Battleship (2012)

Those who have read my ‘Jack and Jill’ review, will remember that the review ended with this; “if it isn’t the worst film I see this year, something went terribly wrong”. Guess what? Something went terribly wrong. Oh God yeah! This film is WORSE than Adam Sandler getting dressed in drag!

This film infuriated me. But then again, I suppose it’s my own damn fault. You see, I was a huge fan of the game ‘Battleship’, it was one of, if not the, favourite game I had when I was a kid. For those who have no idea what the game is, it’s a guessing game. You play against another player, with the aim being to destroy the other players ships, five in total. You announce a co-ordinate, and if you hit the ship, you place a red peg on that co-ordinate on your side, if you miss you place a white peg. The ship’s controller meanwhile places a red peg on the section which was ‘hit’, until every section has a red peg, in which case the ship is destroyed.

THERE ARE NO ALIENS INVOLVED. Seriously! All you need, is one HUMAN fleet, against another! That’s essentially when I knew this film was going to suck, the second the trailer showed an alien fleet coming to Earth. But to be fair, I decided I should actually watch this film before I criticised it.

Granted the people behind the film most likely decided to go with aliens, rather than another nation, so they wouldn’t offend said nation. Then again, when the aliens displayed their technology, one guy on the American warship says it’s the North Koreans. Yes, he says North Korea is behind this. The same country that has only recently developed its first nuclear weapon back in 2006, and whose recent long range missile test failed horribly. Then again ‘Die Another Day’ shows they can develop a solar powered satellite cannon, so the fear is pretty understandable.

Anyway, despite the aliens, I can say they did do some little references to the game I liked, such as the aliens firing peg shaped ammunition. Oh wait, that’s it. Well, okay it’s technically a lie. The thing I was looking forward to, was some sort of variation of the line “You sunk my battleship”. The closest we get to it, is “They’re NOT sinking this battleship”. I hate this film.

The thing that really grinds my gears though, are the characters. I have not seen characters as stupid, bland, or downright irritating since ‘Nuclear Hurricane’. I need to explain some scenes to point this out. We’re first told about how a planet, similar to our own, has been discovered, and NASA sends a communication signal in order to see if there’s intelligent life. A NASA scientist named Cal (Hamish Linklater) says it’s like “Columbus and the Indians, but we’re the Indians”. How does he know this? He read the script of course! Rihanna’s character later delivers what is effectively the same line again.

But the thing is, NASA sends out this communication signal, but everyone is shocked and confused when they actually get a response! Why do you think you’re sending a signal into space you idiots?! I can understand the surprise of getting a response, but wondering why you’re getting one when you’re sending a signal into space is stupid!

Oh, and that’s just a minor supporting character, we also have our main jackass! Alex’ (Taylor Kitsch) opening scene involves him and his brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) drinking at a bar. Alex is drunk. Of course. He meets Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), who just can’t seem to understand that bars do tend to stop serving food at a certain time. I don’t know how bars in America work, but here in Britain EVERY pub stops serving food at about nine pm!

This is, of course, Alex’ love interest, and you won’t believe what he does. In order to get her attention, Alex goes over to the convenience store, which is closing and the owner says it’s too late. So in normal circumstance, you’d expect he’d give up right? Wrong. Alex BREAKS into the store, falling through the roof in the process, STEALS a chicken burrito, causes more damage while breaking out, RESISTS the POLICE, and promptly gets TAZERED. And bizarrely, Alex does NOT get arrested, as he’s at his brother’s place the very next morning. And somehow, all of this WORKS. Seven years later and Alex and Samantha want to get married. So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong, I’ve just been asking girls out, oh no, what I need to do, is break several laws and get tazered.

Following his law breaking, Alex is forced to join the Navy, and in seven years is already a Lieutenant. I admit, I’m not an expert on the military, but you’re seriously telling me that Alex has already been promoted to Lieutenant? Or maybe it’s like Rico in ‘Starship Troopers’. Oh, and Samantha just happens to be the daughter of the Admiral, played by Liam Neeson. I would say that Liam Neeson automatically makes this film awesome, especially since he’s the only brilliant actor in this, but he’s hardly in this.

You know what, I’ll talk about the acting here. It’s awful! Truly, truly awful! They’re all bland, there’s no emotion, no feeling. Except for Neeson, but again, he’s hardly in this. This film also marks the debut of Rihanna, and as you can expect, she is awful. There was this article in The Sun newspaper which was about Jackie Carrizona (pictured left), the ex-US Navy officer who trained Rihanna. You know, rather than spend money on Rihanna, then more money on training her, maybe you could’ve just gotten Carrizona! At worst she would’ve given the same performance as Rihanna! I think she’s more attractive than Rihanna as well.

Then again, I have to save Rihanna isn’t the worse actress in this, oh no, that belongs to Gregory Gadson, who manages to suck the life out of every scene. In fact, the veterans at the end (I’m not sure if they’re played by real veterans, I’ve heard they are) are the only saving grace in the acting department, even if was a bit corny. Wait, I just remembered, the USS Missouri, a decommissioned ship that’s now a museum, not only didn’t have its weapons deactivated, but it still has LIVE AMMUNITION!

