Battle: LA

Well, I think I will start off with the most recent movie I went to go see:

Battle: LA

Before I went to see it, I pretty much went, "YAWOTW Movie" (Yet another War of the Worlds) movie.

In some ways, it was, and in other ways it wasn't. In most of the War of the Worlds movies, we are greeted with Alien War Machines that are fairly unstoppable. I saw the train wreck that was 'Skyline', which followed the tried and true formula of the unstoppable Alien War Machines. While it was grotesque in the way it was 'unstoppable', which was basically, machines powered by using the brains of the humans it captured and harvested, the movie was pretty much the tried and true of Aliens beating the crap out of the humans, only to end with one of those humans becoming one of the aliens and fighting within.

Battle: LA, on the other hand, puts an interesting twist. The aliens are attacking, but not necessarily unstoppable, just overwhelming and completely alien in regards to the conventional warfare.

Now some spoilers of the movie will be mentioned, so you might want to skip reading this if you don't want it spoiled.












In the movie, majority of the technology seems just slightly more advanced than ours. Some Anti-Grav for some of their vehicles, but not many beam based weapons, only the drone ships seem to have that. The alien soldiers are fairly armorplated, but not completely protected. The difference here is the fact they are alien, you can't kill it like you can a human, which obviously is resilient, but not impossible to stop.

The aliens take out military forces fairly expediently, which later is proved how that happens. They locate based on transmissions from the soldiers. They also fight less conventionally, a lot of military tactics are based on ground fighting, literally from building to building and from ground positions, however, the Aliens are attacking from rooftops of some 1 or 2 story houses, which usually don't have easy to get onto roof without assistance.

One of my gripes with the plot is the statement with regards to Earth's Water. Yes, the concept of using water as a reactor source is hardly something new. For those of you who don't know it, science has always theorized the use of water as a means to power a fusion reactor. Our current reactor technology is Fission, which is breaking down of Plutonium to Uranium (I believe) which heats water in a controlled fission reaction. Fusion, on the other hand, is the energy release when an element combines and breaks down. Our Sun is a fusion reaction, constantly going from Hydrogen to Helium conversion and vice versa. My rough understanding of the water based fuel is basically breaking down Water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, or often times creating heavy water (H30, 3 Hydrogen molecules and 1 oxygen molecule) to facilitate a fusion reaction.

Anyways, the complaint I had was how one of the commentators made out the alien's attentions. That Earth's water is in a convenient state. Yes... And No.

Within the range of our known science, there is probably planets with similar situations. In most cases, there are comets or other places where water is in an ice state. Physics of Water is that at Room temperature, its volume is 1 to 1 with its weight. However, when frozen, water's volume is slightly larger than its weight. Which is why ice floats, the density of ice is less in its solid form than it is in its liquid state. And while ice might not be 'convenient', the water of earth is hardly 'pure' or convenient for fuel than ice.

The one thing I noticed with Skyline and Battle: LA... Is that the Military is shown as knowing it is coming. Like Independence Day, it is observed coming, and the military is active for the most part. Unlike Independence Day, they don't make a showy appearance and blast a city, or like Skyline where a weird time, suck up a lot of people, then cause of lot of fighting, they try to assault and make a beach head and start pushing inward, then start rolling in their hardware behind their troops.

Over all, the movie was reasonable to enjoy.