Battle: Los Angeles trailer

[weemadando]

So it looks like the alien invasion movie is definitely back. I'd heard rumours about this one, but thought it had been scrapped.

[adam_grif]

I don't know what the warnings and signs all these fucking trailers have been telling me about for the past three years are, but I ain't seen shit. I wonder what the third act ass-pull that lets us fight them off will be this time.

[weemadando]

Let's hope that it's something like: "OK, so we lose a few cities and a shitload of population, but we need to kill aliens. Nukes away."

And what's with the smoke-ring popping stuff? Is it some kind of orbital drop pod doing a deceleration burn?

[weemadando]

A few nice notes:

Clearly the aliens don't have air supremacy because that heli lift appears to be largely unmolested. Maybe that'll change.

At about 1:36ish there's some WP arty rounds being fired into what looks like a large park which appears to be an LZ or similar for the aliens.

Perhaps the twist will be something like we're the first one's that the aliens have tried this on and they realise that "shit, all our years of watching and we never really saw these guys in a high intensity global conflict, this mightn't be the pushover we were hoping for." Hell, it's about time we actually lost in one of these.

[adam_grif]

My thoughts were that it was some sort of magitech deceleration deceleration thing that has a cool effect. Honestly, looks pretty generic. The only thing that stood out for me was that the alien "soldiers" are apparently robots judging from the trailer. Not having the aliens land their own fleshy troopers is a plus in my books.

Unfortunately, there was also an egg I saw in the trailer, which gives me the feeling that when we finally see the aliens they're going to be pretty cookie-cutter.

[Srelex]

Aliens using orbital bombardment of some kind? Interesting.

[Sarevok]

The orbital bombardment is nice to see, But it needs more oomph. As in remove offending city blocks in one go rather than dropping pop corn at terminal velocities.,

[Srelex]

The orbital bombardment is nice to see, But it needs more oomph. As in remove offending city blocks in one go rather than dropping pop corn at terminal velocities.,

If I understood the trailer correctly, they seemed to blow up a naval group pretty spectacularly.

[Sarevok]

Yeah I noticed that too. But in other scenes it was slow moving firecrackers raining from the sky. Now its wrong to judge a movie by a trailer alone but this is an alien invasion movie. A few city busting hits would have setup the tone of the film the viewers can expect nicely. Maybe the film is better but the trailer was firmly in the good but underwhelming territory.

[Stravo]

I've always wanted to see an alien invasion movie where the military is not knocked out in a single battle or magic shields or whatever other nonsense protects them from everything forcing some bullshit solution. The War of the Worlds really pissed me off with the magic shields thing too. Wells in his book gave the human (19th century) military some moments to shine. I was looking forward to a "Thunderchild" like moment in the movie and was denied.I want to see our military bringing down alien ships, killing alien grunts and generally making a fight of it. The closest I've seen is District 9 where obviously the alien warsuit is hyper advanced but a large determined human assault brings it down. I want to see more of that than Independence Day and its ilk.

[Pulp Hero]

Nice to see both USMC and Army units on the ground. Sci-fi war movies usually pretend like it is one or the other.

[Moby Halcyon]

Hilariously enough, the Transformers movies had the military able to fight competently against the kook transformers and even fend of Megatron with concentrated fire.  What happened?  The scenes were derided at milwanking stock footage.  So I take claims of a desire for the military kicking ass and holding their own with a huge grain of salt. 

[Shroom Man 777]

Turns out they did use stock footage, and turns out those scenes were crappily organized and choreographed and ended up being just a whole bunch of tanks on one side shooting at a whole bunch of robots on the other side, all of whom magically appeared in ancient Egypt out of nowhere with robots deploying by falling in robot meteors and military guys falling in military meteors, I mean LCACs or shit. It ended up being a whole bunch of Baysploding shit. Meh.