Actually, that reminds me of another thing. Rihanna’s character and one of the veterans in this movie says what should be an awesome on-liner, but its ruined by the fact that they go “you mother(insert loud noise here)”. Will films stop doing that?! They did it twice here, twice in the modern version of ‘The A Team’ and even ruined the ‘Yippie Kay Yay’ line in ‘Die Hard 4’ by doing that. If you can’t do that line of dialogue, STOP WRITING IT IN YOUR FILM! It’s not smart, it’s just annoying and ruins what should be an awesome line of dialogue!

Following all this, and a football match between the US and Japan, at Pearl Harbour of all places, the US and Japanese navy’s go on a training mission together. At this time the aliens come to earth, and bring up a shield which blocks off all but three ships; Alex’, Stone’s, and Captain Nagata’s (Tadanobu Asano). One alien ship breaks off from the other ships when it hits a satellite, and ends up in Hong Kong, which is odd since in space we see it going in the wrong direction, unless the Earth was upside down. And still one alien soldier ends up in Hawaii.

By the way, these aliens are capable of creating shield generators and interstellar space travel, but their ships do not actually have shields, and in order to go across water, the ship needs to dive every so often. And despite these aliens having come from the planet which is similar to Earth and which Earth has been communicating with, they apparently evolved in a way so that the sun blinds them. Clever.

 

But the stupidity of Alex still continues to amaze me, as he sees that one alien ship managed to destroy two destroyers, but Alex still orders his ship to attack, despite Japanese forces drowning nearby.

And that’s not all the stupidity in this. Samantha is a psychiatrist, who is treating Mick Canales(Gadson), an amputee. While having a walk a couple of vehicles come by and tell them to get off the mountain trail, but Sam and Mick go up anyway because Mick “has never seen an alien before”, and only when they come across the vehicles from earlier having been destroyed, that’s when Mick says “We need to get off this mountain”. Nooo! Really? You mean when those guys told you to get off the mountain they meant get off the mountain?

Did I mention how much I hate this film?

The scenes involving Samantha and Mick also appear to intrude on the film rather than help it along, although, in defence, they (and eventually Cal who joins them) do actually prove to have a point later. This film actually has a few of those, the other one being when a kid asks what the difference between a destroyer and a battleship is, and Alex proceeds to explain that a destroyer is designed to deal damage, while a battleship is designed to take damage. I thought this was pointless, but it did actually help to solve what I thought was a plot hole later (namely why multiple pegs could take down a destroyer, but not a battleship).

 

Also, the effects aren’t that bad. They aren’t the best, but they’re pretty damn good. Well, the ships and the armour to the foot soldiers look really good, as was the motionless alien without the helmet, but the second we see any facial movements, well, they look terrible. There was one awesome bit though when one of the alien soldiers was shot in the face by one of the destroyer’s cannons.

Although, you know how films made by The Asylum are famous for re-using scenes? Yeah, this film re-uses scenes. I thought it was just me at first, thinking “I swear I just saw that shot a second ago”, but my mate the Whalley ALSO mentioned seeing the same shots! The Asylum I can understand, they’re the Asylum, the do it in pretty much every single one of their film. But this! This film had a budget of $200million! And  they re-used shots?!

The thing though, is that I don’t think the aliens were initially hostile. Yeah, the first thing that points this out, is that the aliens don’t actually do anything at first. The humans sound their ships horn, the aliens sound theirs...only the alien horn shatters the human ships windows. The humans fire a warning shot, which the aliens saw as an actual shot, and promptly fired back. Seriously, the aliens don’t actually fire on the humans, unless the humans fire on them first. This happens every single time there’s conflict between the humans and aliens! The only exception is when the aliens fires circular saw bots (Or whatever) on land to destroy a bridge, but by that point the aliens already feel under threat.

When it’s discovered that the crashed ship was a communications ship, the humans initially think that this ship is to bring other alien ships. No, I don’t think so. Because surely the aliens had already told others where they were going, I actually think the communications ship was to, oh I don’t know, communicate! The fact that they brought military ships with them, is what humans do when they try to communicate with aliens! Don’t believe me? ‘Independence Day’, ‘Mars Attacks!’, ‘Monsters vs. Aliens’, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, ‘War of the Worlds’, several Godzilla films, etc etc.

Of course since this ship was destroyed, there was no way for the aliens or humans to talk to each other. One alien soldier turns out to be a Prothean and transmits images to Alex, where the aliens are at war with another alien race. Of course Alex thinks that the alien was doing an ‘Independence Day’ and telling Alex that the aliens plan on wiping them out. I actually think the aliens went to Earth to look for allies to help fight off ANOTHER alien race, and showing the images was the only other way for the aliens to communicate. Of course this is just a theory. I certainly feel that was the case though.

This has to be the single longest review that I’ve typed up, just to say how bad this film really is. Bland acting, stupid clichés, less than adequate story, and extremely unlikeable characters. And that’s the nice way of putting it. Not even my list of actors who automatically make a film awesome, in this case Neeson, can save this film! Still, we know what to expect when Hollywood decides to bring out the feature film to ‘Snakes and Ladders’, ‘Mouse Trap’ or ‘Monopoly’. MORE CRAP!

Oh God they’re bringing out a video game based on the film based on the boardgame.