It's a strange strategy, to release a major summer film outside of America first. Unless it's a Tintin film which is more renowned outside the States.
Battleship, a film based on a board game starring Taylor Kitsch (
John Carter), Alexander Skarsgaard of
True Blood, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson opens a month before its release in United States with hopes of building momentum. I would say it's a misguided strategy unless the film's is universally acclaimed. With
Battleship, we can only wish to be entertained, we're not here for substance.
The story revolves on an attempt to contact alien life with a ground-breaking satellite, and apparently it worked. That distant planet sent some of their citizens to visit Earth to break havoc and stuff. They surrounded Hawaii (thank God it's not New York or Los Angeles) and as the tagline suggest, they started at sea. And so, our 'hero' comes. He is Alex Hopper (Kitsch), a wild-behavioured (apparently) Lieutenant in the US Navy, who has a brother (Skarsgaard) and is also in a relationship with the Admiral's daughter (smokin' Brooklyn). Hopper, with some of the Navy are only the ones who is able to attack back the alien forces.
I didn't expect this to be that entertaining, I was expecting it to be quite silly. However, it is bold for me to say that
Battleship is actually better than
Transformers 2. The action scenes are perfect, the tech designs are good, and the destruction-level, although not in an extinction-level as said in the film, is decent. Taylor Kitsch is quite good although he's trapped in a dumb-ass-bound-to-be-a-hero-kind-of-role, and Rihanna is acceptable. She deserves at least a Golden Globe
IF you compare her to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Best of all, there is an actual Battleship playing like in the board game! In spite all of that,
Battleship doesn't feel original. I think Peter Berg tried so hard to differentiate himself from Michael Bay, the actual expert on explosion-filled films but he failed. If you want cool CG scenes of destruction and explosion, go for Michael Bay. If you want cool entrance scenes from random people with sunlight or sunset behind them, go for Michael Bay. Ultimately, if you want cool lens flares to grace the screen, go for J.J. Abrams. There are too much lens flares here and it doesn't make sense at all. The characters in the films are, frankly, stupid. Take a look at the Alex Hopper character: a messed-up personality who enters the Navy and within weeks (presumably) he became a Lieutenant and is still messed-up afterwards. F*ck logic! Also, the aliens are the worst Earth invaders ever! And you may think that the
Independence Day aliens were already dumb enough to not include Norton Antivirus in their system but this brings us to a whole new level of stupidity. They were good enough to put up a force field to surround Oahu and other islands but not good enough to upgrade their battleship shields? It was too easy to randomly hit their ship and there's no force field! Their communication system was already destroyed when they entered Earth! Also, what's up with the dolphin-style ship? Aliens, you're making it too easy for the humans! And there's also a human stupidity, which comes from Mike Teavee's dad that said 'we're looking at an extinction-level shit'. Well, to be honest I don't see that. I may need random cities in various countries being destroyed rather than supercuts of Obama giving an emergency speech. Okay, I think those are Michael Bay influences. Let's not forget about the old Navy reunion, which is kinda stands between the line of epic and laughable. Talk about acting, I never saw Alexander Skarsgaard in any film but damn, he takes his character's name too serious: Stone. As for Brooklyn Decker, I just enjoyed your screen presence. I know this film is PG-13, so just omit those 'mf' words because it's a bit silly ["Mahalo, mother-(explosion sound)", "Fire mother-(explosion)!"] But overall, I'm quite satisfied with this film. Just put aside all those strange things I mentioned above and this movie's gonna do just fine. Oh and more thing: do stick to the very end of the film for an after-credits scene.
Battleship hints a summer full of awesomeness!
Battleship: rated 2 out of 4 stars
Here's a bonus of Brooklyn Decker pic (from the film of course)
P.S. For those who visits Battleship's page on IMDB, please avoid the forum titled '31 plot holes' because more than half of them are pure stupidity. But the film's quite stupid anyway.
word of the day: stupidity
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