How scAry is this for 7 and 11 year olds. (Who we thought were fine watching, say, even here or captain America civil war, but the new X-Men was too scary.)
If they thought X-Men was too scary I think they might feel Resurgence is as well. There's lot of destruction, and they do show a lot more of the aliens than the first film did. I don't recall the film being particularly gory despite there being a lot of violence.
Some poster had asked about Randy Quaid. The only reference I caught was a lingering shot of his character's name on a memorial they showed at the start of the film.
As for the film itself, my take on it is that it wasn't as good as the first film. It hurt more than helped that I watched a double feature, starting with the '96 film and then Resurgence. Resurgence didn't have the heart of the first film and the humor wasn't as good as the first film. Resurgence did have better special effects, though the '96 film put its FX to better use.
Also the Resurgence characters, particularly the new or newer characters weren't well developed. Likeable enough screen presences but mostly character sketches. I don't think Liam Hemsworth owned the role as the hero fighter ace that Will Smith did. Hemsworth wasn't horrible, but he was sort of there. He did his lines, he looked like a hero enough, but there wasn't a spark there. They needed someone like Chris Pratt, who could play a charming, rascally rogue that the audience would like. Hemsworth tried but it didn't work for me. I also didn't buy his character's romance. In part this was the film's fault because it kept them too apart for the majority of the film. We didn't get to see them together enough before things went down to invest in their relationship and care about it.
I also felt there were too many characters and unfortunately this led to subplots and asides that took away from the main story and from some of the bigger characters that needed more development. That lack of development made me not really care about any of the characters, which is opposite how I felt for the original film. The original film took time to create those bonds between characters, and then the audience. Some of it might have been cheesy or simplistic, but it tugged at the heartstrings none the less.
I didn't feel that we learned enough about the aliens. And while the alternate future on Earth was interesting I wish that had been explored a bit more as well. With the sci-fi setting Resurgence wasn't as grounded and relatable as the original film was. And I didn't really get the feeling that Earth was in danger despite how much the characters said it was. In the '96 film we saw humanity pushed to the wall, on the brink. And while that was also the case in this film, it didn't quite feel that way or perhaps I was just numb to it. There was a point when I wanted the film to just end. Perhaps that was because I had watched the original first and was just getting tired of sitting in the theater, but in any event Resurgence didn't grab me.
The special humanity thing is groan inducing, but then again, its not like the original film was the most original thing either.
