Battleship.

So far on our journey of 2012 we've had one masterpiece, one movie that sucked a little less than I really expected and one movie I just really didn't get... now we have this. Enjoy!


The thing about Battleship is that despite the panning the critics gave this thing, pretty much everyone who is anyone who decided to go see the movie anyway came out of the theatre with a shit eating grin, claiming they had a good time. It went from me assuming it was a coincidence to me believing this was just 'critics not getting it syndrome' (check out my Lockout review for further explanation) and decided to give the thing a chance.

Critics hated this movie, they said the characters were paper thin, they said the dialogue was awful, that it was clichéd up the butt (still not claiming this a valid criticism), it has been called a 'Michael Bay Movie' (which is the worst thing you can call something after a 'Uwe Boll Movie'), unimaginative, boring - basically calling it overall, a clunky, overly clinical CGIfest. That isn't to say there wasn't some positive stuff floating around too, some critics were actually able to enjoy it just on the level of fun (shocked gasps from the audience), there has been praise for the special effects and that the film makes use of the board game it's based on quite logically but really those were a few muffled voices in a crowd of angry critics.

Was this just another case of snooty critics 'not getting it'? Well let's dig into Battleship.

Battleship is a good movie, but I can't help but feel this will be a more negative, than positive review. Mainly that despite the movie being good, its construction only leaves you feeling disappointed. The first hour of the movie is a surprisingly human drama about war and those who fight in it and a sci-fi, first contact plot, then the aliens arrive, set up their forcefield and it is as if the aliens don't just cut the area off from the world, but they cut off the next hour and a half from the rest of the movie because from here it descends into a mostly heartless, logic devoid explosionfest. And all the action is incredibly thrilling, don't get me wrong, but it's like being thrown into a different movie entirely, a considerably more stupid movie. I mean you can't spend an hour glorifying the American Navy and applying so much humility to war, of the humans that fight in it - and the victims, to then have hundreds of the men and women working there blown to smithereens, it just feels wrong. You can't follow up a heartbreaking story of a man loosing his legs, and his fight, which is shown with such respect with huge explosions and beyblades, that shit doesn't work.

This can be said for a lot of the narrative in the movie, on the one hand the sci-fi elements are surprisingly maturely handled for this kind of film. The plot plays itself straight and feels like a fairly well realised, grounded plot about the possibility of alien contact with it building a lot of tension as our scientists slowly study the alien artefacts - it feels much like what you would find in a much more serious, low key science fiction drama, maybe even 'high brow' to some extent. And this is balanced with the aliens apparently coming from planet Transformers 1984...it just feels so weird, so wrong, these pieces don't belong together.

The first hour is about the Beacon Project, basically in distant space they discover a planet with just the right living conditions to sustain life and attempt to contact the planet. Although, do they mean human life? Surely if they are aliens, concepts like 'a planet is too cold to live on' is surely void, if there is going to be life, wouldn't it just be life that could adapt to those surroundings? I don't know, I'm not a scientist. Although I did like that they called it 'Planet G' - the swaggest planet in the galaxy. They find out they do indeed make contact, aliens come to Earth and then we get an hour and a half of... explosions? There really is very little reason for an all out war to start with the humans and the aliens and it is a dramatic tone shift for the movie, I mean it seems even suggested that the aliens don't attack living beings directly (although this is never explained - the navy obliterate them after only trying to make contact with them once), I mean you quickly forget all this amongst all the thrills, but still.

And the pacing doesn't help anything either. The film is really long, over two hours and at times it really feels it, it just seems to take forever for the plot to get going, but then the explosions start and the film goes screaming past, jumping around so wildly you can barely follow the thing. Calm down, child.

