f13.net

Trailer here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDMXkPfxjOc)

I'm only making this topic for one reason.  Apparently this movie has a $200 million budget.  A movie based off a board game, with Aliens randomly thrown in, combined with the romantic sub-plot from Armageddon, is Universal's big movie to kick off the Summer next year.

Saw the trailer for this in Cowboys and Aliens and was like, "Liam Neeson's gonna go all Taken on this guy's ass..."

And then the fucking Michael Bay Transformers showed up and I was like, "Pass."

What is this I don't even

The director of this was college roomies with Ari (Entourage) Emanuel.  :awesome_for_real: Berg has made some good movies, so I'm down.

To be honest if done right this could be a pretty good Popcorn and Coke movie. Totally silly but hey.

The only thing they can actually take from the game is a battleship and sea battles.  So there is a chance it could be a good summer action flick.

Didn't you see the little "peg" weapons that the aliens fired at the ships?  Heh.

Shhhhhhh I choose to not have seen that.   :ye_gods:

A battleship is like the perfect thing to fight flying aliens with!

Yeah.

I dig Peter Berg as a director because he does some things with his movies that you really don't expect when you watch the trailers. Like Kingdom of Heaven, which looked like a non-stop action flick from the trailer, then turned out the entire trailer was taken from the last 20 minute set piece battle which was the only set piece in the flick. Or Hancock, which took a turn 90 degrees sideways halfway through the movie.

But this trailer pummels me about the face with stupidity. From Here to Eternia with Ships or some shit. Just really really really stupid. It watches like a Michael Bay coke bender.

This movie seems more in line with the recent boardgame release,  Battleship: Galaxies.  In that, I have some hope there will be some actual capital ship scale galactic starship warfare.  If it's aliens vs. navy at sea... pfft  Seriously?

This is just...I don't...what?  That was  t e r r i b l e.

Uh

Ah

Hmmm

I think this is the second preview with the actor that plays Eric Northman in True Blood that i have seen recently.  Glad he is getting work.

The only way this could be good is if it's all one big VR simulation set in the future. All the regular battleships and uniforms we see are actually people in the VR sim wearing "old" style naval clothes and with ancient tech, then we see them trying to fight against modern day tech and somehow winning what should be an un winnable situation.

The movie of course is nothing like that but hey, it'd have been interesting.

Movies have become so meta that they are now parodies of themselves.  Witness this and Cowboys and Aliens.

Trailer lacked energy, how boring will the film itself be?

I will go and see this movie for one reason:  Solely to see if anyone, at any time during the movie, says "you sunk my battle ship".  If someone does not, I start looking for contract killers.

That trailer looked absofuckingterrible.

My hope is they lose the fight against the transformer and Liam's last line is, "You sunk my battleship."

The Battleship Movie is an Indictment of Western Civilization (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/battleship-movie-exists.php)

That author simply hates life and fun, and possibly breathing.

Reading that was probably far more fun than the movie is going to be.

What I can't wrap my head around is the motherfucking aliens.  It's like they completely fail to understand what battleships do, or how you could make an action movie about them.

Ouch, ouch and just wow.  You know your career's in the shitter when the role used to explain who you are is in one of the worst remakes ever.

My commentary upon this entire concept:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsIASofR5-E

This years "Snakes on a Plane?"

I kind of want to see this just so I can say I saw the stupidest piece of shit to hit theaters this year.

No matter how hard Battleship sucks, it still won't take that prize away from the next Twilight movie.

PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME.

Why would a studio buy intellectual property rights for a premise that they could have without them? Do they REALLY think that putting "Battleship" on a film independent of whether the film sucks will sell even one more ticket? There is so much evidence now that it doesn't--just tons of films where the property didn't sell tickets commensurate with its non-film popularity. If the film is good, it sells. Meaning, why not make a good film without paying for the property? It's really fucking baffling.

Maybe Milton Bradley needed something to renew the copyright on "Battleship".

Are they doing a game tie-in they hope to make money off?

