Movie Review: Battle: Los Angeles
So last night was Tuesday, which all you regular readers should know by now means $5 movie night at Regal Jack London Square. As an added bonus, the girl I am seeing was hanging around and is kind of into sci fi movies, so the question of what to do with the eventing was easily solved.
I have been looking forward to this movie for a while. I love alien invasion movies, and it is always kind of nice seeing movies wherein humans are not really the masters of the universe, if you know what I mean. It’s not the greatest alien invasion movie of all time, but it is definitely entertaining.
The story. Burned out Marine Corps veteran Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart, also known as Two Face in the last Batman movie) got some guys killed in some vaguely defined manner in Afghanistan and plans to muster out. Meteors appear out of no where and rain down in the water off shore major cities, spilling out alien invaders who proceed to do world culture a public service by destroying all vestiges of California surf/beach culture. Nantz is joined by every military cliche in the history of film, including but not limited to Lieutenant Deadmeat (word to the wise. If you are in a military movie and your last act before heading off on a mission is to kiss your pregnant wife or baby, just stop off at the funeral home and pick out your coffin to save time), Corporal I-Hate-You-Staff-Sergeant-Nantz-Because-You-Got-My-Brother-Killed, Private I’m-a-Virgin, Corporal Nerdy-Glasses, Navel Corpsman Foreign-National-Working-to-Get-My-Citizenship, and Corporal I’m-From-Jersey-so-I-Can-Steal-or-Drive-Anything-with-Wheels.
They are sent out to rescue some civilians trapped in an LAPD police station before everything west of the 405 freeway gets blown to hell by the air force (and if you have ever lived in LA, you know how funny that really is). On the way they run into some loose soldiers (Air Force Tech Sergeant I’m-a-Tough-Soldier-Chick-who-also-Happens-to-know-Secret-Information-about-the Aliens-that-will-Later-Prove-Critical and three basic bullet stoppers who are more or less there to pad the body count). They find the civilians, which include a hot veterinarian, a father and his too cute kid, and two little girls (sorry, but how cheesy is this?). The aliens show up and military versus alien hijinx ensue. The aliens start the movie almost impossible to kill (four soldiers firing full auto at a range of five feet and a grenade to kill the first one) and somehow end the movie falling down when you spit at them. The movie ends with the Marines doing something that doesn’t completely destroy the aliens (cough cough Independence Day cough cough) but damaging them enough to give humans a fighting chance.
I’ll get into the stars and black holes in a bit, but I do want to say that one thing that really bugged me about this movie was that while the human motivations were relatively clear the aliens motivations were amateurish at best. Honestly, the aliens in Skyline had a more clear and believable motivation. The premise is they are landing to take away all of our water. There is some “expert” on CNN who talks about how rare it is that planet Earth has the right conditions for water to be in a liquid state. Really? Are the aliens dumb enough to not realize that ice, which is extremely common in our universe (Haley’s comet is like 90% ice. Pluto is 99% water), melts into water and can be gathered in any number of places that don’t have well armed native populations ready to fight you to the end? Spare me your moronic writing. Honestly, I respect the motivation behind Mars Needs Moms more.
Anyway, the stars. Alien invasion movie. Two stars. US Marine Corps, which I am a big fan of, painted in a very tough and positive light. One star. In spite of all being plucked from the cliche tree, the characters were for the most part pretty cool, especially Staff Sergeant Nantz. One star. Excellent special effects and CGI. Two stars. Good battle scenes with decent choreography. One star. The aliens looked pretty cool. One star. They managed to avoid the bad cliche of using alien guns against the aliens. One star. They managed to avoid the “the aliens are impervious except for the fact that they can all be killed at once due to their one weakness” (Independence Day, the Puppet Masters, War of the Worlds, Signs, etc.) cliche. One star. The aliens seemed interested in destroying Los Angeles, a city I despise, and surfers, a sport I despise. Two stars. Twelve stars total.
Now the black holes. The aliens are here to steal our water. Two black holes. The characters and most of the situations are cliche as all hell. One black hole. They crowbarred in a bunch of kids (who never died), as well as the father dying and a really painful tender moment between Nantz and the kid to make the movie more human (LOL). One black hole. The aliens were unholy killing machines at the beginning of the movie and fluffy teddy bears at the end. One black hole. I’m no expert in squad level military tactics, but it seems like if you are facing an enemy you already know is using explosive munitions you would want to keep more than a two feet between the soldiers and not run down the street in a bunch like children on a field trip. One black hole. Lieutenant Deadmeat dies in the cheesiest manner possible. One black hole. Aliens don’t seem to be motivated to have back up systems for their military control assets. One black hole. As cool as the aliens looked, the ships all looked like someone glued a bunch of crap to giant Trivial Pursuit wedges. One black hole. Total: nine black holes.
So we end up with three stars total. Not bad, actually. Overall worth seeing if you want to turn off your brain for a couple hours and just enjoy a fairly bland adrenaline rush. If things like aliens invading to take stuff you can find on any asteroid in the universe bugs you than you might have an issue. I think its worth seeing in a theater, and definitely worth NetFlixing.
Next post will be dating advice. I also realize that I have let the whole who-would-win thing drop fall by the wayside. I will go back to the last one I posted; Riker from Next Generation versus Alien. I think it pretty obvious to anyone who knows me all I really want to see is Riker eviscerated by Alien. That being said I think he would list about 30 seconds. Armed with a phaser, I still only give him 50/50 as he would probably try to communicate with the alien as he was having his guts torn out. (Alien image courtesy of the cheap t shirt category).
For today I will once again mix genres. Who would win, Onyxia from World of Warcraft versus Godzilla?
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