War Machine [2026]

September 6, 2026

Despite its bombastic title, War Machine turned out to be another generic action-science fiction movie, just with a bigger budget. Just how big of a budget, you might be wondering? Well, a hefty $80 million. So, if you’re looking for something with cool visuals, a decent amount of action, and zero brainpower required, you just found it. At this point, I want to make a quick comparison. Back in 2020, the Australian movie Monsters of Man, featuring an extremely similar story and equally impressive visuals, was made for under $1 million. I urge you to check it out, as it does what this movie set out to do much more cleanly and faster.

And without that unnecessarily melodramatic bullshit. I will return to this thread in a little bit. I don’t want to get carried away at the very start, before telling you what this movie is about. War Machine follows our unnamed hero known only as 81, a veritable hulk of a man. We find him at the Ranger training base in Colorado, trying to pass RASP. Ranger Assessment and Selection Program is an extremely tough course for the best of the best. After some failures, 81 ends up in a final training mission where he and his squad encounter a strange craft. A strange craft that turns out to be extraterrestrial. Extraterrestrial and not friendly.

Rangers lead the way! As you can see, the first half of the movie is the classic “military training” montage with all the usual gimmicks. Quite a tedious and sappy part, if I may add. The second half is basically Predator but with Alan Ritchson (Reacher) in the lead role and robots instead of “regular aliens”. And there you have it, that’s basically the entire movie in a nutshell. If you’ve seen Battle Los Angeles, you know what to expect. At least in that movie, they didn’t bore us with extremely forced emotional backstories. If you’re going to make a movie like this, you should focus on the action and atmosphere. Not to mention the visuals, since you already have the budget for them.

I guess recruitment numbers are down from previous years, so they have to keep adding this stuff into movies. Men will do anything but go to therapy. For fuck’s sake, just use the Predator template fully if you’re already ripping it off. Moreover, Shane Black’s ill-fated sequel The Predator from 2018 also features Rangers going up against an alien threat. On a brighter note, the cinematography and quality of the special effects were top-notch. I guess the action scenes weren’t too shabby either. It’s hard to mess up something like a giant alien robot attacking a bunch of soldiers in the middle of nowhere.

Granted, these aliens have the worst aim ever, even surpassing the infamous Star Wars stormtroopers. I also liked the fact that they went all out when it comes to the violence. You would, sadly, expect that a commercial movie like this would do that off-screen or in a plume of smoke. Alan Ritchson pleasantly surprised me with his range in this movie. Turns out he’s not just this huge guy but a good actor as well. And from what I hear, a good guy in real life too. Apart from him, we’ve got two veterans who did their job adequately: Esai Morales and Dennis Quaid. Too bad Jai Courtney didn’t get a bigger role; I quite like him.

Finally, once the action starts in War Machine, it’s pretty much non-stop running and gunning ’til the end. The chase scene with the Guardian (M1117 armored security vehicle) was quite exciting. The ending could’ve been better, but I guess it’s okay. The sequel, aptly titled War Machines, is already in development. We can expect it in the next year or two.