And neither is the acting...Hopper is played by Taylor Kitsch, he plays your typical bum, slacker who now has to be a hero archetype. He may not be able to hold a steady job, he may rely on his successful brother, but he'll save the world, Hollywood has said so for the last fifty or so years! After a 'hilarious' scene of him robbing a store, he is kicked off to the navy to learn discipline and then the movie just jumps ahead and suddenly everything is great, yay? Although we never see it and he spends much of the movie making stupid decisions, Hopper is apparently some kind of Navy genius and has flown up the ranks. However despite this, he is going to get kicked out of the Navy anyway but some contrivances later, he ends up the highest ranking officer on his ship and starts an all out war against aliens. Liam Neeson is in the film for all of five minutes, basically playing the character he has always played for the last five or so years. Both Kitsch and really the rest of the cast, put on awful performances, about the only person I really liked in this movie, ironically, was Rihanna who plays Raikes, our badass chick of the movie - and my God is she ever.

The script isn't helping either, it is just so bogged down with clichés, which I know isn't a criticism, but when the dialogue and story is just this generic, it feels less like humans talking and more like humans taking it in turns quoting other movies of the genre. And the ending of this film, you could probably tell me what it is, without ever seeing the thing.

Battleship is indeed a CGIfest, but the CGI is actually some of the best I have ever seen. These screengrabs really don't do it justice. Some of it actually looks genuinely convincing and real, I think that may well be the first time I've ever said that in a review. And it is nice, in moderation, to the escape to the big, flashy world of a Blockbuster and it is even more rewarding when your occasional treat looks this damn fantastic. And I mean like, this is a proper blockbuster, no big and flashy on a small scale - this is all out. Massive shock waves, huge explosions, buildings will get destroyed, huge ships will have all out battles etc it is just so awesome even when the movie literally turns its setting into the Battleship game board, it's just done in such a loud, dramatic way, it still feels so big, not just in scale but just everything is huge, flashy, loud - so quick and exciting. It manages to be just as consistent in fist fights and gunfights as well, with the aliens awesome armour and lots of people being hurled around. Admittedly it seems to a certain extent that the reason that it looks so great, is that it is devoid of pretty much any artistic flair. It must be much easier to create something convincing the blander they make it. I get the whole militaristic feel and all that, so the aliens won't be like bright pink with polka dots but this is basically 'Angular Chrome - The Movie', as big, flashy and convincing the CGI is it can get a little boring when the production is this bland.

Much can be said for the aliens themselves, which have so few differences to actual humans, they wouldn't look out of place on the 60's Star Trek. Why are aliens always so humanoid? The likelihood that two planets would have the same evolution trajectory is like a billion to one and I get that they introduce the Swag Planet as basically being Earth Two, but that still doesn't make sense that they are basically ugly humans with weird hands, especially considering it seems to balance that whole suggestion of them just being us, with them having weapons we are seemingly thousands of years away from - it makes no sense! It also makes no sense that if this is a Earth like planet, why have they got reptilian eyes and cant handle the sun? The more I think about any of this the more it just seems to fall apart. Admittedly though, when the weapons are this cool, you can kind of ignore the distinct lack of logic.

What they do with the Battleship concept is frankly amazing. I mean I guess it is kind of odd they went for this whole sci-fi thing because that has absolutely nothing to do with the game and the movie openly admits battleships are now no longer used but it actually manages to write the gameplay of the actual board game...into the movie and it works, it's super cool and super clever. And they also manage to find a way to get the main characters on a battleship for the final battle, even though they are obsolete in today's world. They've done a surprising amount with a game completely devoid of plot or characters and made it work.

So do I recommend it? It isn't until the credits role and you start to think back over the movie when you realise just how bland and generic the film you just watched, was. I mean don't get me wrong, it has some kick ass special effects, awesome action sequences and some surprisingly well realised drama but really it is just as brain achingly devoid of logic as any other blockbuster, so come for the explosions sure but don't be fooled by the drama and the suggestion that there could be so much more here because there isn't. There is nothing other than explosions to be found here but they are explosions done so fucking fantastically, that that is okay.

Think About It!

-Locke