Battle: Los Angeles

[Gil Hamilton]

I think the issue is that the "chaotic nature of a batte" doesn't necessarily make for "watchable move". You had alot of the same elements in Black Hawk Down as you did in Battle: LA, but I don't think anyone would claim that the latter was a better shot movie. When I watched Black Hawk Down, I never really had any trouble understanding what I was looking at, as frantic as it was, because it was well shot. You can argue that Battle: LA being shot in a someone confusing manner is an artist choice, the same artistic choice of Cloverfield, but dialed to 11, but there were times where it was too shaky and not very well put together. For example, in the first contact for the marines, I could have sworn that one Marine got dragged off and the next minute he was standing there, then was dragged off again but rescued.

With the dialogue, Ebert is kind of right. Alot of it was stock military shouting, with little else in there. While I don't imagine they are going to be talking alot, there was room in that movie for some more interesting dialogue. For example, I think it may have benefited the movie if the Marines themselves were the ones providing all the speculation about the aliens rather than periodically the Marines passing a turned on TV set to CNN. I liked the scene where the two Marines were watching the aliens disembarking and taking orders from one of the Officer Aliens, where the one Marine suggested that maybe the alien grunts were just like them; poor assholes told to go to a place and blow stuff up. Getting the Marines' own speculation on the Bug Eyed Monsters and interlacing that with the Marines and BEMs killfucking each other could have made for excellent watching. As it was, the aliens could have almost been replaced by human soldiers for all it mattered to the movie; the Marines were more concerned about rumors about the sergeant than exhibiting even morbid curiousity about the fact that there are killer alien cyborgs running around Santa Monica shooting people. Who are these cats that will combat drop into LA without air support initially that are dedicated enough to half their guns surgically attached? They could talk about it; the Marines in Generation Kill or Jarhead speculating about Iraqis was certainly effective in that regard. What I think Ebert is getting at is that there is a step up from your script being similar to the Marine dialogue in Halo.

Some of that is stylistic choices, though. I've been refering to the aliens using Hobo Technology because their shit looks like they welded scrap metal together somewhat haphazardly, which I admit I don't much like. I mean, they could have put a cabin on their hover hummer, at least, and didn't make their Hobo Shopping Cart Rocket Launcher look like a reject from the new Transformers movies (with a damn thruster on the bottom of it!). While rejecting the squirrelly ass organic alien look that's popular, it's kind of a fair criticism that the art design may have took the industrial look to the other squirrelly extreme to the point where their gear doesn't look designed by advanced aliens, but dumpster divers with a found art fetish.

[Zinegata]

Just watched it today. Good action sequences, terrible characters. Exactly what I expected, and liked it for it.

I do like how they were able to incoporate a number of different combat scenarios though. I mean, we had...
Spoiler

1) An urban combat scenario, with the Marines tasked to travel through an urban area. The aliens use their superior technology to hop along the roofs to ambush the Marines below.

2) A building defense scenario, wherein the Marines defend a building against an alien attack.

3) The Sarge doing a close assault on an enemy drone.

4) A long battle scene in an open free way - which starts with the Marine supporting an Abrams, while the aliens deploy a crew-manned heavy weapon.

5) A "vehicle" scenario, wherein the Marines comandeer an LAV and shoot their way through the aliens.

6) A sewer recon/firefight.

7) Final battle with the Marines defending a position while they call in artillery.

One would almost think it's the mission list for a short FPS videogame!

[Rayo Azul]

Saw it today. Liked it.

I think it was deliberately filmed in such a chaotic fashion. Combat ain't pretty and order amongst the chaos belongs to the victor.

Like I said, for what it was meant to be, it worked well.

[Sarevok]

I think it was deliberately filmed in such a chaotic fashion. Combat ain't pretty and order amongst the chaos belongs to the victor.

It's not fun to watch for sure when you can't picture the battlefield. Part of the fun of a good science fiction action scene is picking it apart. Seeing who, where was doing what.

