The Aliens from Battleship

[Ahriman238]

I liked that the flying wheel things (and the aliens themselves, for the most part) targeted obvious infrastructure, engines and roads and supports, but didn't attack people who weren't shooting at them.

[Sidewinder]

I liked that the flying wheel things (and the aliens themselves, for the most part) targeted obvious infrastructure, engines and roads and supports, but didn't attack people who weren't shooting at them.

The marines at the airbase the aliens attacked, weren't shooting at the aliens when the wheel was launched. The police officers who were evacuating the area, weren't shooting at the aliens when they were ambushed after ordering the physical therapist off the mountain. The people in the cars that were on top of the highway- and who were likely killed and/or wounded when the wheels collapsed the highway- weren't shooting at the aliens as well.

The aliens did NOT only use violence in self-defense. They used violence to eliminate what they saw as potential threats, regardless of whether or not these "threats" shot first- and in many cases, didn't shoot or have anything to shoot with.

[Losonti Tokash]

So you mean to say they acted like actual soldiers rather than rampaging monsters from deepest space?

[Ahriman238]

So you mean to say they acted like actual soldiers rather than rampaging monsters from deepest space?

Yes, pretty much. I know a lot of people died when the bridge collapsed, it just felt more deliberate than the destruction in, say, the Avengers.

[SylasGaunt]

Yeah, the buzzsaw attack was pretty clearly targeted in order to isolate the area they were moving into. The destruction of the highway helps cut ground transportation and it's fairly clear from the attack on the airbase that it was the airfield and the helicopters they were targeting, not the marines themselves (the only people we actually see killed in the airbase attack are the marines in the chopper that tried to lift off).

[Cykeisme]

It's been a while, but I vaguely recall the characters coming to the conclusion that the aliens must be trying to call home to bring back a full invasion force, hence the imperative that they blast the shit out of the mountaintop facility.

However, in-universe, is there anything to contradict the possibility that they screwed up big time and got stranded, then were trying to call home to request for extraction, while defending themselves? Admittedly their defensive efforts were rather heavy-handed with a lot of preemptive action, but they were acting in ways that are not unheard of for humans.
If indeed they were just trying to get out of there, the course of events might not have spiraled so far out of hand had they not happened to land so near to a significant collection of armed naval vessels!

[Sidewinder]

It's been a while, but I vaguely recall the characters coming to the conclusion that the aliens must be trying to call home to bring back a full invasion force, hence the imperative that they blast the shit out of the mountaintop facility.

However, in-universe, is there anything to contradict the possibility that they screwed up big time and got stranded, then were trying to call home to request for extraction, while defending themselves?

It could be both, i.e., the aliens we saw were a conducting reconnaissance in force, to determine whether or not Earth was worth conquering, when they were stranded.

[Cykeisme]

True, they're not mutually exclusive (and that indeed seems to be the intention of the plot).

Apologies.. perhaps a better question to ask is this: does anything we see in the movie rule out the possibility that they're not invasion scouts, but merely a bunch of, say, mining prospectors who have absolutely no intention of invasion and/or large-scale hostilities?

[Sidewinder]

does anything we see in the movie rule out the possibility that they're not invasion scouts, but merely a bunch of, say, mining prospectors who have absolutely no intention of invasion and/or large-scale hostilities?

HELL NO! The deliberate way in which the aliens attempted to eliminate threats, e.g., the fact the wheel attacks targeted military bases and transportation facilities, is evidence.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Given the aliens came as a result of the signal sent in 2005 (otherwise why include that point in the film), it means they had to have come from a system less than 6 light years away, less if we assume they lack FTL, there's only three star systems close enough for that- Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, and Wolf 359. It's also assumed that somehow the modifications they made to the observatory would enable FTL-signals, despite it would still have to be transmitted by a human satellite, otherwise any reinforcements would be years away at best.

[Sky Captain]

The aliens were more like a mining expedition than real military force given their lack of proper weapons. The buzzsaw things looked like they would be handy mining devices to pulwerize rock that also happened to be farly good improvised weapon. The explosive shell launchers may also have primary function as some sort of mining explosive quick delivery system. By modern standards those shells were fairly slow. The attack only worked because distance was short and so many shells were fired CIWS were swamped.
If not the shield and jamming it looked like the naval forces present would have little trouble defeating the alien intruders.

[Cykeisme]

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

Lemme just pitch this hypothesis..
It's a mining expedition, which would explain why their "communications ship" was so poorly armored that a collision with one of our comms satellite ended in its destruction. It also explains why their fleet didn't use that same shield technology that clearly can be sustained for days at a time, and can withstand kinetic impactors and high pressure (it extended to the sea floor); it'd be perfect for putting up a bubble around a fleet of warships, but they weren't warships. Running into any civilization with common spaceflight (say, if we had moonbases or Martian colonies with regular spaceflights back and forth) almost certainly means their fleet would be screwed, even by improvised weaponry.

The big bubble shield is, in fact, meant to seal off an area on the surface of a planet or asteroid. It keeps dangerous things out, like meteorites or hostile indig life, and could keep a habitable atmosphere in, for the duration of their mining operations. Perhaps their shield tech does scale down to ship level, but they don't mount them because they aren't warships.

So shit got FUBAR'd, they lost their communications ship, and they panicked.. like I said, things might have gone a lot smoother on both sides if they didn't have the awesome luck of landing so near to a huge indig fleet of armed oceangoing vessels.

So they do what they can. They switch on their theater shield and dig in. There's dangerous armed indigenous life around, so they do what they can to call home to ask for a ride. Like I said earlier, admittedly their "defensive" efforts were rather heavy-handed with a lot of preemptive action, but they were acting in ways that are not unheard of for humans.
They do their best with improvised use of their mining tools, and the killy aliens we see are basically security guards.

Ultimately though, they're civilians who don't really have any idea what they're doing and get their asses kicked by the actual military of the indigenous denizens.

[RecklessPrudence]

Haven't seen it since I rented it out on dollar day, but wasn't there some mention of the human signal being FTL thanks to a new development? True, you'd think more would be made of it, but if it was mentioned and I'm not just imagining things, it was in like, one line on a news report or something.

Greatest advance in physics for decades or more, and the media is more interested in how aliens could come and kill us all as a result. Typical.

[hunter5]

True, they're not mutually exclusive (and that indeed seems to be the intention of the plot).

Apologies.. perhaps a better question to ask is this: does anything we see in the movie rule out the possibility that they're not invasion scouts, but merely a bunch of, say, mining prospectors who have absolutely no intention of invasion and/or large-scale hostilities?

When the injured alien that gets rescued he does that mind meld thing with Hopper. It just showed a fiery background and Hopper saying they are in trouble "the I think we are going to need a new planet trouble". Apparently in the novelization of the movie it explains that the aliens are testing humanity to see how tough they will be to invade and conquer.

[Cykeisme]

Hmm thanks hunter5, that sort of settles it then.
They're just really incompetent aliens with the objective of invasion