There was a dog in brief peril due to its stupidity: the ugly little dog that wouldn’t get onto the bus until its owner pulled it on despite the rather looming threat. 
I saw this as a double-feature with the first movie, and I was shocked how few people were attending the first showing of a summer blockbuster.
Yes, the first movie started at 5pm on a Thursday, but there weren’t that many more people for the 8pm showing of Resurgence.
I thought it was fun (and yes, goofy and BIG!), but not “see it a second time” fun. 
Random (spoilered) thoughts:
[spoiler]*Warlord and the nerd-turned-warrior were both cheesy, but the latter didn’t come with a whiff of racial baggage WTF. :smack:
*Vivica Fox’s character dying by split-seconds while Judd Hirsch’s character survived his boat landing ashore was bogus, not just because it was preposterous but narratively: why not let Fox’s character be rescued and then never show her again? Young Capt. Hillier doesn’t have enough motivation without his mother being dead?! :dubious:
*What city WAS Hirsch’s character supposed to be boating in? Couldn’t be East Coast, where the alien ship landed, and still reach Area 51 before the end of the movie. :rolleyes:
*Dr. Okun in a coma since the first movie? :rolleyes:, just :rolleyes:
*The sidekick pilot in this movie was less annoying than the sidekick pilot from the first movie played by Harry Connick, Jr.
*So what would the Apple-Sphere
species have done for us if we hadn’t destroyed their ship on arrival? IIRC, their plan was evacuate now, train & equip later, which the humans would consider defeatist. But I doubt they had enough weapons with them to make a difference in the human plan, so basically serving as alien-bait was the best they could do.
*The movie-makers clearly don’t intend to wait 20 years for the next sequel, having practically advertised one in the last couple of minutes of the movie.[/spoiler]