Battle Los Angeles: The Peak of Gaming

I guess I never realized that this style of movie just sort of ended when we left Iraq... interesting. 🤔

As a marine, I can tell the movie is just one big marine recruiting commercial.

I can't think of anything more embarrassing than being an alien shock trooper, traveling thousands of light years to another world, plummeting through the atmosphere, surviving crashing into the ocean, fighting your way through the city, only to get T-boned by a Humvee.

Halo has one of the best compromises -- where the humans can hold their own against the Covenant planetside, but in space the humans are hopelessly outclassed. It made the Covenant feel like an existential threat while at the same time giving hope that perhaps humanity could beat back the aliens one alien at a time.

In the movie actually, the aliens were defeated and chased out of their home system by another force (aliens). So for the veteran, they are not evil, they are just desperate after facing a defeat back at home and being forced to run. That's why they looked so run down and disorganized because most of their troops had already been defeated and they were running on scraps. So a victim turned enemy

Fun fact: the US Army and Marines have a gentleman's agreement that the marines will always handle aliens and the Army will always handle monsters.

My head cannon was " lost and resource starved alien colonization fleet has to cobble together an army with whatever they have on hand and launch a half assed invasion to try and save themselves."

I cried during this film. My dad was talking about how he wanted to see this movie. He was dead not to long after. So I watched it for him and it just still hits me right in the feels.

The "Developed by Infinity Ward" credits was a hilarious touch

Won’t lie, I love how the aliens are designed in this film. The “land sharks” are a mix of stupid, brilliant, and practical. They’re a species so desperate to survive that they graft guns to their limbs and stretch their bodies over exoskeletons in what I imagine would be an unbelievably painful process. Point is: I just think they’re neat.

The lore for the aliens is suprisingly indepth and well thought out. They're originally an aquatic species so that's why their bodies were modified and why they don't seem too experienced in land combat, and also why the few land vehicles that we did see were very improvised looking. All their drones and vehicles run on water so that's why they use mostly infantry and why they're invading for water. They were in a losing war against another species on their original water planet so they're not exactly at their best or super well prepared to invade.

I remember walking out of the theater and the first thing my buddy said was "We just watched a two hour version of those marine recruitment commercials." I completely agree, and it was still a fun time.

One thing I really liked about this film is the sense that the aliens have their own way of fighting wars and it's not our way. I particularly liked the scene on the freeway where it's clear they have no idea what the tank is or what they're supposed to do about it, because the tank is an alien weapon to them as much as theirs are to us. I don't think you see that often enough,

Battle: LA actually had some shockingly in depth lore for the aliens.

I actually like the idea of an alien species being just maybe 50-100 years more advanced than us and struggling to conquer our forces. Although the aliens in Battle LA could travel through space their method looked crude and it looked like a one way option.

When it comes to the aliens I like to think of it as there first ever planet invasion like how the humans are in Avatar. That would explain there tactics and weapons because they only just unlocked space travel

I remember watching this movie with my dad for the first time. The week before he and I watched the movie "Skyline," another alien invasion movie. Neither of us enjoyed that one very much, but when we finished this movie my dad looked at me and said, "That's how you do an alien invasion movie!" And I couldn't have agreed with him more.

Fun fact: Apparently Aaron Eckhart has stated that this was his favorite role he ever played and that he would be completely on board for a sequel. He was so enthusiastic for this film that he insisted on staying on even after he broke his arm. Talk about passion lol!

Fun fact: The Marines operate very similarly to what you see in the movie, and probably would be a realistic response to how we'd respond to an alien invasion on US soil lol. The reason why is they had a Lt. Colonel help the producers with the movie, and a lot of the extras are real Marines. As a result, also very cool, Marines at Camp Pendleton actually got a sneak preview of the movie before its release. Maybe that's why I liked and still like the movie. It's so easy to get the military and it's operations very wrong in movies, and when it's done right it shows.

To be completely honest, I feel like if we ever get “advanced” enough to invade other worlds we would be like the land sharks haha