Preface
@WotanArgead I'm going to have to ask you to not bring up your usual dislike of Space Opera and restart the argument about Star Wars or the first part of this thread. If it upsets you just don't comment. I think I can say quite frankly that nobody in this thread enjoys these arguments and they clutter up and derail the thread. We'll just have to agree to disagree and bury the hatchet.
A Lullaby for the Stars part 2:
The second movie begins with Medrogan's fleet in full approach, casting shadows over the Earth as they stop in orbit. Streaks can be seen flying out of the warships as they launch shuttles and drop systems, intent on attacking everywhere at once. The streaks briefly flash orange as they start to pass through the atmosphere, and the invasion soon begins. The assault is carried out by a number of often rotoscoped creatures and monsters, with the exact style of warfare of the elite of Mendrogan's army borrowing heavily from Heinlein's notes on the mobile infantry of his stories and the effects of the attack being based on studies of the damage dealt by the second world war and the war in the horn of Africa. Whereas many such movies simply show bloodless carnage being inflicted upon hapless landmarks and buildings, the action makes sure to depict the suffering inflicted on the populaces placed under attack by an aggressive invader, lingering closely on the ground level perspective of the cast; not simply the exohumans but also the conventional military, law enforcement, and civilians of many descriptions as they frantically try to survive the aggressive military onslaught. Scarab beetle like fliers fly through the air, accompanied by nimbler dragon fly shaped fighters and bulky pillbug esque "air dreadnoughts" while the slender form of tick like transports hit the ground to disgorge a colonial army whose fodder is drawn from the countless worlds of Mendrogan's conquests.
We first see Columbia as she jumps up onto a "Reptoinsect" shock trooper, the six limbed armoured stop motion monstrosity scrabbling towards some Children with snapping jaws and a gun based on coil weapon theories. Deflecting the coil gun with a swat from her shield, she smashes' the creature's mandibled and six eyed head with a downward kick from her armoured boot as the creature lets out a keen before she shoves her spear down its throat and fires her lance of truth of once, burning it out from the inside. Recognizing that she can't do everything alone, she calls over to some of the local defense militias, signalling over to them that there are children here in need of help. One of the leaders of the militia, a grizzled veteran of the Libyan resistance during world war two who emigrated to east Italy when it became clear that Libya would remain a capitalist nation named Widad who Columbia actually fought along side in a world war 2 era comic; has a moment to speak with Columbia as her friends arrive just a bit late. Columbia exchanges friendly greetings with Widad, the latter of whom notes with a grunt of disappointment that she's starting to feel the weight of years on her while Columbia doesn't look a day older, though she teases Columbia about still acting like a teenager "someone who's eternally a work in progress, just like your country" she notes before they get to business. Widad says that the Imperialist invaders are quite clearly expecting to simply overwhelm the Earth through surprise and firepower, they are clearly dismissive of those they seek to colonize, much like the Italians were dismissive of the Libyan resistance.
Maui asks what then, can be done, to which Widad replies that invasions need a lot of coordination and organization. One from across the stars with dozens of servant species? Astronomical amounts of both. She makes quick mention of the basic rules of Guerilla warfare*, which includes making it so that you can hide among the people. "You need trust, and you need anonymity. You have trust, but the big bug has already seen you. Keep the costumes off when you're keeping your heads down." She tells them before she urges her group to get moving when she hears the approach of a scarab, leaving Columbia and her group to find their own way out of Rome. Taking the advice of Widad, most of them go in civilian guises to avoid unnecessary notice as the invaders build in strength, Mendrogan's banner being planted as the invaders go about claiming the Earth for their sovereign. However, Hua notes that some of the Aliens' fighters are sometimes struck by those who seem to be more lavishly equipped, making her do her famed "tap finger to lips and go hmmm" gesture as she thinks before she's pulled aside by Orobi into an alleyway when a tripod comes stalking down the streets; towering over the buildings and letting some invisible ray that seems to burn everything in its path strike at distant soldiery.
