First I would like to say i'm English so i don't know much about the US.
My question is this: Why would they defend L.A. and not San Fransico?
I assume (for some reason) S.F. is a bigger port, making it a more strategic location. Am i right in thinking this? Or are they defending LA simply because LA is a bigger city with a larger population?
Thanks.
Because the rest of the west coast had been pretty much lost already at that point. It wasn't their call to make. It wasn't as if they could pick and choose which city to save. They hadn't lost Los Angeles yet so the decision was made to stand their ground there.
According to the viral marketing of Battle: Los Angeles, there were reports of aliens/entities observing soldiers and combat situations around the world for years, as well as numerous UFO sightings suggesting it was all the same species observing humanity and how we fight. For example, I think one black-and-white picture showing an alien in Seoul in 1968.
Then the big event mentioned which also occurred in real-life and served as the basis of the movie was the "Battle of Los Angeles" during WWII where U.S. anti-aircraft units in LA, looking out for Japanese aircraft, saw several strange objects/UFOs and fired a sh!tload of AA shells into the air, thinking it was in fact a Japanese air raid. Nothing was ever confirmed shot down, and officially it's regarded as a huge false-alarm, although in B:LA it's strongly suggested that it was in fact UFO's.
The big reason for attacking a port city is because the aliens are invading for the water and are staging their attacks from the water (like how U.S. Apollo capsules landed in the water) so taking port cities is an important objective. And as others have said, LA is a huge port and military production facility, and if the aliens were observing LA during the last major worldwide conflict (WWII) then they'd be well aware of why LA is so important.
Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around.
Well, the Marines in this movie were from 2/5 (2nd Battalion, 5th Marines), who in real life are stationed out of Camp Pendleton, California. That's located in-between L.A. and San Diego. When the aliens started hitting a bunch of cities along the coasts, I figured that the Marines got deployed to fight in L.A. because it was the closest area that was under attack.
shareSan Diego and San Francisco were lost very early on.
Besides, LA already looked like that, so they shot there.
You Fill Me with Inertia.