Battle: Los Angeles

[DraconianOne]

More alien invasion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORb3zC8z94w

Liking the look of this so far but have some reservations (little girl in jeopardy? Oh noes! )

[K9]

I like the look and feel, but with a year to go I'm not going to get particularly excited yet.

[DraconianOne]

I like the look and feel, but with a year to go I'm not going to get particularly excited yet.

US date - it's coming out in March (25th in the UK).  Yes, still 4 months away but trailer came out today.

The IMDB page has a different title - it's been renamed to "World Invasion: Battle LA."

[K9]

Bah, y'all and your silly system of dates.

Re-watching the trailer I get a bit of District 9 vibe, which isn't a bad thing

[stu]

Oo I was hoping someone would start a thread on this. The most I've heard about this movie is Sony filing suit against the Strause Bros. for cribbing ideas. (The Strause Brothers did some primary effects on this flick while simultaneously creating Skyline). The trailer was released today rather than down the road in order to steal some thunder from Skyline. Considering how much money Sony already has invested, I don't see why they didn't start weeks ago when the bulk of the Skyline adds started pooping up.

[Chimpy]

The only thing that was interesting to me was the green MPAA thing saying it was approved for "Appropriate Audiences" What the hell is that supposed to mean?

[pxib]

The only thing that was interesting to me was the green MPAA thing saying it was approved for "Appropriate Audiences" What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Appropriate to the rating of the movie that the trailer is meant to precede. Basically it means the trailer might not be rated G.

[KallDrexx]

Black hawk down with aliens! g
(that's the vibe I got)

[Sir T]

Sony is apperently suing the makers of Skyline (who did the special effects for both movies) for stealing the idea for their movie from this one, and possibly harming sales by shoving their movie out first. 

Or course skyline cost 10 million, this cost 100million plus.

[Chimpy]

Thank you for reading the post 4 up the page Sir T, and reposting it for us  

[Sir T]

You're very welcome. 

[Tannhauser]

Invasion?  We'll be OK, we have those four genius nerds that live in Pasadena to protect us!

"You're in my spot." (fires nuclear-tipped rocket launcher)

[bhodi]

The movie was going to be released this year, but rumor is it got delayed because it's a gigantic turd.

[DraconianOne]

The movie was going to be released this year, but rumor is it got delayed because it's a gigantic turd.

Bollocks. It's never been slated to be released this year.

[Chimpy]

The movie was going to be released this year, but rumor is it got delayed because it's a gigantic turd.

When has a movie ever been delayed because it was a giant turd?

[DraconianOne]

New trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_pAsPPDdC8

[Velorath]

The movie was going to be released this year, but rumor is it got delayed because it's a gigantic turd.

When has a movie ever been delayed because it was a giant turd?

The Wolfman.

[UnSub]

The movie was going to be released this year, but rumor is it got delayed because it's a gigantic turd.

When has a movie ever been delayed because it was a giant turd?

Often enough that delaying release is seen as lack of faith in the film quality. It might be that test screenings got incredibly negative responses, so they've sent the film back for a re-edit, or it could see the film pushed back to an 'emptier' time of the year when it might stand out better.

Every now and again a film is pushed back if it is seen as fantastic and would have a better chance to make money / win an Oscar in a different time period, but that tends to be the exception.

[Teleku]

New trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_pAsPPDdC8

So far it still looks like good stupid brainless fun.

Though if your aim is to wipe out the indigenous population for resources, I'm pretty sure you'd just fly over cities and drop WMD's instead of launching a block by block invasion.  But then it wouldn't be any fun.   

[Abagadro]

So far it still looks like good stupid brainless fun.

No matter how crap the movie is, that is a very effective trailer.

[Surlyboi]

I'll watch that.

[DraconianOne]

Though if your aim is to wipe out the indigenous population for resources, I'm pretty sure you'd just fly over cities and drop WMD's instead of launching a block by block invasion.  But then it wouldn't be any fun.   

The line after the bit about wiping out the indigenous population goes "Right now, we are being colonized". That suggests to me that the guy speaking agrees with you and the implicit conclusion is that they're not after resources.

But, it's a trailer and there's no context for that dialogue.

Anyway, don't care - the trailers so far have sold it to me and I'll go see it. I fully expect the third act to be a total cop out as with 95% of all invasion films but if it doesn't, all the better.

Often enough that delaying release is seen as lack of faith in the film quality.

This was pushed back three weeks from Feb 18th to March 11th and probably for marketing purposes.  Reason? 0311 is the USMC code for infantry riflemen.

[Ironwood]

Also, it's easier to Morph.

[Khaldun]

You know, actually, nobody wipes out indigenous populations when they're after resources. Because you need someone to labor to extract the resources, and generally you haven't brought enough of your own people with you to do that or even enough of your own machinery. Because transporting that amount of labor or resources is expensive most of the time. When you do transport people, it's either because you've got some kind of weird ideological thing going (convicts to Australia) or because there's an unusual affordance in the environment + you have a deranged indifference to suffering (Africans across the Atlantic along the trade wind 'conveyor belt').

