Critique of unread novel and seen movie "I Am Number Four"

Though the premise and ideas behind the novel and its movie version are ones that highly interest me, I've not read the novel but have now seen the movie. In looking over the official site for movie I was immediately struck by what I think is a huge plot hole. Read on if you dare.

Allegedly penned by an alien, Pittacus Lore, the novel I Am Number Four is the basis for the 2011 movie of the same title starring Alex Pettyfer as alien teen John Smith (that is, Pittacus Lore). Geeze, wouldn't he be suspected immediately of extraterrestrial or non-USA origins with a name like that?

What bugged me about the premise of this novel and movie are the ruthless aliens that destroyed the population of his home planet Lorien. Come on people, if the "evil Mogadorian" (their name even sounds evil) wiped out the population of one planet, what's to stop them from doing the same in one fell swoop to poor, defenseless Earth. I hate to say it, but these 18 Lorienites who came here for refuge are not that enlightened if they're using Earth and its population as a planetary shield against the Mogadorian, hoping, I think, that whatever "humanity" their enemy possesses might be swayed by the beauty of our world. Well, folks, in the real world, an implacable enemy simply is not going to hunt its prey one by one, it will choose the shock and awe option every time. Humans of course learned this lesson long ago.

But then the novel series Lorien Legacies (the second installment is called The Power of Six) and the movie's sequel would not exist and Pittacus Lore would not be laughing all the way to his or her alien bank.

As far as the movie itself goes, I don't think an adequate explanation was given about the war between the two alien species, both of whom of course are humanoid in appearance, the Lorienites enough so that they can pass as humans while the Mogadorians, who comically dress like the good guys (and girls) in The Matrix movies have gills on either side of their noses and tiny sharp teeth. All males, they're bald and with intricate tattoos.We're told by Henri (Timothy Olyphant), John Smith's Lorienite guardian/warrior, that the Mogadorians don't colonize, they decimate planets and then move on. So my question is: why such a small force of Mogadorians to hunt 18, if the bad aliens know there's a nice defeneseless planet ripe for decimating, why not commit all their resources? As it was, they kind of skulked around secretly until the final showdown. It also puzzled me why no one seemed to think to call the National Guard out once the firefight broke out at the high school and where were all the gun-toting militiamen. I mean we were in the heartland of America.

The movie and the relationship between the hero and his high school sweetie reminded me a lot of the Twilight films.

Overall, the film was well acted, well paced and despite my dissatisfaction with the bad and the good aliens' psychology, I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction films. The film has a lot of echoes of many other movies including Jumper, Push The X-Files and even Star Wars.