Advertisement
Stay in the Loop
BSR publishes on a weekly schedule, with an email newsletter every Wednesday and Thursday morning. There’s no paywall, and subscribing is always free.
One war we can all celebrate
"Battle: Los Angeles': War without complexity
Alaina Johns
While the U.S. military leaps into the latest conflict in Libya, questions and difficulties abound. What's our objective? Will our involvement really be brief and focused? How do we define our involvement in a fight when we have no soldiers on the ground? How does Congress feel about being bypassed? Are we at war (again)? If so, how will we get out of it?
It's all too much to think about. No wonder Americans flock to movies like Battle: Los Angeles, which in its first month has grossed more than $70 million in the U.S. Movies that involve the incineration of New York, Los Angeles, London and Tokyo (you know, important cities) usually offer a distinct fantasy that American moviegoers would be better off without: an instantly galvanized, unopposed military mission.
In Battle: Los Angeles, Christopher Bertolini seems to have thrown every war and alien-invasion movie into the pot as if he's simmering some kind of cinematic soup. Instead of slinging the gritty foam into the sink, he made it into a screenplay.
Football-headed aliens
The film opens with the tracking of some very strange asteroids. Soon enough, some football-headed robotic aliens arrive, blasting everything in sight when they're alive and trailing slime from their tentacles when they die. Los Angeles-based Marines must rescue local civilians while the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces go about destroying the invaders with missiles, helicopters, grenades and stuff.
During all the chaos (apparently without any communication from our attackers save for a determined grumbling noise), we discover that the human race is being exterminated in a classic resource grab. The aliens need our planet's water "“ they're using our oceans to power their ships and even themselves. The bastards even plan to use our sewer systems to funnel water for their own devices!
It's curious how we like to imagine that we'd fight to the death if any aliens ever threatened our water, even as we earthlings acidify our warming oceans through rampant carbon dioxide emissions and choke our rivers with plastic trash. Fighting off a worldwide alien invasion would probably be much easier than persuading all moviegoers to toss their Aquafina and Dasani bottles into recycling bins.
Easy to kill
One of the Battle soldiers, contemplating raw carnage wrought by the aliens, remarks, "I'd rather be in Afghanistan." On the contrary, waging war on Al Qaeda is probably much more trying than war with aliens who can be killed without compunction because, after all, they're not human. (One character offers to carry out an alien autopsy because she's a veterinarian.) In movie wars, unlike real ones, there's no battle for hearts and minds.
Nor do any pesky pacifists question the wisdom of war. "The world is at war!" a Battle soldier cries, without apparent objection.
The film invites us to admire fighting men like the battered sergeant played by Aaron Eckhart, a soldier with a dark past. Notwithstanding the deaths on his conscience, Eckhart takes greatest pride in his decisiveness under fire. "Make the call!" is the film's proud refrain, implying again and again that the highest virtue is to stay the course, right or wrong. Hey, that philosophy worked in Iraq, didn't it?♦
To read a response, click here.
It's all too much to think about. No wonder Americans flock to movies like Battle: Los Angeles, which in its first month has grossed more than $70 million in the U.S. Movies that involve the incineration of New York, Los Angeles, London and Tokyo (you know, important cities) usually offer a distinct fantasy that American moviegoers would be better off without: an instantly galvanized, unopposed military mission.
In Battle: Los Angeles, Christopher Bertolini seems to have thrown every war and alien-invasion movie into the pot as if he's simmering some kind of cinematic soup. Instead of slinging the gritty foam into the sink, he made it into a screenplay.
Football-headed aliens
The film opens with the tracking of some very strange asteroids. Soon enough, some football-headed robotic aliens arrive, blasting everything in sight when they're alive and trailing slime from their tentacles when they die. Los Angeles-based Marines must rescue local civilians while the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces go about destroying the invaders with missiles, helicopters, grenades and stuff.
During all the chaos (apparently without any communication from our attackers save for a determined grumbling noise), we discover that the human race is being exterminated in a classic resource grab. The aliens need our planet's water "“ they're using our oceans to power their ships and even themselves. The bastards even plan to use our sewer systems to funnel water for their own devices!
It's curious how we like to imagine that we'd fight to the death if any aliens ever threatened our water, even as we earthlings acidify our warming oceans through rampant carbon dioxide emissions and choke our rivers with plastic trash. Fighting off a worldwide alien invasion would probably be much easier than persuading all moviegoers to toss their Aquafina and Dasani bottles into recycling bins.
Easy to kill
One of the Battle soldiers, contemplating raw carnage wrought by the aliens, remarks, "I'd rather be in Afghanistan." On the contrary, waging war on Al Qaeda is probably much more trying than war with aliens who can be killed without compunction because, after all, they're not human. (One character offers to carry out an alien autopsy because she's a veterinarian.) In movie wars, unlike real ones, there's no battle for hearts and minds.
Nor do any pesky pacifists question the wisdom of war. "The world is at war!" a Battle soldier cries, without apparent objection.
The film invites us to admire fighting men like the battered sergeant played by Aaron Eckhart, a soldier with a dark past. Notwithstanding the deaths on his conscience, Eckhart takes greatest pride in his decisiveness under fire. "Make the call!" is the film's proud refrain, implying again and again that the highest virtue is to stay the course, right or wrong. Hey, that philosophy worked in Iraq, didn't it?♦
To read a response, click here.
What, When, Where
Battle: Los Angeles. A film directed by Jonathan Liebesman. www.battlela.com.
Sign up for our newsletter
All of the week's new articles, all in one place. Sign up for the free weekly BSR newsletters, and don't miss a conversation.
