Drugs. Probably.I just read a very comprehensive critic of the movie, going scene by scene and le fucking wow, how exactly could this scenario be validated by anyone, let alone written?
"Hey, man. Let's make, like, Terminator... but to stop aliens."
"So the aliens will go back in time to stop the good guys?"
"Nah. Nothing will really matter enough for them to do that. The aliens have already won. Barely any humans are alive any more."
"But going back in time will fix things in the future."
"No. It's an alternate timeline that's fucked. So instead they send people into the past to recruit millions of people for their forlorn hope."
"So they aren't going to help the past to stop the future invasion, and actively make the present far worse with a large number of people dying senselessly?"
"Sort of. They need the people in the past to help them make a special toxin in the future. Then that toxin can be used in the past to stop the alien invasion."
"Oh, so they spread that toxin around so the aliens die when they land on Earth?"
"No. The aliens are already here, hibernating. And they mostly get killed by explosives and guns and stuff."
"Pass me more of that weed and we can talk budget."
Also incompetence.