I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it…whenever there was fighting. Most or all of the non-combat stuff (dialogue, character development, explanation of the aliens, etc) was pretty unremarkable. It could’ve stood to be retooled—hell, or just cut completely. But that’s probably par for the course for this kind of movie.
I couldn’t help notice, though, how in modern combat, it seems that all of the prettiest people always die last, if at all. Funny how that works out. 
I was watching ID4 the other day and was surprised how remarkably bad and cheesy it is. I would hardly call it “reasonable” though.
I can understand why aliens would not want to drop an asteroid from space. Sort of the same reason you don’t drop a 500 lb bomb on a house you want to clear of termites and other pests. You might want to actually live in it later.
But really is there any “reasonable” reason to travel a thousand light years to attack some strange planet?
No there is not. Plenty of water in the form of ice elsewhere in the solar system, there for the taking and no gravity well to fight to get it. Same for most materials on Earth that I know of. If I were a writer faced with the problem of justifying an alien attack I’d go with the unknown: a substance very rare in the universe whose existence we are not even aware of cause we are too technologically backward, that Earth has big deposits of. Or Earth is for unknown reasons strategically located in a war being waged between two starfaring races, they are clearing us out so they can transform the planet into a starbase and they don’t want any Earth vermin gumming up the works. Sort of a variation on the Vogons building an interstellar highway and clearing Earth out of the way in “Hitchhiker’s Guide.”
What’s wrong with the good old standard, “humans are yummy”?
The best reason to avoid the “big rocks” attack is that the aliens want to move in and don’t want to mess up the neighborhood.
[Men On Film singsong voice] Hated it.[/Men on Film]
I’m not into war movies for the sake of being war movies. Had there been a bit more exposition about the aliens, some character development, or some decent script writing, any one of those things could have saved this abortion of a film for me. I didn’t care about any of the characters at all and was hoping every last one of them would be eaten by the aliens. However, I wasn’t really rooting for the aliens either.
I even saw it with a former Marine, who said to me, “I’m sorry. Most Marines really do act this stupid.” I don’t hold the all-Marines-are-unintelligent-meatheads view, so I said to him, “I blame the scriptwriters, not the Marines.” I also asked him if he thought this was more like a rah-rah Marine recruiting propaganda film. He thought I might be on to something there.
It isn’t reasonable, it is more reasonable.
Except dropping rocks wouldn’t have the same relative impact of as dropping a 500lb bomb on a house. But regardless the sentiment of the point is that if the goal is to remove humans from the planet there are much more sensible ways of doing it than street combat that doesn’t even target our military infrastructure.
To attack in a way where the goal is apparently just mindless slaughter and destruction? Probably not. But like I said, if a reasonable explanation can’t be figured out then don’t give any explanation, especially one so stupid as “they want our water because apparently these aliens are unaware of the technology that would allow melting the abundant water ice to be found somewhere not at the bottom of a gravity well.”
It also made me look forward to the remake of Red Dawn. Showing street fighting in an American suburb was very visceral to me and I think it will be cool to see when both sides are human.
The only reason I could think of is if they wanted the planet itself—specifically, a habitable planet, with a decent amount of resources they’d need for life. Like for colonization, or maybe as a freerange place to breed/grow those alien grunts, like the Uruk-hai. If they’re in a big hurry, that might be SOME justification for not simply obliterating the surface with asteroids, waiting for the [del]nuclear[/del] asteroid winter to settle down, and shoveling the corpses off of their new place. (Though it hardly seems like something you couldn’t do just by building a big space station.)
Hell, you could almost justify it—or at least make it neatly creepy—by saying by saying that the alien forces in the rest of the galaxy are some incomprehensibly advanced and large, that this isn’t actually a major outlay of resources for them. It’s not “we will conquer this planet for the Irken Empire” it’s “corporal, go check out that abandoned farmhouse—maybe they left behind some fresh chow.”
Maybe after the battle is over, we see a huge alien mothership pass through the solar system, but not even slow down, not even stop to pick up stragglers retreating from the invasion, it just leaves…towing Europa and Titan, and most of Saturn’s rings. :eek:
And that was, ultimately, the thing that bothered me the most about the movie. We didn’t *need *an explanation of why the aliens were invading, because it didn’t affect the story in any way. Any references to “They’re invading for our water” actually detracted from the story, because it made absolutely no sense at all.
I enjoyed it, not loved it, but I was entertained while watching it. It was pretty much what I expected. I thought iw as miles better than Independence Day, but then again I think Independence Day is one of the most idiotic films ever made. One thing however, those aleins were atrocioulsy poor shots, it seemed to me. I mean in the one scene at the pool the alien comes up behind and has the drop on the guy and the alien got wasted…wha??
My wife and I went with a couple of other couples and my wife had the misfortune of sitting next to the other two wives/girlfriends who couldn’t help laughing and commenting on how stupid the movie was. My wife actually was enjoying the movie and they were taking away from that. Totally rude behviour.
I like that idea, but it’d be hard to portray onscreen in the time frame of a movie like this. Maybe some sort of epiloge where military intelligence finally manges to decrypt/translate data files in captured ship computers? That would work much better in a novel than onscreen IMHO.
I get the feeling that studio execs forced the writer to throw in an explanation because they were afraid audiences would feel confused and stupid if there wasn’t one. Still it would’ve been better if they just left it at one scientist speculating on TV without any actual confirmation.
On the other hand all three Black characters survived to the end.
I like the ‘War against the Chtorr’ scenario…Aliens start terraforming the Earth. You don’t even see the intelligent aliens…just an alien ecosystem rapidily outcompeting the Earth one and taking over. The War Against the Chtorr - Wikipedia
However, a 2-hour movie it would not be. Maybe a TV series.
Couldn’t you have a prologue montage (narration) just stating that these alien ecologies have been spreading on Earth for a few years before the movie starts?
Ugh, Red Dawn was less plausible than most alien invasion movies.
I saw the movie a few days ago with my teenage son and a friend and we all enjoyed it very much. No, it wasn’t too plausible but I really don’t expect plausibility from an alien invasion movie. But it was well crafted and exciting and we all had a good time.
I understand that the remake of “Red Dawn” will have North Korean ground forces invading the U.S. Frankly, I like the alien invasion scenario better in terms of plausibility. In fact, I like the alien invasion scenario that involves aliens that both lust for our water and are killed by contact with our water, simultaneously, better. A lot better, actually.
North Korean ground forces invading the US? Let that concept sink in for a moment.
How in the HELL could they possibly pull that off? A land invasion of the United States, no matter what Sarah Palin says, is as near an impossibility as anything on Earth.
Perhaps if they made landfall in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, folks would believe them to be in costume.
Are we talking aliens, or North Koreans?
'Cause I actually see some script possibilities in the former…
I thought it started out pretty intense, but then sort of degenerated into a Hoo-ray fest towards the end. And of course like all alien invasion films, the aliens have to have some sort of Death Star-like exploitable weakness in their technology.
Really Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy seems like the most realistic alien invasion in fiction. Basically a fleet of alien construction ships demolishing the Earth for reasons incomprehensible to humans and we can do nothing about it. I can’t imagine modern Earth aircraft shooting down an alien craft any more than a squadron of Sopwith Camels could take out an F-22 Raptor. Or a Roman Legion taking out a fully armed mechanized company.
I mean why do alien invaders need to hover their ships right over our cities?