Battleship: Rating **/*****, or
3/10
It seems
the alien invasion subgenre of science fiction is in full decline as
far as quality is concerned, though when it comes to quantity, it's
rarely done better. The last few years numerous alien invasion films
have invaded our movie theatres trying to rule the box-office, but
most of them failed due to humanity's natural resilience against bad
movies. Last year's examples include Skyline, Cowboys &
Aliens, The Darkest Hour and Transformers: Dark of the
Moon, but on the 'badness' scale none of these were a match for
the stupendously dismal World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles,
which chronicled the fight of a rag-tag group of marines against a
vastly superior extraterrestrial intelligence. It was a complete
defiance of logic and a total waste of everybody's time and money,
particularly for the audience – okay, so I can get in for free, but
I'd still like those two hours back...– Now Battleship
comes sailing into the cinemas to pull off the same trick (i.e., bore
the audience some more at the expense of their no doubt hard earned
cash that had better be spend on something more worthwhile), except
it takes the fight to the seas instead of rehashing the land based
routine. And in the process it manages to defile the name of a
classic board game, on which it claims to have been based, though the
connection is hardly ever present, other than in the simple presence
of a battleship.
Apparently
using the concept of one fleet of ships being pitched against another
and taking each other out was either not politically correct in the
current climate, or the studio executives considered it too boring.
So the line of thought seems to have been that if there's no human
adversaries to combat, the threat must come from outer space.
Battleship opens with an expositional scene explaining the
existence of large radio telescopes on Hawaii which are used to send
signals to a distant solar system that might contain an Earth like
planet. Lo and behold, the signals are received and the resident
aliens return our call of hospitality by sending in an invasion force
which crashes into the Pacific – except for one starship which hits
downtown Hong Kong instead, resulting in the typical levels of
destruction à la Armageddon,
spectacular but devoid of emotion – around the same time a
huge international naval exercise is underway in that area, featuring
participants from many countries, and of course led by the good ol'
United States ready to gallantly defend our freedom from foreign
agressors seeking to take it from us (think Independence Day,
except with less impressive results on all fronts).
Naturally,
a face must be put on the heroic side to make the resulting drama
(what little of it there is amidst all the action anyway) feel
compelling, and that face belongs to Taylor Kitsch, in the role of
Lieutenant Alex Hopper. Kitsch recently managed to save Mars from
internal political turmoil by uniting warring factions against a
common enemy in the epic space opera John Carter, so this next
task should prove easy enough for him. Alex is kind of a rebel, a
loudmouth screw-up with problems adhering to authority, who is about
to get kicked out of the navy, much to the chagrin of his more
responsible and successful older brother Stone Hopper (portrayed by
everybody's favorite True Blood vampire actor Alexander
Skarsgard, no fangs) who hoped the navy would provide some much
needed stability for his loose gun kid sibling. To complicate
matters, Alex is madly in love with the daughter of Admiral Shane
(Liam Neeson in a typically commanding performance, something we're
used to in his case), so the admiral holds him in great contempt and
is all too eager to dismiss him from the service. Fortunately for
Alex, aliens conveniently come and provide an opportunity to prove
his worth and set things right, saving his love life and his career.
Warning!
Here be spoilers! During the navy war games, strange objects
are spotted in the ocean, at which point the admiral dispatches three
vessels to investigate, including Alex's. Upon closer inspection, the
objects turn out to be (very digital) alien spaceships which
immediately deploy a huge force field, which envelops the Hawaii
islands, and cuts the fleet off from the three destroyers locked
within, after which a cat and mouse game ensues between the human and
alien warships involving a lot of gunfire and explosions. Why the
aliens can't simply protect themselves with separate force fields
instead of proving to be all too easy to destroy with simple cannon
fire is just one of the many questions the conflict raises over the
next hour and a half. Within ten minutes two out of three navy ships
have been destroyed and all officers including bloodsucker Eric
Northman have been killed off, so Alex gets his chance to shine and
kick some alien ass, accompanied by his distrusting crew who give him
the benefit of the doubt only to find he can do the job after all.
