The subtlety of the alien story and special effects made it worth it though.

Wondering if you also came to this conclusion or if the writers/director have laid it out somewhere…

The subtlety with which this story was presented is excellent. Too bad it goes over most people’s heads or Battleship might have gotten better reviews.

but in reality, aliens capable of not only travelling beyond the speed of light, but wweeelllll beyond it. perhaps light years within days, or even minutes as the movie suggests. would have probably a lot of curious interest regarding earth, but only because it can support the evolution of complex life beyond that of microbes. in the same ways we have interest in going to the zoo and seeing odd creatures up close but safely while they’re in their natural habitats.. our natural resources on this planet have no more value than any of the other objects flying through space… our resources are incredibly precious but only to us only because we can’t go from planet to planet, asteroid to asteroid or mine the dark matter in the depths of space like they easily could. when galaxies are suddenly open to you, natural resources aren’t scarce in the slightest.. not to mention mining dark matter would be far easier than trying to get around it to get another solar system.. would they even care to enslave us for cheap labour? with inifinite resources they would surely be able to create whatever they need with far superiority. the same way we no longer enslave horses to carry us around because our cars and trucks are vastly superior… if there are aliens out there. a lot of the most advanced ones already know about us, come here regularly. our sky is probably filled with observatory ships that we aren’t allowed to detect and we’re always being watched curiously.. but we, and our planet remain unuseful at all except as mild curious entertainment… the only thing giving it any value whatsoever to species capable of interstellar travel are the quirky life forms themselves which it has been able to sustain.

learn to have fun…

But going deeper, the aliens were entirely peaceful. The world assumed that they were violent because they destroyed part of Hong Kong. But that only happened because their communication ship crashed into one of our satellites and plummeted into the city. Bad luck!

So without a communication ship, they get fired on and they have to survive long enough to set up a comm signal back to their planet. The rest of the movie plays out from there.

The alien ‘weapons’ are mining equipment; none of it are military grade weapons. Space is a dangerous place, that’s why they have a shield. The explosive cans are for mining asteroids. They are unguided and dig in before the explosion, to blast pieces of ore off asteroids. The spinning shredders are for tunneling through rock. The big aliens are mine workers who have a strong suit with a big swiss knife at the end of their arms. The thin aliens are engineers. The alien suits have a heads-up display that can assess threats, because mining in space is extremely dangerous.

A disastrous accident occurs at their mining colony. They flee to space, however are not able to return home. They intercept the human signal, inviting them and the alien miners go to the planet Earth for help.

When they land they are surrounded by military ships. The miners raise their defensive shield. They respond to the human attempt to communicate clumsily; they are miners not xeno ambassadors. The humans appear to aggressively attack; the alien miners are not familiar with a warning shot. The aliens take out the threat with precision. From there on the humans attack aggressively and the peaceful miners defend themselves as best they can given the situation.

I would love to see a movie about the same events from the perspective of the aliens. Like ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ and ‘Flags of Our Fathers’. It can be called: ‘Mining Ship”.