OK, let's talk about why making Battleship into a movie is an extremely dumb
idea.

1) Those of you who watched the Super Bowl saw an ad for this movie. The big
line was "from Hasbro, the makers of Transformers". That's it. No mention of
the director, producer, or any of the actors involved. All they have is that
it's made by a toy company. This is the equivalent of advertising a novel with
"from the people who brought you college ruled stationery"

2) Battleship is a game for ages seven and up. It is a game for children.
During your turn, you get to announce one square you're attacking, no matter
how many ships you have left by the way, and that's it. You are told by your
opponent whether you hit or miss, and that's it. The only major strategy is to
randomly carpet-bomb, until you get a "hit", then attack adjacent squares.
It's not exactly pulse-racing excitement. Why anyone would want to make a
movie about a children's game, but make the movie clearly for adults (the
promos show a variety of sweaty, lightly-clad, good-looking men and women on
the human ships, as well as innocent civilian targets being ripped to shreds
or exploding, so it's not for young kids), and think it was a good idea, is
beyond me. The target audience for the movie isn't exactly going to run out
and buy the game.

3) The classic Hasbro game Battleship is between two identical forces with
identical ships in hidden locations, locked in battle with only each other.
The movie Battleship involves giant alien water spaceships with beyond-human
technology appearing out of nowhere and immediately attacking every city on
Earth, or New York, which (in the movies) is the same thing. The first few
seconds of the trailer show the aliens attacking a busy freeway filled with
families. I don't have the instructions for Battleship lying around, but I'm
fairly sure there's no section that reads "if you fire off the board
completely, you hit a busy freeway and blow up minivans filled with hot soccer
moms and their sweet, innocent children".

4) There are zero people in the classic Hasbro game Battleship. Ships cannot
sail into the enemy fleet and board each other or otherwise exchange
pleasantries. The movie trailer shows eight-foot hulking warriors with giant
guns, blade gauntlets, and power armor stomping around the deck of a human
ship, engaging the unarmed but handsome young protagonist in melee combat,
shortly before the ship's gunner hits it in the face with the largest piece of
artillery made by man.

5) The trailer shows them blowing up the Chrysler Building. Or at least
something that looks a lot like it. This is a movie image that is about as old
and overused as "the cake is a lie" and people really, really need to stop
doing this. Besides the tired old visual, taking out an office building makes
zero sense in a tactical invasion. American military targets aren't exactly
hard to find, and a lot of them are on or near coastlines, espeically the navy
ones (which, apparently, are the big opponeents anyhow). Are these alien
invaders incompetent military planners, really bad shots, or just big fans of
Michael Bay? Hey alien jerks, how about blowing up a Wal-Mart for a change?
You'll probably hit just as many people, make a significant change in their
way of life, and stop them from buying the supplies they'd need to withstand a
long-term alien occupation.

6) So according to IMDB the director is Peter Berg. Do you know who Berg is?
Neither does anyone else. He has more acting roles than directing, mostly in
the TV hospital drama Chicago Hope, a non-violent show fifteen years ago that
was not about the children's game Operation. This is typically not a good
sign. He did direct The Kingdom, which received a 51% showing on
rottentomatoes.com, Very Bad Things, which received a 44%, and Hancock, which
received a 40% showing. This is probably why the trailer didn't showcase the
director. None of his previous movies are about childrens games. As a
director, his only real measure of success was Friday Night Lights, which by
most reviews was a pretty good movie. Friday Night Lights was about the people
involved in a high-school football team struggling in small-town America.
There is good interpersonal dialogue and character development between humans,
and not a single howitzer or space monster.

7) The screenplay for Battleship was written by the Hoeber brothers. The
Hoeber brothers wrote the screenplay for Red, not the member of the excellent
Red/White/Blue French movie series, but the more recent movie starring Bruce
Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Richard Dreyfus, Mary-Louise Parker, and
John Malkovich. It is a humorous action movie that involves human characters
struggling against a deep conspiracy, intrigue, and the realities of their age
and the way the world has changed around them. It is not about the childrens'
game Stratego, or aliens, or blowing up the planet.