Comparatively, Transformers 1, with the F-22s and Megatron in the city and the troopers dealing with Tankbot and Lennox killing Blackout by dickstabbing him with a fucking grenade launcher, worked better. Why? Because watching Starscream dogfighting with a bunch of STRAK-22s in awesome CGI glory and wooshing around going pew-pew is cooler than, well, milwanking stock footage. The scene with Megatron getting his shit ruined by the F-22 airstrike while clawing at the All Spark was still pretty damn cool.

Hilariously enough.

They even had V-22 VTOLs. VTOLOL

I liked the dogfighting bits in Independence Day when the aliens' shields got downed.

[Moby Halcyon]

I wasn't even making a distinction between the two movies (and the geography issue, which I freely admit was ridiculous - moreover, the stock footage was before the actual fight scene and had no part in it). The quality of the movie doesn't affect the fact that the military lands hits and held their own against the Bayformers.

That said, the trailer looks impressive if generic- I hope it stays on a broader scale or at least focuses on the military - the need for movies like Skyline or Cloverfield to rest the plot of annoying twentysomethings didn't exactly contribute to said movies' quality.

[Stark]

Yeah guys, I totally expect this movie to be about explosions and orbital bombardment and rubbish, instead of accessible special effects silliness. Just from that trailer its obviously following a bunch of normal people to give context.

And honestly a bunch of nerds making ridiculous demands about military trivia and alien wank is pretty funny when it appears they blow up Los Angeles while being happily invulnerable. Oh noez needs more 200 gigatons!

[RedImperator]

I've always wanted to see an alien invasion movie where the military is not knocked out in a single battle or magic shields or whatever other nonsense protects them from everything forcing some bullshit solution. The War of the Worlds really pissed me off with the magic shields thing too. Wells in his book gave the human (19th century) military some moments to shine. I was looking forward to a "Thunderchild" like moment in the movie and was denied.I want to see our military bringing down alien ships, killing alien grunts and generally making a fight of it. The closest I've seen is District 9 where obviously the alien warsuit is hyper advanced but a large determined human assault brings it down. I want to see more of that than Independence Day and its ilk.

The point of the Thunderchild scene was not that they managed to wreck a war machine. It was that the very best the British had to offer couldn't inflict any significant losses before getting blown up and sunk; it removed any doubt that the military situation was hopeless. They managed to buy time for the refugee ships, but that's it. You got the same scene in Spielberg's WotW when the army made the suicide charge over the ridge, right down to the refugees trying to escape. Nice that the civilians could get away, but any hope of a military victory was gone after that scene.

[Stark]

The problem with translating the scene is that in the 19th century, powerful ironclads were a strong symbol of all modern technology and industry had to produce, especially in England. Even the name 'Thunderchild' represents the creation of all that iron and steam can do in warfare... and the Martains just pew pew it with their laser. What is the strongest symbol of modern industry and power? A microchip? A space satellite? It doesn't translate well, culturally or technologically. Its similar to how 'we have no effective fire control for our guns' doesn't really translate well into 'oh they are actually invincible'.

[Srelex]

One could simply substitute a full naval group, with aircraft carriers--that'd fill nicely. 'Battlegroup Thunderchild', or something like that. Or just one aircraft carrier.

[RedImperator]

The problem with translating the scene is that in the 19th century, powerful ironclads were a strong symbol of all modern technology and industry had to produce, especially in England. Even the name 'Thunderchild' represents the creation of all that iron and steam can do in warfare... and the Martains just pew pew it with their laser. What is the strongest symbol of modern industry and power? A microchip? A space satellite? It doesn't translate well, culturally or technologically. Its similar to how 'we have no effective fire control for our guns' doesn't really translate well into 'oh they are actually invincible'.

The atomic bomb is a pretty good choice; that's what George Pal used in the '53 movie. It's also a good reason why you can't let the puny humans have a "moment" in modern adaptations. If the Martians just have really good point defense or something that occasionally lets a shell through to kill them, then sure as shit a nuke will take them down. That would leave the audience and the characters with hope, and if there's hope in your WotW adaptation, you're doing it wrong.

