Battleship

“This could be like Columbus and the Indians,” a nerdy radio astronomer worries. “Except we’re the Indians.” From a powerful transmission facility in Hawaii, he’s supervised the transmission of a signal to the Earth-like Planet G in another galaxy, and with a blink of an eye, aliens arrive. Roger Ebert said in his review, “Considering that they arrive in weeks, they must have discovered faster-than-light speeds, so it's a little strange that when they arrive they're strictly analog.” Their huge warships land in the Pacific (except for parts that destroy Hong Kong in one of those towering skyscraper scenes so liked in disaster movies). However, these alien ships are only armed to a point that makes their fight with U.S. warships more or less a standoff.

Ebert is right when he said, “Why would the U.S. fleet conveniently already be near the splashdown point? It's involved in war games with allies such as Japan, which provides an excuse for a Japanese officer to take temporary command of one of our ships and thus boost the grosses of "Battleship" in Asia. It's also handy that the aliens create a force field that forms an impenetrable barrier around their craft, which seals in three U.S. ships, locks out all other ships and explains why our jets don't simply nuke the SOB.”

In the old B-movies, the response to the alien visit is immediately military. There’s not one word of discussion about the aliens possibly just calling. We invite them, they come and we open fire. Ebert noted, “This despite the fact that they're remarkably humanoid; when we finally remove the helmet from one alien's spacesuit, he turns out to look alarmingly like James Carville.”

In the film, we meet a beach boy named Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), whose brother Stone (Alexandar Skarsgard) is a naval officer. In a bar, Alex hits on the flexible Samantha Shane (the hot Brooklyn Decker), who is surprisingly the daughter of the admiral of the fleet (Liam Neeson). Breaking into a convenience store to get her a burrito, Alex is arrested and his brother delivers an ultimatum: Join the Navy or else.

Meanwhile, the nerdy Cal, played by Hamish Linklater, supervises the transmission of the signal to Planet G, and before Alex can even get into uniform and on board a U.S. destroyer, five alien spacecraft enter our solar system in tight formation. Ebert said, “One alien craft then levitates from the ocean depths, as large as a skyscraper and bristling with ominous protrusions.” You can say it takes the audacity for a communications officer, played by singer Rihanna, and two seamen to speed over to it in a rubber boat armed with just a machine gun.

In a different story, we learn Samantha is a physical therapist working with the Army vet Mick Canales, played by real-life Iraq hero Gregory D. Gadson. She takes him on a hike up the mountainside where the big NASA radio satellites are located, they meet Cal, and all that depends on preventing the aliens from calling home. In the Pentagon situation room, officials freak. There’s the necessary montage of cable news reports on the alien invasion, and the U.S. ships exchange fire with the aliens. Two ships are destroyed, including the one led by Stone, and after several officers on Alex’s ship die, he ends up being next in command and becomes the captain of the surviving U.S. ship. That’s convenient. The characters we met at the beginning all become essential characters.

“Battleship,” released in 2012, is based on the Hasbro board game of the same name, which I have played a little. You get the idea of that when the radar doesn’t work, and Rihanna figures out a way to assume the underwater movements of the alien ship by tracking wave patters on a grid with old-school weather buoys. The film eventually comes down to lots of scenes where things get “blowed up real good.” One alien weapon is especially fearsome: a large metal ball with spikes, which rolls through things and flattens them. Ebert asked, “Were less sophisticated versions of this used in medieval times, maybe made of flaming tar balls?”

The film is in the same vein as the “Transformers” movies, also based on Hasbro games, and you get the feeling that Hasbro showed director Peter Berg some Michael Bay movies and told him to go and do likewise. To his credit, “Battleship” is a more entertaining film than the “Transformers” franchise, because it has a little more fully developed characters, a better plot and a lot of naval combat strategy. Ebert credited, “The work of Gregory D. Gadson, as the disabled vet, is especially effective; he has a fierce screen presence.” Rihanna is as convincing as the character allows, and Taylor Kitsch makes a strong if predictable hero.

Ebert credited, “But the nicest touch is that "Battleship" has an honest-to-God third act, instead of just settling for nonstop fireballs and explosions, as Bay likes to do. I don't want to spoil it for you.” People can say the Greatest Generation still has the right stuff and leave it at that.

Sorry to say guys, but this is one bad board game adaptation. If this was just an adaptation like how the board game is played, which is a naval ship war, then it would have been fine. However, they mixed in aliens and Battleship doesn’t have anything to do with aliens. When did aliens ever become a part of the game? This is why this film is a failure. Don’t see this one, just avoid it all cost, it’s very bad.

We have now reached the end of “Liam Neeson Month.” I’m sorry that most of the movies were bad, but unfortunately these were the only films of his that I hadn’t reviewed yet. Stay tuned next month for more excitement.