Later this month, the aliens from ID4 are coming back to Earth in Independence Day: Resurgence, and they definitely aren’t pleased with humanity! It’s been 20 years since the first film in the franchise was released, and apparently director Roland Emmerich originally had a different direction in mind for the sequel.

During his stint as guest editor for Empire magazine, Emmerich revealed that he and his creative partner Dean Devlin had a very “era-appropriate” idea for ID4’s follow up. “It was after 9/11 and Dean and I wanted to make the movie about peace, and it just didn’t work,” recalled Emmerich. “There’s still an element of that in the new one, but that version was only about that. We shoot aliens down accidentally and then at the end of the movie they land on the White House lawn and say “we come in peace” and that was it. It was just too weak an idea and we didn’t really want to do it. It didn’t have an Independence Day feel. Only the alien ship was destroyed!”

In the face of a real life tragedy, it’s understandable why Emmerich and Devlin were considering such a stark departure from the original movie. That said, the ID4 franchise that they created isn’t exactly built for a Star Trek-like peaceful coexistence between mankind and aliens. At least not with the alien race that has twice attempted to destroy humanity. We think that the bombastic action, the widespread cinematic destruction, and the triumph of Earth over aliens are the big selling points. We’d be shocked if ID4: Resurgence broke away from that formula in any significant way.

Do you think that Emmerich and Devlin’s original ID4 sequel plans would have been embraced by moviegoers? Invade our comment section below and let us know!

To hear about what we can expect from the Independence Day sequel that actually made it to production, watch our chat with the cast below!

Image: 20th Century Fox