Film 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.
Film The audacity!
Battleship must have been written by someone who was either incredibly ballsy or incredibly stupid. Either way, they've produced one of the most over-the-top, cheese-fest spectaculars since The Expendables. Let's be clear. I loved The Expendables for what it was, and anyone who enjoyed that film would probably like Battleship.
I laughed my ass off through most of this film. I laughed at how they actually managed to associate this with the board game, complete with people shouting out "B3! H12!". It took a hell of a lot of silly contrivances and exposition to do it, but they did it. As I said, balls or stupidity. I laughed even harder when the heroes commandeer a 1940s warship - still prepped and armed, no less - and with some very special help, drive it around like the Blues Mobile. Balls or stupidity.
My hat goes off to the casting choices as well. Liam Neeson plays both a grumpy admiral, and a father to an endangered daughter, whom he never gets to go on a killing spree to rescue. Then there is that guy from True Blood for those who bring the Mrs along (there are plenty of shirtless scenes). Then there is Rhianna. What, Rhianna's in this? Sure, why not. The only person I had trouble with was the protagonist, who I could never ever recognise for some reason. I kept mistaking him for an extra, or one of the minor characters. They needed someone more distinct, with a big bushy beard or something. They might as well.
Although it was probably not the intention of this ridiculous movie to provide me so much mirth, I hesitate to label this as a So Bad Its Good movie. That isn't really what it is. It is what The Expendables was. Or Independence Day. I hate the phrase "its just a dumb action movie", because that always feels like a cheap way to excuse poor film making. But there must be some credence to that argument, because I find myself forgiving all these movies for being as dumb as they are. Refuge In Audacity? Rule Of Cool? Or maybe its because I just like giant warships and massive gunfire. Whatever it is, it works.
Film The better of Taylor Kitsch’s flops.
It's unquestionable that Battleship was conceived for no other reason than a combination of Hasbro owning a license that could be sold and a studio hungry for box-office successes of Transformers. However, all films in Hollywood besides select group of Oscar bait are created to make money first and foremost, and this production was just more transparent than most. Ultimately, it is to be judged by what’s on screen, and here it’s not all bad. There’s a cool moment where they actually manage to replicate the atmosphere of the board game through the use of water-displacement grid. While nonsensical, it actually works. Film strikes a welcome connection with real naval warfare when the first few alien projectiles are shot down with Vulcan Phalanx chainguns. The CGI is consistently competent, even if there was no stand-out moment. The old battleship getting to fight aliens is a genuinely fun and uplifting moment (and I’m a Russian and a leftist, so I’m hardly enamoured towards US military). There is a major Japanese character who’s crucial to their victory, so unlike (first three)Transformers and films in their vain, Battleship tacitly discourages US-centrism and “America can save the world alone” mentality, though it’s success on that field is debatable. Finally, the film touches on the uglier side of war with the legless veteran and the therapy courses he takes, without patronising him and showing he can still be a hero.
Those are the good bits. Sadly, there’s also Taylor Kitsch, who is less odious then John Carter, but is still far from a good protagonist. There’s the pointless Hong Kong devastation: I can accept that alien ship could collide with a satellite (after all, we lost a probe because we didn’t bother to convert from imperial to metric), but the way 10000 deaths are brushed off along with other destruction and forgotten by the end is discouraging. There's no attempt at crafting deeper characters or telling a proper story. What really sinks Battleship, though, are the clichés/contrived alien behaviour. The whole segment with alien soldier on board was a painful cliché. There are alien POV shots, used only to allow for contrived escapes and “justify” transparent Infant Immortality. First alien encounter is a joke: 3 alien ships fighting 3 human ones one at a time.
All in all, Battleship is still a 3/10 film, though it's better then John Carter.