On November 12, 2010 we were treated to Skyline which dealt with an alien invasion of the world with events centering upon attacks in Los Angeles.  Almost exactly four months later on Friday, March 11, 2011 Battle: Los Angeles was released in theaters and once again the premise is that an alien attack is released upon the world, with the story once more centering upon Los Angeles.  And now as I write, a mockbuster has been released on SyFy called Battle of Los Angeles which...oh what's the point?  You get the idea.  Alien attack with Los Angeles as the emphasis.  Point is, we've had a whole lot of alien action going on in the City of Angels as of late over the last few months and it really just has led me to wonder what the big fuss is all about.  While each film has different spins on the story, the basic elements are the same.  Big alien attack.  Humans pretty screwed. Survival at all costs.  Fight back.  Not like we haven't seen that in any of a number of alien contact films, books, novels and comics.  But why L.A.?
What makes the southwestern metropolis of the US of A so important to alien visitation movies as of late?  It almost made no sense to me why there would be so much emphasis on this particular city as of recent.  
    And then I recall a certain historical tidbit of 1942 Los Angeles that not too many people are aware of and for which I later found out were major inspirations for the three films I have thus discussed.  Apparently on February 25 of that year, anti-aircraft batteries in and around the City of Angels were on a mass hysteria artillery barrage in the dead of night shooting something in the sky that people thought may have been a Japanese bomber.  You have to understand, this was just a little under 3 months after the the sucker punch that was the aerial-naval bombardment of Pearl Harbor and there was massive concern among the Western populace of some kind of imminent invasion on the part of the Imperial Japanese that spurned a wave of anti-Japanese hysteria and suspicion.  But you all know about this story.  What you might not know is that many contemporary news papers of the time decried cover-up in official explanation of the events thereafter which prompted later UFOlogists to claim that what as being shot at in the sky was an unidentified flying object.  Here's one contemporary newspaper article of the time that sheds light on the subject.