[Rayo Azul]

I think it was deliberately filmed in such a chaotic fashion. Combat ain't pretty and order amongst the chaos belongs to the victor.

It's not fun to watch for sure when you can't picture the battlefield. Part of the fun of a good science fiction action scene is picking it apart. Seeing who, where was doing what.

I don't know with this one. I don't think it had enough story line to survive too much detail. The battle scenes and special effects made up for a well used plot. Still enjoyed it though.

[krakonfour]

I think one of the stupidest things was that whatever energy was obtained from water fuel that could hold up a several ton drone in the air could be used to ...MELT water! WOW! State changes just removed the necessity for an invasion.

Oh and the explosions make huge fireballs and a car one meter away doesn't budge. Same missiles from a drone went through tank armor.
Oh and on the tank. What the heck is it doing all alone, no other tanks around, without infantry support...

Command center is large enough to need to be towed by SEVERAL drones. It falls several tens of meters and the ground doesn't even shake, nothing.
Oh and radio signals from the CC are strong enough to cause a blackout several km around the sourse, but the heroes still manage to call in SSMs.

Oh and the F15's flying around don't shoot a single missile. A single GROUND missile, short range version, takes a drone out however.

[Themightytom]

.
You... you start a lot of sentences with "oh and..."

I think one of the stupidest things was that whatever energy was obtained from water fuel that could hold up a several ton drone in the air could be used to ...MELT water! WOW! State changes just removed the necessity for an invasion

State changes remove the alleged need for the invasion, which suggests there was another reason that was unstated. As they were not interviewing the alien military commander it's possible that this was in universe speculation that was simply wrong. For all we know, they simply chose to sue technology fueled by an abundant resource on earth as an economic and pragmatic alternative to developing a supply chain.

Oh and the explosions make huge fireballs and a car one meter away doesn't budge. Same missiles from a drone went through tank armor.

It sounds like a directed explosive that was pointed the wrong way, maybe up. As opposed to an armor piercing round that exploded inside the target.

Oh and on the tank. What the heck is it doing all alone, no other tanks around, without infantry support...

Uh, maybe they were massacred four blocks back?

Command center is large enough to need to be towed by SEVERAL drones. It falls several tens of meters and the ground doesn't even shake, nothing.

Blimps are pretty large too. We also don't know how much surplus weight the drones can carry in addition to themselves.

Oh and radio signals from the CC are strong enough to cause a blackout several km around the sourse, but the heroes still manage to call in SSMs.

He had to climb a tower to get a signal out actually. And got blown up for it. They were targeting via the laser not a radio.

Oh and the F15's flying around don't shoot a single missile. A single GROUND missile, short range version, takes a drone out however

.

Maybe they ran out killing things on the way in as happened in ID4.

[SylasGaunt]

Oh and the F15's flying around don't shoot a single missile. A single GROUND missile, short range version, takes a drone out however.

Point of fact we do see fighter planes firing on the saucer formations of wedge ships an doing no noticeable damage.

And you do realize that a shoulder fired AT4 will utterly destroy things that would, at best, have their paint scratched by anti-aircraft missiles right?

[dragon]

Yup most anti-air missiles are proximity burst and use shrapnel to have a better chance to damaging a aircraft. A AT4 fires a warhead designed to pierce armor.

Edit granted as big as some of those ships are a AGM-65 might work or a Hellfire from a AH64 Longbow would be usefull.

Even better fly over the thing an drop a few GBU onto it.
Such as the GBU-15 2000lb bomb or the GBU-28 which is a 5000lb laser guided, contry to the film the laser doesn't have to be done by ground troops.

[MKSheppard]

The aliens are after our water, because it exists in a liquid state on the surface of Earth.

Yes, you heard that right, and that is almost a direct quote from the movie as well. Apparently, they use the water as their fuel.

Remember though, that's a stupid talking head [TM] on TV, trying to figure out a reason why. I liked how they never explictly had a clear motive laid out for the alienz other than wild rampant speculation on CNN.

