For the uninitiated, Netflix’s hit movie War Machine follows an unnamed Staff Sergeant who enters a Ranger program where few applicants make it to the finish line and, even when they do, they’re known as nothing more than a number. Before they can cross that finish line, however, they need to pass a training mission, and that’s just what this Staff Sergeant and his team think they’re on. But it’s no simulation, they’re now facing an extraterrestrial space bot with its sights trained right on them. All the group has are blanks, so it will come down to their ability to evade and, ultimately, bare knuckle box with this thing.
If you’re in the mood for a particularly bloody human vs. alien movie, War Machine scratches that itch. It also leads directly into a sequel. Given how well it’s performed for Netflix a sequel or two seem quite likely but, for now, we don’t have them. What we do have are similar movies that could make for the second half of an action-packed movie night.
5) Battle: Los Angeles
Battle: Los Angeles is effectively what the sequel to War Machine is going to look like. This isn’t one team of soldiers versus one extra-terrestrial bot, it’s the entire combined military might of the world versions an entire army of alien soldiers.
Nonetheless, it does go about things in the same “boots on the ground” style as War Machine. And, while it’s a paper thing movie in terms of plot and character development, it does do a fine job of coming across like a war video game brought to life and stuffed to gills with aliens instead of the soldiers of an adversarial nation.
Stream Battle: Los Angeles on YouTube TV.
4) Starship Troopers
War Machine doesn’t have the sly sharp commentary of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, but it sure does have the 1990s classic’s no-holds-barred carnage. In both movies human bodies are decimated in pretty icky ways.
If ever you’ve wanted a war movie pitting humans versus aliens, Starship Troopers is for you. It has some of the best battle scenes of the ’90s outside Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart.
3) Edge of Tomorrow
There is no time travel in War Machine, and, on the surface, the protagonists of the Netflix movie and Edge of Tomorrow are very different. However, they do share a certain complexity, even if, in the case of Tom Cruise’s Major William Cage it’s cowardice as opposed to the PTSD suffered by Ritchson’s 81.
Tonally the movies are also on different levels, with War Machine being relentlessly gritty while Edge of Tomorrow knows how to be fun. But it’s not as if this 2014 movie refrains from bringing intensity to the table. Not to mention, its aliens also have a certain mechanical look to them.
2) Aliens
One might think The Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgment Day would be more appropriate here considering they involve a robot, but we’re giving it to Aliens. It is, after all, a movie that can be summarized as “a group of soldiers take on violent, dangerous aliens.” Turn the plural form of that final word into the singular form and you’ve got War Machine.
This is also a movie that has a similar snappy pace. And, of course, it consistently goes for broke. It’s rare that someone feels entirely safe in this movie. That all could be said of War Machine, just as it could be said that the finales of both films involve the protagonist getting into a weapons-free vehicle and taking on the adversary up close and personal.
1) Predator (& Predator: Badlands)
If there is an ultimate companion piece to War Machine it’s Predator. Swap a flesh and blood Yautja out for a mechanical titan and they’re the same movie. It was quite clearly an inspiration for the Ritchson vehicle.
And there are definitely worse inspirations out there, and to War Machine‘s credit it tries a little harder to put a fleshed-out protagonist in the middle of it all. But, regardless, the John McTiernan classic is the one to put in after War Machine and, after that, put in the excellent Predator: Badlands (which, like War Machine and Aliens, features the protagonist fighting off the antagonist in a weapons-free vehicle).
Stream Predator & Predator: Badlands on Hulu.
Which movie will you watch right after War Machine? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!