It's essentially a 2-hour (far too long) commercial for the Marines, except in a commercial, you care about the characters.

I'm not sure if I hated this or Skyline more. Skyline was far stupider and the characters were less likable. But this movie manipulates you, repeating over and over again that these are Americans and Marines and they never give up, so the movie doesn't allow you to feel anything. It crams it down your throat.

They honestly repeated that they were Marines at least a hundred times. Ecotage looks the part, but his "inspirational speeches" are terrible. The biggest one, where he explains his backstory and how he's a Marine, honestly got giant laughs from my audience when he followed it with a very earnest "But none of that is important right now." Huge misfire on the script.

The aliens are not intimidating. They are made to seem unstoppable and then the Marines slow them down perfectly when the plot dictates that they need time. There isn't a plot though. It's non-stop, illogical, incomprehensible action.

Most offensive of all? The effects aren't great. Skyline and District 9, both far cheaper, had more convincing effects. They keep cutting to these sweeping shots of LA burning that all look as real as a Roland Emmerich flick from 2003.

It's not fun, not exciting, and the only emotion or feeling you might have is from the movie yelling at you that if you don't care about these brave American Marines, just grab a gun and join Al Qaeda, because you're a terrorist. Newsflash: even Marine grunts have personality in real life that goes deeper than "the scared one," "the angry one," "the jokester," "the one with a pregnant wife," and my favorite, "the black one with glasses."

Not worth your time.

EDIT: Thinking about it, Skyline isn't much stupider, it just draws attention to its stupid ideas. Battle: LA has plenty of REALLY stupid things, but it glosses over them with zero plot, lots of running, and repetition of the word "Marine."