Doug's Darkworld

A TV commercial just came on saying “Battle: Los Angeles” was the world’s number one movie. I’ve seen it. If it’s the world’s number one movie, it’s because it doesn’t have much competition. Not that it’s a bad movie. If one likes alien invasion movies, say Aliens crossed with Independence Day, it’s a passable and even enjoyable movie. (Aliens and Independence Day, whatever else one may say of them, are at the top of their genres.)

—Insert mild spoiler warning here.—

The idea behind “Battle: Los Angeles” was to make a realistic alien invasion movie, combined with a gritty combat movie. In that, to a large extent, they succeeded where others have failed. In Independence Day for example, or Cloverfield, or Skyline, the alien’s rationale and tactics we’re both silly and/or incomprehensible. So I can get behind the idea of a realistic alien invasion movie.

And the producers tried, they really did. The start of the movie was great. The aliens managed to figure out a way to get close to Earth without being detected, and launched a basically D-Day style invasion of Earth. As war movies go, way cool. They emphasized the importance of air power. The aliens had a military very analogous to human militaries. They weren’t invincible, their weapons were no more powerful than ours. It was a great fight, humans were the aborigines that a colonial oppressor had decided to exterminate.

Sigh. The movie at one point explained the alien’s rationale for invading. I can only hope that in the director’s cut, this will be edited out. It was so stupid, that it rivals the scene in Independence Day where a Mac laptop interfaces with an alien computer system. The ugly truth is that if aliens capable of star travel wanted to capture Earth, they would just toss rocks at us from the Asteroid Belt, obliterate our 10,000 largest cites (and 90-99% of the human race,) and hunt down what humans remained like the vermin that we are.

The other really stupid thing, the aliens were terrible shots. I mean not just bad, but terrible. I mean, how hard is hit to it someone with a automatic weapon from 3 feet away? Maybe they weren’t used to Earth’s sunlight,  or gravity, or ere hung over from a  big pre-invasion party the night before, I dunno. Still, even with those two stupid things, it was still better than most alien invasion movies. Most alien invasion movies consist of endless stupid things and horrible plots as well. I think in that vein, Signs might be the stupidest movie ever made. It had the stupidest aliens too, I mean, an  alien travels light years to get to Earth, but can’t figure out how to get out of a locked pantry? The clincher was the thing that made the alien invasion doomed … water as like acid to them, just spray a bit on one and poof, fried alien.

Let’s think, say you’re a human leader and are looking for alien planets to invade. You find one. It has vast sulphuric acid oceans lakes, and rivers. Clouds of sulphuric acid float throughout the atmosphere, and sulphuric acid rain is commonplace. And the life forms on the planet are all mostly made of sulphuric acid. Would that make a great planet for humans to  invade and conquer? Of course not, it would be insane. Of course, considering some the USA’s recent invasions, maybe it wouldn’t be that far fetched.

Then there’s the fact that even watching the trailer, I thought, “The aliens want LA, so? Give it to them.” What can I say, I have  a Northern Californians attitude towards Southern California.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and I’m basically plugging the movie so I can’t imagine anyone would object. Credit and copyright: Columbia Pictures. Next we get back into the disaster that continue to unfold in Libya and Japan Washington, LA getting blown up was just a  light diversion. Starting to look like LA is the Tokyo of our times as far as city destroying alien invasions go. If you see the movie, enjoy.)