A weird complaint I heard about this movie is that the alien's tech is too primitive looking. I fail to see why that's a problem. Just because they have space travel doesn't mean they need to have lazer guns or teleporters. Obviously their just like us in a way; More advanced in some areas than others. Humans have super computers that can make billions of calculations in less than a second. Do we have faster than light ships or the power to create mini black holes in our hands? No.
@@robbiepatrick6251for all mankind is perfect example of that. Just because you can travel in space doesn't mean you have *future tech shining screen* to use in general way.
I'd call it Battle Mississippi. The aliens are fighting their way up the Mississippi River, and the US military is struggling to stop them from cutting the country in half.
*IN ALL WORLD IMAGE OF AN AMERICAN SOLDIER IS DISGUSTING, IF THEY ARE IN YOUR COUNTRY THAT MEANS THAT USA WANTS TO RUIN YOUR COUNTRY FOR RESOURCES AND ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD MOVIES THEY ARE HEROES, WHAT A CRAP*
The one thing that always gets me in this film is the SITREP you hear during the insertion: "All stations this now, stations this net, stand by for sitrep. Enemy elements have advanced beyond the beach. Enemy units are still breaching out of the ocean. Enemy infantry outnumber us in the thousands, no final estimate. 1-0-1 Tank has been destroyed, companies behind defensive lines are falling back to form new lines. Be advised. They have heavy assault weapons. Firepower equal to high explosive rounds. We are not evacuating civilians fast enough, I say Again, we are not evacuating fast enough. All units be advised. There are Friendlies Behind. Enemy. Lines."
They also said more than that. "These enemies are falling tactically, their strategies are coordinated. Do not underestimate enemy combat intelligence. They're pressing towards the city center." Then they said we're not evacuating civies fast enought Semper Fi 107 actual out!
5:00 ah their units are falling tactically, their strategy is coordinated, do not underestimate enemy combat intelligence. Ah their striking towards the city centre. We're not evacuation civilians fast enough. Some more dialogue that is heard on the radio.
The one thing this movie gets right more than any other is that this is a BELIEVABLE invasion by a superior alien force that is still near-peer enough to be conceivably fought. They didn't come in massive shielded monument-killing, city destroying ships (we'll lose to that sort of force 100% of the time). Early in the movie they were portrayed as "superior yet with vulnerabilities" so when the humans do have victories you can cheer instead of eye roll. Well done.
It is enjoyable, fictional entertainment, but how is it believable that current human military could put on a fight against a species with technology so advanced they are able to travel lightyears? It would be like medieval archery against fighter jets.
@@Andreas-ni2lt 1/ As described, the species is running from its home because they are being evicted. That describes a species that is traveling under duress similar to how humanity would be if we had to abandon Earth and take a stab at colonizing a neighboring star. The aliens didn't arrive in "world ships" or arks. They arrived with workable solutions. 2/ Just because a species is able to travel light years doesn't mean that they have materials that can break certain laws of physics. The armor plate of the aliens was still vulnerable to over/under pressure from explosions, could still be penetrate by certain high caliber rounds, etc. That's actually still quite realistic. If the aliens were traveling at warp speed or similar - sure, that would make sense. But the whole premise of the story is that they aren't THAT far advanced and were clearly engineered "enough" for the journey. They didn't come in massive numbers and relied heavily on drone technology to stand a chance.
@@Andreas-ni2lt i thinks its more like medieval archery versus medieval archery, its just one side has model Ts to move around. Of course if I were to invade, I'd start in a developing country where they actually have few weapons and little electricity, but that's just me. Never confuse intelligence with being smart. I know a PhD who cleaned snow off his wife's car...with a snow shovel. Smh completely ruined the paint. Who knows maybe the intel was centuries old or was taken from the wrong continent.🤣 Alien scout: sir the natives only have single ballistic rifles. They dont even flying vehicles. Alien general: a cakewalk! Excellent!