[Zinegata]

The tank wasn't actually all on its own either. If you look very carefully right after the Abrams is destroyed, you'll see an infantryman right beside the burning tank wreckage. He's shot by the aliens as he tries to fight back.

As he doesn't seem to be wearing a crewman's outfit, and the soldier isn't part of the main cast, we can surmise that the tank did in fact have limited infantry support but it had been steadily stripped away before the main characters got to it. When the tank was taken out, the few surviving infantry supporting the tank were then finally wiped out - all before the main characters could establish contact with them.

Also, the Abrams was actually killed via a top-hit. The missile "spread" struck engulfed the top part of the tank, which has the weakest armor. The rest of the tank even remained intact after it was taken out by the top hit.

One more thing I'd like to note: The Alien infantry seemed to use their personal hand-held rockets less and less as the movie went on. During the LAV scene the Aliens weren't using their rockets to take out what was a relatively lightly armored vehicle. I thought it was a bit of a nice touch, as given the amount of munitions they were expending early on the alien infantry was probably running out of ammo and were at this point relying on their flyers/heavy weapons to do the heavy lifting from this point on.

[AniThyng]

Yup most anti-air missiles are proximity burst and use shrapnel to have a better chance to damaging a aircraft. A AT4 fires a warhead designed to pierce armor.

Edit granted as big as some of those ships are a AGM-65 might work or a Hellfire from a AH64 Longbow would be usefull.

Even better fly over the thing an drop a few GBU onto it.
Such as the GBU-15 2000lb bomb or the GBU-28 which is a 5000lb laser guided, contry to the film the laser doesn't have to be done by ground troops.

It seems clear at that point that the aliens had local air supremacy and the air force had retreated to preserve whatever was left of itself, so it's not like there was any thing else that could lase it or lob GBUs...which is why they were designating for artillery in the end. (They said "copperhead", which IIRC is a laser guided artillery shell, but that looked a lot more like those big TACMS missiles launched from an MLRS system)

[Vympel]

Saw it last Saturday with Chris. It was ... adequate. Pretty much Black Hawk Down with aliens with very goofy technology. The alien infantry were fine, but their drones and heavier weapons and what not - it all just looked like shit.

I don't know who to blame - but alien technology designs in movies have just gotten more busy, more overdesigned, more stupidly implausible and just all around animators-run-amok over the last few years. I look at the designs and I just don't believe them. They don't ring true as something anyone would ever design and build. The only recent exception is the superb District 9.

I don't understand why they just can't have more smoothly designed, minimalist alien technology, whose function is easily understood and not needlessly complicated. It's all so busy and has so much crap coming off it, I can't imagine who the hell is designing this stuff in-universe.

That said the performances were decent, the script was by-the-numbers but passable ... the action was enjoyable - yeah, it was ok.

[Balrog]

One would almost think it's the mission list for a short FPS videogame!

That's exactly what it was: a film version of a video game. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, the film was still enjoyable, but you're getting exactly that.

Speaking of which, they actually did come out with a video game of the movie. Has anyone tried it yet?

[loomer]

Unfortunately, even though the film seemed like a video game, the game was genuinely shit. Mostly because they didn't go for anyone at all talented as a dev - it was just tie in shovelware even though it probably could have been quite good with more time and money.

[M3 Lee]

I thought this was really good. Probably my favorite alien invasion flick so far. It had a competent military, competent aliens, lots of action, and the ending wasnt nearly as cheesey as other alien invasion movies(I'm looking at you Skyline).

[Simon_Jester]

I think one of the stupidest things was that whatever energy was obtained from water fuel that could hold up a several ton drone in the air could be used to ...MELT water! WOW! State changes just removed the necessity for an invasion.

You know what I think?

Imagine what's going on in world capitals during this invasion. Every military and civil authority is calling up everyone they can think of who has credentials that make them even remotely plausible as someone who's good at deducing the methods, intentions, and technological secrets of the alien invaders.

Meanwhile, there's a talking head on CNN who says the aliens are here to take our water and kill us all in preparation for resource extraction.

