Battle: Los Angeles

[Morrus]

Saw this yesterday. Not bad at all; although shaky-cammed from start to finish if that bothers you. My only real quibble was how utterly dire the aliens' tactics were, along with the whole "have a whole attack plan based on the operation of one single location, the failure of which causes all the bad guys to shut down" deus ex machina that was used in ID4. As if the alien military would be set up in such a stupid manner that a single little missile could wipe out their entire invasion force! Decentralization, people!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

So how's the geek tech?

Edit: WOOT! 6000 posts! Level 3!

 

[Banshee16]

I assume that the weakness of the central control center might have been something that just affected individual battles. It's not like it affects all their troops.

I figure they have to find *some* way to wrap it up in two hours, in case it doesn't do well enough to justify a sequel. If there was guaranteed to be a sequel, I'd almost have the aliens win in the first movie. Few people would expect that.

Banshee

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Saw this yesterday. Not bad at all; although shaky-cammed from start to finish if that bothers you. My only real quibble was how utterly dire the aliens' tactics were, along with the whole "have a whole attack plan based on the operation of one single location, the failure of which causes all the bad guys to shut down" deus ex machina that was used in ID4. As if the alien military would be set up in such a stupid manner that a single little missile could wipe out their entire invasion force! Decentralization, people!

As Banshee16 alludes to,

Spoiler

they are decentralized, it's just that local group that goes down, but it gives the humans a high-value target and a means to make sure they can beat the other beachheads. The infantry is left, but the drones are gone, and since those are the things that really hurt the humans, the odds swing back into our favor. I suspect the remaining C^3I nodes go down to waves of missiles as they're identified

.

And the alien infantry isn't terribly potent. They can be taken down by modern weapons, and their weapons aren't terribly good at putting down humans. Early on, you see some Marines injured by the aliens' plasma weapons, but I don't think anyone dies to a direct shot. Deaths are either due to

Spoiler

getting shot down in a helicopter by a drone

or

Spoiler

being blown up by one of the aliens' heavy weapons

. The only people who seem to die to direct infantry fire are civilians.

They do, of course, make the aliens fairly weak in general. Certainly, they don't come in behind a wave of kinetic-energy weapons or nukes, and they aren't in overwhelming force. But then again, that'd kind of defeat the point of having a fun, kick-ass war movie. If I were trying to come up with an explanation, it'd be that the aliens are desperate and somehow on minimal resources, so they're doing the invasion on a budget.

Brad

 

[Mark CMG]

LA was just one of 20 cities being attacked, according to the movie, so it would seem there are 20 such C&C targets to eventually destroy (and those only wipe disable the drones, not the alien soldiers or their field artillery). The premise seems to be that if the C&Cs can be destroyed, the battles can be won against the rest of the alien forces.

My beef was with the early news report and "expert" who surmised they were here for the water.