KCR: Cowboys and Aliens (movie, western, scifi)

Went to see Cowboys and Aliens yesterday. It was a fun movie that is about the same as Battle: LA... looks great, but the motivations doesn't make sense, esp. for the other side. It's fun, but it's not THAT good.

WARNING

MAJOR

SPOILERS

AHEAD

SO

STOP

READING

ALREADY

Movie starts with the hero wakes up in the middle of the desert with almost no memory, wound, almost no cloths, but a very good survival instincts... when set upon by 3 brothers. There's this mysterious bracer on his left wrist. He went into town, was helped by the preacher, met a mysterious woman, and was arrested for being a wanted outlaw who robbed a stagecoach belonging to the local rich man... oh, and he pissed off the rich guy's spoiled brat.

As he's about to be transported to Santa Fe, the rich guy arrived with his "mob"... they want the guy... and the son... then the flying aliens attacked, and roped off a lot of people. The stranger, who we now know is "Jake", found his bracer activated into a weapon system, and shot down one of the flyers.

Now it's a battle. How will Jake find out who he is, what happened to him, and who is that woman in his dreams or visions? And what horrible things had he done that he can't remember?

When you examine the plot a bit closer, there's a ton of problems.

1) How would an alien weapon/bracer just happen to fit a human wrist, and be activated by it?

2) Why would an alien weapon/bracer react to other aliens, when they are hunting HUMANS?

3) Why kidnap all those humans any way? There's too many of them needed for "experimentation".

4) Mining for gold... doesn't make sense at all. They could have found far more precious metals and such out in the asteroid belt. They have plenty of technology. Why come to Earth at all?

5) There is only ONE of those bracers?!  Others have those big rifles, but haven't seen more than a handful of them. Most of the aliens do hand-to-hand only.

Told you, doesn't make that much sense.

KCR: Aggressor Six (novel, scifi)

Aggressor Six is an interesting twist on "know your enemy" novel on a sci-fi stage when the humans encountered the "waisters"... aliens that seem to bent on extermination of human species. Their technology is centuries ahead of the humans. Humans convened "Aggressor Six", a group of humans ordered to learn, act, speak, and ultimately, think like the Waisters, in order to give humans an edge in combat... if such a thing is possible. As colony after colony are exterminated, and the waisters are approaching the Sol System (the scouts were destroyed or driven off at TREMENDOUS casualties), will Aggressor Six find enough enough about the aliens to save humanity?

While the theme is hardly new, the execution is quite good, as this goes into the concept of war, on demonstration of superiority, and what constitutes sanity, and stubbornness. There's a surprising amount of actual science behind the sci-fi narrative, combined with enough action to satisfy those with shorter attention spans.

The book's old, and I encountered this in a used bookstore, but it's very good read. This is Will MacCarthy's first novel (dated 1996!)

KCR: A Hymn Before Battle, Posleen War #1 by John Ringo

Cover via AmazonA Hymn Before Battle is basically a setup for the subsequent novels, paving the way for the Earth to be invaded by the Posleen horde, by giving you some action now, and majority of the situational background. For that, it mostly delivers, though some plot points where never tied up (but you'll need to read subsequent books to realize that).

The setup: Earth was visited by friendly aliens, who brings good news and bad news. Good news: high, we're the good guys, who bring you great technology and other advances in all areas. Bad news: you are about to get invaded by people who will LITERALLY eat you, called the Posleen. Earth was hurried organized, and technology shared to build various fortresses, called up ever last bit of reserve manpower available, even seniors who can be rejuvenated with the latest Galtech (the alien technology). Why don't the aliens fight? One race is the scientist race and don't even know how. The other is the manufacturing race and is not capable of violence. The third, the most aggressive, is the merchant and administrator race and will literally DIE after going berserk if it tries to commit violence. Thus, all the fighting must be done by... humans.

