Director : Peter Berg
Starring : Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, Liam Neeson, Jesse Plemons, Tadanobu Asano
Running Time : 118 minutes
Release Date : In Cinemas Now
‘ The battle for Earth begins at sea ‘
Based very, veeeeery loosely on the Hasbro board game Battleship, this movie tells of a battle between the Navy and aliens. Yep aliens. Reptile eyed aliens. Oh be still my little conspiracy theory loving, tin hat wearing heart. You be quiet now, you hear!!
The movie begins with Tim Riggins and Sgt. Brad ‘Iceman’ Colbert drinking in a bar. Iceman is telling Riggins what to do. Iceman is a gorgeous, focused military man and Riggins is his useless but handsome loser brother. Oh wait…that’s not right. Riggins and Iceman are characters from TV shows. Riggins is Kitsch’s character in Friday Night Lights and Iceman is Skarsgard’s character in Generation Kill. Both excellent TV shows by the way. But I think you get my point.
Anyway, back to Battleship…..
Alex Hopper (Kitsch) and his brother Stone (Skarsgard) are drinking in a bar. Stone is telling Alex what a screw up he is. Alex spots the gorgeous Sam (Decker) and sets out to impress her. It ends with Alex being stuck on the zapping end of a stun gun. Think Hangover Vegas scene just not quite as funny.
At the same time, NASA is about to launch a signal into space. These signal towers are on one of the Hawaiian Islands. You see, they have discovered a planet very similar to Earth, engagingly named Planet G and they want to send out communication. A pulse is sent every 24 hours to Planet G. The initial signal is sent with great fanfare and lots of media coverage. Some scientists are not convinced this is a good idea though.
Flash forward 6 or so years and both Hopper brothers are in the Navy, Alex and Sam are madly in love and Alex is working up the courage to ask Sam’s father, Admiral Shane (Neeson) for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
The US Navy is hosting some Naval War games in Hawaii. We are treated to a not-so-friendly-friendly soccer game between the US and Japan where we are introduced to a few more characters, most notably Raikes (Rihanna) and Nagata (Asano). It sets the tone for the first part of the movie. Serious rivalry between the 2 country’s Navys. I won’t delve too deeply into the political undertones here because, to be honest, I’m just not sure if it was delved into by the writers. Maybe superficially but apart from that, not sure.
The participating countries are officially welcomed on board the USS Missouri. Yep, that USS Missouri and we see some original Pearl Harbour Veterans. I want to stray here and note that these are indeed real Pearl Harbour veterans. I wasn’t sure when I watched the movie but yes, they are indeed the real deal. If I say anymore, I will have to include a spoiler alert so that’s it for me on the veterans.
So the war games begin and these great big boats sail off into the ocean and prepare to engage in real time training exercises. Simultaneously, back at NASA, something is heading towards earth. 5 objects, in formation, are tracked as they hurtle across the skies and finally crash into Earth. 4 hit the ocean but one strays onto land and hits Hong Kong causing much damage and wreaking havoc.
Ironically, they land near where the naval war games are being held and the naval vessels are sent in to investigate. The investigating team manage to trigger the alien vessels and they start their attack on Earth. A force field is activated around the area so just one sole naval ship is left to fight the alien invasion.
Some aliens have made their way onto land and head straight for the transmission towers. So we have some alien ships/aircraft in the ocean, trapped within a force field with a solo naval vessel…..and we have some more aliens making their way to the transmission towers.
Okay…..
This movie is great fun. First of all it has lots and lots of gorgeous cast members. Pretty, pretty everywhere. Some of these pretty people can act, some of them cannot. Some are wonderful, some are cringe worthy. Let’s leave it at that.
But I will single out Rihanna, if only because I went into this movie expecting her to be terrible. She was not terrible at all. She is actually the stand out actor, staying true to herself but having some fun with her character. Girl can act! And when she is stripped down, she is a very beautiful young lady. It’s a shame she can’t just keep it natural all the time.
Battleship has lots of great special effects. I loved the alien craft. I loved their guns and how they attacked. I really loved the spinning metal cutting things and want to order one. So if anyone has a link……
The aliens themselves were odd. They were basically humanoid but with some kinda gross differences. But they didn’t come in peace so it’s okay they were so ugly. Not so ugly you couldn’t look but ugly enough. They were also dumb. You can travel across the universe and still not……..oops spoiler alert. Sorry!!!
The tin hatter in me was disappointed I must say. This was marketed as an alien movie so I wanted better aliens!!!
The movie was good. I did like it and think anyone who likes alien or Transformer stuff should go see it. Most alien type movies are pretty hit and miss anyway so you either love them or hate them. Unless it the Alien franchise which is in a class of it’s own. Or Star Wars. Okay, okay, I will stop now.
If you have a crush on Eric Northman, you should absolutely go. He is in a fair chunk of the movie so that alone is worth the $15. Liam Neeson is only in it for a few minutes. Boooo I say boooooooo.
I have been looking forward to this movie for ages and you know what…. it was just what I expected. Sometimes you just want to be entertained. You don’t want to think too deeply, you don’t need to ask the serious questions. You just want to see some hot men run around in uniforms and fight aliens. And that is exactly what you get.
Totally agree. A good popcorn movie for the summer. Battleship was fun, but forgettable. I was surprised that Eric Northman from True Blood was in it. A nice surprise in an otherwise vanilla flick.