Surprised there's no thread here.

I liked it...alot, actually.  For what it was and what it was meant to be, it worked for me on every level.

FX were good, aliens were cool, action was pretty constant.  Even the performances were pretty good, IMO.

I know this wasn't critically lauded, and in terms of NABO, was probably viewed as a disappointment, but, it did pull in $202 Million WW on a $70 Million budget, so I'm not sure how that's a problem for anyone.

Many of the reviews are downright bad and say how poor the dialogue is.  I personally didn't feel hat way at all, but I definitely wasn't watching this for the dialogue.

I did have some issues with the setup of the battalion going out to a police station to rescue a few civilians, when it wold have been alot easier to simply send a helicopter over.

I also didn't quite understand why our forces weren't better prepared with better weaponry, and a more strategic defense plan.

Of course there are cliche characters and rather obvious plot points, as well as an expected ending, but IMO, it really doesn't matter, as you have to expect this going in.

It was well done, and well put together and it didn't drag at all for me.  Much better than I expected.

Just watched this last night and felt much the same.

I'm not real sure why critics tore it a new one, although some of the cliches were LOL pretty bad.

Once upon a time I actually was a Navy Corpsman for a Marine Air Wing.
Spent a few years flying around at Camp Pendelton/29 Stumps in helicopters, both the UH-1 Huey and the CH-47 Chinooks seen in the movie, picking up dehydrated jarheads outta the sand.

Although I don't really care for the false-documentary, cinéma vérité style I have to confess the legitimacy of the FUBAR-clusterfuckedness of the operation seemed painfully familiar.

The dummy LT that freezes on his first op was pretty cliche.
SSGT saving everyone's a$$ was pretty far fetched.
Getting blamed for a FdUp situation was real.
The half-assed knowing where the h3ll you're going part seemed pretty legit.
People getting lost was OTN.
Dubious missions was a go.
Shooting the sh!t outta everything was about right.
Letting material you don't know WTH it is, like alien goo, get all over you was BS.
Reloading instead of resting was bingo.
The rag-tag squad following Nantz down off the helicopter was... spot on.
Blowing up an alien command center with a single missile was pretty ridiculous.
And where the H was the aliens' armor? You'd think... screwwit. Never mind.

But overall, a few Fkups aside, it was pretty decent.

Can't say the title at all matches the story.
Yesssss, there was a battle over L.A.
Noooo, this squad's story didn't exactly come anywhere near telling about the battle over the entire L.A. territory.
I couldn't very well load up my kids into the minivan, drive to the store, shop and return and call that THE WHOLE CITY GOES SHOPPING!
Uh... no.

I wouldn't RECOMMEND it, but I'll likely watch it again tonight for DVD extras.
(I think director commentary is on there).

I was interested in seeing this, and you guys have heightened that interest. As long as their's no PC preachyness, I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy this for what it is.

Ray, I thought the extras were very impressive in this Blu ray release.

I did not watch it again with any commentaries, though.  I always tell myself I will, but always choose to watch another, new movie, instead.

The extras about how the director got this gig were very impressive...and downright scary that someone would/could go this extreme to get a gig.  Looks like it's a tough market for directors to follow this guy's lead, but as they say a few times, looks like it's caught on.

PS - Didn't they hit the Alien Command vessel twice with missiles?  Guess they didn't have shields, but then again, neither do we.

Glad to hear you liked it, but I'm wondering why you wouldn't recommend it if that's the case.

I do recommend it.  Far, FAR worse ways to spend 2 hours...

There was no really good take-away lesson to learn from it.

It's just stuff.
No intrinsic value to any of it.
Nothing quotable.
No principles to be applied to anything else.

First missile hit the tethered drone which deliberately placed itself in the way to protect the primary craft which the second missile did hit after Santos/Rodriguez knocks out another tether-drone with her shoulder-fired AT4 rocket.

I was dumbfounded none of the attacking force had any semblance of armor.
Rooks.

God forbid we get attacked by anything with tech even a few hundred years more advanced than ours.
Have you any idea of what a thousand year tech advantage provides a force?
Ten-thousand years?
A hundred thousand years?
I don't think we'd even begin to comprehend WTH we were looking at if a OpFor with a million year head start on us came calling.
Cosmologically speaking, a million years ain't sh!t.
Ten million ain't sh!t.
Anything that can span the gap from one star to another is gonna toast us before we know WTH happened.
You think an ant has any concept of the can of Raid I just sprayed all over it's a$$?

