It is a pretty cool trailer. I love when the robot collapses itself and then explodes. Good brainless entertainment!

It's basically a demo reel for an effects house.

Scott - I agree with you. He got hired because he can direct special effects heavy action sequences.

More power to him. When the Twilight stars are going to potentially make 10 plus million for the fifth movie, one million to a director don't seem that much in the grand scheme of things.

He's shown he can deliver standard Hollywood schlock on a budget. Why wouldn't Hollywood love him? On the brighter side, his story doesn't appear to revolve around zombies or teen vampires.

It does look like War of the Worlds meets Transformers, but this short is visually pretty moving. My guess is the end result will be a derivative sort of movie that will end up being a blockbuster.

Great visual sense, but I agree - we've seen alien invasions before, and recently. I'm bothered at how many people are comparing this to "District 9" which had a brilliant concept imaginatively explored, and acted. "District 9" was not about some guy posting a demo effects reel to Youtube.

That was exactly my reaction. Thank you for articulating it. I thought I was being a bit of a hater, but no, it was a legitimate reaction.

Pretty to look at but geez, how many times have we been here before? I guess he got the gig because Hollywood is running out of new and interesting ways of showing massive digitally manipulated destruction?

I'll back any film maker until or unless the film sucks - and then it depends on how much. That looked pretty cool.
Kind of like ID4.
But since we should all be thinking big picture, I'd wonder about "robot invulnerability" and "who shall stand against it."
It's easy to blow up buildings for 5 minutes but a lot harder to find a narrative that makes heroes and drama.

There's a split second Potemkin moment in this that I liked. The baby stroller on the stairs made me think the director probably at least knows who Eisenstein is.

When you think about it, it's not like Eisenstein had a whole lot of story to tell either.