“Marines battle aliens in Los Angeles” cried the Washington Examiner Friday morning.  As I hadn’t had my coffee yet, as I stepped on the Metro, I briefly thought to myself that there had been a military coup during the night.  Unfortunately, it’s just a movie, and these aliens come from outer space.

As what used to be our country continues its decline into a barely controlled confederation of hostile ethnic fiefdoms, it is harder to make movies and games about villains that invade America without offending the hyphenated Americans that already invaded in real life.  The only possibilities left are Nazis, zombies, Nazi zombies, North Koreans, and space aliens.  (And also, I suppose, Nazi space aliens.) As in Independence Day, the aliens in Battle have come to take our resources and kill us all, so we don’t have to do any soul searching or make any clumsy attempts to humanize the enemy.  The aliens are a gooey machine-biological hybrid, and look like a slimy cross between Terminators and the robots from the crappy Star Wars prequels.  With their unmanned drones and their cybernetic suits that look like they came out of DARPA, the battle scenes seem like a fairly accurate representation of the United States military today fighting the United States military of 20 years in the future.

Yet despite the futuristic alien weaponry and modern, diverse cast that seemingly stepped out of a college admissions brochure, watching Battle: Los Angeles, is like stepping back in time.  As the American military in real life is transformed into a socially conscious welfare office for the Third World, the American military in the movies can return to its preferred role of waging war against wholly unsympathetic enemies. Aaron Eckhart, whose square jawed soap-opera looks normally conceal flawed characters, like Harvey Dent or Nick Naylor, here channels John Wayne’s Sgt. Stryker from Sands of Iwo Jima.  Eckhart perfectly represents the ideal Marine NCO, exactly the type of blue-eyed fighting man that the U.S. military is trying to drum out of the service to make room for more Alvin Greenes.  In this movie, the gay sensitivity training, nation building missions, racial gangs, and political correctness that characterize the modern military simply doesn’t exist.

In fact, the entire movie is simply a recruitment ad for the military.  Every soldier, Maine, and airman is skilled, brave, and noble, selflessly sacrificing themselves to rescue trapped American civilians.  All the war clichés are here, from the green lieutenant facing his first combat action to the fiancé who just wants to get home to his sweetheart (who, because this is 2011, is named “Shanice.”)  Even the civilians somehow manage to be useful.  Los Angelinos look gratefully to the Marines as their liberators, apparently reversing their stance from the last time the USMC set foot in LA, when they were rioting and shooting at them.

While the multiple Oscar-nominated film The King’s Speech may be called a passably entertaining period piece, it is far from being a great movie. The fact that this film has won such overwhelmingly effusive plaudits from the Academy and critical establishment does, however, raise a fascinating question: Can a filmmaker, by referencing every acceptable cinematic “meme” and dishing out all the requisite thematic “tropes,” succeed at manipulating supposedly educated and erudite people into thinking that his film is far better than it actually is?

Put differently, can a mediocre and forgettable flick come to be regarded as “excellent” if it tells the chattering class exactly what it wants to hear and shows it just what it aches to see?

Apparently, the answer is “yes,” as always, which shouldn’t overly surprise us. The chattering class, for all of their chatter, are after all just like every other group of people; they have their own pet hobbyhorses and obsessions; they delight in certain types of settings and story arcs; they enthuse over specific actors and directors; their collective heart swells, as if on cue, at the passionate oration of particularly treasured sentiments.