Just sayin'

Just watched it, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't high art, but anyone who was expecting art needs to work on their critical thinking skills.

"Invisible aliens invade Moscow? I bet this is a real thinker."

Frankly, it does bring up some interesting points about situations such as this one (Aliens invade/Disaster/Collapse of Society, people take a beating, survivors have to regroup). The main characters are nerds, for lack of a better term. They're not business savvy, they're not typical "manly men", and they aren't much to look at. But frankly, thinkers are going to be the ones saving lives in these situations... at least initially.

Sergei, crazy old shut-in... sure, but he can also build a microwave gun and understands the science behind the aliens enough to come up with a way to counter them. Or take for example the "unseen" guy that had been staying in the Embassy. He knew enough to magnify the radio signal on his little radio using the bird cage and was able to access information by being Mr. Clever, not Mr. Action.

The Russian crew were the second part of one point this movie was trying to make. Thinking only gets you so far. Sean et al, are typically useless in a fight and while they know what to do, they don't do a great job of doing it. That's where you need the do'ers. Left to their own devices the Russian crew were able to damage the things, but that was it. They learned from the guys who know the science, and became better able to kill the things. Without the nerds, they'd have been dead before long. It's a new angle on the "survival of the fittest" motif and it's a refreshing one. Not that "thinkers" or "do'ers" are inherently better than the other, but that the world needs both to survive.

Also, I've seen complaints about the fact they kept risking their lives for each other too much. That, in my opinion, was the second theme. Skylar comes right out and states the idea with his "You don't know what kind of person you are...". The fact they risk themselves so much for each other is called stepping up. They all reacted differently to this insane situation, Skyler broke down, the blonde fearfully just followed along and the two guys shirk the role of being "sheep" and became wolves; this completely contradicts the image of losers they present pre-calamity and reinforces the theme presented via. the character's reactions.

tl;dr, sometimes action heroes need "thinkers" too.