Please be aware there are spoilers for Independence Day: Resurgence.

After 20 years of buildup, the Independence Day sequel has finally arrived. With Independence Day: Resurgence, Roland Emmerich returned to the alien invasion apocalypse with much of his original cast in tow, including fan favorites Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson, Bill Pullman as President Whitmore, Judd Hirsch as Julius Levinson and Brent Spiner as Dr. Okum, as well as a host of new characters to face the coming of a new extraterrestrial assault against planet Earth. Unfortunately, despite moments of dumb fun, the film didn't quite live up to the years of anticipation, bombing critically and financially in its first weekend of release, and left a host of unanswered questions in its wake. Thanks to a fairly obfuscated script and muddled editing, there are a lot of headscratchers in this one, but I've tried to narrow it down to the top queries that left me in ponder mode when I walked out of the theater. Ponder along with me, if you dare, as I count down seven lingering questions after Independence Day: Resurgence.

1. Why aren't David and Julius close anymore...and where the hell is Connie?

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Image via 20th Century Fox

This just straight up bummed me out. David and Julius' relationship was one of the first film's highlights – a believable father/son relationship forged on mutual love and respect. Julius guided David, offering him sage advice in moments of quandary and sending his son into space with a copy of the Torah. I know David is a hotshot now, but he really can't talk to his father more than once a year (and sometimes not even that apparently)? It doesn't seem like they had a falling out, and it's obvious that Julius is eager to see more of his estranged son, so it just makes David seem like he turned into kind of a shitty person. Along the same lines, where the hell is Connie and why was she never mentioned? Their reconciliation was a central arc of the first film and seeing David immediately flirting Charlotte Gainsbourg's scientist is offputting at best. We've known for a while that Margaret Collins wouldn't return, but it was how her absence was handled that caused an issue. Which is to say it wasn't handled at all. According to the film's Wiki, it turns out Connie died offscreen in a car accident after a stint as senator, but no movie should require you to hit up the Wiki to find out something like that. It's just a jumble of shoddy storytelling, and a pair of moves that turn the wonderful David Levinson into kind of a D-bag.

2. How was the African town affected by being the only place an alien ship landed as planned? The touched-by-an-alien warlord Dakimbe (Deobia Oparei) was one of the Resurgence's few highlights, and the story of his hometown was an unfulfilled source of intrigue in a film lacking new and interesting plots. Unlike the rest of the world, where the alien ships crashed from the sky in their failed 1996 invasion, the spacecraft that loomed over Dakimbe's African town actually landed as planned, and stood there for 20 years in the aftermath of the war. How did the fact that the ship actually touched ground change the experience of the locals? Did they find themselves in fist fights with the aliens a la Captain Steve Hiller in the first film? How did the looming figure of the dormant ship shape the mentality of the town over the years? And how (and why) did Dakimbe communicate with the aliens? We know from his tattoos that he killed countless extraterrestrial foes, so just how brutal was the combat he and his people faced? Unfortunately, despite being some of the ripest ground for an interesting, untold element of "The War of 1996," these are questions to which we get no answers as the film glosses over one of its most promising subplots.

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Image via 20th Century Fox

3. What is Moon Milk? Look this might be a dumb question, but the very simple concept of "Moon Milk" stuck in my head perhaps more than anything else in the film (which yeah, kind of reflects the quality of the film). Seriously though, what is it? What makes it different than plain old milk. Are the cows raised on the moon? Are they moon cows? How do you milk cows in space? Is it nutritionally designed to enable humans to live more easily on the moon? Or is it literally just milk that's marketed to sell on the moon? I have questions about the Moon Milk, damnit, and I demand answers!

