In the mid-90’s Hollywood’s fascination with humanity forced to the brink of extinction was in full force, with disaster films being all the rage. Humanity faced many threats and lots of imaginary lives were lost throughout this run of films, but perhaps none were as famous as Independence Day. The Will Smith summer blockbuster featured aliens coming to Earth bent on annihilating the human race. Their genocidal impulses were foiled by a heroic Will Smith and a drunken Randy Quaid, which is perhaps the only way that most of us could conceive of humanity being saved from extinction at this point.
So while Independence Day: Resurgence came out to tepid reviews and marginal ticket sales, that was simply one future that could have occurred in the aftermath of the original film. So yeah, the future that was laid out in Resurgence could have happened, or things could have really gotten weird. YouTuber AlternateHistoryHub has put together a fascinating theory of what Earth would look like after 3 billion of a projected 5 billion people on the planet were wiped out in a matter of days and, needless to say, it varies a bit from the new movie.
The video points out that only certain, big cities were targeted by these initial attacks and that society simply rebuilding after losing governments and infrastructure would be a tough sell. Instead, the unaffected areas would thrive while the more urban centers that were attacked would devolve into chaos, simply having to move to cities that weren’t hit as hard because rebuilding would be pretty difficult following the attacks.
If that sounds a lot different than the world presented in Independence Day: Resurgence, well, it is. Does the movie perhaps create quite a few big plot holes to advance the story that they wanted to tell? Most likely. Are people going to watch it and enjoy it anyway? Absolutely. Check out the video for the full, in-depth lay of the land.
