I see, Mars needs American Women! 
Back on 1999, there was a brouhaha in San Francisco when Fat people protested against a local health club that put up a billboard depicting a space alien and declaring, ‘‘When they come, they’ll eat the fat ones first.’’
The US is at the center of a large land mass. Nice and inviting.
And Wales is part of the UK.
I would have to say that an invasion of North America would put ET under the nuclear guns of the US. Say for instance , the arcturians invaded earth and they picked Africa, specifically egypt cause of the pyramids. How many ICBM’s do you think would be dialed in and the pres would have no problem engaging the arc’s with on call nuclear fire support.
Declan
Without coming up with industrial output numbers, no, it’d be Europe. The United States is the world’s richest state, but it’s also spread out. If aliens were looking for a center of high population density, they’d land in India; if they were looking for a center of high population plus substantial technological and industrial power they’d land in Europe, which has far more people and measurably more economic activity packed into a MUCH smaller space - the entire EU’s about half the size of the lower 48.
That’s if they purely rely on externally-observable clues. OTOH as mentioned before, if they have done their intelligence-gathering homework, they’d know that the USA is a very valuable game piece to take early, specially if they want a lot of coverage of their prowess. Their choice of specific targets would depend, I guess, on if they wish to simply destroy, to take over real full control, or just establish domination, and how quickly.
And how come it’s always Boby Lee Willis and his fishing buddy, and not Noam Chomsky and Dinesh D’Souza?
A few other countries to get invaded by aliens in the movies:
Switzerland – The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye)
Sweden – The Animal People
Great Britain – The Quatermass Xperiment (The Creeping Unknown)
Quatermass 2 (Enemy from Space)
Quatermass and the Pit (Five Million Years to Earth)
The Quatermass Conclusion
Doctor Who and the Daleks
Island of the Burning Damned
The Strange World of Planet X (The Cosmic MNonsters)
The Man from Planet X
Devil Girl from Mars
Italy – Fifty Million Miles to Earth( Sorta – he WAS from Venus)
That’s all I have off the top of my head, and doesn’t include general mosters (which would give us, for instance, Denmark for Reptilicus). I’m sure people can add to this
Thank you for mentioning one my favorite alien invasion movies. Even though the invasion happened a long, long time ago…
They hate our freedoms!
From ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s song, Slime Creatures from Outer Space:
“First they leveled Tokyo, then New York was next to go …”
In the webcomic MegaTokyo, because invasions of monsters, aliens, zombies, and giant robots are so common, the city has a government department whose function is to issue permits to invading forces. It’s much like obtaining a parade permit in the USA.
I forgot Japan!
**The Mysterians
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
Godzilla: Final Wars**
and others.
Its not a movie, but in the DC Comics series “Invasion!”, Australia is the first to go. One of my countrymen wrote an amusing letter to DC at the time which was published in one of its comics asking for money to be sent to his address to assist freedom fighters.
The earlier mention of Independence Day got me thinking… we see in the conclusion of that movie massive alien ships burning in front of various global land marks. Aside from the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Sydney Opera House, the Pyramids, and possibly the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, most globally recognised landmarks are in the US. This is one of the reasons why the Statue of Liberty so frequently gets blown up and left as rubble (Planet of the Apes) or ripped to shreds (Cloverfield), why the White House gets lasered (Independence Day), and why the Chrysler Building gets smashed and toppled (Armageddon) in sci-fi movies. I’d guess the Pentagon, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Hollywood sign, and pre 9/11 the World Trade Center have suffered similar catastrophic fates in film.
Granted that many movies are made for a US market, but US landmarks, recognisable in so many places, getting pulverised makes for good visuals in film.
I read a short story a few years ago which turned the “Aliens always invade the U.S.” trope on its head. I think it was by Spider Robinson, but I’m not sure, and I don’t recall the title. It featured an alien invasion in which the aliens were remotely possessing and teleoperating human bodies in order to accomplish their alien and incomprehensible goals.
The American protagonist thinks he’s being smart by fleeing the U.S. He arrives in Canada, only to be told that that’s where the aliens had arrived first.
*** Ponder
The aliens/monsters typically invade whatever country made the film. Aliens invade the USA in American films, Japan in Japanese films, etc.
Sometimes they invade the entire planet, such as in Signs or Independence Day or V.
Occasionally they invade NY because that’s where the UN is (Day the Earth Stood Still).
In *The Arrival * the aliens are in Mexico.
No, it’s because he’s a New Zealand director making a New Zealand film - his first, incidentally - in New Zealand: where the hell else would he set it but New Zealand? You think film and TV made outside the US secretly aspires to be “made in America” but just can’t afford it? It’s that kind of blinkered parochial US pig-ignorance which assumes that the whole world really wants to be American - and is willing to go to war to prove it - that makes your country both despised and laughed at.
Calm down, Jack. You’re acting like a dingo ate your baby.
Uh Friedo - dingos come from Australia, I kinda think maybe Scissorjack is a New Zealander… I know we sometimes refer to Australia as our “west island” but it is a different country ya know…
'snip…
err - I know you are being somewhat facetious and all - but I kinda don’t think terrorists hate America because of jealousy, but rather because they perceive America to be interfering in their rights / religion and supporting people they don’t like… it’s kinda a bit egocentric and arrogant to say people hate America because it’s successful and just feeds back into the whole arrogance and cultural insensitivity meme…
Dingos come from all over Southeast Asia and Australia, actually, but thanks for ruining my obnoxious joke wherein I insult an irate Kiwi with a stereotype about Aussies. 