"Battle: Los Angeles" is the latest addition to one of the oldest stories in science fiction: the alien invasion story. While most movies tend to treat alien invasion movies as disaster films, like "Independence Day", or survivalist films, like "War of the Worlds", "Battle: Los Angeles" treats alien invasions like actual invasions; that is to say, it's a war movie. This is both a good and a bad thing.
It's good because, hey, if you're going for "realism", which all movies seem to want to do these days, there's no other way to handle an alien invasion. You break out the military in full force, and you focus on the fighting. Maybe, if you want to appease the sci-fi fans as well as the average moviegoer, you include some discoveries and theories about the aliens, which "Battle" does. It has a good premise: a worldwide war that focuses on one battle so that it doesn't knock itself, or the viewers, out trying to cover the entire invasion of Earth. It focuses on the marines and their efforts to evacuate civilians from the combat zone while only occasionally touching on the aliens and their technology/motives so as not to um alienate the general audience.
It's also bad, because, while working in the obvious tropes about alien invasion, such as the superior technology, extraterrestrial biology, and overwhelming military force, it also works in quite a few war movie tropes at the same time. There's Aaron Eckhart's ("The Dark Knight", "Paycheck") character, Staff Sergeant Nantz, who's retiring from the Marines the very morning of the invasion. Ramon Rodriguez ("Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen") plays the young lieutenant fresh out of officer training who, despite outranking the older sergeant, still needs Nantz's guidance in leading the men (oh, and his wife's pregnant). There's even Noel Fisher, who's starring in the upcoming "Twilight: Breaking Dawn", playing a very young private who is constantly freaked out by everything that happens.
It's not that they play these roles poorly; it's just that this movie doesn't really have anything new to offer. It's refreshing to see an alien movie that doesn't exploit an incredibly lame weakness (minor spoiler: they do need to exploit a weakness); but every trope, from both types of movie, teeters on the edge of being a cliché. And there are only so many clichés you can take in one movie, especially a "serious" one.
I liked the movie; didn't love it, but I liked it. Aaron Eckhart almost never disappoints, and he did a good job in this movie. The interspersed moments of exposition, such as "experts" on TV discussing the aliens' actions, weren't the best, but they did make it a bit more believable. And there were some genuinely touching moments with the civilians they were sent to rescue. In the end, it goes for the trope, not the cliché, and it generally hits the mark.
(Originally appeared at http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports)
It's good because, hey, if you're going for "realism", which all movies seem to want to do these days, there's no other way to handle an alien invasion. You break out the military in full force, and you focus on the fighting. Maybe, if you want to appease the sci-fi fans as well as the average moviegoer, you include some discoveries and theories about the aliens, which "Battle" does. It has a good premise: a worldwide war that focuses on one battle so that it doesn't knock itself, or the viewers, out trying to cover the entire invasion of Earth. It focuses on the marines and their efforts to evacuate civilians from the combat zone while only occasionally touching on the aliens and their technology/motives so as not to um alienate the general audience.
It's also bad, because, while working in the obvious tropes about alien invasion, such as the superior technology, extraterrestrial biology, and overwhelming military force, it also works in quite a few war movie tropes at the same time. There's Aaron Eckhart's ("The Dark Knight", "Paycheck") character, Staff Sergeant Nantz, who's retiring from the Marines the very morning of the invasion. Ramon Rodriguez ("Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen") plays the young lieutenant fresh out of officer training who, despite outranking the older sergeant, still needs Nantz's guidance in leading the men (oh, and his wife's pregnant). There's even Noel Fisher, who's starring in the upcoming "Twilight: Breaking Dawn", playing a very young private who is constantly freaked out by everything that happens.
It's not that they play these roles poorly; it's just that this movie doesn't really have anything new to offer. It's refreshing to see an alien movie that doesn't exploit an incredibly lame weakness (minor spoiler: they do need to exploit a weakness); but every trope, from both types of movie, teeters on the edge of being a cliché. And there are only so many clichés you can take in one movie, especially a "serious" one.
I liked the movie; didn't love it, but I liked it. Aaron Eckhart almost never disappoints, and he did a good job in this movie. The interspersed moments of exposition, such as "experts" on TV discussing the aliens' actions, weren't the best, but they did make it a bit more believable. And there were some genuinely touching moments with the civilians they were sent to rescue. In the end, it goes for the trope, not the cliché, and it generally hits the mark.
(Originally appeared at http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports)