There was a time this year when I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. Let me see if I can find those posts… OH. Here’s one! #3 with a bang. I ended up seeing #2 in the theatre and i still dont know what the hell happened to Perfect Sense (Though I still want to).
Anyway, I thought this movie looked amazing, but most of that “amazing” was smoke and mirrors created from an amazing marketing campaign.
You see what they did was made this movie seem really indie and unique. They used this weird soundtrack in the trailer that made it seem so dark and horrifying. What we ended up with though was a fairly standard aliens v humans action movie. I’m not trying say there have been a ton of those, but this one doesn’t stand out from the pack in any way.
I think I get the jist of what they tried to do here though. I think the director/screenwriter were trying to create a sort of a “Black Hawk Down” of alien movies. They were saying to themselves “Lets make a super realistic war movie. It will just so happen that the army that the marines are fighting against are Aliens. Big Whoop.”
It doesn’t work though. Well, let me rephrase. They don’t follow through. The first half of the movie sets up to be hyper realistic, but then things truly slip as they try to add more and more exciting aspects, and lets not forget that the rag-tag bunch of marines has to win, right?
I mean, don’t leave it up to a scientist or a general or admiral to figure out a way to beat the baddies. Lets have that be an average Luitenant that figures everything out. Do you think that’s the way it happens in real movies? Generals dont really have anything to do with it. If anything, they usually cause trouble by making people withdraw, right?
This movie would have been best if they just tried to escape. If the movie was “Shit is going down. We might figure out how to beat them, we might not, but all you care about is if this set of marines can get in and out.” That would have been a great movie that didn’t cheat the viewer. Instead it fell violently short. Lets rank some Alien-Action movies…
10. Skyline
9. The Arrival
8. Dreamcatcher
7. War of the Worlds
6. Battle: LA
5. Predator
4. Signs
3. Independence Day
2. Aliens
1. District 9
Can you think of any I’ve forgotten? Agree with my rankings?
The Movie Fight 