@@nunyabusiness863 Kind of hard to believe that you can be that advanced in terms of transportation but not be more advanced in terms of weaponry and tactics. In human history, those two go pretty much hand in hand. Also, I sincerely hope that our military response to an alien beach invasion would be a bit more aggressive than Marines holding a line with machine guns and a couple of bombers carpet bombing a few blocks. That shit needs to be sterilized.
@@Andreas-ni2lt It's been implied in interviews about the film that the alien force we see comes from a planet that is engaged in a very long war, and they weren't the dominant force on the planet. This is basically a small faction in a much larger war trying to find a planet to regroup/rearm at. What they have works to get them places, but it's not top of the line equipment. For us it seems advanced, for them they could be using their planet's outdated/scrapped together transports and weapos.
Pretty sure they had a bunch of dudes from 29 there as advisors and it shows. Probably one of the most faithful depictions of Marine Corps culture I’ve seen in film
Such an underrated movie. The Deployment scene @04:15 is my absolute FAVORITE part of this movie. In particular, the Chinooks @05:31 as they're approaching over the beach. Then, the SSGT looking down on the streets @06:31 and seeing the troops engaging the enemy in Humvees/Bradleys on the streets as civilians are running for their lives (wish they showed more of this). Then the cherry on top with the lone A-10 doing what it does best and then climbing out as the Chinooks approach the FOB. Honorable mention, once the Chinooks land, all the attack helos and A-10s screaming towards the thick of the fighting. The entire scene gives me goosebumps! Fkn AWESOME!!!
And at 4:18 they were getting the SITREP while en-route. They were being told that enemy units had advanced beyond the beach and more were coming out of the ocean, the 101 tanks had been destroyed, companies beyond the defensive line were falling back, enemy had heavy assault weapons that were equivalent to HE rounds, they were not evacuating civilians fast enough, and there were friendlies behind enemy lines.
@@saj1567 Thanks! When I first saw the movie back in 2011, this scene was my favorite from the get go. So, I kept rewatching it, looking at every, minute detail. That’s how I was able to notice civilians running for their lives while the ground forces were engaging the enemy (SSGT looking down on the streets). Then at the next scene, I happened to see something flying down & up as the helots were approaching. That’s when I realized it was an A-10! Love that thing.
This is an excellent film. It might be fiction, but the ethos of the Grunt is on full display. It's the why Grunts do what they do. Cheers from a former Grunt.
What i like about this movie is a realistic military response. They start getting ready to the minute everything begins to kick off. The alien attack was a blatant blitzkrieg attack, so the military has no qualms using massive air and land power to destroy them. If i was the Aliens in question after this battle, i wouldve called it a failed scouting mission and wouldve made Earth a no-go zone lol.
@@davecrupel2817 no, I don't. If my scouting force gets absolutely gonzo'd in 24 hours, so badly that they couldn't even evacuate, then I would reason that it would take alot of resources and time to properly conquer humanity (assuming I didn't want to destroy the planet). Would you wanna wage that war? Commit millions of your own to possible death? The Aliens in the movie show that they have compassion for each other and try to save their wounded. So why would I, and intergalactic race, get into a costly war with an extremely war-like race (humans) that I had just discovered? Logic dictates that I leave the humans alone until I have a good reason to take Earth.
@@starsiegeRoks Fair assessment. Assuming one isn't in a desperate "do or die" need for the planet's resources, i probably would come to the same conclusion. After all, the lore says they made their decisions based on how they saw earth at the time. Mid-ww2. When we were less advanced, not at all united, and in the middle of a world-scaling conflict. They did not anticipate how quickly things would change in the time it took them to get here.
@@Palasdinwhere did you get that information? I’m curious I’ve watched this movie probably dozens of times but never looked anything up into possible lore
@@theojames109Air support? You mean the air support that was wiped off the map? Not to mention no sane officer would do that and wipe out a lot of civilians specially not when the enemy wants to extinct the local population remember any civilian that gets killed also means one less potential soldier in against an enemy that doesn't exactly care about geneva
This has gotta be one of my favorite alien movies of all time. All the little details in the background: burnt out wrecks, radio traffic. Not perfect by any means but damn fun to watch
This movie was so underrated and hated on for no reason. I agree the second half of the movie could’ve been better but still. Realism and Sci-Fi mix so well and they done a great job.
