The General Sunday Ponderings: Battle: LA, a review.

When I first heard about the movie my feeling was, “Oh, yeah. Another polemical piece which goes on to skewer the military, the United States of America, the military-industrial complex and the worst thing of all, capitalism.” I figured the acting would be halfass with a bunch of overly muscled, Hollywood pretty boys who looked like their most closest brush with the terrors of combat was a paper cut from the script they were trying to read.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.

First, for the record, it is a standard alien invasion movie. The aliens come out of nowhere in a meteor shower. This has been pretty much the method of insertion since H.G. Wells. Unlike the British in War of the Worlds, we have enough technological and scientific know how to realize that these meteors simply do not behave right. They are slowing down before impact, the objects seem to be mechanical in nature, and they are landing off the coastline of major population centers.

So even though the humans do not know exactly what they will be facing, it becomes pretty clear that this is a threat and they mobilize to respond to it. Of course, the Marines of Camp Pendleton are the men of the hour as we follow a put together squad with a grizzled Staff Sergeant soon to retire, a brand new butterbar, and a squad of Marines who have nothing but bad things to say about the Staff Sergeant. Scuttlebutt is that the Staff Sergeant, who has the proper growl and looks like a Marine, got his men killed.

Initially, it looks like the humans might be able to pull this one off. On the ground, the freaky looking aliens with tails and weapons grafted into their bodies are dangerous enough but they are not invincible. That said, they do not seem to have any air support. With confidence born by the lack of evidence, the military figures they’ll sweep in, bomb the crap out of them with air power, and call it good.

The only problem with the plan is that there are civilians who need to be rescued. Our squad is sent in to go get them.

During the course of their run to the police station and back, the characters will grow and change through the rigors of combat. There is sufficient character development in place that when one of the Marines dies, and they do die, it actually means something. These men are brothers who are depicted in the 24 hours before the invasion bonding over beers, women, and the real possibility of deployment to Afghanistan. We see their hopes and dreams, albeit briefly, before they get thrown into the meat grinder.

Some in the science fiction community will no doubt complain that the aliens have been completely dehumanized. There is not one encounter with them that doesn’t involve killing them, trying to avoid getting killed, or figuring out how to kill them. We don’t get a chance to admire them or root for them, as was the case in James Cameron’s Avatar, where you were emotionally manipulated to root for the Na’vi as they fight against a parody of Corporate America militaristic fascist types. There is no touching moment such as you’d find in All Quiet on the Western Front where the Marines look at one of the enemy and go, “Oh, they are just like us.

There is none of that.

Does it matter? Well, frankly, the story isn’t about the aliens. It is about the Marines and the civilians they are trying to protect. It is about Marine culture and mythos, never leave a man behind, never quit, retreat, hell, and so forth. The aliens are just the catalyst for the Marines as they struggle to meet the incredibly high standards they have set for themselves while.

That, my friends, is where the character of the story is at.

Now I suppose someone will also complain that the aliens are a stand in for Islamic terrorists. It is a standard argument that can be traced back to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers where the Arachnids were said to be stand ins for the Communists during the Red Scare of the 1950s. The cynical will no doubt argue that it is a recruitment film designed to make folks feel good about signing up for service in a noble cause, and what could be more noble than defending your homeland against invaders?

Propaganda. That is what they’d call it. They’d be the same people who wouldn’t go see it in the first place unless compelled to do so.

So what. Every culture needs a certain level of positive mythology about those whose duty it is to protect the rest of us. We do not get a lot of that these days, especially in the post-Vietnam era. Frankly, I found the film somewhat refreshing from the standard issue mantra of unending self-repentant, self-loathing groveling that many are prone to engage in.

A few scenes are a bit forced but overall, it is worth seeing.

It has my recommendation.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri