Understandable that SONY have called on real resources to help promote their new movie Battle: Los Angeles but how many really think this is just a marketing ploy?
On the SONY Pictures website they have provided a mini-docu detailing what happened that night, 1942, in Los Angeles. With speakers such as Bill Birnes and C. Scott Littleton. This type of video makes me happy and sad in equal amounts, because I love that this topic is becoming more popular and real people are speaking out and getting the ‘airtime’ by the major companies. But then i’m sad, because this is not being shown to the mass audience that they pull in because they want their audience to see real people speaking about this for what it is, this is being shown for marketing value and to make their movie seem more attractive.
Bill Birnes: “When it comes to the Battle of Los Angeles, people think its all hoop-la, its all hype, its all newspaper stuff.. Absolutely not. There are eyewitnesses.”
SONY, if you are going to make another alien movie where we all die and aliens want to harvest us for whatever reason, I will see it, because I love movies and the culture. But if you are stepping into the bounds of real history and promoting a movie on the back of these events, then you have got to come correct. From what I have seen in the trailers, it is as I said. “Oh no, aliens are invading and we are all going to die. Oh no again.” Mixing history and all out fabrication, is OK when done right and is just seen for what it is, a movie.
The Alien discussion is such a split and varied topic, all but the alternative media will not have anything to do with real or not alien topics. Only when promoting a movie, the media goes banana sandwich over marketing and advertising. For this reason alone, it is instilled in the brain of the average joe, that aliens on earth means instant war or death. Not many people will want to research or believe what they are shown outside of the movies. Because it’s just a movie right? Someone just wrote a script and that’s it? The inspiration comes from the facts and then the facts get trivialised into a mainstream movie.
As I was saying above, makes me a bit sad when events and real speakers are being trivialised for this purpose, because people will see them now as ‘that guy who did the marketing report for Battle: LA’. These are real people and case in point, one Matthew Razak from Destructoid.com and Flixist.com had this to say about the aforementioned SONY marketing mini-documentary:
“Sony is pushing Battle: Los Angeles once again with this pretty well done bit of marketing in which talking heads discuss alien sightings throughout time. That includes a fictional confrontation between the U.S. military and an unknown object over the skies of WWII L.A. I’m always a fan of when movies create a solid history to back themselves up and it looks like Battle is doing exactly that.”
Now, i’m not a historian, but I know that was a real event and not a fictional marketing ploy dreamed up by SONY execs last month. This was not a personal attack at Matthew, I was just pointing out the fact of what I had been saying in this article. With that said, I do hope this movie will spark more interest into the real events of what actually did happen on late February 24 to early February 25, 1942, because that can only be a good thing, right?
This is my opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of Pop Culture Zoo.
Click below to watch the Battle: LA mini-docu from SONY: