This was great action, and nobody understood it...

Finally, an amazing action/popcorn flick with no bs character drama or development, which kept the flick short in duration and extended the action scenes. Sure there were plot holes, but not in the story, just in terms of technology and tactical fighting. As an engineer who has worked for an aerospace defence contractor, the petty cliches and misrepresentation of human technology did not bother me one bit, because these movies are just supposed to be fun. If the director was aiming for realism, they wouldn't sink the main ship with the Missouri with a bunch of old geezers.

Oh and for the record. The aliens were neither hostile or friendly. The story actually made sense. They only red-coded humans when attacked with weapons (i.e. the warning shot from the Samson just whizzed by their ship and then they fired back, or whenever a human fired on them they painted them as red).

These guys were only seeking metals. This was also mentioned, that their technology contained metals that didn't exist in the periodic table with the exception of one metal. Maybe that's what they were searching on earth or they were a mining vessel or communications crew. This also explains why their fighting technology weren't all that impressive and seemed mostly for defence. The aliens also did not have guns, only those blade/knife extensions for self-protection.

The shield they created was for protection from the sun, not for a military purposes.

The Americans idea was to kill off the communication to stop their actual fighters from coming in and begin mining on earth, which makes total sense. However, they didn't need to start a war...but then what else is new...Muhricah.