About an hour into Independence Day: Resurgence the invading aliens tractor-beam Singapore — the entire city-state — into the air and literally drop it on top of London. At about the same time, I was hoping a large building would also be dropped on me.

I wanted to believe there was some hidden historical warning embedded in the sequence: a state once colonized by the British rising up to literally flatten its former colonizer, the echo of a past which, if left unreckoned with, will spell doom for us all. Independence Day: Resurgence, however, is oblivious to history — even, and most egregiously, its own.

The whole film is so clunky — such a naked attempt to cash in on its predecessor’s iconic status — that not even Jeff Goldblum’s glorious weirdness can save it. It is a disaster film masquerading as a sci-fi film that in the end is just a disaster.