Movie Review: Battleship

It's Fortress America Day!  Most people call it Black Friday, but over a decade back, I played the Milton Bradley board game "Fortress America" with my long-lost buddy Greer on this day.  And since that day, I've wanted to play the game again when this part of year comes around.

The Milton Bradley game "Fortress America."  Everybody but Canada is against you.  And we're kinda suspicious of those Canadians, eh?  / Source: HiewanBoardgames.blogspot.com

Funny, but today's review is based on another board game-turned-movie.  After reading the review, you may wish that somebody made a movie out of "Fortress America" instead.  And they did!  Well, not really.  The recent remake of Red Dawn might qualify.  But from what I've heard, it is not much better than Battleship.  I'll stick to the 80s film, I guess.


Battleship (2012)



A fleet of ships is forced to do battle with an armada of unknown origins in order to discover and thwart their destructive goals. Short synopsis of Battleship taken from IMDb.com 


This is not Battleship Potemkin, that's for sure. Of course I refer to Eisenstein's masterpiece of early twenty century cinema in which the crew of a Tsarist era naval vessel mutiny against their officers and the regime which they serve. No, this Battleship falls more in the big budget/big bang/small thought film category. And believe me, it won't be remembered near as long as Eisenstein's film. Of that, I can almost guarantee.

Now before I go too much further, let me say that I didn't completely hate Battleship. It had its charms. After all, it is nice to watch something fairly mindless when there is so much on your mind, as has been the case lately. And I did view this while I was down sick with a really fast moving illness of unknown sort (almost like the aliens of the movie, they come and go in a lot of fuss and heat and aches and pains, but leave hardly a trace of their presence once the body - that is the U.S. Navy - beats them soundly).

During Battleship, I couldn't help but feel a sense of Deja-vu. Was Michael Bay involved in this thing, I wondered? It's a lot like the last two Transformers movies, only without Shia LeBouf (thankfully).

For one thing, I couldn't help but wonder how our slacker of a main character goes from robbing a convenience store to get a chicken burrito for his soon-to-be girlfriend, a supermodel-turned-physical therapist (Brooklyn Decker - now is that a stripper name or what?) and - coincidentally - daughter of the local big time admiral, played with gravity by Liam Neeson, to a Lieutenant in the Navy. Sorry, but not buying it.
 

The alien "chipper-shredder" robots attacking one of the good guys' Arleigh Burke class Destroyers (one of the most capable naval vessels afloat today).  The movie is chock full of scenes similar to this one. / Source: Tweaktown.com

Further, I found it oh-so-convenient that this slacker-come-officer's brother just happens to be on one of the three destroyers that are trapped in the alien's forcefield. Worse yet, this brother then conveniently gets killed in a heroic and touching scene where the U.S. side fires on the "bad-guys" and then is fired upon in return. The scene takes great pains to show us that the military guys did the first shooting, so as to get us to believe that the aliens were only acting as they saw (you know, monkey-see, monkey do?). But then, as the film so often does, we toss all this pretense out of the water in a matter of minutes and establish that the aliens are evil and are just here to destroy our world and do us a bad turn in any way, shape, or form they might. So don't concern yourself too much with their imitation of our actions that led to open hostiles, ok?

Speaking of coincidences, how do all the "peg" bombs the bad guys use manage to land post side down? And none of them hit and bounce off, as statistic probability predicts? Yes, the U.S. and other nations use self-stabilizing weapons dropped from the air on a regular basis, but they don't all work perfectly either. Come on, guys. Was it in the contract that the movie had to resemble the board game so much, or something?

I hadn't put together the connection that these peg bombs look like the playing pieces from the board game until I read it online, or I would call them something other than "peg" bombs. And you're telling me that aliens come millions of light years in such a short amount of time (beacon only started in 2006, that's a pretty fast turn-around for interstellar travel, kids) and they don't have anything better than lobbing explosive things from their ships? Hmmm...

