Are you ready for ‘ID4′ 2 and 3?

In honor of Roland Emmerich’s release of disaster film  2012 this week I decided to watch sci-fi action classic Independence Day (aka ID4). I can’t tell you on how many levels I love this film. Sure it’s campy at times but the actors seem to believe so ferociously the fictitious alien invasion is real it just works. Moreover, it paved the way for some of the best scenes of destruction ever in film history.

Fans like me have been waiting nearly fourteen years for a sequel and we may get our wish. While promoting 2012 Emmerich spoke to MTV about the possibility of not one, but two ID4 sequels:

“What we want to do in the next – it’s actually two movies – we want to do a bigger arc,” he explained. “‘Independence Day’ was always like the king who leads his troops into battle against an evil force, and that stays like that.”

As exciting as the prospect of two more ID4 films could be allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. One reason I like the first film so much is that it’s a closed box. That is, it simply ends. No twists, no hints at a sequel, simply an ending. With so many films vying for franchise potential these days it’s refreshing to have movies like ID4 that simply wanted to tell a story-once.

Part of the reason sequels concern me is that I don’t want Independence Day to end up like The Matrix movies. The Matrix was a ground-breaking film, the sequels were very expensive, two hour long, video game cut scenes. To this day I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the second and third films. I’d prefer not to say the same thing about ID4.

While it’s a little hard to discern where the jumping off point for a story may be there are places it could go. The main one being how would civilization carry on after an alien invasion of ID4’s magnitude? Unfortunately, you could replace ‘alien invasion’ with ‘world-wide disaster’ and you end up with 2012.  This begs the question, should this survival story be told in a 2012 or ID4 sequel?

Clearly I’m in support of an ID4 sequel and while nothing official was stated Emmerich did sound very confident that should these sequels move forward Will Smith would be involved. That alone could be enough to greenlight two more movies. Of course, I’d love to see other cast members return, specifically Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum.

Now, if those names alone are not enough to convince you of ID4 sequels the new title should. While speaking with MTV Emmerich suggested the name ‘ID4-ever’. How awesome is that?  Let me answer that for it, it’s way awesome. The only way it could be awesomer is if he decided to go with ‘ID4-eva’ instead (because dropping ‘er’ in favor of just ‘a’ is the awesomest).

Come on Emmerich, Smith and film studios, make ID4 sequels happen. This way I’ll be able to use the headline ‘ID4-sure’. That would be awesome, and you know who demands things to be awesome-Michael Bay. Sure, Bay has absolutely nothing to do with ID4, but I was on an awesome train there and felt compelled to round this article out by linking to that commercial*. Why?  Because it’s awesome!

*I, nor The Flickcast, endorse this particular service and used said commercial for awesome entertainment purposes only.