Someone posted an article a while back which gave a good explanation of why Hollywood is really playing it safe right now. Sequels and existing IPs (even tenuous ones such as this) are seen as far safer money than new stories. This is why we are seeing so many comic adaptations, sequels, trilogies and book adaptations right now, and fewer big new stories.

I don't know much about navies but I thought they stopped making actual battleship class vessels decades ago.

The last US one launched in 1944.  They still nominally have two in reserve.

They used one during the Gulf War to cheaply pound the area 20 miles inland from the beaches.  There will always be a place for mobile artillery in war.
Also, the future is full of smart munitions, rail guns, and energy weapons.  You can guarantee the battleship will be a part of that picture.

As big fat targets for those smart weapons to hit?

Yes, because we don't put anti-missle systems on our naval ships.   :oh_i_see:

Fine they're totally viable and that's why no one has built one in 70 years. Totally making a comeback any day now. Personally I'm waiting for the catapult to come back into style.

The reason we don't have them anymore is because of aircraft carriers.  They are just obsolete when you can have a crapload of aircraft that can do more precise attacks.  It's not that Battleships were a bad idea, they just have better ways to blow shit up now.

Now mind you, if we ever get into a full blown world war again, heaven forbid, I'm sure we'll see some manufactured again if we aren't all dead from nuclear winter.

One reason the U.S. mothballed BB's is that they are labor intensive to operate.  But a reason to keep them is to bombard the shoreline.  More than half of the world's population live within 60 miles of a coast. 

A coast that can be hit with missiles fired with ultra precision from smaller, more agile, more defensible ships.

The only reason to bring BS' back would be the expense or inability to produce of cruise missiles and smart munitions, since lobbing hunks of metal is cheaper and simpler. We're not likely to see that without the sort of a protracted war that won't happen without shit getting nuked first.

They pulled two BB out of mothballs to shell/missile strike the Iraqi coast even with all of their guided missile cruisers.

If you want to shell coastlines then you're better off putting your railguns or whatever on a smaller and less resource-intensive ship, one that wasn't designed and built for an antiquated form of surface combat that barely even took place in WW2. Christ make a railgun artillery barge and have a destroyer tow it up to the coast. Don't send out a behemoth only a few (admittedly large) steps removed from wooden ships exchanging broadsides.

Lol. Battleships are seige weapons, when the poor and angry eventually figure out how to counter predator drones, lobbing a chunk of metal using google maps is going to be all the rage. We spent the last 2000 so years slamming ships against each other before the Pacific War, having a heavily armored multigun weapon firing platform that can rain death on anything 60 miles north of water seemed like a good idea till the aircraft carrier.

I'm not even sure what that post meant. All I know is that I've blundered across a few people here who actually think battleships are still a good idea, despite the matter having been settled ages ago.

Those were not taken out of mothballs for the Gulf War. Those were the last two of the four still in service that Reagan spent billions re-furbishing and putting tomahawk cruise missile launchers onto in the 80s.

Settled my arse.   :awesome_for_real:
Precisely wtf do you think would be capable of carrying the necessary infrastructure to operate these next-gen smart/energy weapons (in large, effective quantities mind you)?  A tiny aegis destro or c-130 wont cut it.  You will always need a large, ship-mounted delivery system.

Couple that system with laser, emp, and metalstorm defense systems and you're pretty much a floating porcupine of energy-death.  The only other thing you'd need is a sterling-drive/aip propelled attack sub escort for totally silent subsea defense.

At this point, I can only hope that the plot of Avatar 2 is that the humans come back to invade the planet again, this time bringing battleships along with their mechs.

Obviously the Warships will turn INTO mechs http://youtu.be/NwD3gDfa-VU !

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oejStjh89Gw/TaytKhCPl0I/AAAAAAAAAAo/yZIyxdvqh3I/s1600/185px-Salem_insitu.jpg)

Supreme Commander :drill:

Once again, you show the rest of F13 that you still need to put the crack-pipe down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRhv9_jHDhk&feature=related


They were actually kept fully operational even while serving as floating museums.


On the plus side, they managed to avoid another clusterfuck like Jutland, which would have made it apparently fucking obvious to even the densest motherfucker why Battleships were a retarded idea even in WWII.  Instead, we have to go with the somewhat lesser evidence of motherfucking Pearl Harbour.


Erm, you failed history, right?  The Pacific war has jack and shit to do with development of naval rifles, except for, you know, ending it.

Also, the range on those is 23 miles.  Since 1964 there exists dumbfire artillery rockets with a range of 251 miles.


Actually, a destroyer would be quite sufficient. (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4231461)

But hey, just think of all the money you could blow on this shit to protect a battleship, only to have it "sank" by a half century old Canadian diesel boat in wargames.  Wouldn't that be awesome?

 :oh_i_see:

Also, if you think the appropriate tactic to counter battleships is to send in battleships you're a goddamn retard.  I already brought up Jutland in this thread, you probably should have taken the hint and read a little about it.

Isn't all this surface shit just meat for Submarines?

I thought the counter to battleships was titans?

Yes, settled. The fact that all these future railguns that shoot hundreds of miles are being planned as destroyer-scale weapons just settles it even harder.

How do future railguns shoot targets hundreds of miles away under the horizon ?

Google & Gps or we're back to the old F.O. model, apparently.

I think he means that conventional wizdom has that rail-guns fire projectiles at ultra high speeds in very straight lines, meaning that they arent supposed to be able to "lob" munitions at things that would be far enough away that the curvature of the earth would mean a strait line between gun and target would have to go through the ground to hit.

They bounce the railgun shells off the Ionosphere.  :grin:

To be honest I'd love a film on Jutland. Unfortunately I can't see Holywood fucking it up Pearl Harbour style. 24 Brit Dreadnaughts vs a line of 18 (I think) German Dreads, one at a time, is not very hollywood. Plus Beatty would look like a complete idiot and we cant have that.

Fixed.

There are four main threats to battleships: missiles, naval rifles, torpedoes, and mines.  We've had examples of the latter three that could stomp a mudhole in the USS Iowa since WWI, and China has motherfucking conventional warhead SLBMs in service that have a CEP of 40 meters (i.e. a ~50% of a direct hit to an Iowa class from a submarine 14 000 kilometers away).  I'd like to see your CIWS deal with a warhead reentering @ 12 250 km/h motherfuckers.


He did manage to cross their T twice in one battle.

Ask the Popular Mechanics article that was linked earlier and talked about the Marines wanting a weapon that could provide supporting fire from 220 miles away. What, you think they're a direct-fire-only weapon like a laser or something? The projectiles fly so fast that they defy gravity and don't arc at all?

That would make for a really shit artillery piece, don't you think? Especially considering it would be fired from a few feet above sea level by definition. Yeah that's what they're doing. They're building a new advanced form of naval artillery with a range of a few miles, because hey, horizon.

Conventional Wisdom is usually pretty dumb.  Comes from being part of a hive-mind where the IQ is 100.  Think about that for a minute.

Rail gun artillery: rendered obsolete by Studebakers with missile racks driven onto barges.

Destro-scaled railguns are only prototypicial, and as you've hopefully read it puts the small ships on their knees just with the single cannon, and this is with the scaled-down version.  Later versions will fire shells at twice the speed at 50% more power required.  Sure, you may see some super-secret prototype sitting on a destroyer, but it was always considered a futureweapon that a capital ship would be needed to fire.  A nuclear-powered carrier or refit battleship....  maybe a refit Aegic Cruiser, etc.

Indeed. And I still think that a chunk of metal fired at mach 10 makes for a really shitty artillery piece. I am way to lazy to even try to figure out the physics behind this, but the high speed and generally very flat trajectory of such a gun are really not suited for artillery engagements. You would either be able to vaporzie anything that comes in line of sight or anything in a rather small area way beyond the horizon. Or not ?

