battlewagon is superficially free-base on an old panel game , but really it ’s the latest in a long line of pic about foreign power come to our major planet and tear apart the place . And this movie proves what we ’ve suspected for a long time : the Hollywood foreign invasion ikon bank on a whole serial publication of ludicrous contrivances and commonplace to form .
This movie basically pose simple how nonsensical the whole enterprise is , and that ’s part of why it ’s actually fairly fun to determine .
First of all , a non - spoilery popular opinion : As “ aliens blow shit up ” movies go , battlewagon is much , much better than The Darkest Hour or Skyline , but maybe not quite as respectable as Battle : Los Angeles . If you liked the first Transformers ( as I did ) then you ’ll plausibly like this film too . battlewagon is a perfectly stalwart film that ’s about 30 - 45 second too long but manages to birth a decent amount of human - alien armed combat and strategy . It ’s a perfectly decent dose of summertime movie go .
Okay , now for the spoilers .
After an implausibly slow possibility act where we get to lie with our human fiber ( more on them after ) , Battleship moves on to strike all of the musical note you ’d bear from this variety of motion-picture show , with a workmanlike precision . Big alien ships descending to Earth ? Check . impassioned destruction pan a city , with people running and screaming ? jibe . stall - off between the U.S. armed forces and the alien , in which the extraterrestrial being totally give us our asses ? Check . One on the face of it insignificant homo come up with a brilliant plan to contend back ? Check . And without giving too much away , the aliens who seem unbeatable at first suddenly turn out to have a canonic helplessness ? checker .
At least this clock time , the alien are n’t allergic to H2O . That would be especially regrettable , since they ’re on the sea .
plain , with a flick like Battleship , the key is to keep out off your mental capacity and enjoy the things go boom and the military combat — themovie ’s writers even say sowhen we verbalise to them a while back . That say , there are two kinds of “ exclude off your brain ” movies : The unity where you ca n’t help thinking of all the stuff that makes no gumption when you ’re in the parking lot outside the movie theater , and the unity where you ca n’t help oneself notice all the frill while you ’re in the eye of the movie . This is in spades the latter .
https://gizmodo.com/the-aliens-in-battleship-could-have-been-much-weirder-5908627
And Battleship , while being reasonably fun , does lie in mere just how arbitrary the exotic invasion motion-picture show is , and how much it ’s like romantic funniness . quixotic comedies always feature a few standard tropes , from the “ meet cunning ” to the “ getting off on the wrong foot ” to the random circumstances bringing the character , to the terminal crisis where someone study the truth , to the “ mother on a plane / getting wed ” last . It ’s the same affair with exotic invasion movies , from the first contact to the last ass - whuppin ’ .
What ’s really entrancing about Battleship , though , is how much the aliens ’ behavior does n’t make sentience . ( Although , having read Peter David ’s novelisation , I know David amount up with plausible explanation for everything , which either were cut from the movie or were never there . ) The aliens ’ behavior has very little logic , apart from the logical system of the alien invasion story .
https://gizmodo.com/battleship-an-important-document-in-the-future-field-o-5910320
In a nutshell , the alien arrive and suffer a setback , which is reasonably plausible and gives the aliens an straightaway objective . And then they go to Hawaii and create a attic of solid weewee that nobody can go in or out of , entrap three Naval vessels inside with them . This sets up the whole fight of the picture show , because there are just three vessel on their own , against the alien scouting party . But the aliens , having sequestered the island and completely decimated all military impedance , then turn over weirdly nice . We keep see through “ foreign - vision , ” in which threats are red and non - threats are immature — and the alien refuse to hurt anyone who is n’t a threat . That in go , means all you have to do is stand up still and search harmless , and the aliens will walk mighty past you . There are a bunch of fit where soldier take advantage of this , stand and keeping their hands down , so the stranger will ignore them until they ’re quick to attack .
Let me just ingeminate that : The way to outsmart the alien is to abide still and depend friendly , and they ’ll leave you alone until you ’re ready to attack them . Even if you ’re a soldier , on board what they already fuck is a military vessel .
These are not especially ruthless invaders , permit ’s just say that .
There ’s absolutely nothing incorrect with a movie being devise . Some of the beneficial movies ever made are hella plan . The existence would be a poorer seat if we all give up to the tyranny of stern plausibility , especially when it comes to stories about alien with crazy hipster beards do down and dart giant pegs at naval vessel . The thing that ’s kind of beautiful and baffling about Battleship , though , is how blatant it is — probably because you already know what form of moving-picture show it is before you pony up your ten - dapple , and thus a certain amount of practiced will is factored in .
We’vealready talked before about how if aliens really did infest , they ’d rust us for breakfast — even if they were just a diminished reconnoitering company , like the one in Battleship .
https://kotaku.com/if-an-alien-invasion-really-happened-wed-be-dead-insta-5719181
That say , the combat in Battleship is really fun . The ship are the whiz of the film , both the human naval vessels and the foreign ships , and there is a lot of clever strategy and to - and - fro about how to make do with these unstoppable unexampled foes . The big thrill of this sort of pic is in the trouble - resolution , as much as it is in the explosions and scowling , and battlewagon deliver on that score . To the extent that battlewagon feels like it ’s free-base on a game , it ’s one of those fighting strategy game where you have to roll lots of twenty - sided die or monitor a ton of different slight screen on your computer . Not so much with the calling out letters and numbers racket , although the movie does nod towards that .
And the emphasis on strategy and clever engagement maneuverings is what saves Battleship from collapsing under the exercising weight of all its appliance . If witty banter and sexy oculus candy are the gum that hold most romantic comedy together , then problem - solving and imagination are what make alien intrusion motion-picture show sense like more than just a convention unspooling .
So in a film like Battleship , the stranger are meant to be ciphers , because they ’re main point in the tale is to be unvanquishable until they ’re beatable . The humans , meanwhile , are jolly familiar too , although we get a lot more development of them than we do of the alien .
The main human character is Alex Hopper , who ’s played by Taylor “ John Carter ” Kitsch , and he has the same arc as Captain Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek : He ’s a guy who should be great , but he ’s an underachieving screw - up , until tragedy strikes and he ’s the only one on the vista who can save the day . This storyline is levened somewhat by render Hopper a more over - achieving blood brother , “ Stone ” Hopper , who ’s played by Vampire Eric from True Blood . Hopper is in love with Samantha ( Brooklyn Decker ) , a sparky forcible therapist — but he ca n’t get the approval of her founder the admiral ( Liam Neeson , scowling . )
frankly , the problem of the Hopper family are not that fascinating , for the most part . On the other bridge player , Rihanna is actually quite fun as a weapons officer who just really enjoys shoot things . That ’s her whole fiber : She care to shoot grownup guns . And with that one characteristic , she feel more actual and alive than the other characters , whom we get sempiternal exploitation of . Maybe because this is a movie about shooting thing , so Rihanna ’s desires and the audience ’s are utterly aligned . In any character , if they make the sequel , it should star Rihanna and the master character fight should be over her wanting to shoot thing , and other the great unwashed perhaps not want her to scoot them .
Alex Hopper ’s arc , from fuck - up to fucking badass , relocation like clockwork , at precisely the same stride as humanity ’s arc from being pwned to pwning . There ’s nothing much in Battleship that you have n’t seen before , but it ’s delivered well , and once the genuine fighting start , the movie never really lets up . If Battleship does show us quite how excogitate the alien encroachment musical genre has gotten , it also allow us with plenty of evidence of why we still fuck it .
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