“Life sometimes happens a certain way…but I’ve always been into American movies and I never could understand anything else,” he said, adding that “Midway” was a different experience for him because, despite distribution from Lionsgate, Emmerich assembled the film independently and for a lower price-tag than his disaster tentpoles typically demand. Still, Emmerich reaffirmed in the interview his commitment to wanting to continue to make big American movies. On a production budget of $165 million, the film netted just under $390 million globally - long in the shadow of the $817 million its predecessor grossed. “ Independence Day: Resurgence” turned out to be a box-office disappointment.
“I should have just said no because all of a sudden I was making something I criticized myself: a sequel.”
“I should have stopped making the movie because we had a much better script, then I had to, really fast, cobble another script together,” Emmerich said.
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Roland Emmerich Slams Marvel and 'Star Wars' for 'Ruining Our Industry' “But then in the middle of production Will opted out because he wanted to do ‘Suicide Squad.'” Smith led the original “Independence Day” film as a wisecracking marine fighter pilot, and was slated to star in the sequel, but the actor reportedly cost too much for the already expensive sequel. “I just wanted to make a movie exactly like the first,” said Emmerich, who while the film was underway, lost his leading man, Will Smith, to another tentpole project. According to the Yahoo! interview, Emmerich regrets ever having made the 2016 Fox sequel “ Independence Day: Resurgence,” the follow-up to the alien-invasion film that took the box office by force in 1996. As revealed in a new interview with Yahoo! and echoing a previous, frank discussion the German-born filmmaker had about “The Day After Tomorrow,” Emmerich isn’t mincing words about his difficult experiences as a filmmaker. Younger audiences who just care about the battle sequences may find it adequate, but overall this isn't a satisfying sequel.Master of disaster Roland Emmerich returns to theaters this Friday with the WWII battle epic “Midway,” and he is reflecting on his past failures and successes. It's a problem when climactic deaths and close calls don't come close to pulling an emotional punch, and the dialogue is filled with trite "we can do it" speeches and "no man left behind"-style rally cries. The computer-generated action sequences are big and portray the same sort of mass destruction as the first film, but a movie can't survive without compelling stories and characters. Instead a group of young pilots serve as the protagonists, with Hemsworth's Jake caught up in a Top Gun-style rivalry with Usher's Dylan, while Jake's fiancee, former First Daughter Patty, worries about her aging father, who - like many others who survived the '96 alien war - has a psychic connection to the aliens. Independence Day: Resurgence brings back several of the players from the original, but - except for Goldblum's Levinson - they aren't the main characters. It's not that the first Independence Dayis a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's fun and loud and audiences felt invested in the various characters and storylines.
This mediocre alien-invasion sequel isn't going to wow anyone who's seen the original, which is a true summer popcorn-flick, with quotable lines and memorable action scenes.