(You Sunk My) Battleship - "Film" #11

Everyone has a birthday tradition. Some people go out to dinner, some people eat cake...me? I go to see a movie. A bad one. Oddly, usually of the action-y variety. And I make my sister come with me.

Because that's love.

I've been eagerly anticipating "Battleship" for MONTHS now (or weeks, or years, or decades - I'm really not sure which)...and, man, did it not disappoint!

I am so going to spoil the shit out of this one. Consider that your only warning.

So...shall we get down to brass tacks?

Or, should I say, plastic red pegs???



First, let there be no pretense here. My motives for seeing this film were pretty obvious, in a lanky Nordic kind of way:


(world, meet Alexander Skarsgard. If you are not familiar with his work, by which I mean abs, you should amend that)

There is so much wrong with Skarsgard's casting here, I can't even begin to explain it all. Besides the fact that he and Taylor Kitsch are supposed to be brothers despite some pretty heavily apparent ethnic dissimilarities in their genetic compositions or the fact that there is NO way that their "parents" named one child "Stone" and the other "Alex," I'm also fairly certain that Mr. Skarsgard has never played Battleship (the game) ever. Do they even have Battleship in Sweden?


(Eric dons Navy whites because he heard a rumor that Sookie loves a man in uniform)

Poor Alex Skarsgard, nobody told him the film was going to be a rehash of Contact, Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Forrest Gump, Independence Day, and Die Hard. And that he would be serving the same role that Josh Hartnett and Harry Connick, Jr. do in their respective films.

Mainly die.

Only here, in the first act of the film, which was totally unfair considering they gave him second billing in the movie.

Seriously, his whole function is to serve as the most perfect example of a human being ever so that his brother can feel like a total asshat in comparison, and thus, by the older brother's death, creating some sort of impetus for change in his wayward brother's naval life.

Stone also had to die because according to the naval bro code, in order for his brother to become captain, he had to be the person on board with the most stripes. I'm pretty sure with his impeccable understanding of what a colossal screwup his brother is that Stone would have battled through any flesh wound to ensure that travesty wouldn't happen.


(people in glass battleships shouldn't throw Stone)

After Stone's demise, the movie's plot held considerable less interest for me. Here's what I gleaned:

1. Aliens respond to a signal sent up by some too-smart-for-our-own-good earthlings by sending their own version of battleships and attempt to eradicate all our metal-based appliances and structures but preserve our organic integrity thus ensuring that no children were harmed during the fictional rendering of this movie.

2. Stone's little brother - who I shall call Gunny Riggins even though that is neither his name nor his rank - must assume control of the embattered fleet of shippery left after the aliens establish a kickass force field and his brother goes to the big Naval Yard in the sky.

3. The Navy apparently employs people whose sole purpose is to yell things like "Miss!" whenever one of our missiles refuses to hit its designated target. That person looks an awful lot like "Landry" from "Friday Night Lights".

4. In times of crisis, veterans apparently have nothing else to do but wander around Battleship museums in desperate hopes that they will be able to once more sacrifice their lives for the greater good. Or get an opportunity to use some of that salty sailor sea jargon you know their spouses do not permit at home.

5. The state of Japanese-American relations is really, really not fucking good.

6. Soccer is the kickassiest (or kissfaciest) sport that ever kickassed. And the Navy apparently sponsors something called "RIMPAC" which is not nearly as controversially scandalous as the name implies.

7. Women in these movies always suck.


(Rihanna is as comfortable in a Navy uniform as we would be watching her in a Chris Brown video)

First, Rihanna, who is the gratuitous female on the boat, appears like an androgynous waif whose sole function here is to remind us all that the navy is VERY open-minded when it comes to allowing people to serve someone else's country (although her accent is better than Skarsgard, who starts off southern and then switches to...something else...).

Of course, Peter Berg's most questionable scene regarding the aforementioned songstress is not when Rihanna sings quietly to herself on a boat ("Show me the way to go home / I'm tired and I want to go to bed..."), nor is it when she shoots something scary and otherworldly and shouts (and I shit you not) "Ma halo Mother-Fu-" (it gets cut off to spare the rating, I guess). No, no, it is when he gives us a scene where a big bruiser of a humanoid alien beats the shit out of her face.

Too soon, Peter Berg. TOO SOON!

No wonder she later does this:
 

Of course, the only other female of note (besides the mysterious female in a picture with Alexander Skarsgard who is NEVER IN THE FILM EVER) is the love interest of Gunny Riggins and the daughter of Admiral Liam Neeson, who could not have been more bored. She has a name, but I don't really remember it, so let's call her "Chicken Burrito".


(Reese Witherspoon? Never heard of her)

Chicken Burrito is a physical therapist who wants to be eternally bonded to loserboy Gunny Riggins before he saves the world (so it really must be love). She adopts a new pet amputee named Mick and together they roam the mountains of Hawaii, oblivious to the impending extinction level doom surrounding them both.

Then, they help save the world, too.

It's pathetic.

Come on, people, it cannot be that hard to have a female character who does not need to get saved at the last minute by a man with no legs, a science nerd with an indestructible metal suitcase, or her navy boyfriend!

But still, the movie was epic,

And I'm torn on the whole stance of war the movie has. The end credits roll to the tune of "Fortunate Son" - an anti-war protest song...so either the filmmakers are incredibly obtuse (which is possible) or this whole blockbuster is a masterful subversive lesson in the power of humility.

And The Art of War.