Valiente, deciding that wandering the city aimlessly is a poor move ends up being the first to look for people to ask around; speaking to some of the lay civilians who help navigate them through the thicket of patrols, and hide them from passing by conquerors when they go about searching for enemies. When possible, the group does ambush some of the thickets of aliens when they can be isolated and entrapped before getting word out, but the group manages to find a way out of Rome at last and board itself onto a submarine. The submarine escapes the attentions of the attackers and sails off to the UASR proper, the pause being used to help get everyone's perspective on the issue and show the stress that having to go through something as world shaking as an invasion would do as everyone finally has the chance to release their pent up stress all at once. The agony of having limited communications as can be found in a submarine also weighs on the group as they make all due speed to America with the aid of Maui's powers, but, when they get there they find that the American military is engaged in desperate struggle with the alien attackers. The carnage is not bloodless nor are people spared a look at its human aftermath, and immediately the group is put under attack when an air patrol spots them. They manage to punch through the alien menace, having already fought the Axis War machine and the likes of Alulim, but the enemy's mooks are cunning opponents and it clearly takes effort to deal with them. Effort aided by some of the alien tripods being toppled by explosives set up by resistance fighters as mines, as well as timely artillery strikes by the military.
Now Hua can't help but notice that many of the other species lose the nerve to fight when the elites seem to go down, and starts to form a theory that the subservient species might not actually be all that enthusiastic for the fight. Columbia thinks about it but Molotok interrupts her before she can speak, getting him a now memetic glare of disapproval from Columbia as he notes it's almost certain that most of these aliens are themselves oppressed proles. Clearing her throat, Columbia then says that this means that to stop the machine of conquest, they'll need to do what Widad told them to, take out their coordination and organization; which will also mean dealing with Mendrogan himself. If this is an alien Autocracy, then dealing with the Autocrat himself is always a needed step in dismantling the system he set up, along with breaking the other pillars of the system. Orobi is the first to take initiative and signals in some civilians and soldiers and asks them if they've seen the locations of any of the better equipped aliens and their bases, confirming what they say with her spells to get them a more accurate picture of the situation. From what she learns, getting communications going with the other fighters is proving to be a pain with the Aliens' jamming of communications, and that the aliens have a major signal jammer going up near Norfolk. When asked how people are faring, we get a sobering report of repression and a look at many tired refugees.
As the group sets out we get another look at Visori and Meera who are busily trying to manage the internal resistance against Mendrogan. We get a brief look at how the invasion is faring, and a more insider perspective of the Aliens. We find that many came to believe that this would be an easy conquest, so Mendrogan brought relatively weak forces to this conquest for greater challenge. We also find from the two through their interactions with others in the fleet that Mendrogan's society is deeply stratified and hierarchal and that they're being fed outright lies about the way of life of their enemy to prevent them from asking too many questions. We get a little insight about Mendrogan's own motives with a note of their almost pathological fear and hatred of disorder and unfamiliarity and their obsession with organizing everything. The two help the earth out by enacting simple and more grandiose acts of sabotage, whether letting communications slip by unencrypted or blocking important orders or even sabotaging some of the ships in the fleet and creating a series of false contacts that directs alien fighters away from the jamming device in Norfolk, letting Columbia and her group rip through it which allows the resistance fighters in the eastern seaboard and the conventional armed forces begin to coordinate far more effectively. However, circumstances force them to have to escape to Earth when Mendrogan's lieutenant Visdorak; introduced early in the film and seen throughout giving commands and managing the army; stumbles on the two, forcing a fight to break out as Visdorak attempts to kill the two, and forces the resistance in mendrogan's fleet to have to go loud.
As the two aliens manage to effect an escape after quickly and temporarily blinding Visdorak with lasers to his eyes, the perspective switches back to Columbia and her group as they move towards D.C, moving with resistance fighters and the military and noting that some of the aliens have seemingly begun to shoot each other. However as Columbia finishes off an elite of mendrogan's species, Visori and Meera's ship comes landing before them, having been directed there to try and link up with what they see as one of the more effective resistance cells. After a brief and awkward stand off only made more awkward by Visori forming telepathic link on a very surprised Columbia via kiss, the aliens catch the humans up to speed on what's going on, and saying that the aliens are converging on D.C in an attempt to demonstrate their superiority by crushing such a major center of resistance. However they also reveal that the Aliens are dependent on "brain ships" which help coordinate their armies by forming telepathic links as needed and suppressing natural urges of fear and disobedience. With this information in hand, the group is able to navigate safely to D.C thanks to the efforts of the people to hide them and guide them, letting them ambush the Aliens in D.C with a large vanguard of troops including armoured elements disguised by a spell from Orobi, who teleports in herself, maui, and a vanguard of shock troops and exohumans to immediately pull in as much attention from the aliens as possible while Columbia and her group link up with alien resistance fighters called by Visori and Meera.