One my favorite invasion movies. There's some great parts. Plus, there's nothing to say that an invading force has to be greatly superior to our own technology. They made that fit nicely while being fairly believable. Pity they didn't continue for a second. At least cleanup, or make this a forerunner force.
Actually, the fact that they likely get here from another star system at least, suggests that their technology HAS to be superior to ours. In every respect and conceivable way imaginable. There would be no other acceptable explanation or situation. Put another way, there's no way that a civilisation that would be comparable to ours that we could put up a good fight against, would ever be able to leave their star system to invade a planet on an entirely different star system, light years away,, any more than we can leave the solar system for anything. It was the one major unbelievable thing about this movie and really of any alien invasion movie where humans can put up a fair fight at all.
@@Cbricklyne Not really. We're working on space travel right now. There's a few things that need to click into place, but there's nothing to say that we might now figure it out two days from now, then have a test run a year later. While parts of our technology will absorb, and advance with it, most of it would remain the same for a time, yet we very well could have viable speedy space travel by next year. Not saying that's going to happen, just pointing out that it could be that simple. It's not inconceivable. What is inconceivable is that a comparable civilization WOULD do that. Our first steps would be exploration, not conquest. Conquest would be the space of the more advanced, which would likely lose the conquest part through advancement, or the desperate. If we were desperate, even with what tech we have, and the ability to travel the stars, we would turn to attacking a native species to get what we need. We've proven that plenty here on earth. Most likely any species traveling here would be far more advanced than us, and have purposes that we don't even really think of. That's not required though. Nor is another species looking so "alien" as is often depicted. If there are aliens, which the number of stars/planets lends to, there's likely "intelligent" species very similar to us.
@@Cbricklynetheir biology might make them more suitable to space travel, so their spaceships need to be less advanced. They might have bodies immune to radiation, due to their home planet not having any protection against it at all, so their bodies do have it. They might be able to hibernate for hundreds of years so they don't have to travel that fast, they can take their time with Voyager 2 speed. They might be a peaceful species who have endured an apocalyps and had to flee their planet. This is the first time they go to war Looking at things from a human perspective, sure, they would outclass is. Thing is, these guys aint human
I can guarantee you, that if we have to, we can run similar invasion within 40 years from now, but the invaided planet has to relativly close to earth. We do not pursue space travel, because it is to expensive. Simple as that. But if you have incentive you can have similar level of technology and travel within let say 10-12 light years away. Also the enemy could be very advanced, but some of their technology can not work properly due to number of factors. Like radiation levels or something and they are stuck with old fashion kinetic projectles.
5:31 - 5:45 may be one of the best visual pieces of cinematography ever created, the chorus fits, and the look of dread on the soldiers when they finally see it’s not a game.
"Realistic" in what sense? It's the fact that it's "gritty" and whatnot and humans actually put up a decent fight that makes it unrealistic as all heck.
@@Cbricklyne Because it shows how the military will react to an invasion. The military won't sit around & do nothing til last minute, they will be deployed if they find something coming this way towards earth in a unnatural way.
@@Cbricklyne Idk what version of Battle Los Angeles you watched but every single gun fight they took, the Marines lost. It wasn't until they were able to momentarily outsmart the aliens with a manually guided Tomahawk missile that things even looked slightly better. First gun fight in the neighborhood resulted in several wounded, police station rescue resulted in several killed and wounded, the battle on the interstate resulted in several killed and wounded.
I know this movie didn't do to well when it first came out, which is a shame, because as a Vet I always really enjoyed this flick. Would loved to have gotten a sequel to this!
May 12, 2023---Every once in a while, Hollyweird comes out with a great movie like this.....but NO sequelo? Herd there was to be another but also taking place in NYC.
