Battleship

 Creating movies based on toys has become somewhat of a trend over the past few years. A trend that has resulted in very mixed results with the original Transformers movie being the pinnacle and everything after that has pretty much been Razzie quality movies. Peter Berg and Universal Studios thought it would be a great idea to bring Battleship to the big screen which is an adaptation that no one was asking for. I must have also misunderstood the game because I don’t remember it being about an alien invasion of Earth.

The movie tells the story of a down on his luck loser, Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), who is enlisted into the Navy by his brother (Alexander Skarsgard) after a night of drunkenness leads him to being arrested and tased. Fast forward several years and he now is involved with the daughter (Brooklyn Decker) of his Admiral (Liam Neeson) and he needs to muster up the courage to ask the Admiral for his daughter’s hand in marriage. At the same time a signal sent out by NASA to a far distant planet resembling ours has made contact with an alien civilization and they are on their way to Earth. The alien crafts land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and a battle between the Navy and the Aliens ensues with the fate of Earth hanging in the middle. The basic premise of this movie sounds a little convoluted and it really is when you see it on screen. Also, Rihanna shows up in the movie if you didn’t already know.

Goes to Brooklyn Decker simply being on screen throughout the course of the movie. She is amazing to look at and is not atrocious in the acting department, so I consider that a win. The special effects are good for the most part if a little overused. The standout actor in the movie is Tadanobu Asano, who plays Captain Nagata. He seems to be one of the only actors trying in the movie and you get some great moments from his character. Taylor Kitsch may be a “leading man” in the eyes of the Hollywood bigwigs, but they need to learn to start people off with smaller movies. He has great screen presence but unfortunately he talks like Christian Bale’s Batman 90% of the time that he is on screen. Give the kid a few leading roles in smaller movies then give him the chance to headline the summer blockbusters. There is no rush.

The whole idea of the aliens coming to Earth is pretty weak and you could tell that the writers had absolutely no idea how make a movie based on the original board game, Battleship. I don’t ever remember saying “B-10. Your alien cruiser sunk my battleship”. The whole idea was convoluted to begin with and didn’t get any better throughout the course of the movie. Liam Neeson, why did you have to do this movie? You were on such a good string of movies and then you get involved in this pile of poop. He probably just needed the money because that is exactly the way he acted in the movie. I’m willing to forgive him for being in this movie if Taken 2 is as badass as the first one. Casting Rihanna in a major role in a major Hollywood blockbuster, come on. Big music star does not mean great actress. She looked like she was reading out of the clichés for tough chicks in movies. She makes January Jones look like Charlize Theron. I hate myself for comparing January Jones and Charlize Theron, never again.

Final Verdict

This is one of the dumbest summer blockbusters I have ever seen. It made the last two Transformers movie look magnificent in comparison. It also proved to me that no matter how many special effects you have in a movie, it cannot hide a turd of a plot. Also just wanted to take a second to wish Peter Berg the best of luck and hope he continues to make painfully mediocre movies.