Re: BATTLE: LOS ANGELES(Film 2011) Grade/Discuss
Sorry for the longwinded reply, but I haven't had a chance to post a lot recently so I've missed much of the discussion.
Yeah, I admit it's an odd connection to draw but what I saw of the trailers to B:LA it just made me think of Skyline for some reason. I'm sure the movies aren't alike in anyway...
But, think of it this way. Imagine after "Batman and Robin" just, like, a few months later another live-action Batman movie came out or pretty much any other superhero movie you'd probably suspect the entire genre had gone to campy nonsense.
The similarities are not coincidental, since the same guys who directed and did the FX for 'Skyline' also did the FX for 'Battle: Los Angeles' first, which created some controversy:
Sony Pictures Entertainment investigated the possibility of legal action against the filmmakers Greg and Colin Strause, who were hired to do visual effects work on Battle: Los Angeles through their special effects company Hydraulx. Sony Pictures suspected the Strause brothers had created their own Los Angeles-based alien invasion film Skyline, which would compete with the Battle: Los Angeles release, by using resources they had gained while working on Battle: Los Angeles without the consent of Sony Pictures. A spokesman for the Strauses responded by saying, "Any claims of impropriety are completely baseless. This is a blatant attempt by Sony to force these independent filmmakers to move a release date that has long been set by Universal and Relativity and is outside the filmmakers' control."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle:_Los_Angeles
Since I've not seen it linked yet here's Ebert's review:
LINK
"Battle: Los Angeles" is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don't even try to make it more than senseless chaos. Here's a science-fiction film that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails. ...
Though I disagree, I don't have a problem with Ebert's subjective opinion of the film. However, this is really unprofessional of him:
Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you've been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.
Insulting the audience for disagreeing with you on liking or disliking a film is something I expect from obsessive fanboys or bashers or just general assholes online, not a professional reviewer whose opinion I usually respect a great deal. Ebert has never been known to pull his punches, but usually the target is the filmmakers, actors, or the film itself.
And, of course, our heroes find a way to defeat the aliens who've mastered intersolar travel but haven't mastered bullet-proof vests, non-projectile weapons, or any kind of shielding (physical or electrical) for their vehicles. Our military chaps, on the other hand, go into battle with large powerful aliens with strong ground vehicles without packing much in the way of heavy firepower like bazookas or seriously high-caliber weaponry.
The aliens had armored exoskeletons, several layers of thick hide and bone or shell, small bodies with cybernetic legs or hover tech, and a decentralized physiology that made them very hard to kill unless you hit their one vulnerable spot or blew them up completely.
I'd imagine having anything electrical going on outside their suits while they're frequently walking through water might be a bad idea or at least interfere with its operation.
The idea that advanced civilizations should all use energy weapons is a scifi cliché. While energy weapons have advantages for certain tasks and under certain conditions, projectile weapons have their own advantages as well that won't likely render them obsolete anytime soon.
When the aliens first came out of the water they didn't have "strong ground vehicles" that anyone saw yet, only the armored exoskeletons. The little hover skiffs and floating missile launchers that showed up later in the day probably came down with the drones. However, other Marine and Army units did go into battle with trucks and armored vehicles, hence the destroyed or damaged Humvees, LAVs, and tanks strewn all over the place and at the Forward Operations Base. But the Marines we followed were specifically tasked with a quick and quiet insertion to rescue civilians at a police station in hostile territory and call for evac, so using vehicles would draw attention to them and be counterproductive.
They did have Javelin anti-tank missiles, plastic explosives, and 40mm grenade launchers, BTW.
What I've learned from Independence Day and now this movie? Don't have your auxillary craft powered by a central source that can failry easily be taken out by primitive weapons. Would it be that bad for every craft to be independantly powered and controlled?
I got the impression that maybe there are not too many of them left. They couldn't mount an overwhelming show of force to the point where anyone thought it would be a suicide mission to even go up against them. They could only attack a specific area of a limited number of cities around the world. It seemed rather like a desperate measure, in fact.
Also, they seemed to have either a hierarchy or caste system with the cybernetic-legged soldiers and the tentacled commanders. While it might be as simple as having officers and enlisted personnel like we do, it could be that the troops are forced to fight by the tentacled guys, hence the surgically grafted weapons and lack of extensive heavy weapons and any vehicles amongst the alien troops (with only unmanned drones instead). Maybe if they give them too much power they'll rebel against the tentacled aliens. Or if they gave them control of the aircraft they'd fly away.
So either of those reasons could be why the drones are centrally controlled rather than independently guided. That being said, it's nowhere near as bad as 'Independence Day' with all of them being connected to the mothership. Only the local drones were deactivated, not all the ships around the world.
My biggest nitpick would probably be the "going after our water" reason for invasion. (although it is just speculated by the news) Because that makes NO sense.
There are a heck of a lot more water in much more easily accessible places in the solar system.
Surely they have ice-melting technology? Jupiter's moon Europa is also suspected to contain just as much (of not more) liquid water as Earth has under its ice.
Didn't their whole modus operandi strike you as extremely desperate, though? Attacking only a relatively small number of cities from one landing zone in each? Falling in a barrage of landing pods, many of which missed their ocean target and presumably exploded on the ground? Attacking in waves (with the drone aircraft and limited heavy weapons showing up much later than the initial assault) instead of all at once with overwhelming force? Having to land in the water instead of a soft landing within the cities they wanted to conquer?
Running with all of that, what if they had to leave their homeworld in a hurry aboard a ragtag fleet of ships due to some disaster? They launched themselves in low-powered pods with the crews in hibernation toward the nearest planet that was both compatible with their physiology and had the massive amounts of liquid water that they needed to immediately fuel up their troops, battlesuits, and vehicles (hence the water landing first to power up). They might not have had the power to melt large quantities of ice in deep space since they need to power up first, or the ability to do so (maybe they only had ships that could process liquid water).
I can't believe they never even mentioned nuclear weapons in the entire movie! The aliens had no energy shields. Nukes would have torn them apart. At one point they say they're abandoning LA... so why not nuke it into cinders?
Because twenty nuked cities around the globe and the resulting firestorms would spread radioactive debris that would kill millions more than were already dead, not to mention any survivors still in the cities.
Because even though they had been pushed back, the military still held their own for a while. There's no reason to think that after adapting to their enemy's tactics that they couldn't strike back more effectively next time.
Because they hadn't even had a chance to see the effectiveness of conventional carpet bombing first. If that had failed, then they could escalate to strategic weapons.
It was still the first day of the invasion, so using nukes is a bit premature yet.
Movies work differently than reality does.
In movies every line spoken is exposition, is information, information to help the audience understand what is going on in the movie. So, in a movie, if we're told that the aliens are after water we're supposed to accept that as "the truth" since we've no other way to get it. This is, of course, unless the information is specifically contradicted later in the film.
Never heard of the Unreliable Narrator, huh?
That's more in reference to characters like Verbal Kint in 'The Usual Suspects' or the Narrator in 'Fight Club,' not brief news reports that aren't a central part of the story.
Trekker's right that while we wouldn't unconditionally trust what a real news report said so early into an unknown situation like that, it's clearly supposed to convey authorial intent here. Besides, it's not that hard to justify.
In closing, I thought the movie was great and completely lived up to exactly what was promised, which was 'Black Hawk Down' with aliens. It wasn't campy, the action was intense, and while it ended on a hopeful note, it didn't wrap everything up nice and clean by the end of the movie. I gave it an "A."
I would have focused on retaking San Diego before Los Angeles.