Now, let's put two and two together. Basically, everyone with any brains is off talking to the White House, the Pentagon, or their equivalents overseas, doing the real work of trying to figure out who the hell these people are and what they're capable of. Meanwhile, this clown is free to talk to CNN.

What's the logical conclusion?

When it comes to improv xenobiology and threat estimates on the aliens, this guy is the equivalent of the clumsy kid who got picked last in the baseball teams at school. No wonder he comes up with a half-assed guess that makes no sense.

[Sarevok]

Maybe the aliens were using deuterium found in naturally occurring water for some kind of nuclear fusion based energy source.

[Gil Hamilton]

You can get that anywhere. The natural abundance of deuterium isn't much different in any planetary system as it is in Earth. That's the thing with the resource angle. It has to be something that is actually unique to Earth as to make an invasion worth it.

[RecklessPrudence]

I saw a guess somewhere that they were aquatic, and saw Earth like a premade paradise, thus the 'liquid water' statement? But then, I haven't seen the movie yet, so they might be beings of living fire encased in sugar for all I know.

[Sarevok]

I saw a guess somewhere that they were aquatic, and saw Earth like a premade paradise, thus the 'liquid water' statement? But then, I haven't seen the movie yet, so they might be beings of living fire encased in sugar for all I know.

They are not aquatic. They seem like the Strogg from Quake 2 - a combination of flesh and grafted on metal bits.

[Simon_Jester]

I still think the easiest explanation is that the one guy was a babbling idiot who didn't know what the hell he was talking about. We don't see the aliens do anything that indicates they're any more dependent on water than humans are, or that they're using huge amounts of water in industrial processes.

[krakonfour]

I still think the easiest explanation is that the one guy was a babbling idiot who didn't know what the hell he was talking about. We don't see the aliens do anything that indicates they're any more dependent on water than humans are, or that they're using huge amounts of water in industrial processes.

The only times we see the aliens using water was a drone dipping a bucket into the sea and and that the alien CC had to stay in the sewers for the water....

They are not aquatic. They seem like the Strogg from Quake 2 - a combination of flesh and grafted on metal bits.

Was it me or were there electric sparks crossing the fluid when they were opening the alien up?

The tank wasn't actually all on its own either. If you look very carefully right after the Abrams is destroyed, you'll see an infantryman right beside the burning tank wreckage. He's shot by the aliens as he tries to fight back.

As he doesn't seem to be wearing a crewman's outfit, and the soldier isn't part of the main cast, we can surmise that the tank did in fact have limited infantry support but it had been steadily stripped away before the main characters got to it. When the tank was taken out, the few surviving infantry supporting the tank were then finally wiped out - all before the main characters could establish contact with them.

Probably missed that. But even so...
Tanks are mobile. They have tracked wheels and thousands of horsepower, so when they see their combat group being ripped apart, they MOVE. For me, the tank was sitting idly there taking potshots from infrantry with no form of mobility apart from their legs.
Did you know that modern Abrahams can shoot missiles through their barrel? The missile could go on a ballistic trajectory and hit the aliens from the top. Any shot from the main cannon (120mm) can blast through several cm of concrete, let alone the thinner lip of the side of a suspended highway...one shot and the aliens lose the platform. The ones behind the cars? A single shot can send the cover flying several tens of meters away. Nah, stupid use of tank.

Also, the Abrams was actually killed via a top-hit. The missile "spread" struck engulfed the top part of the tank, which has the weakest armor. The rest of the tank even remained intact after it was taken out by the top hit.

The tank was used stupidly, at least it died correctly

One more thing I'd like to note: The Alien infantry seemed to use their personal hand-held rockets less and less as the movie went on. During the LAV scene the Aliens weren't using their rockets to take out what was a relatively lightly armored vehicle. I thought it was a bit of a nice touch, as given the amount of munitions they were expending early on the alien infantry was probably running out of ammo and were at this point relying on their flyers/heavy weapons to do the heavy lifting from this point on.

