Twenty years after we watched the White House explode and Will Smith sucker punch a space invader in Independence Day, the aliens have returned and they’ve got one thing on their mind: world domination. Big explosions, massive extraterrestrial ships, and Jeff Goldblum abound in the trailers we’ve seen thus far for Independence Day: Resurgence. In the wake of the events of the 1996 film, humanity has found a way to harness alien technology, using it to create a highly advanced society. However, the otherworldly militants that devastated the planet some two decades prior haven’t been resting on their laurels; as the film’s tagline reminds us, they’ve also spent the last 20 years preparing for another assault on the pale blue dot we call home.
Apart from that, we don’t exactly know what to expect from Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi sequel. While on the film’s set in Albuquerque, New Mexico last year, I observed the filming of a scene that takes place at the Earth Space Defense’s lunar base, but that left me with more questions than answers. So, in search of the truth, I sat down with veterans Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Vivica A. Fox, Brent Spiner, and Emmerich, as well as newcomers like Liam Hemsworth, Sela Ward, Maika Monroe, and Jessie Usher, in order to find out exactly what’s coming our way later this summer.
Independence Day: Resurgence opens on June 24, 2016.
What would you like to see from an Independence Day sequel? Let us know in the comments below!
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Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. You can follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).