The battle of D.C is a rather lengthy romp where everyone gets about kicking as much alien ass as possible and goes about saving and helping as many as they can. It is not an easy fight by any means, but it is one of the most technically challenging set of scenes ever filmed for animation up to that point. All the while we get a series of banter between the aliens and their human comrades and now that we can understand the aliens, the enemy aliens' dialogue is rendered in English. With each of the pill bug shaped brain ships taken out, the enemy's forces seem to lose more and more cohesion and each character gets a moment to show off as they blast holes in the Alien army; which starts pulling in reinforcements from elsewhere which allows other forces to have an easier time as the Aliens decrease their concentration of force and information about this particular weakness begins spreading around the world, with snippets of other characters occasionally being seen as the world starts to push against Mendrogan. Angry at their losses, but believing that the humans are suffering more in the fight, Mendrogan commands Visdorak to lead a counter-attack personally, ordering him to attack Columbia and co. With glee, Visdorak complies and shoots himself out of a special pod even though one alien asks why he's doing that when he can survive re-entry unaided. Mendrogan then gestures to a device Visdorak had often been seeing using before hand, explaining them as an envitalization device that Visdorak uses to strengthen himself before fights, and that pod had enough juice in it to make "atomic bombs look like fire crackers, though too much can be a bad thing".
As we get back to the fight where we see Columbia taking the advice of some militia leaders to take out a set of alien elites for them in a furious flying battle; we see Visdorak's pod slamming into the earth like a meteor, steam hissing as the pod glows with strange energies briefly before opening up. Then we see the form of Visodrak emerging, far larger than before. The green scaled web eared monster now stands at thirty feet tall and is rippling with muscle and clad in armour that could be described as being like a wearable tank, their somewhat skull like and somewhat reptilian face baring a fang filled grin and a tail lashing out from behind them as they let out a roar of challenge. The final fight of the movie is a furious melee where Columbia and co repeatedly try to force the hulking colossus out of city limits to minimize damage while Visdorak keeps on trying to force the fight back in them, attacking not only with abominable strength sufficient to overmatch Columbia who has been able to shift objects weighing billions of tons before and Maui who is as strong as his legends say; but also with deadly energy and high tech weapons. While known for getting more powerful the longer a fight goes on, Columbia and co find it difficult to overcome Visdorak; discovering that he too is growing more powerful the longer he's in this supercharged state.
Visdorak attempts to level the city with a ground pound meant to create an earthquake to shatter D.C, forcing Orobi to stop his impact with a magical shield, making Visdorak reel backwards as some of the energy feeds back into him. At this point, Valiente starts to make the connection, he needs to constantly discharge energy or risk overload. Molotok is the first to capitalize on this, swinging his hammer to deflect Visdorak's vita-ray fireball back into him, Visdorak reeling back and snarling as Orobi tries to teleport him out of the area, only for Visdorak to teleport himself back in with his technology; making it clear that they'll need to fight him the hard way. Armed with their newfound knowledge, all eight of the protagonists repeatedly work to deflect Visdorak's vita rays back into him, the military offering what assistance they can by distracting him with their weapons to make it easier for one of them to move into position to feed Visdorak his own waste energies. This makes him grow stronger and larger quite rapidly, but soon Columbia notes that his cells cannot handle any more energy, and combines her own magical skill with Orobi's to teleport Visdorak into orbit after bouncing one last mouth ray from the alien back into his eyes as a call back to the first fight with Visdorak; who explodes with enough force to devastate much of Mendrogan's clustered up fleet and turn night into day over D.C. After reserved celebrations ensue and the last conversations are had, it's noted that the invasion isn't over and Mendrogan still needs to be dealt with. Orobi says that teleporting in blind into his ship would be a fool's gambit, but Meera says that they know of a way to bring the fight to the Alien warlord and end this charade.
*Notably when this was being made the Indochina war was really picking up, and Samantha Waver was herself hugely supportive of Communist Guerilla movements and wanted to help put viewers, particularly from a country that had known no foreign invasion for more than a century; a little of what it's like to be a resistance fighter, even if through a fantasyscape lens.
