[Shadow_Flanker]

I went to the premier of Battle: Los Angeles last night, and all I can say is wow....simply wow. This was an awsome movie, and I strongly recommend people to go see it. The actors did a very good job in their respective military roles, especially Michelle Rodriguez, I thought she could never pull off a military role (she's Air Force in this film) but I was pleasantly surprised and she managed to pull it off.

The aliens were done in a fashion that was quite original. The way they conducted the war was much in line with what any modern military does. Military style ranking system, pincer tactics and ambush, amphibious and airborne assaults, close air support/air superiority missions, armoured and artillery support, capture and secure of territory, forward operating bases/Command HQs, reconnaissance using UAVs and infantry scout units, signals jamming and detection.

The aliens aren't the usual super tough/virtually invincible that you find in the other Hollywood alien films. They are slightly less frail and vulnerable than we humans are. Simple 5.56mm rounds drops the aliens and frag grnades blows them apart easily, even bayonet passes right through them. Their vehicles even aren't the usual super-uber tough behemoths, the aliens' aircraft and ground vehicles are just as vulnerable to heavy caliber guns and cannons, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons as our own military vehicles are.

Spoiler Alert

The main reason for their invasion is to get our planet's water. For the aliens, water is a fuel source (just like crude oil and petrol is a fuel source for us). It is explained that certain molecules/elements in H2O can be used as a fuel, and since water consists of over 70% of our planet's surface, and is in liquid form, the extraction and refining proccess for those said molecules/elemens (don't ask what those are it was never really mentioned as far as I can remember) will be very easy for the aliens to get to.

[Dayseed]

See, here's the problem with alien invasion movies. Why the hell would they develop interstellar travel to come here and get liquid water? If the aliens are that advanced, surely they cruised on past some hydrogen planet and/or oxygen planet. Take hydrogen gas and burn it in oxygen and bammo, water. Tons of it.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that they detect water on Earth and then show up to fight like shit for it. Why go through the hassle? If you needed wood to burn for fuel in the winter, how would you go about getting it? Would you chop down trees from a forest waaaaay off the highway and away from prying eyes, or, would you get into a massive gunfight at Home Depot while you violently stole the bannisters there, fighting cops and old people with shitty retirement plans?

The way this movie is presented, the aliens drove up to the local police station to have the firefight first so there wouldn't be any complications robbing the Home Depot later.

I haven't seen Battle Los Angeles yet so I'm not taking shots at this movie specifically, but all alien invasion movies in general.

[fifeboy]

Dayseed wrote:

See, here's the problem with alien invasion movies. Why the hell would they develop interstellar travel to come here and get liquid water? If the aliens are that advanced, surely they cruised on past some hydrogen planet and/or oxygen planet. Take hydrogen gas and burn it in oxygen and bammo, water. Tons of it.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that they detect water on Earth and then show up to fight like shit for it. Why go through the hassle? If you needed wood to burn for fuel in the winter, how would you go about getting it? Would you chop down trees from a forest waaaaay off the highway and away from prying eyes, or, would you get into a massive gunfight at Home Depot while you violently stole the bannisters there, fighting cops and old people with shitty retirement plans?

The way this movie is presented, the aliens drove up to the local police station to have the firefight first so there wouldn't be any complications robbing the Home Depot later.

I haven't seen Battle Los Angeles yet so I'm not taking shots at this movie specifically, but all alien invasion movies in general.

Invade L.A., for water?

[Shadow_Flanker]

Dayseed: Yeah, it seems odd to come all the way over here just to get our water, especially since they could've easily went to Neptune to get all the frozen water there, but Hollywood needs reasons for our planet's invasions, even if it's just to kill us all for the hell of it (ie: Independence Day, War Of The Worlds).

From what I gather of the initial enemy contact, the aliens took out the police force first because they (LAPD) were the first organized armed response the aliens encountered, and since the police use their radios all the time the aliens were able to pinpoint all the police locations (whereabouts of units, police stations, and PD headquarters) and sent rapid response forces to take them out.

The scientist that is interviewed at certain parts of the film has said something that the presence of liquid H2O, especially if it is stable in a liquid form, seems to be the clincher to why they are here. I'm just going from what the movie is saying.

Fireboy: The aliens land along the coastlines so they can secure the easiest access to the oceans.

[bootlegga]

Dayseed wrote:

See, here's the problem with alien invasion movies. Why the hell would they develop interstellar travel to come here and get liquid water? If the aliens are that advanced, surely they cruised on past some hydrogen planet and/or oxygen planet. Take hydrogen gas and burn it in oxygen and bammo, water. Tons of it.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that they detect water on Earth and then show up to fight like shit for it. Why go through the hassle? If you needed wood to burn for fuel in the winter, how would you go about getting it? Would you chop down trees from a forest waaaaay off the highway and away from prying eyes, or, would you get into a massive gunfight at Home Depot while you violently stole the bannisters there, fighting cops and old people with shitty retirement plans?

The way this movie is presented, the aliens drove up to the local police station to have the firefight first so there wouldn't be any complications robbing the Home Depot later.

