Battle: Los Angeles

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Naomi

eeeehhehehe.

Sooo much better than Skyline, but that's a given. Despite all the good moments of action set pieces and a few scenes of suspense the entire film stops dead periodically for bad movie dialogue and "character" moments that no one cares about. They should have just dispensed with that and given us carnage, I really didn't care if I was supposed to be invested in the characters or not.

It did make for one of the more unintentionally hilarious line readings I've heard in quite some time. Well not so much Aaron Eckhart's reading of it as it is the line itself. After one of the longer dramary scenes just before the 3rd act starts and everyone is having a cry about who's died there is a big long load of exposition about backstory that has been foreshadowed rather clumsily from the beginning. As it the writers never got past placeholder lines, at the end of this big emotional outburst he rather aptly states "But none of that's important right now" and then goes on to the next mission. if only they had realised none of it was important before they got to shooting stage.

There were a few very obviously foreshadowed deaths. But the action sequences are cool, if only anyone could tell what was going on. Actually that's a bit of a disservice, You usually have a great sense of geography but it is all in spite of the rapid edits and woefully arbitrary crash zooms in and out and in and out. It is incredibly annoying and take you out of the film, wondering what the hell the camera operator is on.

I've been having a load of problems matchmoving and 3d tracking of late, but i think it's nothing compared to what the effects guys must have had to deal with in this one. I think it would have even made Michael Bay's head dizzy.

I like the more low-tech alien fighters. They are super neato. And strangely enough even after watching the whole film I would have trouble telling you what they looked like. They are kept out of sight for the first section of the film which creates some great tense moments but you definitely see much more of them later on. I guess it's just the way it's shot, the way the move, a lot of the time staying in darkness or being filmed from very far away, or always ducking behind the nearest car, you never get too much a view of them to destroy any suspension of disbelief. Even when they have one and are doing an autopsy on it.

So bad dialogue and character building time wasted aside there is some cool action and awesome aliens to be seen here. It play like military propaganda, and not the fun and ironic kind from Starship Troopers, but killing aliens is fine though right?