Among the ranks we find the recording artist Rihanna, offering some
female empowerment in her first film role. Don't worry, she doesn't
sing, and neither does she do much acting.
The
aliens' interest in the Hawaii islands, other than their stunning
natural beauty and fantastically sensual beaches of course, is
focused on the presence of the aforementioned telescopes, which the
aliens mean to commandeer so they can call in reinforcements from
their home planet, since their space craft downed in China apparently
was the only ship capable of communicating with home base (yeah, that
makes perfect sense, if you take your audience to consist solely of
morons). The action of Battleship therefore is not limited to
the ocean, but also witnesses a struggle on land between the aliens
and a small group of valiant braves consisting of Alex's girlfriend,
a local telescope scientist and a crippled marine with prosthetic
legs, attempting to foil the evil schemes of the invaders. Of course
the girlfriend is total eye candy, the scientist is a stereotypical
hairy nerd who turns to cowardice (after all, science created this
mess which the navy must now clean up) and the ex-marine feels like
an uncomfortable attempt to give credit to the many battle scarred
troops in the armed forces who might not be compatible with the hard
business of soldiery anymore but can still prove to be useful human
beings when it comes down to it. A noble sentiment, but not the best
time to express it if you want the audience to take things seriously.
The
movie proceeds to press the latter point too much when the plot calls
for a new ship to save the day after the three destroyers have met
the fate their class name suggests they should have done to the
enemy. Only one true battleship remains, the near legendary USS
Missouri, and though it's a museum piece she's still ready for
action, as is the sturdy crew of very old veterans who preserved her
and get called upon for active duty once more. And so the movie
reaches its lowest point when we see these seniors walk down the
decks in excessive slow motion as truly heroic characters, reporting
for duty in order to save the day. Any sense of seriousness this
movie might have offered before this point now gets completely undone
in a single moment of utter camp, while it remains unclear whether
this is what director Peter Berg (also responsible for the not so
funny superhero spoof Hancock) intended.
And so
the final battle for the fate of the planet begins, when the Missouri
squares of against the vile extra-terrestrials all by itself guns
fully blazing. It proves to be as tiresome and overly loud a
confrontation as the rest of them, and all too soon forgotten when
the lights in the theatre go on. In fact, though the action might
deliver some minor entertainment during the course of the movie, none
of it proves memorable, also due to the obvious levels of computer
generated imagery that never makes the invaders, be it the aliens
themselves or their vessels, feel convincingly real. What's worse, in
the heat of battle even the battleships feel overly pixelized at
times. The design of the extra-terrestrial aggressors is also lacking
originality, except for the silly beard like appendages on their face
which makes the threat and thus the film itself that much harder to
take seriously (if the platoon of old folks hadn't ruined it
completely yet). And when you take into consideration that their
motives for attacking humanity are never explained and clearly badly
executed, it's obvious Battleship is yet another pointless
addition to the plethora of lame alien invasion films that have
plagued moviegoers for the last few years. Being based on a much
beloved board game does not excuse studio executives to regurgitate
their recent failures.
The
original Battleship board game was a game of wits and skill,
but the resulting movie employs neither and appears to be nothing but
a haphazard attempt to out-Bay Michael Bay by applying his noisy and
irritating style of action to yet another Hasbro owned toy franchise
(as if the Transformers trilogy wasn't headache inducing
enough), undoubtedly also intended to sell more Hasbro products. The
latter might not be a bad suggestion, since saving the money for two
tickets for this film can buy you the board game instead, which is
guaranteed to make for more fun for two than watching the Battleship
movie could ever hope to achieve.
Oh well,
at least we still have The Avengers to remind us alien
invasion films can still be done right occasionally...
And
watch the trailer here:
