Return of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 3 Battleship.

Why?

This is the question one asks when you see an ad for the film never mind the film itself. 

Why did they do this. It cost a hell of a lot of  money to make – 209 million dollars – enough money for Ed Wood to make 418 films – (we won’t be using that metric all the time but it’s a good way get a handle on the amount of money being spent as well as appalling the imagination with the idea of Ed Wood doing 418 films and no John Carradine would not be in all the them, just most of them.).  Just a staggering amount of cash even for Hollywood. And what was the hook? What did they decide to hang this huge expense on .

The game battle ship – originally produced by Milton Bradley in the 30’s (as a pencil and paper game it’d had been around even earlier – battleships as we understand them had been built starting in the 1880’s )  

It was the Huh? Heard around Hollywood when the project was announced and in the end it sank the film like well a battle ship. Even with the addition of aliens.

Okay the plot of the film such as it is, has our hero – one Taylor Kitsch (whoever gave him that name should be slapped) who plays Lt Alex Hopper – brother of his brother Commander Stone Hopper – who somehow convinces the Tom Crusieish cocky screw-up but likeable Alex to enlist in the navy. I wasn’t aware that the Navy was a sea of nepotism but it seems commander  Hopper has enough pull to get younger brother set up as a lieutenant.  This is the sort of nepotism that led to things like the Franklin expedition by the British navy in the arctic where they ended up eating the dead to survive but we’ll just let that go.

There is a meaningless soccer game sequence where Taylor after having been massively fouled to the point of not seeing straight insists on taking the penalty shot and screwing it up. I know  a little about soccer – one you start bleeding you’re off the field until you stop, two penalty kicks are taken by the best player on the team – Lenol Messi for example for Barcelona. Anyway Taylor screws up and everybody hates him.  And he proves that somehow he has managed to become a Lieutenant  in the Navy without learning a thing.

But redemption is coming in the form of an alien invasion. 

I can only assume that as the studio boss started looking doubtful at the idea of a movie based on a board game the producer said “it’ll have aliens”

And so it does.

The aliens upon hearing a signal that we said saying pretty much “hello? Anybody out there?” come all invading and such.  And inside the force field set up by the Aliens (don’t they always do that? ) Taylor along with the female lead Sam (the very very blonde Brooklyn Decker – who is the daughter of the Admiral who is played by Liam Neeson – and really Liam if the rent is that high – find another place to live) and Rihanna yet another in a long line of pop stars who can’t act fight off the aliens.

Yes a battleship does show up but only about 2/3rds of the way through the picture.  The battleship, the Missouri or the  Mighty Mo where the Japanese empire surrendered to the Allies in 1945 does more impossible things than the Red Queen believes in before breakfast before destroying the aliens who as per Hollywood have the stupid weakness (water, bright light, salt it is something that makes one hit their head against a desk for a while.) 

It all ends well except for the folks who died of course.  Do the aliens ever win one of these? 

The whole thing has a weird War Porn –Kill the Aliens vibe – but honestly using the Missouri like a trained seal in the film left a bad taste in my mouth.