A good, but entirely unoriginal "sci-fi"-memory flick

Rating: 7/10 (19 September 2014)

1) It has a good plot that draws you in with its tempo and different directions.
2) It's also, sadly, your standard American movie glorifying the military, violence and downplaying and dumbing down the importance of actual science in science fiction. Yes, I do think the entire military side-plot line was entirely unnecessary.
3) Here are the real spoilers, so don't read beyond this if you haven't seen it yet.
Alright then, the Aliens are so conventional and unoriginal in their design and so unrealistic that you have to take some kind of ironic distance at them. If you just take one step back... biological beings that can fire magic missiles from their body, travel at less than the speed of sound (how the f did they get to earth traveling so slowly? do they magically live off gasses that are hostile to every other organism known to date?) do telepathy and even turn back and control time.
4) The reason I still give it a 7 is because of the plot, as mentioned earlier, and because of the acting - Cruise and Blunt are really making their characters believable. In short, I like the drama in the movie - the "sci-fi" (IMDB won't let me use the abbreviation itself for some reason...) itself isn't hugely appealing to me.
5) As recently as in Pacific Rim, we had this problem: Why do we have to have the 'Murican military in these movies? I mean they're always highly ineffective at what they do and only ever serve a side role making a commercial out of blindly following orders and being a stupid ****. Please stop including them for no reason, or if not, at least be honest and transparent about the money you received from the US army to finance your movie, so people with half a brain will know not to give those movies any money.