4. How has that Siri orb not learned better communication by now? The spherical McGuffin that saves the day is one of the goofiest, ill-wrought points of Resurgence, and literally nothing about it makes any sense. First of all, if their species has transcended physical form into orbs of consciousness, why would it matter if the host body was destroyed? Isn't that the point of transcending physical form? Yet much of the film hinges on the idea that we need to protect the last of the mystery spheres from the menace of the alien queen. If that's senseless, the creature's introduction is utterly obtuse. We're meant to believe that this being's entire race was wiped out (again, how is that possible?) and this lone survivor has been assembling races throughout the galaxy to train them to defeat the alien scourge. So...knowing that humankind had a pretty rough go with their first extraterrestrial encounter, why the everloving eff does the creature not introduce itself instead of just bursting onto the scene, unprompted, in a heavily armed environment. Sure the president was kind of a dumb-dumb and wildly aggressive (There will be no peace!), and particularly a fool to ignore David's warnings, but to be fair, that was probably the worst possible play the spherical ET could have made. If you're going to just invite yourself into a hostile environment, maybe send out a warning or a message of peace first. Definitely don't just blaze into town and expect a heroes welcome.

5. How did that enormous ship not fuck up our orbit?

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Ok, I get it. This isn't the kind of science fiction movie that's going to delve into the "science" part of the equation, but that ship was nearly Earth-sized – big enough to have its own gravity -- and yet it attaches itself to earth without any orbital consequences. That makes the kind of sense that doesn't, even for a turn-your-brain-off movie like this one. Why not use that possibility, or at least the threat of it (since we're throwing science out the window anyway) to heighten the stakes? Or just go for broke and send the whole fucking earth spinning into the sun. After all, these films aren't shy about tremendous human casualty, and if humans are colonizing the moon and the plan for future installments was to send the heroes off into space anyway, why not give Emmerich the opportunity for the ultimate apocalypse and just straight up annihilate the Earth?

6. Will we ever see a third film? Turns out nostalgia just isn't as bankable as the studios planned on. It's a well-noticed trend that 2016's haul of long-brewing sequels (outside of Dory because Disney is seemingly invincible this year) have been underperforming not only critically, but commercially as well, and Resurgence took one of the biggest hits. A massive, blockbuster-budgeted movie, Resurgence opened to smaller box office returns than Independence Day did in 1996, and the film's major competition, Finding Dory, made $30 million more...in its second week. With that in mind, is another Independence Day sequel out of the question? Most likely, yes, and (bear with me here) that's kind of unfortunate. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of better things to drop hundred of millions of dollars on than another Independence Day sequel, but the end of the film promised a future that would see mankind teaming with the Siri sphere's advanced technology to head to space and attack the alien menace on their own turf. That just sounds so goofy and fun, and 100% more interesting than the re-hash Resurgence ended up being. One of the Resurgence's most fun scenes was the schlocky sci-fi moment where the young cast members venture into the queen's ship to find an entire frond-filled ecosystem (where apparently they don't have radar despite being technologically superior). It played like something straight out of the pages of a paperback sci-fi book you'd pick up at your local discount book shop. The only thing really holding the scene back was that it centered around the remarkably drab cast of young characters introduced in Resurgence, but I would just love to see Goldblum and Spiner trekking around in the swamps of alien territory.

7. Are we heading for a Brent Spiner: Resurgence?

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Image via 20th Century Fox

The return of Brent Spiner's Dr. Okum, and his charming if neutered-for-international-appeal love story with Dr. Issacs, is unequivocally the highlight of Independence Day: Resurgence. He was having the most fun, hamming it up with utter abandon, and in return, he let the audience have some well-needed fun along with him. There's never been a shortage of love for Spiner, but this is the first time we've seen him get some big screen play in a while, and it's a firm reminder of why the actor is such a delight. He's also currently starring in the acclaimed exorcism drama Outcast, and if there's one good thing that comes out of this whole disappointing affair, I hope it's a major career boost for the beloved Star Trek actor. Jeff Golblum has had a bit of a renaissance this year, and I hope Spiner's time is next. There's a whole lot more to ponder about this one...Why even bother bringing Vivica A. Fox back? Why does no one under 30 have a personality? Why doesn't a single woman have something of merit to do (I mean, maybe, if you count the alien queen)? Sound off in the comments with your nagging queries.

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Image via 20th Century Fox
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Image via 20th Century Fox
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Image via 20th Century Fox