In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Emmerich has happily provided solid answers to some of the biggest questions that fans of the original film have had. One of the biggest uncertainties regarding the plot is whether the story would pick up immediately after the events of the first film or twenty years later. According to Emmerich, the answer is is both:
“The humans knew that one day the aliens would come back. And they know that the only way you can really travel in space is through wormholes. So for the aliens, it could take two or three weeks, but for us that’s 20 or 25 years.”
The Independence Day sequels being set only twenty years after the events of the first film will mean that by the time they (potentially) gets a theatrical release they will more or less be set in the present day, but Emmerich claims that the films will also have a distinctly futuristic feel. Based on a “what if…?” scenario of what might have happened to our history if we’d discovered advanced technology back in the nineties, the story will see humanity far more prepared for an invasion than they were in the original film. Says Emmerich:
“It’s a changed world. It’s like parallel history. [Humans] have harnessed all this alien technology. We don’t know how to duplicate it because it’s organically-grown technology, but we know how to take an antigravity device and put it in a human airplane.”
Despite the progress that has been made, Emmerich insists that the fight won’t be an easy one, saying that, ”We’ve rebuilt. But [the aliens] also do different things.” If only two or three weeks have passed from the aliens’ perspective, it’s doubtful that they’ve had time to come up with any new major advances themselves, which can only mean that they weren’t bringing out the big guns the first time around. Perhaps the first Independence Day was just a warm-up.
When we first heard rumors about this project several years ago, the impression we got from Fox was that they did not consider Will Smith’s return to be necessary for the film, perhaps due to the large price tag that inevitably comes with hiring such a consistently successful star. It’s unclear whether this was a factor or not, but Emmerich implies that he has written a story which will allow new stars to shine by focusing on characters who would have been children during the first invasion.
“It’s still some of the same characters, but also new younger characters; it’s a little bit like the sons take over. The first one ends on a little success, but only enough to give the humans hope. And then in the second one they free themselves again [from the aliens].”
Lil Nicky from fresh prince going to be recasted
