Friday 4 January 2013

Unfrigateable That's What You Are [Review: Battleship]

I'm not going to get into the thorny question of whether Hasbro's latest movie adaptation Battleship is a good movie or not. I mean, what is this, some kind of review? Instead I'll mostly focus on some of the outstanding triumphs this movie achieves, and you can decide for yourself whether these historic achievements alone justify the price of admission.

Battleship outstanding triumph #1: Which family members did they kidnap in order to persuade Liam Neeson to appear - and act - in Battleship? This sure beats Alec Guinness waking up with a hangover to discover that "George Lucas talked me into playing who?" Henceforth in all future reviews Mr. Neeson shall be referred to as Liam Neeson (Battleship).

Battleship outstanding triumph #2: The rules of the Battleship game really do get translated into the plot. Navy gunner Rihanna calls out grid co-ordinates as the crew fire shells at the alien vessels. They are invisible to radar, so although large enough and close enough to see with a cheap pair of binoculars, the crew decide to guess their location indirectly based on movements of ocean sensor-buoys. One sailor also states with great conviction that the aliens can't see the human ships either. They so can.

Battleship outstanding triumph #3: further adaptation of the Battleship game. The aliens deploy an explosive that actually resembles a Battleship peg - and only sinks the ship when several pegs have been fired into the hull.

I think I've made my point. You can see a lot of thought went into this adaptation and surely it's faithful enough to the source to satisfy the legions of fanatical Battleship players worldwide.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice post. I liked the movie because I laughed while watching it. A lot. Which is something since I usually don't like those kinds of movies.

Sci-Fi Gene said...

I laughed a lot too. In its defence while it's not an out and out comedy, it doesn't take itself too seriously either. What happy accident led you to see it Melissa?