Almost all alien invasion movies bother me a little. In Steven Spielberg's ‘War of the Worlds’, you follow a family through their adventure: surviving an alien attack and the emotional turmoil of people getting blown to smithereens all around them. In some scenes, you see the military running to fight the aliens. Yet all I thought was “What are they doing?” and “ I want to see more of their story”. In ‘Independence Day’, you see Will Smith flying around in his fighter, attacking an alien ship. “OK, cool, we are going see some crap!’’ but not really. Instead, we see quick shots of planes getting blown up and cut-backs to the President screaming “ Get them out of there!”, like hes the only one that knows whats going on. So I always asked myself, “Can you have an Alien Invasion movie about just the military fighting the aliens, and stop with the cut-backs to the “civilians” who are emotionally involved? Well, I think this movie is trying to answer just that.
‘Battle: Los Angeles’, promises action and excitement. In reality, the majority of the movie was spent following characters who were whining in buildings, talking about their feelings.The movie starts out strong, and I love the “Tarentino” thing they did in the beginning: i.e. “lets show some awesome battle stuff, then flashback 24 hours.” Its a great way to get your audience excited for things to come, then show some character development.
As the movie started to introduce the characters, I felt more and more cheated. “Lets focus on too many characters, so you don’t care whether they die or not,” great plan. When the action finally starts again, you are happy, but when you realize it’s going to be a bunch of shaky camera shots, and can’t really make out whats going on, your brain stops caring. At least if this movie had some good action to fall back on, it would make up for the simple-minded character development and the absence of plot.
I do want to talk about some plot points that I thought were interesting, so SPOILERS for the rest of this paragraph. There is a scene where the military captures one of the aliens and they try to figure out how to kill it (they had been having trouble with that before). Well, they proceed to cut it up and torture the crap out of it . I know it’s not a real creature, and it’s “war,” but I felt like this scene was unnecessary.
MORE SPOILERS: One of the plot points is that a giant alien ship controls the other small ships. Hmm, wait, that sounds familiar. This made me very mad; it’s too easy! Why? They needed some epic thing for them to destroy at the end. Everything that involved this “control ship” bored me, which is most of the last 40 minutes. Why would an alien race make such an easy target? It doesn’t make sense. Lets make one ship that if you destroy it takes out all our ships. great plan guys. END SPOILERS
So what does this movie have to show for its self? Interesting characters? Nope. Good action? No. Original plot? Not really. I couldn’t even tell if the special effects were good because of all the shaky camera stuff. I know they are trying to be intense, and it works when its done right, but when the characters get blown up at the end, and you don’t really care, what’s the point? I think you will feel the same way I did at the end: you just want it to be over. So do you have to make a movie about the civilians for the benefit of the audience? Can I empathize with military troops? I feel like this movie had a good idea, and I was excited to see it, but it falls flat.
The Rating System
Production (Directing, Editing, Music) 2-5
Story (Plot) 2-5
Characters (Likability, Acting) 3-5 (for acting only)
Writing (Dialogue, Cleverness) 2-5
Emotions (Was it; Fun, Scary, Sad, Do I care)1-5
Overall score 10-25
After I see this movie I'll make a proper comment, just wanted to give you a thumbs up on the wallpaper and profile pic :) Miss you dude
ReplyDeleteFinally saw this today. Hmm... ok where to start.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, the opening shots of crazy intense fighting was very engaging, got me excited to see some s**t blown up. And I could have happily watched the movie from that point on, not having to go back and see the actual invasion - it worked for The Road (a catastrophe happened and there was no real explanation as to what it was or why, but how the people endured was the focus of the movie). I think Battle could have followed the same plan and been successful. Battle could have let the character stories develop through the struggle to survive, I like learning as the story unfolds instead of being told who they were before the s**t went down, because people always change in the face of adversity. However, what I did like about the retrospect point of view was that the invasion was first reported as a meteor strike, which I found logical and plausible. I also found plausible the concept of the aliens using the oceans as a fuel source and as a reason for attack. But the tripod commanders and baritone sounds were a little too War of the Worlds for me. I kept waiting for Dakota Fanning to run by screaming with her striped sleeves clutching her teddybear.
The stock footage from CNN and other news networks was visually effective in bringing the crisis to the homefront on a global scale, and even though the shaky cam was reminiscent of District 9 - you know, that OTHER technologically revolutionary alien invasion movie - it was also effective in adding a personal element relating the audience to the characters. Or it just induced nausea, I don’t know which.
Characters: I could have cared less about Aaron Eckhart's staff Sgt Nantz. Of course he was the seasoned veteran tortured by ghosts of the past who wanted nothing more than to complete one last mission before retirement. And of course he was forced to play second fiddle to the snot-nosed young Lt who was green on the field. We all know how that story arch played out: Nantz ended up taking command because the Lt flaked and ultimately sacrificed himself for the sake of the team. My doppelganger Michelle Rodriguez was saucy as ever playing an air force pilot..or um a tech something..or uh.. I don't even know who she was or why she was there other than to delivery coordinates to somewhere Air Force-y. But I do know if I worked out as much as she does I'd be as buff as her! And then we could be twins and I could replace her in Fast Five..sorry mind wandering onto more interesting avenues...Oh! And it just so happens the civilian woman they rescued was a veterinarian (how convenient!), yet she was not the one to figure out how to kill the alien thing so she was a waste of space- yeah Pat, that torture scene was a bit much and unnecessary - besides, how do they know what organs these things have in order to get the right kill shot? It was just grody and dumb. The lone marksman who volunteers to make the suicidal call to the Air Force-y people with the coordinate thingies in just a few seconds because the aliens follow radio signals of course gets obliterated in the most egregious manner. Like we couldn’t see that coming.
And of course our noble hero cannot go out into the darkness alone, if he makes a martyr of himself to recon an area looking for a central command center, they all have to. If he can’t rest and have breakfast after perfectly executing the fall of their enemy, none of them can.
I was the only one in the audience who laughed at the question of whether or not one of the soldiers could hotwire a bus “of course he can, he’s from New Jersey”. Ha ha ...
Sorry that this comment is half-assed, I'm just tired of writing about it...
You need to update this son. Battle LA will be on Turner Classic Movies by the time you write another review. What are you waiting for, the 10th year anniversary edition of the dvd?
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