushed in the same way or attacked with the telepathic powers of the aliens. They clear their way through the debris like it is heavy street fighting in a large city. What makes things worse is foolish civilians who see it as a major new tourist attraction trespass into an off-limits zone and are taken hostage by the aliens who use them as shields out of desperation against further attack. Further entrance into the craft debris seems futile.

Eventually, future ESD director David Levinson sees a pattern where the aliens are starting to become more and more densely packed together as the humans' approach. He theorizes that they may be building up to launch a joint psychic attack which will kill all in the convoy in a certain radius if unleashed. They are all also concerned that the civilians taken hostage will be used for this purpose as well. Time becomes of the essence to find where this is happening and strategically eliminate the aliens without taking civilian lives. The best way is to develop some sort of tested psychic weapon David Levinson helped develop. The same one which could be used in a future sequel. Testing the device they push the aliens back long enough to rescue most of the civilians except the really stupid ones and move back enough to lay explosives eliminating the survivors.

News of the success of this device is shared with leaders all over the world trying to eliminate pockets of alien resistance on the ground. Levinson and Hiller are once again heroes and have defeated the aliens in another process. Remaining aliens are taken prisoner to be studied more with the effects of this telepathic device which is used in the third film of the franchise to defeat the second wave of invasion.
 
The tie in novel which oddly I just finished reading this week makes the sequel somewhat better but still it's not great basically it explains everything between now and the original movie.
 
One the main things that bothered me about the film is the idea that in 20 years Earth was not only able to repair all the damage done fighting the aliens but develop the industry to colonize the moon. Think about it:
-First off mankind was able to figure out all that alien tech and successfully reverse engineer it. Then we build the factories to build all those wonderful space ships. We also master all the sciences involved with living in space and train a generation who understands all these new disciplines in 20 years.
-At the same time we have rebuilt all the destroyed cities and are keeping our people fed.

In my sequel I would show that humankind has been struggling since 1996. People were still dying from radiation sickness and other effects of the alien invasion through the rest of the nineties. In 2016 the population of the Earth is still catching up to pre-war levels. There was period where various warlords/terrorist/criminal groups seized control of areas of the world and had to be put down. There were also alien holdouts who had to be defeated.

The main plot would be that in 2016 it is discovered that the aliens have a base on Mars. The base was constructed by human slaves taken in the 1996 invasion. It is decided by the world powers to launch a rescue mission to Mars and bring our people home. The rescue mission will use most of Earth's anti-alien weapons. Will Smith would be the General in command of the rescue ship. His son would be a fighter pilot who volunteers for the mission along with the President's daughter. Russell Crane's son Miguel would be a special forces team leader.
 

Greenville

Banned
Does anyone agree that the filmmakers and the studio waited too long to do the second one?

It could've worked if the sequel were a spin-off piece instead like Rogue One or Kong Skull Island where it takes place in 1997 or shortly after the first invasion.

Other sequels in the form of video games, merchandising, and more was possible.

A first person shooter where survivors of the American military entered the fallen craft and eliminate or apprehend what remains of the surviving invasion fleet in the downed ships.
 
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