That wasn't Beatty. That was Jellicoe. beaty commanded the Battlecruisers that Chased Hippers battlecruiser fleet into the German fleet then turned and ran, losing 2 battlecruisers in the process.

Jellicoe correctly arranged his fleet slightly away from the german fleet initially (for which he was critisised later as not conforming to the aggressive spirit of the royal navy) and then watched Sheer sail into him. Sheer turned his fleet around and sailed off, then turned back around as he had no idea what had just happened. This resulted in the second crossing of the T upon which Sheer about turned and sailed off.

Nobody anywhere in the fucking world has EVER EVER EVER talked about putting railguns on naval vessels as direct-fire weapons. You really need to quit talking out of your goddamned asshole without even bothering to do the tiniest bit of elementary googling.


Sigh.

1) The Popular Mechanics article that was linked talks about how existing destroyers could power the hypothetical full-scale version, not the half-power version they have now. How about YOU try reading it, wiseass?

2) The fact that firing the gun would require the ship to slow down briefly probably isn't a big deal since artillery bombardment isn't something that's usually conducted at speed anyway.

3) Barrel heating is going to be an infinitely larger problem than power generation when it comes to maintaining a given rate of fire, so in all likelihood a ship that carried multiple railguns would be firing them in sequence rather than simultaneously anyway.

4) At most all of your bullshit is an argument for better generators. Nobody is going to build a fucking neo-battleship twice as long, five times as heavy, and ten times as expensive just so they can fire all their guns at once.

Fuck off.

But...

but what if it had legs?

This thread is turning out much better than I ever expected.

This isn't Politics. Some of you need to stop posting like it is.

Does that mean I should quit telling people to suck my dick? Because I don't really do that in Politics. I save it for important debates about WoW lore and railguns.

Are you out of your mind ? Bad day at work ? Usually you are funny, but right now you come across ... a little bit... unhinged.

From guessing, the connection to the battleship game is 2 things. The bubble defines the play area. The ships are squared off directly oppose each other. I'm some ways, this may be a cool move long ship battle.

One side firing a single barrage at a single location, then the other side does the same ? Sure. Give me 90 minutes of that.  :grin:

Yes.

Predator with ships?

Ok.

Don't do that. It's rude.

Also, I don't really see the "argument", hence my suprised reaction. As far as I can tell the "argument" went like this.

WUA: Fuck Battleships. Battleships suck. Fuck them all.
Someone else: But they were used quite recently, the still might have its uses.
WUA: NO! RAILGUNS!
me.. somewhat later: Railguns (should they actually be produced some time in the future) make for a shitty artillery replacements and this is why I think that.
WUA: [postal]
me: ???

Guys, this mechs vs tanks bullshit stopped being amusing over a year ago. It was a funny gimmick for a while but that time has LONG since passed.

Damm. I was feeding the troll, wasn't I ? Sorry.

ok, guys, 2 things

a) stupid internet nerdfight

The closest real world example would be Zumwalt class destroyers, which currently run at a price of US$ 3.5bn per ship. That's before product cost-overruns. For a destroyer.
If you heard about recent the financial woes - if not, I'd recommend: MahrinSkel, Morat et al. (2011). Time to bury the gold: Barclay's Declares Meltdown Imminent. TheInterwebs: F13 Publishing as introductory read - it should be clear that there will be no monster-railgun-wetdream-super-battleships.

b) stupid film

The comments in the trailer are surprisingly negative. If even the youtube-hivemind figures out its being sold a turd that should be a warning sign for producers.

Cala

Edit: Also, Wua: I am just going over my IETF RFC 1855-Netiquette Guidelines (October 1995) (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855)) and I think you are violating some (most) recommendations. Especially section 2.1 and following.

You: I THINK A THING!
Me: You're utterly wrong, it's right in that article linked in this thread.
You: NO BUT REALLY!
Me: Well fuck you then.

