Attack of the Clones

I guess you could trace it back to all the old Sci-Fi B-Movies of yesteryear, where the military were hopelessly outnumbered or outgunned or all-round-outclassed by invading aliens, but this whole 'invasion' schtick is rapidly becoming quite boring.

Not too long ago, there was Spielberg's pretty decent adaptation of HG Wells' The War of the Worlds, where gigantic tripod mecha - piloted by three-limbed alien things - cut a swathe across America (oh, and the rest of the world... probably) only to be felled by the common cold. More recently, we had Skyline and Battle: Los Angeles, where basically the same bunch of aliens made two different attempts at conquering our world. One involved turning people into blue-light-zombies, removing their brains and using them to pilot a vast range of seemingly unstoppable, brightly glowing, insectoid biomechanical things, while the other dispensed with all that blue light and just fried anything that moved with superior weaponry. Both had 'motherships' and 'fighter planes' that looked alarmingly similar.

Then, breaking with his own established continuity, Michael Bay decided that the transforming alien robots in Dark of the Moon would, after all, pilot spacecraft and other vehicles... which looked somewhat familiar. Add some blue light and lensflares, and you've got the rejects from Skyline and Battle: LA.

And now the completed first trailer for Avengers Assemble (or is it just called 'Avengers'?) turns up, and Loki appears to be making his bid for world domination on the back of an alien assault force that wouldn't have looked out of place in any of the previously mentioned films. In particular, there's a flying mechanical dragon thing that could easily be related to Shockwave's pet, Driller. Maybe it's the bastard offspring of Driller and Laserbeak. Wow... there's a mental image I can live without.

I guess we've all moved beyond the point where flying saucers made out of foil-covered paper plates are the height of sophistication but, really, why do all these alien assault forces look the same? The CGI designers must surely be paid to be somewhat original? Most of the craft I've seen might as well be forged from a template. Cut and paste a few bumps and panel lines from various sources, change the textures, and sell to the highest bidder.

I had high hopes for a movie that unites some of Marvel's most enduring Superheroes, not least with Joss Whedon at the helm, but 'Massive Alien Invasion' is a cliché that is well and truly played out. I can only hope that the big special effects battle is only a small part of the story, or this will be another disappointing effort from Marvel, that could have been so much better.