Just because the aliens have presumably FTL travel doesn't necessarily mean they'd outclass us in every way possible. Just as plausible that they simply had access to a kind of mineral or material which would allow such technology to be produced.
The book series In the Balance by Harry Turtledove explores this. An advanced alien race invades Earth at the height of WW2 and at first they have the advantage but the one area that humans have over them is adaptability. While humans were initially at a huge disadvantage the aliens were not accustomed to adaption at all so they slowly lost their advantage to the humans and got pinned down in a brutal Vietnam style guerilla war against the Nazis, Soviets, and Allies
@@solinvictus4367read some about the book. Basically they send a probe in the middle ages, and they assumed we would create new weapons at the rate they did, so they expected the most advanced enemy they would meet was a knight on horseback Even more shocked when the Germans switched to new tank types right in the middle of a war Also very realistic was them being cut off from supplies. They captured factories here and could make new guns , mortars and grenades, but any advanced stuff they lost could not be replaced
There is some lore for the aliens, apparently known as Land Sharks. Turns out, they were a advanced species in combat until they were beaten and needed to escape to another planet.
Very true. Plus if history has taught us anything, highly outclasses civilization can and have held off superior forces for many years and even decades just by using unconventional tactics. That time allows for development as well and would likely lead to reverse engineering alien tech to make us semi equal in firepower.
I never understood why the chinooks took such a risky route, literally flying over the beach which the enemy already has under control, was there literally no other way to the FOB?
There may have been no other path, the beach under the choppers might have been clear while other sections were in enemy hands, and maybe the aliens´ AA fire was deemed ineffective enough to risk it. Also, those are not Chinooks. They are CH-46 Sea Knights, colloquially known as Phrogs, which were retired I think three years after this movie aired.
This film is really good and massively underrated. The ending was a bit weak. Probably would have worked better if the Marines had just fought their way out of LA and then encounter the Army setting up a new defensive line, reveal that aliens haven't move off the coast line. Then more ships land in the sea.
Or instead of the drones falling out of the sky, have the drones just idle in place once the control ship is destroyed. So instead of a coordinated, acting/reacting, and guided swarm of drones, you have individual craft hovering in place that will defend themselves and attack if anything interesting appears in their sensors. If Drone_A gets attacked by weapons fire then Drone_B might go over to investigate and open fire, but Drone_C through Drone_E which do not see the weapons fire will remain in place. Contrast that with before where Drone_A will pull back from weapons fire while Drones B-E can receive data about Drone_A so will automatically move in and engage.
The scene that made me 'fall out of my seat' was at the end when they used a Copperhead round to destroy the alien control pod. Former Marine artilleryman from the Cold War, I know what a Copperhead round is, though I never actually handled one. Not sure where they managed to fire it from, given the power of the aliens and it is kind of sad that the aliens couldn't detect incoming, given their technology. But it was a cool trick to end the movie.
@@charlesphillips1468 Oh, we used plenty of red bags for HE rounds (and the occasional Willie P); depended on the fire mission if we went green or red.
Darn it - should not have watched this before I was about to go to bed ... now I want to dig out my DVD and watch the film! I loved this one because it kept it simple. No convolutions of morals or confusion as to how to meet an aggressive threat - those things have their place in some movies but this one is all about the boots on the ground putting themselves in harms way for their fellows. Oh and Michelle Rodriguez too
When your friend who is a Marine thumps you in the chest and says "This $#!T was well made!" You can't get a better stamp of approval than that IMO. I was in the Navy (served in the mid 90's), and saw this in 2011 with my cousin who had just gotten out. They ABSOLUTELY NAILED the realism on this. The Aliens were powerful, but not invulnerable, the Marines reacted to this type of threat how you would expect. Some took it head on, some freaked out, some just fell in line and tried to stay alive...if you think that that isn't how they would act against freekin aliens then your nuts. What I loved about this movie was HOW the Alien units worked very similar to us, in squads, with support and heavy fire teams. While they were more advanced, it was overwhelmingly so. Definitely goes to show you that having that kind of dependency on one singular structure/unit is folly. A good military in general LOVES a good central command, but know it is worthless if the individual units cannot continue to work without it.