Unfortunately, some of the aliens don't exactly WANT the humans to succeed as the humans are just too darn GOOD at what it does. Humans can do EVERYTHING, and are extremely adaptable. If too many humans survived, the other aliens will be living under human rule in a couple decades. So the nasty allies (with allies like these, who needs enemies?) are ordering assassinations of humans who asked too many questions.

In the meanwhile, a group of long range scouts is sent to infiltrate a planet already occupied by the enemy, and see if they can find some interesting intelligence, if possible.

The characters are a bit thin, and due to amount of 'setup' the actual plot is rather abbreviated, and as later books show, not fully resolved. The ethical implications of all this sudden influx of technology was not discussed due to the exigencies of upcoming war, and you KNOW Earth is going to get ****ed.

If you like your action mixed with a little politics and a LOT of dark humor, give this a try. The later books are even better, when the invasion actually starts.

Rating: get it

KCR: Watch on the Rhine (war, scifi)

Watch of the Rhine is a novel of the "Posleenverse" (or Legacy of the Aldenata) series where the Posleen Horde invades Earth and wrecks it completely. This novel is about the European threater, where the Germans are forced to reactivate every last soldier and officer it has... including the few surviving members of the SS. The book is about their struggle to contain the Posleen, and failing that, to delay the Posleen so the civilians have a chance to escape. They have to do this while dealing with interior decent and as predicted a traitor in their midst. Also in their midst, a giant SHIVA tank built to kill Posleen "landers" with a motley crew trying to survive against tremendous odds.

As you can imagine, this is a controversial topic... SS is verboten in Germany... until the Posleen war left the Chancellor no choice at all. Most SS soldiers are honest Germans, but there were some truly evil people... but you need evil people to fight wars too... but can you fight a war of annihilation, and keep your humanity?

The book does make you think, about how much evil is there in war, and can you fight evil with more evil?

Rating: worth a read

KCR: Battle Los Angeles (movie, war)

I actually paid $$$ to watch Battle Los Angeles in a real theater, and I was actually chuckling half the time, because this movie is so obviously a ****ing ripoff of all the war movies and alien invasion movies that came before it. I have no problem with a movie glorifying the military. Heck, Transformers was a military lovefest too. But this is just a joke, sorry.

The premise itself is almost absurd. A bunch of "meteors" came out of nowhere and is heading for coastal cities. Upon "landing" they turned out to be invaders from outer space invading our beaches (no, that's NOT a joke), with a bunch of aliens wielding assault rifles and rocket launchers, clearly inspired by by the aliens in Independence Day (which came out almost a decade ago!)

The US Marine Corp is ordered into action to repel the invaders and save the civilians, of course. The problem is the aliens are seen jumping from rooftop to rooftop. In other words, instead of acting like an invading army, they are acting like guerillas and random ambushers (read: Somalia / Blackhawk Down). They are also highly armored but they CAN be killed, apparently with a lot of effort and ammo.

The whole thing makes no sense. When the choppers deployed the marines they hit anti-aircraft fire... but fired by who? Aliens don't seem to have any sort of anti-aircraft GUN that do airbursts, so where did the triple-A came from?

The whole thing is supposed to remind you of Blackhawk Down, street fighting against relentless enemies. However, it came off as a stupid clone as the enemies makes no sense. Later, the moviemaker also shamelessly ripped off Saving Private Ryan (multiple scenes) and a ton of other scenes from various other movies.

The end makes no sense either, as it's an almost direct copy of Independence Day... they need to take out this "base". That is the ONLY time we saw use of ANY sort of artillery, and even then it was depicted wrong... Those can't be artillery shells, but actual tactical ground-attack missiles. (see IMDB goofs)  And it's a fight in the Alamo. Makes sense? Not at all.

Go see it for the special effects, the big budget production, and so on, but you will need to turn off your brain completely, as the inconsistencies add up.

Rating: Just rent it

Coming soon on June 14, 2011

Related articles

• Battle: Los Angeles: War of the Cliches (reason.com)