“Battle of Los Angeles” – It’s “Battle: Los Angeles” Without the Colon!

You may or may not have heard of The Asylum, a production company that specializes in “mockbusters”, which are cheap, low-budget straight-to-video ripoffs of major Hollywood films. Here’s a full list of their shameless knockoffs, which includes such titles as Transmorphers, Snakes on a Train, Alien vs. Hunter and Titanic 2. Not surprisingly, they have produced their own version of Battle: Los Angeles, imaginatively titled Battle of Los Angeles, but instead of Michelle Rodriguez and Aaron Eckhart, you get Nia Peeples and the guy from Good Burger! I’m sure this latest effort will appeal to their key demographic: people who rent their movies by mistake because they think it’s the Hollywood version. And, no, that’s not sarcasm! I honestly think that Asylum makes a good deal of profit by successfully fooling people. My eight years working for Blockbuster Video taught me one thing: there are a LOT of people out there who don’t know that movies do not come out in theaters and on home video at the same time! In 2005, Asylum released a cheap, low-budget version of War of the Worlds while the Steven Spielberg version was playing in theaters. I witnessed so many customers rent the Asylum version and bring it back for a refund once they saw C. Thomas Howell was starring in it instead of Tom Cruise. And I am sure that poor video store clerks everywhere are going through the same thing all over again right now with Battle of Los Angeles.