When you wipe out indigenous populations, it's: a) because you did it by accident, a la smallpox and Native Americans; b) because you're genocidal lunatics who kill for ideological reasons even if it's against your economic interests; c) because you're trying to intimidate the survivors into knuckling under to your imperial or authoritarian rule.

Be interesting if someone would actually do an SF alien-invasion movie that was actually serious about "right now we're being colonized". District 9 was about as close as we've seen though in reverse. Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis books were one of the best treatments of what colonization-by-aliens that wasn't the equivalent of the Russians occupying the US in "Red Dawn" might actually be like.

[DraconianOne]

Also, it's easier to Morph.

[HaemishM]

New trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_pAsPPDdC8

Why are the aliens resurrecting Megatron in Los Angeles? 

[Tannhauser]

Very anime, looks like good blow up fun.  I'm in.

[DraconianOne]

You know, actually, nobody wipes out indigenous populations when they're after resources.

Tell that to the orang-utangs.

[WindupAtheist]

You know, actually, nobody wipes out indigenous populations when they're after resources.

The hell you say. I still want to see Earth carpet-nuke the Na'vi. 

But at least the scenario in Avatar was sort of worth kicking around as nerd debate material. The average Independence Day type of movie pretty much requires the aliens to come down and blatantly throw the fight in laughable fashion. You know, sending down little fighter ships to get in dogfights instead of... say... nuking every large military base on the planet from orbit, then nuking one randomly-selected city per hour until everyone surrenders.

[Surlyboi]

Fuck that noise, nukes are expensive.

Asteroids on the other hand, are cheap and plentiful.

[Khaldun]

You know, actually, nobody wipes out indigenous populations when they're after resources.

The hell you say. I still want to see Earth carpet-nuke the Na'vi. 

But at least the scenario in Avatar was sort of worth kicking around as nerd debate material. The average Independence Day type of movie pretty much requires the aliens to come down and blatantly throw the fight in laughable fashion. You know, sending down little fighter ships to get in dogfights instead of... say... nuking every large military base on the planet from orbit, then nuking one randomly-selected city per hour until everyone surrenders.

Well, exactly. You arrive at a planet of (to you) aliens. You've come a long way. For some reason, it seems to you to be important to kill everything on the planet, or at least the local sentients. You're that kind of species: you like burning ants with a magnifying glass and then pouring Drano down their anthill when the fun of burning them one by one gets old. So maybe you send a couple of WTFHELP monsters or ships or something down to burn a few ants, and maybe the sentients get lucky and kill a few of them. It happens: mean kids that burn ants sometimes get bitten by a couple of them. Little ouchies and all that. But after the fun gets old, just throw some rocks down from orbit or something. It's not like the local sentients can project any force at all into their upper atmosphere or low orbit. Even if you're interested in resources that you can extract with your magic technology and no organic labor, what resources that you need are you not going to be able to get after 5-6 major asteroid strikes? Farmed food, I guess, but if you need to resupply that, a) you couldn't have travelled interstellar distances anyway and b) then don't kill the local primitives. Unless you're looking to raid supermarkets after the apocalypse.

Say, that would make for a good genre mashup: zombie apocalypse + stranded aliens who need supplies from abandoned human stores and infrastructure.

[Typhon]

Fuck that noise, nukes are expensive.

Asteroids on the other hand, are cheap and plentiful.

And asteroids don't leave the impact point radioactive.

[Ookii]

I have comfort in the fact that it could NEVER be as bad as Skyline. The bar has been set so low anything could surpass it.

[WindupAtheist]

Even if you're interested in resources that you can extract with your magic technology and no organic labor, what resources that you need are you not going to be able to get after 5-6 major asteroid strikes? Farmed food, I guess, but if you need to resupply that, a) you couldn't have travelled interstellar distances anyway and b) then don't kill the local primitives. Unless you're looking to raid supermarkets after the apocalypse.

Really I can't think of much that Earth would have to offer to any marauding aliens capable of getting here, except maybe the old standby of lebensraum. Even that's debatable. Movies always drastically underrate the challenge associated with not just cheating the speed of light, but doing it so well that crossing tens or hundreds of trillions of miles in massive cargo-laden ships becomes economically worthwhile.

Anyone who can expect to get here in a reasonable timeframe, steal all our gold or whatever, load it into ships large enough to hold it all, and get home in an equally reasonable period of time would probably find it easier to just suck hydrogen out of the nearest star and synthesize it into whatever they want.

And if anyone that advanced did want to come fuck with us, the invasion would make "modern military with nuclear weapons versus naked cavemen" look like a fair fight.

[Teleku]

I don't know, I always thought it would be funny if there was an alien invasion where, after landing, they ran out of the ships waving clubs at us.  Because, due to a religious decree thats held for thousands of years, its heretical to fight with anything other than a blunt club.  This isn't a problem because everybody follows this religion, and they just assume everybody else does.  Considering the religious stupidity I see here on earth, I could actually imagine that happening.  

But yeah, your right, theres really no physical elements that earth has that would make it worth fighting over, that they couldn't just get from some nearby uninhabited rock.  The only thing we have thats special is plants/life.  So in the event of an invasion, thats what they'd be coming for ("men, at long last we've found more land to grow grapefruits.  Order the attack!")