Not even Jeff Goldblum and Charlotte Gainsbourg stationed on a militarised moon can save us from the joyless tedium of this mind-crushing movie

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“This came in from Hubble! There’s some kind of force pulling at Saturn’s rings!”

“Holy CHRIST!”

This is how two dismayed scientists on planet Earth first register that the alien insurgence of 20 years ago has now become a resurgence. They’re back. And our boffins’ futile, wrist-flapping panic spreads to cinema auditoria all over the globe as people everywhere realise that the most planet-smashingly boring sci-fi sequel in history is on its way to crush our minds and empty our wallets and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

In 1996, the aliens with their hateful alien weaponry famously reduced the White House to smithereens – a form of blasphemy which in that innocent pre-9/11 era was deliciously exciting. They were finally repulsed under the judicious leadership of US President Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman – a C-in-C notable for resembling Bill Clinton. Now, 20 years on, America has a woman president, the White House has been reconstructed and the use of recovered alien tech has enabled earthlings to achieve all sorts of futuristic innovations such as big flying cars and overhead monorails.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance of course, so we have built a big military defensive station on the moon – but evidently with no great interest in creating fortified outposts further afield in the galaxy than that.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘An interstellar Center Parcs’ … Independence Day: Resurgence. Photograph: Allstar/20th Century Fox

President Whitmore is now an ex-president, a troubled old guy with a troubled old beard, plagued with premonitory dreams about the aliens coming back. Dr Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) from the original movie is in a coma and we all know how he feels. Meanwhile, a certain group of people in “Central Africa” (this film sticks to the Hollywood habit of thinking of Africa as an undifferentiated continent without nation states) who had long fought a “ground war” against the aliens and whose terrain is the site of one of its biggest crashed spaceships, is itself plagued with occult warnings – they are led by warlord Dikembe (Deobia Oparei).

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Many are the complex emotional situations on Earth that are destined to complicate yet lend humanity and meaning to the forthcoming brutal war. Scientist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) is now a grey-haired senior figure in the area of anti-alien defence and he finds himself reunited with an old flame, French psychologist Dr Catherine Marceaux – played with sad-eyed, chin-jutting fatalism by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Gainsbourg’s expression of martyred acceptance that she must participate in this appalling film is the nearest thing the movie has to real tension. It is an expression that transits to the viewer the actor’s conviction that her fee is only about 65% of what might justify this ordeal.

And what of the younger generation of hotties who are going to be at the sharp end of the counterattack? Liam Hemsworth radiates pure beefcakey dullness in the role of Jake, a pilot who has a serious quarrel with fellow pilot Dylan (Jessie T Usher) - the son of the original hero pilot, played by Will Smith. Jake is in love with ex-President Whitmore’s daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe) – another Top Gun among equals.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Pure beefcakey dullness’ … Liam Hemsworth in Independence Day: Resurgence. Photograph: Allstar/20th Century Fox

Well, the new alien mothership is big all right – even bigger than last time, just as liable to create huge gravity-bending, ocean-upending, CGI-confected disasters and with the same taste in destroying famous buildings. Goldblum’s droll line about the aliens’ taste for smashing our landmarks is one of the few moments of wit.

But it seems that the mothership has its own eco-system within, like a gigantic interstellar Center Parcs. And it also appears to have what could be described as the Death Star design flaw: a small, comparatively ill-defended area vulnerable to attack by plucky humans in small craft. The aliens also have that traditional liability – a “queen bee” without whose guiding consciousness the whole flotilla could go phut, like a batallion of iPads losing the Wi-Fi.

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None of which would matter if the resulting movie wasn’t so joyless and tedious, a reboot quite without the first film’s audacity and fun. The plot’s potentially interesting dependence on the idea that there are aliens who are allies as well as enemies is lost in a tiresomely written muddle – an all-but-plotless melee of boring digital carnage. The first film was a creature of the pre-digital age when the spacecraft on screen were mostly physical models, but it can’t be entirely the fault of our digital age that this film has no real sense of excitement and awe. It’s a movie that is going through the intergalactic motions.