No Battle: LA thread? *SPOILERS*

Haven't seen one yet, so here it is. As the thread title states, there will be spoilers, so don't complain.

Got back from it just now and thought it was a decent popcorn flick. Things go boom. Bad guys get blowed up. Dunno if I'd pay full night price for it though as a matinee it works. Story is acceptable, but it reminded me a lot of Independence Day, especially with the ending. There does seem to be too many characters, IMO. When you start to look at it closer, some things fall apart.

*SPOILERY BITS*
















1) Reason for the invasion. Water? That's it? You're going to spend your soldiers lives for water? When there's lots and lots of water, just in frozen form, lots of places (Oort Cloud, Europa, etc). They said it was because we had a lot of water in liquid form. They don't even go for the fresh stuff, but rather the salty kind. And even then, you could siphon off a lot of it by sticking your forces into the middle of the ocean, rather than right off populated cities.

2) Nature of the invaders. The ground forces are biomechanical infantry. The air forces are drones. Couldn't you just, you know, make drone infantry as well? Granted, they are alien and we don't know if they are in a society that has no value for individual lives (hive mind, brainwashed, penal legions, etc) or a warrior society (Klingon, Sanghelli, Jiralhanae, etc) where one has to prove themselves in combat, it would make sense. Otherwise, it would be cheaper and more cost effective to simply bombard the cities from orbit or develop a virus bomb to wipe out the indigenious population.

3) Timing. This is a big problem in a lot of movies. How they go quickly from night to day and day to night (X-men 3, for example). Seems that in the space of five minutes they go from using night vision scopes to having a high noon shootout.

4) Human response. This may just be me, but it seems that they spent a lot of well-trained soldiers lives to rescue a few civilians. That doesn't sit right with me. Every soldier down is someone who can't assist in future operations and dealing with a blitzkrieg like this means that as many soldiers as possible are necessary. Now, the end result of the soldiers' actions do turn the tide, but it's not because of the civvies or anything, but rather the soldiers being in the right place at the right time. When you're dealing with an invasion like that, response needs to be immediate before allowing the invaders a foothold. Had it been me, especially after losing comms with the other invasion points, I probably would've ordered a carpet bombing immediately rather than wait for the civvies and lose a whole lot more because of that wait.

But that's just my opinion.

5) Construction speed. The invaders sure had that C&C facility built pretty quick for the time alloted. Especially given its size and placement. Seems to be a bit hand-wavey.



Phew. Done. Feel free to pick that apart.

good popcorn flick, but yeah it had some issues. The water didn't bother me as much as the drone thing, just used too much in the alien invasion genre.

The drones were neat though in that they were modular. Also in the fact that they were using our own tech against us.

It was better than Skyline, and that's all that matters to me

I thought it was pretty much on the same level as Skyline. Entertaining enough to watch on cable or dvd but paying to see it in the theater was a mistake. Although I did like the scene with the alien where they are trying to figure out what can kill it. Absolutely brutal.

agreed that it was much better then skyline

During the movie i was thinking, "you know this isnt nearly as bad as i thought it would be." Its definately an attempt to do something like a black hawk down meets alien invasion. They try to keep the action as much reality based as possible when dealing with aliens.

The movie kinda of lacks in what it tried. The first 20 minutes or so of the movie is really a set up trying to establish character backgrounds that were then mostly forgotten about.

I didnt have a problem with the water thing either. First off our planet is 70 percent water, so it makes sense to use that as a device for why they have come. My only real or big complaint was that at the end they basicly do what it seems every movie since star wars has done and basicly come up with their 2 meter exhaust port in the way of taking out a control ship that will then result in their forces going inactive blah blah... Been there done that.

I guess my main problem with this plot device is that why would an inteligent species not plan for the idea that at some point a drone might lose communication with the network and need to operate independently for a bit. You know set something like a "Continue to follow last orders recived" or "You control ship is toast, go find the next closest and take orders from it"

But no in all these movies now, its take down one big ship all the little ships are just gonna go dormant.....

They are planning to make two more of these films and they are all under contract to be released by 2015. Maybe they'll explain more in those films.

But yah if I had to nitpick, then it would probably be how they went into the sewer at night and when they came out 5 min. later it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

You guys realize that the whole they want our water thing was just a guess by a scientist trying to explain what he saw happening to a reporter. We never actually see anything from the Aliens perspective that explains the invasion.

Maybe they were draining the oceans because there's something underneath they want to get at and getting rid of the water is the easiest way to get at it. A space ship isn't necessarily going to be able to handle the pressures deep underwater. If that's the case then it makes sense to establish a perimiter around the oceans by attacking everything on the coastlines to prevent interference from the human race. Distract them with a diversionary invasion while they go after the real target by getting rid of the water.

Stuff went boom! Money well spent.

I saw it, I liked it. My two cents as follows:

Water Theft: As said before, this is one scientist "expert's" assumption of what they were doing. Personally, if they were actually here to colonize, my guess is that thier buring off/processing the water in massive amounts in preparation for terraforming.

Bio-Mechanical Infantry & Drones: I think the infantry were *also* drones of a sort. I don't think we actually saw the aliens. I think we saw what amounts to disposable "Marine" forces (eg. lots of fairly lightly armed, highly mobile, first contact infantry, with a moderate degree of air support) setting up beachheads and securing for the main battle-force. I imagine that their command will eventually bring down thier main troop ships on the coastal regions secured and begin to make advances towards the centers of the continents.

(After all, if you had big **** command and troop ships coming down from orbit, It would more than likely be easier to land them in deeper coastal waters, then trying to find areas big enough and geologically stable enough to land them in... or just having them hover about. Yes I'm looking at you, V!).

My biggest issue was the overuse of the "shaky-cam" effects.

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

Coming soon to SyFy, Aliens Vs Sharktopus.

As I told more than a few friends after having seen this: the plot was as deep as the box of popcorn I was eating from.

The trailer told me all I needed to know: Marines vs. Aliens. That's it. No deep concept, well-thought out alien attack. This is a showreel for the FX company (which I understand also was behind Skyline, feel free to correct me here) and nothing more. You can argue otherwise if you want, but I know a point-to-point script when I see one.

The friend I went with to our session and I were literally looking over to each other and marking the checklist of scenes cribbed from other movies, from Alien to Aliens to Independence Day and even bits of District 9.

Aliens attack Earth, Marines go 'OO-RAH!' and whup on the aliens. That's it.

Aaron Eckhart does as much as he can with the script he's been given. He tries to inject some depth into a fairly shallow part, and he's clearly better than the movie he's in. Beyond that, there's a lot of by-the-numbers stereotypes who you could transplant into any other movie of this nature.

It's what it promoted itself as: a popcorn movie.



S.

Maybe the water is what fuels their technology. Why bring fuel with them when they can use our own oceans to fuel their equipment.

The aliens in all these movies come across like Gru from Despicable Me. "We stole the Statue of Liberty! ...the small one, from Las Vegas."