Battleship is flawed, relatively flawed, but still a great movie.
It’s a great action movie with a great huge scoop of science fiction, and it’s fairly shamelessly just that.
That’s what makes it great and a re-watchable movie.
There is not a lot of drama or anything other than action in this movie, there’s a little bit of humour here and there.
It should be noted that this movie includes in its credits “Based on the Hasbro board game Battleship”.
If you go into this movie knowing this and expecting not too much from the movie it’s actually really enjoyable.
It looks amazing, on Blu-ray especially it looks wonderful, the colours are rich and intense, the setting of Hawaii and the sea around it make for some really intense visuals.
Inside the ships everything is still intense, yet muted.
Sound wise this is a great film to watch in a surround sound setup, it gives all 5 speakers a good work out and the sub-woofer also is given a good rumble throughout the action sequences.
But even with a set of stereo speakers, or even just a pair of headphones it’s full of intense sound that really helps to make this movie great.
But it’s not just action and explosions, there’s some good tactical scenes of naval warfare knowledge at work. It is quite fortunate that the aliens are not a “shoot first ask questions later” sort of species but follow a fairly easy to understand war laws or something that means you basically have to be aggressive towards them before they attack you.
Which means for a action science fiction film the civilian deaths in this movie are actually quite low. The only people who I think would die is a result of aliens taking out infrastructure.
Characters wise they’re all good though there’s no real character development outside of the first 20 minutes or so.
On that 20 minutes, it basically sets up Taylor Kitsch as one of the main characters Alex Hopper as a risk taker and youthful, they make sure he’s seen almost naked and shirtless within the first 10 minutes. His brother is Stone Hopper played by Alexander Skarsgård which is an interesting choice. Skarsgård is perhaps best known for playing Eric Northman in True Blood, or if you’re only into war-based drama then he played Brad Colbert in the excellent Generation Kill.
Within that 20 minutes is a soccer game, which seems present to bulk out the film and to cement the character of Alex Hopper as someone who despite joining the Navy is still a risk taker and hot head.
The other interesting casting choice of note is Rihanna, she plays Cora Raikes, whose name I didn’t really notice in the film, so that info comes from Wikipedia. She’s a Gunner's Mate Second Class (GM2), crew mate and a weapons specialist. Battleship appears to be her only acting role so far. I found her pretty convincing her character gets to shoot at aliens, get beaten up by aliens and fire weapons on Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer and also on an actual battleship, an Iowa-class battleship.
Yes, on that, only one genuine battleship appears in the film, though this is explained quickly and briefly at the start as to why the navy doesn’t have battleships much anymore.
Now, back to the flaws. It is those that make the movie, once you can acknowledge these flaws and move on or fast forward through them it becomes a great movie. Perfect movies are fairly hard to find, but it’s the imperfections that make you truly enjoy a movie because you know there’s some parts that aren’t any good that are a bit ropey. But you’ll still sit down and watch it because the rest is great and those ropey parts aren’t really that bad in perspective.
It’s a great action movie with a great huge scoop of science fiction, and it’s fairly shamelessly just that.
That’s what makes it great and a re-watchable movie.
There is not a lot of drama or anything other than action in this movie, there’s a little bit of humour here and there.
It should be noted that this movie includes in its credits “Based on the Hasbro board game Battleship”.
If you go into this movie knowing this and expecting not too much from the movie it’s actually really enjoyable.
It looks amazing, on Blu-ray especially it looks wonderful, the colours are rich and intense, the setting of Hawaii and the sea around it make for some really intense visuals.
Inside the ships everything is still intense, yet muted.
Sound wise this is a great film to watch in a surround sound setup, it gives all 5 speakers a good work out and the sub-woofer also is given a good rumble throughout the action sequences.
But even with a set of stereo speakers, or even just a pair of headphones it’s full of intense sound that really helps to make this movie great.
But it’s not just action and explosions, there’s some good tactical scenes of naval warfare knowledge at work. It is quite fortunate that the aliens are not a “shoot first ask questions later” sort of species but follow a fairly easy to understand war laws or something that means you basically have to be aggressive towards them before they attack you.
Which means for a action science fiction film the civilian deaths in this movie are actually quite low. The only people who I think would die is a result of aliens taking out infrastructure.
Characters wise they’re all good though there’s no real character development outside of the first 20 minutes or so.
On that 20 minutes, it basically sets up Taylor Kitsch as one of the main characters Alex Hopper as a risk taker and youthful, they make sure he’s seen almost naked and shirtless within the first 10 minutes. His brother is Stone Hopper played by Alexander Skarsgård which is an interesting choice. Skarsgård is perhaps best known for playing Eric Northman in True Blood, or if you’re only into war-based drama then he played Brad Colbert in the excellent Generation Kill.
Within that 20 minutes is a soccer game, which seems present to bulk out the film and to cement the character of Alex Hopper as someone who despite joining the Navy is still a risk taker and hot head.
The other interesting casting choice of note is Rihanna, she plays Cora Raikes, whose name I didn’t really notice in the film, so that info comes from Wikipedia. She’s a Gunner's Mate Second Class (GM2), crew mate and a weapons specialist. Battleship appears to be her only acting role so far. I found her pretty convincing her character gets to shoot at aliens, get beaten up by aliens and fire weapons on Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer and also on an actual battleship, an Iowa-class battleship.
Yes, on that, only one genuine battleship appears in the film, though this is explained quickly and briefly at the start as to why the navy doesn’t have battleships much anymore.
Now, back to the flaws. It is those that make the movie, once you can acknowledge these flaws and move on or fast forward through them it becomes a great movie. Perfect movies are fairly hard to find, but it’s the imperfections that make you truly enjoy a movie because you know there’s some parts that aren’t any good that are a bit ropey. But you’ll still sit down and watch it because the rest is great and those ropey parts aren’t really that bad in perspective.