Battleship possess many hallmarks of Michael Bay movies; pretty explosions, chest-thumping for the US military and a plot with as much substance as the scruples of the average banker. Plot holes abound that are often highly illogical. For example, the aliens can travel interstellar distances but apparently do not have sufficiently advanced telemetry to avoid crashing their most vital ship into a satellite. Throughout the movie we have very little idea why exactly the aliens have travelled all the way to our Insignificant Little Blue Planet. They do not seem to be trying to establish contact with the human race, they come in insufficient numbers for conquest and if they are advance scouts, their actions just alerted our world of their possibly hostile intentions.
That is not to say that the humans in this movie fare very much better. Hopper has very few redeeming qualities. He is brash, violent and impulsive; one wonders how he managed to finish his military training let alone earn a commission as an officer. It’s even lampshaded in the movie itself: when the men aboard the John Paul Jones learn that Hopper is now in charge, the usual reaction is “he’s going to get all of us killed”. His subsequent heroism then comes out of left field. If the movie were more self aware, you could suspect that Hopper is really a rather mean-spirited caricature of an Eagleland Flavour 2 Jerk Sue. He gets the girl, wins medals and receives a promotion for driving off aliens that were not even initially hostile. Were they here to uplift humanity? Did they need to establish communications in order to bestow on us the secrets of immortality? We will never know.
Then there’s the Battleship scene which is the film’s money shot. It more or less encapsulates the entire film. If you can turn off the part of your brain that says “that’s impossible”, “What An Idiot” or the Eight Deadly Words then you will enjoy this film. In those respects it does well. The special effects are good and the actions scenes entertaining. The acting is decent enough even if the script is not. It lays before you not a profound examination of human nature but a film meant to entertain on a superficial level. If that is indeed its intent then it succeeds admirably.
Numb Your Brain to Get Any Gain
Battleship possess many hallmarks of Michael Bay movies; pretty explosions, chest-thumping for the US military and a plot with as much substance as the scruples of the average banker. Plot holes abound that are often highly illogical. For example, the aliens can travel interstellar distances but apparently do not have sufficiently advanced telemetry to avoid crashing their most vital ship into a satellite. Throughout the movie we have very little idea why exactly the aliens have travelled all the way to our Insignificant Little Blue Planet. They do not seem to be trying to establish contact with the human race, they come in insufficient numbers for conquest and if they are advance scouts, their actions just alerted our world of their possibly hostile intentions.
That is not to say that the humans in this movie fare very much better. Hopper has very few redeeming qualities. He is brash, violent and impulsive; one wonders how he managed to finish his military training let alone earn a commission as an officer. It’s even lampshaded in the movie itself: when the men aboard the John Paul Jones learn that Hopper is now in charge, the usual reaction is “he’s going to get all of us killed”. His subsequent heroism then comes out of left field. If the movie were more self aware, you could suspect that Hopper is really a rather mean-spirited caricature of an Eagleland Flavour 2 Jerk Sue. He gets the girl, wins medals and receives a promotion for driving off aliens that were not even initially hostile. Were they here to uplift humanity? Did they need to establish communications in order to bestow on us the secrets of immortality? We will never know.
Then there’s the Battleship scene which is the film’s money shot. It more or less encapsulates the entire film. If you can turn off the part of your brain that says “that’s impossible”, “What An Idiot” or the Eight Deadly Words then you will enjoy this film. In those respects it does well. The special effects are good and the actions scenes entertaining. The acting is decent enough even if the script is not. It lays before you not a profound examination of human nature but a film meant to entertain on a superficial level. If that is indeed its intent then it succeeds admirably.