The movie stars Liam Neeson. This SHOULD be a huge stroke in the movie's
favor. Sadly, it is not. In the sixty-second trailer, Neeson appears for under
four seconds, with voiceover for another six. His name is not mentioned once.
If I made a movie with Liam Neeson, one of the first things I would put is
"Starring Liam Neeson" all over the trailer in huge red letters. This is the
guy from Taken. And The Grey. And Darkman. And Batman. And Star Wars Episode
1...ok bad example, but bear with me. And he was the voice of Aslan, the
father in Ponyo, and the father in Fallout 3. HE WAS NOMINATED FOR AN OSCAR IN
SCHINDLER'S LIST. And they don't mention his name ONCE in the Super Bowl
trailer.

Why not?

Because the movie is in post-production, and Neeson has already done his part.
And the editors have had the chance to look over his work. If Neeson had hit
his role out of the park, really nailed it and gave a major performance, you'd
think they'd be thrilled with it. So what should we infer from silence?
Clearly, Neeson realized early one what a steaming pile of goat mucus this
movie was and phoned it in, and now the producers are making sure they don't
get called "the movie that killed Liam Neeson's career". Because that would be
unforgivable.

9) Want to know who else is in this movie? So would I. The trailer didn't name
a single actor. Not one. Not even in small script. I looked it up. It's about
a dozen no-names, the guy from Ally McBeal 15 years ago, and Rhianna. This is
Rhianna's first, and I predict, last movie. Generally speaking, singers make
lousy movie leads. There are exceptions. But for every Will Smith, there are
three or four Madonna's, J-Lo's, Brittney Spears's, and Mariah Carey's. The
odds are not in her favor.

10) The movie trailer features Liam Neeson saying something like "They've
created a barrier. Nobody can get in, or out." over a visual of a giant
hemisphere that pokes up through the clouds. OK. Clearly they're trying to set
up the 5-vs-5 no-reinforcements nature of the children's game this movie is
based on. Fair enough. This is then followed by several scenes of the aliens
raining devastation on an American seaport, and an Air Force Base filled with
helicopters. Wait, what was this about nobody getting out again? How are they
still throwing things at us? Also, if nobody can get in, why attack an Air
Force Base?

Ok, so the aliens have put up a barrier. Fine. They must be protecting
something important, otherwise, why have it? I have never made a force field,
but I imagine making a barrier that would stop nuclear weapons covering
hundreds, if not thousands, of cubic miles, would consume a lot of energy. You
wouldn't do it on whim. And these aliens can't possibly have an unlimited
energy supply. Why? Their main weapon of city destruction appears to be these
flying razor balls with chain whips. In the first 10 seconds of the trailer,
one hits a road going perpendicular to it and smashes a few cars, then the
road collapses so a few more cars fall through. If you had an unlimted energy
supply, why wouldn't you throw explosives? I'm willing to bet a bomb, made by
Earth US technology, the size of the razor whip balls in the trailer, could
not only break a few yards of highway, but make an explosion a lot wider than
a few yards. The term "daisy cutter" comes to mind. So does "Fat Man". Are the
aliens just playing a big misunderstood game of lawn darts here? Or did they
come from the planet where impenetrable force fields are $59.99 and weapons of
mass destruction $100 gazillion?

Fortunately for Planet Earth, inside the force field are, as the children's
game dictates, one submarine and one battleship (and some other stuff),
staffed by people with American accents, and also Liam Neeson (who I
understand is Irish). According to wikipedia, the last US battleships were
decommissioned in the early 1990's, and no other navy has one in active
service. I realize they're not making a historical documentary, but the very
namesake of the children's game is simply not available. You might as well
name the movie "Giant Hovercrafts that run on Chocolate" for all the relevance
it offers. And while not every US submarine carries nuclear weapons, they are
all nuclear powered. Since the movie heavily features the title ships firing
their huge in-no-way-phallic guns, the assumption is that those guns would
have some effect on the enemy. One would further assume that a nuclear
explosion would be pretty final on anything vulnerable to a 16-inch shell. The
movie trailer mentions this is an "extinction-level event" and that mankind,
as a whole, is threatened. So, guess what? Someone's going to yank their
cooling rods, take one for the team and end that invasion really quick.

Unbelievable.
Shinarae Lluminus