[Stark]

Yeah, in a world where the height of military technology lets you kill men fast and miss a lot with artillery, its a totally different scenario to literally being able to destroy entire cities to stop them. That's why alien invasion shit is always 'lol invincible' (like that awful '53 movie) which is way less powerful dramatically.

[RedImperator]

Yeah, in a world where the height of military technology lets you kill men fast and miss a lot with artillery, its a totally different scenario to literally being able to destroy entire cities to stop them. That's why alien invasion shit is always 'lol invincible' (like that awful '53 movie) which is way less powerful dramatically.

I think the Spielberg adaptation might actually owe more to the radio drama than to the '53 film. There was a similar moment in the radio drama where an entire armored company (or whatever; I don't exactly remember and I doubt it was specified anyway) was wiped out in exchange for one war machine. In the Spielberg adaption, they didn't even get one, but you still saw the Mighty US Army (TM) get its ass handed to it effortlessly.

[weemadando]

Yeah, in a world where the height of military technology lets you kill men fast and miss a lot with artillery, its a totally different scenario to literally being able to destroy entire cities to stop them. That's why alien invasion shit is always 'lol invincible' (like that awful '53 movie) which is way less powerful dramatically.

That's one of the reasons I was chuffed to see what looked like area denial barrages in use.

HOLY SHIT! COMPETENT MILITARY TACTICS IN A SCI-FI FILM!

[Artemas]

The problem with translating the scene is that in the 19th century, powerful ironclads were a strong symbol of all modern technology and industry had to produce, especially in England. Even the name 'Thunderchild' represents the creation of all that iron and steam can do in warfare... and the Martains just pew pew it with their laser. What is the strongest symbol of modern industry and power? A microchip? A space satellite? It doesn't translate well, culturally or technologically. Its similar to how 'we have no effective fire control for our guns' doesn't really translate well into 'oh they are actually invincible'.

The atomic bomb is a pretty good choice; that's what George Pal used in the '53 movie. It's also a good reason why you can't let the puny humans have a "moment" in modern adaptations. If the Martians just have really good point defense or something that occasionally lets a shell through to kill them, then sure as shit a nuke will take them down. That would leave the audience and the characters with hope, and if there's hope in your WotW adaptation, you're doing it wrong.

Wasn't the point of the Thunderchild (and earlier, artillery hiding in trees) to give a sense of false hope? "Hey, if we fight smart, we just might win this thing". Followed by tripods just blasting anything that could hide people, and adapting to the new tactics.

[weemadando]

The orbital bombardment is nice to see, But it needs more oomph. As in remove offending city blocks in one go rather than dropping pop corn at terminal velocities.,

If I understood the trailer correctly, they seemed to blow up a naval group pretty spectacularly.

It looked like a coast guard cutter, but yeah, whatever exploded blew up real good. It looked like a planar shockwave cutting through the boat above the waterline.

[Stark]

Yeah, in a world where the height of military technology lets you kill men fast and miss a lot with artillery, its a totally different scenario to literally being able to destroy entire cities to stop them. That's why alien invasion shit is always 'lol invincible' (like that awful '53 movie) which is way less powerful dramatically.

I think the Spielberg adaptation might actually owe more to the radio drama than to the '53 film. There was a similar moment in the radio drama where an entire armored company (or whatever; I don't exactly remember and I doubt it was specified anyway) was wiped out in exchange for one war machine. In the Spielberg adaption, they didn't even get one, but you still saw the Mighty US Army (TM) get its ass handed to it effortlessly.

I guess the need to concoct a set of conditions whereby you can have this kind of result is the reason why so much scifi is so weak; they're trying to fit a situation into a setting that just doesn't support it. There are ways to sell the 'unstoppable alien' thing without them being invincible, but the plot contrivances generally aren't the focus of the film.

The English use of artillery in the book demonstrated that against such an enemy, all their tactics and capabilities were useless. The Martians were shown effortlessly dealing with anything the English could do (although its arguable their initial confusion over Thunderchild is stupid since they should have spotted ironclads with their envious eyes).