Our Verdict

Great if you're a fan of the new film as there's lots of material that will take you behind the scenes, but sometimes rather light on explanatory detail.

For

Packed with film stills, behind-the-scenes photos, concept art

Against

Large chunk of book devoted to the first film
Limited explanation of technical and artistic process

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For the first quarter of this 176-page tome, you might think you've actually bought the wrong book. The first 50 pages are devoted to the first Independence Day film, with a lot of fan-friendly detail about characters and plot but not much mention of the technical and artistic process behind it.

The book finally starts to fulfil its title's promise from page 70, where we get rough pencil sketches, digital paintings and cross-sections of the new movie's moon base. From here on, it's the art book you've been looking for, replete with film stills, behind-the-scenes photography, and concept art showcasing how the many visual worlds of the movie, its new alien characters, its weapons and its spacecraft were conceived.

When it comes to the art, though, this book is fairly light on explanatory text. Much of the concept work featured isn't credited, and while you do get a few quotations from members of the art department such as Aaron Sims, Mark Yang and Johannes Mücke, we'd have liked more. In short, this book is probably mainly of interest to fans of the new film – and a glance at the box office receipts suggests that there aren't that many of those…

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The Verdict

out of 10

The Art and Making of Independence Day: Resurgence

Great if you're a fan of the new film as there's lots of material that will take you behind the scenes, but sometimes rather light on explanatory detail.

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Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects.