PG-13

When “Skyline,” an effects-heavy and character-light movie directed by Colin and Greg Strause about aliens invading Los Angeles, came out five months ago, many critics speculated the Strause brothers were preemptively ripping off “Battle: Los Angeles,” another effects-heavy, character-light movie about aliens invading Los Angeles. The brothers Strause were part of the visual effects crew on “Battle: Los Angeles,” and the similarities between the movies were enough for Sony, the company behind “Battle,” to consider legal action. 

They were right to be worried, but not because “Battle” is a superior film and viewers might get confused about which aliens-invading-L.A. film they’re watching. Despite having a huge budget and cast featuring legitimate actors, “Battle: Los Angeles” turns out to be just as cheap and dumb as “Skyline,” but with the added benefit of clichés from both alien invasion flicks and war movies. 

The cliché meter starts running early on in “Battle” and doesn’t let up till the end. The first few minutes are devoted to cramming in as much character information as possible. We meet Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), just days away from ending his 20-year career in the Marines. He’s stationed at Camp Pendleton, near L.A., along with other Marines whose names and characters are so hastily sketched that it’s impossible to keep track of them. Someone’s getting married; someone’s wife is pregnant; someone has a brother who might have died under Nantz’s command. Meteors land at all the planet’s major coastal cities, but they’re actually an alien invasion force, and soon Nantz and his Marines are dispatched to L.A. to rescue some civilians before an air strike.

Director Joanthan Liebsman wanted “Battle” to recall “Black Hawk Down” and real-life battlefield footage from Iraq. Instead, the movie looks and feels like a video game with a broken controller. It’s hard to know where you are or what’s going on at any point, and while it may accurately capture the chaos of war, it doesn’t make for a good movie. Like a game, “Battle” is spectacularly violent yet almost entirely bloodless; the aliens crumple in metallic heaps and the good guys are vaporized by the advanced alien tech. There’s dirt and loud noises and L.A. takes one hell of a fiery beating, but overall, the combat in “Battle” doesn’t seem much worse than an afternoon of playing Xbox.

Other times, “Battle” plays like the most expensive, flashy Marines recruitment video ever. Eckhart is only adequate as an action hero. He is, however, great at giving inspirational speeches. Nantz gets plenty of chances to bark commands, rally his troops, comfort children, and deliver the kind of pro-human speeches Bill Pullman would have found too embarrassing even for “Independence Day.” The aliens are as vague as the humans. They look rubbery and clunky, fish-men wrapped in tinfoil, and their equipment all looks like it was made from rejected designs from “Transformers.”

Mostly, “Battle” feels interminable. By the time Nantz and his troops rescue the civilians, the movie seems like it should be over. But it slogs on and on until the Marines find themselves facing down alien drones, missile launchers, and, of course, the aliens’ secret underground base. Do they win? Do they save the day? Do you even need to ask? If it had been released just two months later, “Battle: Los Angeles” would’ve been lost among the rest of the summer dregs. Instead, it sticks out like a sore thumb, a loud, joyless portent of the lousy summer fare to come.