We're soooooooo f#cked when that day comes.

After keeping away from this in theatres, I finally witnessed this drek on DVD. It's fine for one viweing, but there's other films I can compare this to, and with that, "Battle" is at the bottom of the ladder for me. For all it's cheese, "Independence Day" is Oscar caliber compared to this (and as far as alien invasion flicks go, I loved The Arrival more than ID4 in that same year) ...but back to Battle.

Look, I know it's probably accurate to address a CO by rank. But every time I heard those ranks being called out endlessly every other minute, it started to grate on me.

Not as bad, though as not being able to tell who was who among the soldiers with the exception of four - and three of those four only because of lead role, accent or gender. The one standout isn't so much of a good thing- Lockett- the guy whoses Marine brother died under  one of Staff Sargeant's previous commands. (Contrivance-? Maybe...) The movie actually made this a plot point, which I'm not against. Problem is, Lockett kept bitching about it. When they get to the Airport/FOB which is in flames,  Lockett bitches about it one more time.

Let me understand this. Help me out.
You have a situation where the whole world is being attacked, where your fellow soldiers are injured and dying, the enviornment around you is a pile of rubble and the guy leading you has not only had the same rough day you had but also saved your life and those around you, you are still in harm's way...and you're gonna bitch about your dead brother under that SSgt.'s previous command?!

(On top of this, it follows a scene where the Ssgt. is comforting a scared little kid who just lost his father!)

Then the SSgt goes on and repeats names and ranks from memory, which was, in my view, uneeded. All what was needed was "We were doing our duty." or " I'd love to trade places with him. He was a fine Marine -who  never gave me hissy fits every few minutes unlike his bozo brother who needs to get his shit together. That' was a screwed up situation but 'know Bozo, that's life when you are soldierin' so shut your piehole and lock and load "  I'm serious. I wanted the SSgt to rip him a new  one I hated this Lockett character with a vengeance. Poorly written if not badly acted.

Perhaps Battle LA was flanked by the "suspcious" apparance of last year's Skyline (as The Strause bros also worked on this film) which was just as grating but slightly more interesting - and this summer's TV series 'Falling Skies' which could have made a nice companion piece to 'Battle LA" - only with some characters one could follow.

"Battle" is not only one of the worst films so far this year; it's one of the worst films I've ever seen -and heard - period. Maybe the script was good- but someone saw fit to shred it. Stuff happens.

One of the worst films you've ever seen, Darren?  Really?  That is downright shocking to hear.  And you're saying you enjoyed Skyline more than this?  That is beyond shocking.

I guess you didn't see Red Riding Hood or Predators, then....

i thought this one was pretty bad. not the worst film of the year, but not good by any means. the characters were paper thin cut outs from every other war film out there and quite frankly, i thought the cgi sucked. i even spotted some cgi car windows that were blown out by fire. to be fair, this wasnt a sci fi movie. this was a war movie with aliens in it. aaron eckhart made the film somewhat bearable, but there isnt much he can do to save the film. overall i was just bored.

I'm with Dreamscale here. Battle LA is just an action movie and for that it's fun to watch. It has all the elements it needs to from one end to the other; goals to acheive, obstacles to overcome, and some characters that have at least a little flesh on 'em. Battle is not even a blip on my worst movie list radar and I'll get the DVD when it's priced right.

Quoted from Dreamscale One of the worst films you've ever seen, Darren?  Really?  That is downright shocking to hear.  And you're saying you enjoyed Skyline more than this?  That is beyond shocking. I guess you didn't see Red Riding Hood or Predators, then....

I liked last year's Predators quite a bit. I have not seen Red Riding Hood.
When I say I enjoyed Skyline more than Battle LA, note I'm not saying it's THAT much better. But Skyline played by its rulebook, and it had  better pacing and sense of place. And yes, Emmerich's ID4 from the 90s was better than both in spades,

And Battle Los Angeles is one of the worst films I ever seen. Period.

Haven't seen the movie yet, but this thread is sort of raising my interest.  One thing I can say for sure...Darren and AlbinoPenguin's avatars are so similar I thought it was the same guy.  Gonna need a bigger boat.

Hamn!
No director commentary of any sort on the DVD.
Rat fat.

