Oh boy. I know everyone wants to compare Peter Berg to Michael Bay right about now. I’m sure a lot of people saw the trailer for “Battleship” and were tricked into going, thinking it was really “Transformers 4″….but it’s not. Don’t get me wrong. The movie is still big and dumb and loud and packed with actors who can’t act. Except Liam Neeson. He is still a bad mofo. Unfortunately he look soooo bored in the few scenes he is in. Maybe that’s because he is mostly left out of the last half hour of the movie, which is the only redeeming section of this based on a board game flick.
First, let’s deal with the plot. What plot? Exactly. Director Peter Berg does try to create a plot but it fails miserably. Let’s give it a whirl, though, shall we? Years ago, we send some communications into space, hoping an alien race will answer. Just when we start to give up, some satellites in Hawaii pick up transmissions coming from five objects approaching Earth.
They are quickly identified as warships (assumed). One of them crashes in Japan, causing a huge mess and sending every country on Earth into a panic. Back on Oahu, there is some sort of weird World Cup thing going on where the United States and Japan are competing in War Games and soccer competitions. When the remaining four ships land in the pacific ocean, the humans assume they are malicious and attack.
The rest of the movie is a battle between the aliens and the humans. The one thing that stands out is that the aliens ONLY fire when threatened, leaving one to wonder if they are a threat to begin with. They were only answering a signal and the movie ends with humans trying to stop the aliens from communicating with their alleged armada in space.
“Battleship” might be a sign of bad things to come. Rumor has it Adam Sandler is trying to get a “Candyland” movie green-lit. Hopefully, studios learned that he has lost it after “Jack and Jill”. The truth is that the rumor that Hollywood has lost originality might be true. They are basing movies on everything. The real problem is they’re doing it all wrong. “Battleship” could have been good if it was a hard core Navy battle movie set at sea, instead the bad guys are aliens. Actually, if you see the movie, you might think WE are the bad guys. MISS.
Read my Examiner review of “Battleship”.