The Aliens Should Have Destroyed This Movie First
Yes, this movie missed the mark by about 46 miles. It tries to be serious by making us care about one or two of the characters and it's not even very entertaining.
I was hoping for something along the lines of an alien-invasion Machete--lots of wanton violence, flying limbs and maybe a stern, bad-ass hero thrown in for good measure. But mostly, I thought it would be kind of funny or campy or something. To be fair, it will probably seem pretty campy in a few years, but that's probably not what Jonathan Liebesman, the director, was shooting for.
Battle: LA isn't fun to watch because of the overuse of handheld cams, which are meant to give a first-person "realistic" view of an alien invasion. So it seems just like the real alien invasions, I guess. This technique works sometimes, like in District 9, an extra terrestrial movie that's actually good. In this case, it makes it impossible to tell what's going on in addition to being stressful and nauseating.
Another problem is that the aliens don't look all that rad. Traditionally, I'm a big fan of alien movies, but the two that came out on March 11 are both impossible to like, mostly because the aliens have no personality. (The other is Mars Needs Moms.) They are machines programmed to destroy; there is nothing subtle or mysterious going on, just a lot of loud jerky something or other.
Between Battle: LA and Mars Needs Moms, the portrayal of aliens in I Am Number Four is starting to seem well-crafted and nuanced. Yikes.
Aaron Eckhart is a really good actor and he looks like an action hero, with his Mormony wholesome good looks. His character, US Marine Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz, is the one we're supposed to care about. There's a cloud, unrelated to the aliens, hanging over his blond head, something to do with Iraq, but we're not sure what. Regardless, he's a tortured soul, so we're supposed to root for him. This was a big mistake because, unlike aliens destroying Los Angeles, Iraq and its effects on US soldiers are things that we really ought to take seriously. Conflating the two diminishes both the real issue, as well as the movie.
Anyway, on the eve of Nantz's retirement (duh), the asteroids start dropping from the sky and, surprise surprise, there are actually aliens on board what turn out to be spaceships. We don't know what they want exactly (I think "human brains" would have served just fine), but they need to destroy people and infrastructure to get it.
A band of military personnel led by William Martinez (Ramón Rodríguez) and including Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez, who was so fantastic in Machete) and Nantz are sent to Santa Monica to rescue some civilians. The aliens apparently resent this. Unenjoyable chaos ensues. And the audience is mad because their lives are full enough of unenjoyable chaos. The least the movie could do was make the chaos fun.
