Battleship
So now Hollywood has moved back to making board games into movies. Is this an all new low or an all new high? Let's find out.
At a bar to celebrate his birthday, Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is with his brother, Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard), when he notices a beautiful woman, Sam (Brooklyn Decker), at the bar. He offers to get her some food that the bar has stopped serving. So he robs a nearby gas station and gets knocked out in a matter of seconds of leaving the gas station. The next day, Stone tells his brother that Alex must join the Navy if he wants to still be living at his house. Within a matter of months, Alex is engaged to Sam and his a Lieutenant at the Navy. He plans on asking Sam's father, Shane (Liam Neeson), who is the Admiral for the Navy. Eventually, they all go out for some battle practice. However, before they start, a giant ship crashes into the ocean. They go to check it out and discover that it's an alien ship. So now everyone across the globe with their Navy are trying to take out the aliens.
To be quite honest, I don't have much good to say for this film. The action sequences are amazing and fun to watch. They really show off the power and how much of a threat the aliens are. The best weapon that these things have are these pretty interesting balls of destruction. These things travel at incredible speeds and can destroy anything in their way. There's actually one part of the movie where neither the aliens nor the Navy can see each other, so they use signals to try and destroy each other. This is the closest the movie will get to being like the board game, and I thought that it was really creative and inventive way to put it in.
So now on to what I really want to say. There's a lot of problems here, which causes this particular Battleship to sink. First off, the editing. It's God awful. There's one scene where one of the Navy soldiers goes on an aliens ship and is thrown back. Not only can you hear the wire being pulled on him, but you can faintly see it. Why wasn't this edited out? There's also a lot of times during the action sequences where it clearly shows no one hitting each other, yet they all react to getting hit. By today's standards, this isn't acceptable. It also has a lot of problems that a film that came out earlier this year had with editing. Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. Yes, there's tons and tons of video effects, mainly slow down. At least in Ghost Rider, it was to enhance his powers and the fighting. Here, I couldn't tell why they used it. Yes, it's used a lot in action sequences, but then it's used for no reason, especially when they go slow-mo, then rewind, then slow-mo, then regular speed. What could be worse is the writing. I kid you not, almost an hour into the movie, Alex looks to another person and says "I have a bad feeling about this". The guy replies with "What kind of bad feeling?". To this he says "Like we're going to need a new planet". REALLY?!? No fucking shit Sherlock. We just spent an hour showing that the world is screwed. I'm pretty sure that we don't need to be told that we're screwed. That's not even the worst of it. Heck, that may just be one of those so bad it's funny lines. It just gets worse from there. Also, the balls are the only creative and original thing about the aliens. Their ships, while not flying saucers, look like they were ripped from something like Halo. Their suits look like the ones in Dead Space. Their bodies look nothing like an alien. They look way too human to be alien. Not only that, but they got goatees. Basically, if you take a bald guy with a goatee and throw him in water, you have these aliens. Their suits also work exactly like the robots in Transformers when it comes to weapons. They can switch around just by turning their arms. They even sound like the Transformers when they change weapons. That's not something you want to be compared to. Then there's the terrible acting. This is Rihanna's film debut, so I'll cut her some slack. She was terrible, but it was her first try. No one else here has any excuse for being terrible. Liam Neeson seems to be the only one trying. When he speaks, it sounds like he's pouring emotion into it, or that could also be that he's embarrassed to be starring in this film. Liam, at least you're only in 5 minutes of it. I could go on, but this review is running a bit long.
So would I recommend this film to anyone even after all the hate I gave it? Let's put it like this. If you're going to hang out with some budies and need something to watch, go ahead and watch it. If you want to watch a movie on your own, it's not this. This director will quickly become the next Michael Bay with films like this, and hardly anyone likes Bay, so let's not go in that direction.
At a bar to celebrate his birthday, Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is with his brother, Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard), when he notices a beautiful woman, Sam (Brooklyn Decker), at the bar. He offers to get her some food that the bar has stopped serving. So he robs a nearby gas station and gets knocked out in a matter of seconds of leaving the gas station. The next day, Stone tells his brother that Alex must join the Navy if he wants to still be living at his house. Within a matter of months, Alex is engaged to Sam and his a Lieutenant at the Navy. He plans on asking Sam's father, Shane (Liam Neeson), who is the Admiral for the Navy. Eventually, they all go out for some battle practice. However, before they start, a giant ship crashes into the ocean. They go to check it out and discover that it's an alien ship. So now everyone across the globe with their Navy are trying to take out the aliens.
To be quite honest, I don't have much good to say for this film. The action sequences are amazing and fun to watch. They really show off the power and how much of a threat the aliens are. The best weapon that these things have are these pretty interesting balls of destruction. These things travel at incredible speeds and can destroy anything in their way. There's actually one part of the movie where neither the aliens nor the Navy can see each other, so they use signals to try and destroy each other. This is the closest the movie will get to being like the board game, and I thought that it was really creative and inventive way to put it in.
So now on to what I really want to say. There's a lot of problems here, which causes this particular Battleship to sink. First off, the editing. It's God awful. There's one scene where one of the Navy soldiers goes on an aliens ship and is thrown back. Not only can you hear the wire being pulled on him, but you can faintly see it. Why wasn't this edited out? There's also a lot of times during the action sequences where it clearly shows no one hitting each other, yet they all react to getting hit. By today's standards, this isn't acceptable. It also has a lot of problems that a film that came out earlier this year had with editing. Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance. Yes, there's tons and tons of video effects, mainly slow down. At least in Ghost Rider, it was to enhance his powers and the fighting. Here, I couldn't tell why they used it. Yes, it's used a lot in action sequences, but then it's used for no reason, especially when they go slow-mo, then rewind, then slow-mo, then regular speed. What could be worse is the writing. I kid you not, almost an hour into the movie, Alex looks to another person and says "I have a bad feeling about this". The guy replies with "What kind of bad feeling?". To this he says "Like we're going to need a new planet". REALLY?!? No fucking shit Sherlock. We just spent an hour showing that the world is screwed. I'm pretty sure that we don't need to be told that we're screwed. That's not even the worst of it. Heck, that may just be one of those so bad it's funny lines. It just gets worse from there. Also, the balls are the only creative and original thing about the aliens. Their ships, while not flying saucers, look like they were ripped from something like Halo. Their suits look like the ones in Dead Space. Their bodies look nothing like an alien. They look way too human to be alien. Not only that, but they got goatees. Basically, if you take a bald guy with a goatee and throw him in water, you have these aliens. Their suits also work exactly like the robots in Transformers when it comes to weapons. They can switch around just by turning their arms. They even sound like the Transformers when they change weapons. That's not something you want to be compared to. Then there's the terrible acting. This is Rihanna's film debut, so I'll cut her some slack. She was terrible, but it was her first try. No one else here has any excuse for being terrible. Liam Neeson seems to be the only one trying. When he speaks, it sounds like he's pouring emotion into it, or that could also be that he's embarrassed to be starring in this film. Liam, at least you're only in 5 minutes of it. I could go on, but this review is running a bit long.
So would I recommend this film to anyone even after all the hate I gave it? Let's put it like this. If you're going to hang out with some budies and need something to watch, go ahead and watch it. If you want to watch a movie on your own, it's not this. This director will quickly become the next Michael Bay with films like this, and hardly anyone likes Bay, so let's not go in that direction.