Anyway...

I forgot to mention how cool I thought the alien scout-ship mini-thruster flight capabilities were.


Found these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC97wdQOmfI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO67Yha_03g

http://images.wikia.com/aliens/images/f/f9/Walkinggunfire.png
And that walking tank thing the aliens were escorting about looked real familiar, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBCVprX0WnY&feature=related

Just saw this.   A resounding meh for me.  Nothing new whatsoever.  Not a single original idea here.  It's like they took the cliches of war movies and mashed them up with the cliches of sci-fi invasion movies.  Mix well, then bake for 30 minutes and this is what you get.

I think all these alien invasion movies that involve a military style assault by the E.T.s are kinda ridiculous.  If they've mastered interstellar travel, odds are they've mastered the ability to stop rounds from an M-16.  Just seems like they could launch some human DNA seeking pathogen that could kill us all within 24 hours without a shot being fired.  Or suck all the oxygen from the planet for ten minutes.  That'd do it.  But this street to street fighting is just too much.  Makes War of the Worlds seem brilliant with its germ warfare winning the day.

Skyline definitely sucked much worse than this, however.  That flick has stink waves comin' off it.  

I have to admit, it was kind of fun seeing my neighborhood(Santa Monica airport area) getting destroyed, though.

It was OK. Kind of a propaganda movie for the Marines, but reasonable enough at what it did.

There's no depth, or any real attempt at creating something new, but it killed a couple of hours.

It's kind of a funny dilemma, I think. Ryan is correct that if there ever were an invasion it would be unlikely to look anything like that. But then, the methods the invaders would likely use would not be very interesting for a movie, and there would probably be no way we could fight back either.

Funnily enough I watched a drama-doc the other day which was about potential alien invasion..and featured scientists discussing ways in which we'd fight back and the potential threats we'd face.

It was quite interesting.

Some interesting points were raised:

The fact that we'd have to arm EVERYONE. Literally turn the entire occupants of the world into an army to combat their superiority.

Chances are that interstellar travel relies on either enormous energy or a huge amount of time which makes it problematic for biological life-forms, so any invasion would more than likley be automated...you'd be fighting drones and machinery rather than actual aliens. The plan of defense would essentially be to get hold of the machinery and hack it, or learn to use it against itself.

If it was biological then germ warfare might be useful...they tried making people seriously ill and using them as suicide "bombers"...having them captured by the aliens to spread disease.

I saw that one. It was pretty interesting. Could be the basis of a movie, as long as they built a more dynamic drama situation on the ground.

The thing about alien invasion is we probably would have no chance, at least if the invasion purpose was extermination of humans. There's no way we could resist a technology even a couple of hundred years ahead of ours. But it is cool to think about, and I'll always like movies and docu-dramas like these.

I believe I saw that same documentary on National Geographic.  I actually found that a lot more interesting than Battle LA.  I guess the point the documentary was making was that if humans made it too difficult and drawn out for the aliens to complete their goal(which if I recall in the documentary was sucking up every natural resource), then they would simply move on.

I don't know if you've seen the TV show Falling Skies, but it's obvious the producers of that show are familiar with the source material of the documentary.  Not that I'm a big fan of that show.

One other thing that bothered me about Battle LA is how the experts on TV merely speculated that the aliens were here for the water.  The film never actually showed the aliens going for the water or why they needed it so desperately.  And speaking of plot holes, the marines mention early on that the aliens' strategy is to cut us off from each other and isolate us.  Uh, then wouldn't satellites be their first target?  I mean, you have massive ships invading every major city on earth, but you still allow CNN to broadcast?  Meh.

They did show 1 of the ships draining water and also said something about the Earth's water had already been decreased by whatever it was.

Okay, then I missed that.  I was getting might bored at that point waiting for something new to happen.  The old version of the TV show V used the exact same plot device with the water.

If I had to sum this one up in a few words for a pitch it would be...

Independence Day meets Saving Private Ryan.
The idea of an epic film from the infantryman's point of view is intriguing.
However, this movie has no human mission driving the narrative.

Stunningly okay actioner with threadbare characterization and decent effects.
I felt a lot of the sets were very rinky dink, too much Culver City.
For a $70 million budget, the film felt very "contained" at times.

Aaron Eckhart tries, but doesn't have much to work with.

E.D.