Our Opinions on Battle: Los Angeles

The answer may surprise you....

What did the Awesome Robo! crew think of the highly anticipated Battle: Los Angeles?

REZZ:

Where to begin. . .

Essentially this movie was one giant military circle jerk. I was waiting for groups from the Marine Corps to burst in at any moment and proceed to give out handjobs while we sign our lives away. Unfortunately that didn't happen. Honestly NOTHING F***** HAPPENED THE ENTIRE GODDAMN FUCKING BORING PIECE OF S*** C*** D*** MOVIE. I would have preferred forced military sex than watch this piece of s***.

First of all it was possibly one of THE most generic alien-invasion movies I had ever seen. ALIENS INVADING/HOW WE KILL THEM/SHOOT DA BASE!

At first I thought, OH SWEET THEY'RE JUMPING DIRECTLY INTO THE INVASION THERE'S GOING TO BE SOME SICK ASS PLOT DEVELOPMENT.

No. Nope. Not Even. Instead I'm forced to sit through an hour of marines getting shot at by aliens, aliens that I don't even get to fucking see because apparently someone thought it was a good f***** idea to cover the city in dust 90% of the movie. I enjoy tension building up to the alien reveal, but when they're continuously fighting I'D LOVE TO SEE WHAT THEY'RE FIGHTING. Oh don't worry, they eventually do show the aliens and then I understood why the dust was there; they realized that walking jellyfish with gun arms were stupid as s***.

Oh, and apparently there was some kind of inner-struggle between one of his fellow Marines and a past incident, but it's okay he remembers how fantastic all the soldiers he worked with were and makes everything better by repeating their names with tear filled eyes, while he secretly touches his "Little Marine" off camera.

F*** THIS PIECE OF S*** MOVIE.

ROBOBRAIN:  

Take Independence Day, suck the fun out if but direct it better. The biggest problem with this movie is that it takes itself waaay to seriously for the subject matter. The movie is a brotastic exercise in monotony, with no main protagonist of any kind, retarded civilians and an entirely forgettable cast that did little to nothing to stand out. I was left fantasizing about freak accidents which would wipe out the annoying, grating civilians.

The alien designs were hilariously bad, and I laughed at how crappy their technology was.  A tractor that fires missiles?  A ship with 30,000 misfiring boosters?  These aliens had it covered.  Lets not forget about the aliens forgetting that they can fire acid bullets 30 minutes after the movie starts.

You'll love this movie if you want to join the marines.  Its a testosterone laden clusterf*** of overzealous patriotism ad nauseam.  If you do go, the ending will prove this point in full.  It has to do with breakfast.  This movie sucked ass.

ROBOGAL:

It was a Saturday night, I already had quite a bit to drink, and was at that sleepy-drunk stage.  Instead of letting me go home and crash, RoboBrain suggested seeing a midnight showing (yes, I was already spent by midnight, whatever) of Battle: Los Angeles.  I obliged, partly because I knew I could sleep in heavily the next day, and partly because I enjoy the movie theater experience in general.  Sadly, my drunken haze didn't help much in terms of enjoying this film.  The only partial redeeming factor was the special effects.  Mind blowing it wasn't, but it wasn't all that bad either.  The plot was stale, and unoriginal.  It felt a bit like "Independence Day", but without the fun, slightly cheesy feel.  We're given a brief, run-of-the mill introduction to the central characters in the beginning of the film, but it isn't enough to draw me to any character, let alone the main protagonist.  I end up not caring for any of the characters, keeping me from feeling any sort of involvement (which is important for me).  At times some of the dialog was laughable:  The best way to prove you're worthy to do a physical exam of an alien? "I'm a veterinarian."  Uh... alright, I guess...  By the time the end credits started to roll, I was left unimpressed, yet not angry about my time and money wasted.  At least it wasn't 2012(The worst movie experience of my life.)

UNICORNSEXIST:

I love the alien invasion genre. But when the genre is done bad.....my god does it suck. I've been looking foward to this film, and I really hope it would break away from the clichés of the genre, but it uses them to the point of frustation. This film isn't as bad as Skyline, but my god does this film suck hard. It serves as a 90 minute marine recruitment video.

One thing I must point out is that this film is hard to watch. I mean physically hard to watch the screen. Shaky cam has become one of the most over used techniques in film over the last few years, and it's used to the limit. At some points, it just makes the film look really amater. And then half the film is spent looking through a scope which was a cool shot at first, but after being used 16 times in the first 40 minutes gets very tiresome fast.
Then lets talk about the aliens. We don't get a clear shot of the aliens, and even when we do a mixture of the mystery dust that lies across LA (which, whilst realistic really pisses off the viewer because you can't see a god damn thing and only serves to try and milk the reveal for all it's worth) and the shaky cam just makes things really annoying to watch.
But the reveal of the aliens is disappointing. They don't have any lasting impact. I hated Independence Day (another movie this film tries so hard to imitate) but the designs of the aliens were original and stuck out in my mind all these years.

The story is average, and not worth talking about. But the characters? There is.......black guy, the kid virgin, the married guy fighting for his wife and unborn baby......you know EVERY STEREOTYPE YOU COULD IMAGINE. These characters are given no development time outside the 2 minutes introductions each character is given in the first 20 minutes which shouldn't matter, but the films wants to make you feel sympathetic each time a character dies or goes missing but you just aren't given that emotional tether. Film makers need to learn that too many chiefs can ruin a perfectly good meal.

It's not even the worst alien invasion film I've ever seen, I think Skyline holds that title in this particular genre (and never get me started on that piece of s***). It's just boring, unoriginal and lazy. The ideas are there, and had an amazing advertising campaign, but this film is mediocre at best.

Also, why did the aliens start to drag the soldiers like they were kidnapping them during the first scene, and then every other scene proceed to "shoot to kill"? Also did the writers forget the aliens had acid bullets, or did they just get bored of that particular story element?

NATHAN:

I saved the price of a movie ticket and concessions and went to go get a mani-pedi instead of watching this movie. Turns out, I had the best time among the five of us.