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‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ trailer revisits War of 1996

Part history lesson, part movie promotion.

 

Dennis Scimeca

Internet Culture

Posted on May 5, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 8:12 pm CDT

Remember the old days before we had airplanes with anti-gravity pods and we were shooting at each other instead of at the aliens trying to kill us?

The newest trailer for the upcoming Independence Day sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, features Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson, the barely willing participant in Earth’s defense from the first film, now turned head of the Earth Space Defense unit in the sequel.

It also features a few squadrons’ worth of really cool starfighters and giant laser cannons because of course it does.

Independence Day, released in 1996, written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, and directed by Emmerich, has taken a path similar to that of another Devlin/Emmerich joint, Stargate. In the Stargate SG-1 television series that began on Showtime, humanity took advanced technology left behind by invading aliens and reverse-engineered that technology, culminating in the creation of starfighters and capital ships to defend the Earth.

Humanity has done precisely the same thing in Independence Day: Resurgence, building advanced combat aircraft, giant orbital defense cannons, and a military base on the moon, using tech left behind by the aliens who flattened all our major cities in Independence Day.

The new trailer, a faux news piece from United World News titled “The War of 1996,” takes us through the founding of the Earth Space Defense unit, created to defend us against the inevitable return of the marauding extraterrestrials. Safe money bets that Earth Space Defense isn’t going to amount to much—otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a movie, would there?

Independence Day: Resurgence will be released on June 24.

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*First Published: May 5, 2016, 4:18 pm CDT