I haven't seen Battle Los Angeles yet so I'm not taking shots at this movie specifically, but all alien invasion movies in general.

Well, from what I understand, water is crucial to our own future space missions, because not only do we need it to live, it can be cracked into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for us to breath. That's why announcements that they might have found ice on the moon are so important to NASA.

So, in that way, it does make some sense to want water where you find it, but as Shadow Flanker said, why not Neptune, or even better, any of the hundreds of comets flying around our system? After all, lifting large quantities of something as heavy/bulky as water out of a gravity well is going to take a lot of effort.

If I was an alien race bent on colonizing Earth, I'd just show up and spread a disease or two amongst us. A few low flying passes over each continent and you could probably wipe out 90% of the population in a few months. Recovering from that would take the starch out of any defence on our part. After all, the native Americans had almost no tolerance for European diseases and it was a significant factor in the conquest of the Americas.

BTW, from the reviews I've seen of this movie, it sounds like a real stinker. I still want to see it, because sometimes there is nothing like a good ole popcorn flick...

[Thanos]

^ No doubt. If the age arrives where there's colonies built on the Moon and Mars, comet harvesting will become critical to supplying water in these barren places. Give it a about two or three hundred years and the activity, both in terms of adventure and for commercial gain, that will take place in asteroid mining and comet harvesting will be incredible.

I hope by then that I'm re-born and get to see some of it.

[Shadow_Flanker]

[quote="bootlegga]Well, from what I understand, water is crucial to our own future space missions, because not only do we need it to live, it can be cracked into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for us to breath. That's why announcements that they might have found ice on the moon are so important to NASA.

So, in that way, it does make some sense to want water where you find it, but as Shadow Flanker said, why not Neptune, or even better, any of the hundreds of comets flying around our system? After all, lifting large quantities of something as heavy/bulky as water out of a gravity well is going to take a lot of effort.

If I was an alien race bent on colonizing Earth, I'd just show up and spread a disease or two amongst us. A few low flying passes over each continent and you could probably wipe out 90% of the population in a few months. Recovering from that would take the starch out of any defence on our part. After all, the native Americans had almost no tolerance for European diseases and it was a significant factor in the conquest of the Americas.

BTW, from the reviews I've seen of this movie, it sounds like a real stinker. I still want to see it, because sometimes there is nothing like a good ole popcorn flick...[/quote]


I'd actually stay away from using any kind of chemical/biological weapon. The resource you're after (water in this case) would become contaminated, and therefore make the work of harvesting it more costly and longer to underetake. Also you might not get all of the contaminates (spelling?) filtered out of the water and end up damaging your vehicles and poisoning your invasion troops. Sometimes it's best just to send in the grunts.

The movie isn't a stinker, it's quite well done.

[Dayseed]

Bootlegga,

I saw this flick on the weekend. The reviews are wrong. While it's not as poignant as Saving Private Ryan, it's a damn good movie in that ilk. Or maybe more like Black Hawk Down. I came away very satisfied and Aaron Eckhart gives as good a performance as Tom Hanks did in SPR. He won't get recognized for it because he fought aliens instead of Germans, but that's the Academy for you.

That said, if you've got SuperScopes capable of seeing water on Earth, you should probably figure out that there's going to be resistance here. And at the start of the movie, they mention that the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942 was actually the aliens sneaking a peek at humanity, so it's not like they wouldn't have known.

If it were me, I would study humanity a little more and then bomb the shit out of strategic installations. Bye-bye undefended oil-refineries. Choke off gasoline and watch the world tear itself apart over the few remaining Shell stations with gas in the tanks. Chances are with the uproar, riots would be rampant, the world would be divided and you could get yourself a front row seat to watch humanity battle royale itself into the ground while you lazily siphoned off the water.

Of course, the aliens in the movie are sucking up salt-water. Take that metallic insides of your warships! Should have gone for Niagara Falls.

[bootlegga]

Shadow_Flanker wrote:

[

Non-persistant bio/chem weapons would be very useful. Any group that can travel faster than light should be able to engineer something to which they would have immunity (think people and smallpox) and we would not.

The other obvious alternative is to drop kinetic weapons (rocks) on every military base from orbit. Given that they have space travel and we do not, they have command of the high ground so to speak and a conectered bombardment of every major military base should be relatively easy for any interstellar race.

[bootlegga]

Dayseed wrote:

Bootlegga,

I saw this flick on the weekend. The reviews are wrong. While it's not as poignant as Saving Private Ryan, it's a damn good movie in that ilk. Or maybe more like Black Hawk Down. I came away very satisfied and Aaron Eckhart gives as good a performance as Tom Hanks did in SPR. He won't get recognized for it because he fought aliens instead of Germans, but that's the Academy for you.

That said, if you've got SuperScopes capable of seeing water on Earth, you should probably figure out that there's going to be resistance here. And at the start of the movie, they mention that the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942 was actually the aliens sneaking a peek at humanity, so it's not like they wouldn't have known.

