To be truthfully honest, I wasn't paying much attention to the beginning. You see, I have this thing where I go off into my own world, leaving it to the movie to take me out of my world and into their's. Luckily, the movie did this successfully and I was engrossed into the story it was telling.
If you don't know by now, the movie is essentially about Marines fighting aliens who are trying to colonize in Los Angeles. There really isn't much more than that. I can, however, tell you what part grabbed my attention and helped me focus through the rest of the movie. It was the scene where the Marines were going through some fog, walking between two buildings. Then they get startled but it turns out to be a dog. I thought to myself, "Uh oh, movie, if you invite an animal along, the audience is going to care more for the pooch than the characters you were establishing." The dog disappears and the Marines are ambushed by the aliens for the first time. From this point, I was interested and I was actually invested into the characters; especially Aaron Eckhart, who's a good actor anyway.
Along the way, they pick up some civilians which consist of a man, a woman, and a couple of kids. Despite a lack of character development, I did care for these characters enough to feel sorry for any of them if they ever get shot down by the aliens. This element did help some intense moments, especially the scene where Aaron Eckhart must elude one of the alien aircrafts to a gas station. There was a lot of these tense moments all the way up to the end.
It was an action extravaganza and I was entertained. Coupled with that and some decent acting from the cast, I didn't have much to complain about. Even the shaky cams didn't bother me too much, though sometimes it felt totally unnecessary. The main ingredient here was that I wanted to be entertained, and I got that. It's definitely better than Skyline, but I don't see this one being the best of the year. 2011 is still early, and we have a lot of films to go. Summer is upon us.