So you come from this solar system very far away, headed to fight several major cities and probably every single miliary force on the planet, and you only bring enough munitions for a few hours....

.
You... you start a lot of sentences with "oh and..."

To make the 'mistakes' and 'errors' of the script writers seem more like stupidity and neglectance rather than 'coincidences'.

It sounds like a directed explosive that was pointed the wrong way, maybe up. As opposed to an armor piercing round that exploded inside the target.

The explosion was from the flying drone spreading stream of missiles. There were several others (like the C4 explosion in the bus burning half of it and eating a hole out of its metal structure but not even moving the corpse of the sacrificed protagonist...) but it was the most notable example. Really, they all looked like simple, backyard SFX gas flames.

Command center is large enough to need to be towed by SEVERAL drones. It falls several tens of meters and the ground doesn't even shake, nothing.

Blimps are pretty large too. We also don't know how much surplus weight the drones can carry in addition to themselves.

Just from the drag the CC is making by being moved at shown speeds is a minimal figure of the towing capacity of each drone. More likely they were pushing at maximum power to get the CC the hell out of there...and since those drones are able to move at mach speeds despite a bulky and unstreamlined airframe, they do pack a punch, so F=ma the CC weighs quite a bit.

Oh and radio signals from the CC are strong enough to cause a blackout several km around the sourse, but the heroes still manage to call in SSMs.

He had to climb a tower to get a signal out actually. And got blown up for it. They were targeting via the laser not a radio.

A signal propagates spherically, except if it is directed. If it was directed, they wouldn't be losing energy in creating blackouts. If the signal is NOT directed (the blackout zone is circular) then the perturbation extends as much UP as ACROSS from the CC, so climbing two stories is not enough.

[The Big I]

I watched it today and enjoyed it for an alien invasion movie it looked realistic. I felt that the Alien were more like marines going in to capture and expand a beach head for the heavier army units and airbases for their airforce hence why they may have been using drones. Anyway how long would it take for a heavy armour unit to get going after they get the call to head out because you do see on tv(as they were leaving for the helos) the strikers out on the street helping the civilians get out before the asteroids hit, but by the time they have taken off you hear over the radio that they had lost 101 Abrahms.

[Kartr_Kana]

Saw it last week and as a Marine infantryman I loved it. Yeah the camera angles and shaky cam made getting a sense of the bigger battlefield really difficult, but then when you're down there that's how it is. Plus at that level you're not as interested in who's two klicks west you just care what is around the next corner or the top of the roof. As such I didn't have much trouble following what you could get "contact rear!" aliens were on the top of the house behind them. That kind of thing is usually the best you're going to get anyway.

The Marines were amazingly well done and I could easily see them being guys from another company that I didn't personally know. Heck there were a couple guys in the movie who reminded me of buddies I had when I was in. The only thing I noticed was that they were nicer to the "boot", but that's been the trend recently, can't even yell at them when the fuck up or you go to the brig.

There isn't a whole lot of character development on the battlefield. Sometimes guys who talk big and convince everyone that they're the shit, turn into weepy little babies when rounds are coming down range. Other guys who everyone though would be the cry babies because they're not loud mouths wind up being the steadiest under fire. That's essentially all the character development you get in a combat zone, that and them learning to trust the SSgt they felt had history of letting his Marines get killed. IMO there was only as much character development as you can actually get in the battlefield and that was a good thing. Otherwise the Marines would've all been emo and sparkle in the sunlight.

Not going to get into the whole "water for fuel", "radio shouldn't have worked because of EMP" or any of the technical aspects because we all know Hollywood doesn't think those kinds of things through. That being said I do like the way the gunships looked.

As for the tank there was some pretty big chunks of rubble around perhaps they didn't have a lane to get out. Or possibly they'd already been mobility killed and couldn't move anyway so they were acting like a pill box to try and hold open a lane for as long as possible. Things like that have happened in real life and could've easily happened here.

All in all it's my favorite alien invasion movie to date and since I didn't really care for District 9 I have to say I think Battle LA was better.