If it were me, I would study humanity a little more and then bomb the shit out of strategic installations. Bye-bye undefended oil-refineries. Choke off gasoline and watch the world tear itself apart over the few remaining Shell stations with gas in the tanks. Chances are with the uproar, riots would be rampant, the world would be divided and you could get yourself a front row seat to watch humanity battle royale itself into the ground while you lazily siphoned off the water.

Of course, the aliens in the movie are sucking up salt-water. Take that metallic insides of your warships! Should have gone for Niagara Falls.

I just mentioned that many reviewers savaged it.

Honestly though, I hardly ever trust reviews. Sometimes, they are bang on (Battlefieeld Earth) and otehr times they are way off. The problem is most reviewers seem to expect every movie to be like the King's Speech and can not understand why anyone would want to see explosions, car chases or romantic comedies. I remember Ghostbusters getting all sorts of nasty reviews, yet it is an awesome movie.

As i said, I love a good popcorn movie, and even if it has cheesy moments (like Independence Day had), I still tend to enjoy them. I'm looking forward to seeing this one sometime soon.

[SprCForr]

Oh good, I was looking for a companion to ID4. That poor disk has had the 1's and 0's worn off.

[jeff744]

bootlegga wrote:

Dayseed wrote:

Bootlegga,

I saw this flick on the weekend. The reviews are wrong. While it's not as poignant as Saving Private Ryan, it's a damn good movie in that ilk. Or maybe more like Black Hawk Down. I came away very satisfied and Aaron Eckhart gives as good a performance as Tom Hanks did in SPR. He won't get recognized for it because he fought aliens instead of Germans, but that's the Academy for you.

That said, if you've got SuperScopes capable of seeing water on Earth, you should probably figure out that there's going to be resistance here. And at the start of the movie, they mention that the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942 was actually the aliens sneaking a peek at humanity, so it's not like they wouldn't have known.

If it were me, I would study humanity a little more and then bomb the shit out of strategic installations. Bye-bye undefended oil-refineries. Choke off gasoline and watch the world tear itself apart over the few remaining Shell stations with gas in the tanks. Chances are with the uproar, riots would be rampant, the world would be divided and you could get yourself a front row seat to watch humanity battle royale itself into the ground while you lazily siphoned off the water.

Of course, the aliens in the movie are sucking up salt-water. Take that metallic insides of your warships! Should have gone for Niagara Falls.

I just mentioned that many reviewers savaged it.

Honestly though, I hardly ever trust reviews. Sometimes, they are bang on (Battlefieeld Earth) and otehr times they are way off. The problem is most reviewers seem to expect every movie to be like the King's Speech and can not understand why anyone would want to see explosions, car chases or romantic comedies. I remember Ghostbusters getting all sorts of nasty reviews, yet it is an awesome movie.

As i said, I love a good popcorn movie, and even if it has cheesy moments (like Independence Day had), I still tend to enjoy them. I'm looking forward to seeing this one sometime soon.

Indeed, I think some of the people assigned to the shows don't even like the genres they review

Apparently some critics said that V was a generic paint by numbers, I don't recall any alien invasion shows where they don't start openly shooting before it.

[Shadow_Flanker]

bootlegga wrote:

Shadow_Flanker wrote:

[

Non-persistant bio/chem weapons would be very useful. Any group that can travel faster than light should be able to engineer something to which they would have immunity (think people and smallpox) and we would not.

The other obvious alternative is to drop kinetic weapons (rocks) on every military base from orbit. Given that they have space travel and we do not, they have command of the high ground so to speak and a conectered bombardment of every major military base should be relatively easy for any interstellar race.

Yeah, on a logical view one would think that a space faring species woud have such weapons, however just because a race can travel the galaxy doesn't necessarily mean they have weapons systems like Star trek or Star Wars for example. If the aliens in Battle: LA have such weapons then why didn't they just planetary bombard the planet? It make more sense to do it that way, but for Hollywood it doesn't make for good films.

Besides, during the film you get a look at the aliens' weapons and their effects. Their infantry rifles fire heated projectiles that leave third degree burns on the target's skin(like plasma weapons, but much lower powered) but doesn't penetrate. Their main anti-tank (and just general anti-vehicle) weapon consists of a four-legged assault gun that fires half a dozen mini-missiles in a single shot to a single target, the individual missile doesn't have much of a punch or an effect against an M1A2 Abrams but a group of them will knock it out. Even their indirect fire of artillery isn't all super-duper, it's on the same scale as our modern militaries. The only thing the aliens' military capabilities that is far superior to ours is the ability of their signals corps to pinpoint the EXACT position of any of our military untis that use radios (and that includes individual soldiers).

I don't put much faith into what critics/reviewers say. If it's not academy caliber films like King's Speech, No Country For Old Men, etc. they'll pan it.

[BartSimpson]

Movies like this simply play on our anxieties over unassimilated immigrants - with 'unassimilated immigrants' being the PC way of saying 'colonists'.

[DanSC]

If the Kings make it to the finals and lose, "Battle: Los Angeles" will be the result.