“Battle: Los Angeles” Movie Trailer Review

“Battle: Los Angeles”

Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Joe Oliveto

The latest trailer for upcoming sci-fi flick “Battle: Los Angeles” debuted recently, giving us our first really good look at what we can expect from this film. The verdict: we’re cautiously optimistic about this one.

Optimistic because Aaron Eckhart signed on, so there’s reason to believe the script might actually deliver. We’re also optimistic because, like many other successful blockbusters from the past few years, the look of the film seems to be inspired from the war footage that we’ve seen come out of Iraq. If you only caught a quick glimpse at this trailer, you might mistake L.A. for Baghdad. We can’t promise that the movie itself will be an allegory for any of our current conflicts, but perhaps the visual style will at least give it a heightened sense of urgency.

Still, we’re not crazy about everything in the trailer. The attackers are CGI robots, because apparently we haven’t had enough “Transformers” for one lifetime. In fact, the CGI in general looks pretty disappointing, only a few steps above “Skyline,” which didn’t turn out too well. We know that every special effects movie that Hollywood ever makes from now on will feature visuals created in a computer, but that can be a little disappointing. “Independence Day” isn’t a great movie, but look at some of those early scenes, when the alien ships emerge over our major cities. There’s a major sense of awe because those are real objects combined with footage of real cities. Maybe the effect isn’t seamless, but it at least doesn’t look like a video game.

Also, a bit of an aside here: how many times can we cast Michelle Rodriguez as “the badass chick with a gun”? It’s getting old.

So, yes, there’s some potential here, but from what we’ve got, we can’t decide whether or not this will be the invasion flick we’re hoping for. We’ll have to wait and see.

View the trailer below. Thoughts?