Oh, and on the line of silly game-based gimmicks, how about the part with the NOAA buoys and the destroyer shooting off missiles to try and hit the alien ships without using those expensive guidance systems - ala the game mechanic in "Battleship?" And the whole idea that they can't stand sunlight like we can? Yes, I can imagine how an alien race would be differently adapted than we are. That's no stretch. But they come here and shut down our technology, and yet they can't do anything more than visual, close range attacks? And hit 'em in the eye and they're out of luck? Pretty lame aliens.

You know what I think? What this movie really needs is more explosions. Not nearly enough of them, for my taste. No, it needs more Rihanna. No wait, more music cues! No, more patriotism! No, more lens flare (I was starting to wonder at times if the aliens brought lens flare with them as a form of non-lethal crowd control or something). No, more green is good and red is bad. Because after all, aliens think in those terms too, you see. No, I've got it, this film really needs more slow motion. Yeah, more slow motion.

One word name actress Rihanna manning a minigun aboard the ship's launch that goes to investigate the alien stuff in the water.  With so much starpower on this little boat (our main protagonist, played by Taylor Kitsch, is also aboard), there is no chance it'll get sunk. / Source: Idolator.com

Oh yeah, am I the only one who saw the end credits song as ironic? "Fortunate Son," by Creedence Clearwater Revival? That's a weird choice for a rabidly patriotic explosion-filled soulless summer action flick.

What else is there to say? How about the part where the aliens do the mind-meld thing? Our hero, when he touches the unconscious alien and it wakes up, sees its thoughts and knows they are here to invade us. You know, just once, I'd like to see an alien group not do something predictable. Because really, if Hollywood has predicted alien invasions correctly, our world has very little to fear. Especially because they - the aliens, that is - seem intent on not hurting innocent civilians for some reason. Like I said, green is good, and red is dead - err... bad, I mean.

And don't get me started on that whole beacon thing, or the supposedly "deep space" satellite, or the tooth-knocking out fight that the former U.S. serviceman (the one who lost his legs in the Middle East, who was actually one of the better pats of the film) did on that alien on the mountain, or worst of all, the change of heart by our geeky tech guy who comes to the rescue at the most opportune time.

Oh, and why do we (as aliens that is), come to rescue one of our lost soldier guys, and then leave one behind to run amok in the Navy's destroyer? To what point and purpose, huh? You could say that there are lot's of strange reversals in this movie.

When I started this review, I did say I didn't hate this movie. So what were the good parts? Well, there were lots of explosions. The film was certainly exciting. And it had good music for the most part, even though there was a lot of it. The AC/DC "Thunderstruck" music cue for the USS Missouri montage, where the good guys get the floating museum that is World War II in the Pacific's culminating moment (the Japanese surrender took place onboard) was kind of cool.

The USS Missouri was called out of retirement during all the major conflicts of the twentieth century.  The image shows her sixteen inch guns providing off-shore fire support during Operation Desert Storm.  Though the Missouri was not the most powerful dreadnaught of World War II (that would be the Japanese vessel Yamoto), it is practically eponymous when the word "battleship" is used today. / Source: ThomasWilsonStoryteller.blogspot.com

On that note, it was nice to see naval warfare getting attention. Especially that part where we see the sinking of the John Paul Jones by those aliens robot chipper-shredder things. And the involvement of the Japanese Navy helped save it from being too jingoistic. Although I think the Chinese, who lose quite a few people when one of the incoming spaceships hits an orbiting satellite (don't get me started on that!) and veers off course, might have something to say about the "us-them" dynamic of the film. People who the U.S. is friendly with are bloodied, but come out well. The Chinese just come off looking like victims, which I'm sure they don't appreciate much.

I could go on ragging for awhile, but why? The filmmakers put together a money pot based on a flimsy idea, and it came out almost exactly like any thinking person could have predicted. I spent fifty cents on the rental; it was one of those Redbox "you rented one movie at full price, so why not get a second title for only a little more?"-deals. It was only worth what I paid, in my opinion. Naval warfare could have been done in just as interesting a manner without aliens. It's just easier not to, I guess.


The parting comment:

Source: LolSnaps.com

 For those of you who don't like blonde jokes, I apologize.  But this seems like the sort of logic I've been exposed to while watching Battleship.  So one good turn deserves another.  Besides, that makes god sense, doesn't it?  I'd go at night too, if it'd work.  Doh!