The idea of making a realistic alien invasion film is almost like looking for Santa Claus. In a decade and a half after Independence Day, a film that upped the ante as far as alien attack films went, is there nothing left to explore in the genre?
In the Battle: Los Angeles’ (click here to read the review) director Jonathan Liebesman seeks inspiration from modern-day war cinematic war classics such as Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. Interesting, you might say but what he ends up giving us is nothing but an unashamedly bad mix of the two. What’s more surprising is that the script finds its genesis in a real event that took place during the Second World War and yet there is nothing ‘real’ about Battle: Los Angeles. The camera keeps shaking as it one of the aliens were asked to film; not a single image is powerful enough to linger on for a moment longer than you could say ‘oh’ and the writing is so trite that you can’t even imagine. At the height of the ‘attack’ a senior officer is barking orders and everyone gets what they need to do but one new Captain looks like a lost pup and the senior impresses upon him that ‘this is not a drill’! This is when the audience would look at the mega bucks you spent on Computer Generated Imagery to show space creatures unleashing their alien fury.
Separated by a few months from Independence Day, 1996 also saw the release of perhaps the only film that tried giving a different spin on this genre. Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! parodied the gung-ho
While science fiction as a genre has seen some really good films in the 15 years (do check out a sleeper called Primer, fantastic to say the least) since Independence Day, the sub-genre of aliens hasn’t mirrored similar success. The only film that somehow managed to break the mould since Roland Emmerich templatized the alien attack genre was District 9. Based on his short film Alive in Joburg that impressed Peter Jackson enough to produce District 9 for him, Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 is one of the best films ever in the genre. Very realistic and highly original, Blomkamp applies the themes of racism and xenophobia to the aliens and even though some quarters heavily criticized the film for its racial insensitivity, the urgency depicted by it’s video-like feel and its innovativeness of showing aliens beyond the clockwork and the steel cage body makes District 9 stand out.
Watching films about alien attacks and world annihilation one can’t help but praise the organized manner in which we perceive these guys. They might be assembly line produced unless one of them is Steven Spielberg’s ET but all of them highly meticulous. They lay great stress on planning and believe that executing orders to the last detail is the edge they have over creatures from the blue planet; dare I say almost Chinese! They know our weakness and prepare for every eventuality but somewhere these out-of-towners just forget our strengths like good looking presidents who were once combat pilots (Bill Pullman in Independence Day), cute looking boy who realizes that aliens can’t take oldies on radio (Lukas Haas in Mars Attacks!) or washed out priests who accidentally spill ‘water’ on an alien take-over plan (Signs) or the best- earth’s ‘bacteria’ penetrates the alien defense (War of the Worlds). The only thing shocking now days in alien attack films is the great expectations that filmmakers have from their audiences!
Click here to read my Buzz in Town review of Battle: Los Angeles.