lol highly possible, no. First of all, you have to want to take this planet. Any alien invader would do recon first. They would know that even if they have superior technology, the nuclear powers would simply launch every nuke they had when it was clear Earth couldn't win. So, invasion would have no point. Second, you have to understand the vastness of space. Even if we can figure out how to go like 20% the speed of light, it would STILL take like 25 years to get to our closest star, and we aren't anywhere close to 20% the speed of light yet. So, whoever comes to invade us is going to be so advanced, we would have no chance what so ever. The space ship that arrives would have to be made out of a material (or have shields) that can withstand insane heat, cold, radiation, rocks and bits of metal traveling at insane speeds and hitting it, etc. A nuke would do nothing to a ship that can travel between stars. If they have those materials, bullets would do nothing to their armor. IF some aliens came here and wanted to take the planet, the best course of action (after observation) would be either some kind or world wide EMP blast followed by an absolute lighting strike with extreme power, and dealing with the few nukes we would manage to get off and dealing with years of insurgency as they wipe people out, or releasing some kind of super virus to wipe people out. Either one would not make a good movie.
@@Cruor34 I'm pretty sure that all the resources and water will still be there in a nuclear war. They're not planning to make it a paradise tropical holiday destination mate. Most of your reasoning is horseshit by the least. You also heavily assume that we know physics better than they do, which is probably not so much in your favour. Pretty sure that the world isn't going to launch nuclear weapons for aliens, first, the aliens lack any sort of territory holding on the planet, so I doubt a country is going to nuke russia or china because ALIENS. Your lack of intelligence is paramount to the downfall in the reasoning in your argument. Good day sir.
@@Cruor34@Cruor34 theyre already here , and are already familiar with our resources and capacity.. its just a matter of time before their comet drone that contains a virus(oxygen killer) to wipe all the inhabitants impacts the planet starting in the US pacific coast.. if we are looking for a technical invasion, then again we are still fcked. Those countries who has nuke power can sacrifice their people cause they want to probe these invaders weakness. so either these aliens or those fcking politicians will kill the humanity so again its possible.. the question we should know is WHEN
Excellent film. It felt very authentic to me. If you read Welles' War of the Worlds, there are shades of the naiivity of the victorian era soldiers in the cockiness of the Marines here
Saw this in the cinema then bought the DVD, which has proved a great investment. Unlike most Hollywood alien invasion movies, this does not glamorise war and has a horribly realistic feel about it. And yet the critics almost universally panned it, which hit box office sales.
i’ll never forget how me and my best friend at the time used to always act like we were playing this movie in real life with our bb guns and nerf guns. he was a huge army buff so he had a bunch of military jackets and helmets so we really immersed ourselves and went to war with our imaginations. good ass times man i miss being a kid.
I think this was such an underrated movie. I liked that everything was from the perspective of one platoon on the ground and how they made their stand at the very end. However, when I see online discussions about it, the film always gets dissed completely. The alien technology was also very tactile and unromantic. Down and dirty drones, military gear, etc.
To be fair - this is probably not a great movie at all, but I love it. This is quite simple story, but confrontation between humans and aliens looks really good. Is there any movie with such combats like that?
*Ships coming from space start falling from the sky and creatures come out of them A soldier every 5 minutes: "Aliens? No way", "It can't be aliens right?", "Hey, do you think it can be aliens?"
One of my absolute favorite alien war movies ever, imo they overused the shaky cam in a lot of scenes but other than that it's an awesome movie. I want more.
MAN this movie was underappreciated at release since my first viewing it has made my spirit soar with its amazing story about soldiers fighting a superior enemy conveniently and through adversity and loss they form a unit of battle hardend grunts who would not except retreat or leave the non combatants behind and in the end learning more about the enemy lead to a moment of true resolve and honor and they won a battle up to that point thought unwinnable a great movie truly