What a strange mess this film is. It really has no idea what it wants to be, and should be a film studies lesson in knowing what you want from your outcome. I can’t be bothered to detail the fractured plot, but it has multiple threads which seemingly are unaware of an overall narrative. That is not necessarily a bad thing in an art-house movie, but in a blockbuster it feels like they just threw money at 20 different storylines and then decided which ones they’d stick together.
It lacks any narrative arc, tension, characterization but most of all identity. It isn’t sure if it wants to be Star Trek, Deep Impact, Godzilla or even Independence Day. This is fine if you have an alternative, but if your hope is that you can stitch elements of these together and realize something individual then that is akin to grabbing the shredded film scripts from bins and proposing it as Citizen Kane.
Occasionally there are films that cost so much money, and lack any obvious plan, that their mere existence is offensive. If you’re going to make an incoherent mess of a sequel then at least go down fighting – Independence Day 2 could have been a tangential sequel like Cloverfield Lane, or if they’re going to mix in storylines then just crowdsource contributions. At least be experimental, instead of just crap and ill-defined. Imagine being involved in something that costs this much, involves so many people and expertise, and then has not a single redeeming quality.