Anyway, the buzz for this movie is predictably terrible. The IMDB forums are a great place to spot moles trying to fabricate a positive spin, but the most I've seen is one lonely post about "Oh boy Skarsgard and Neeson in one movie!" If there are any studio moles at work, they're being drowned out by "How about a Connect Four movie?! LOOOL!"

Temp banned for 3 days. Anybody else want to keep fucking up this thread?

I love that there is an RFC for that.

Bets on how long before he actually comes back again this time?

Though I'm not sure its actually possible to fuck up a thread about this horrible looking of a movie.   :awesome_for_real:

I dug out the history books, and I stand corrected.  Jellicoe was also lambasted for not pursuing Sheer, who had covered his retreat with a torpedo barrage.


That was sort of my initial impression.  What a terrible premise.

Is that worse than spending 95 minutes of a guy in a box (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462758/)  :grin:

Ha ha!

But really, I think this is mostly going to be a CG fest, with some tacked on hero drama.

Plot speculation after looking at the trailer again #7087

Hero is an asshole, but his hot girlfriend loves him
Hero is an asshole and the stick in the mud admiral hates his guts (much like the audience)
Hey look its a naval exercise
Hero is a moron and turns on Alien wargame
Alien wargame drones fire fake wargame weapons at American warships
American warships use real weapons.
Real weapons > Fake weapons. Who knew?
AMERICA WINS OVER ALIENS USING HARMLESS WEAPONS!
Admiral learns to love Hero as he realizes that being an asshole and a moron is what makes America great. Or something
Audience goes "Wtf?"

After a movie based on a Disney theme park ride was not only successful, but spawned 3 more films, I'm not so quick to say films based on odd IPs are going to automatically fail.

Sounds like Green Lantern on a ship.

Is it the heat wave making people act funny?

And this movie looks HORRID.  :ye_gods:

I'm excited about the film adaptation of Cooties.

That was already made, they changed the name to Philadelphia.

(http://images.wikia.com/horrormovies/images/1/13/Cat_ghoulie.jpg)

An Oliver Stone version of Monopoly!

The inevitable crossover movie, Chutes & Ladders & Aliens & Predator.

Darren Aronofsky's Stratego

(http://www.cluedofan.com/movie/wadcard.jpg)

Chris Nolan's Guess Who.

Tim Burton's Life.

Wes Craven's Candyland.

Michael Bay's Parcheesi.

Roman Polanski's Mystery Date.

M. Night Shyamalan's Twister 

George Lucas' Othello

Steven Spielburg presents: Duck, Duck, Goose.

Ron Howard's Hi Ho Cherry-o.

You know what. I might actually see this one as I could see him coming up with a creepy ass horror movie. Then again, we might get that Gingerbread Movie with Gary Busey...

Michael Bay strikes me more as a Ker-plunk kind of guy.

Clint Eastwood's Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Considering how the hippos are usually treated, that's sort of fitting.

Ridley Scott is currently attached to direct a movie version of Monopoly. I wish I was kidding. (http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/monopoly-movie-concept-was-inspired-by-alice-in-wonderland/)

There is also a Candyland movie being worked on as well.  In fact, the Battleship, Monopoly, and Candyland (as well  Stretch Armstrong) movies are all being done by Universal, and are all Hasbro properties so I can only imagine that Universal got some sort of bulk deal on them.

That's......pretty depressing.

Maybe they'll decide to tap into the more advanced board games, and we can get an Mansions of Madness movie!  Hell, the right director could make a pretty awesome Fortress America movie.

Also, this whole thing reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs

Yes, this is so much more productive that the "battleships are and always were a bad idea" derail.  :roll:

Really? You're going all SRS BSNS on a thread about a movie adaptation of a board game? Wow.

Tim Burtons Settlers of Catan, anyone?

Monopoly, directed by M Night Shylaman

Twister would be too obvious.

Aha, I see what he did there now

I was going to say Coen Bros.  :awesome_for_real:

David Cronenburg's Operation

Who's David Cronenburg? :awesome_for_real:

Ah, I was trying to think of a good Settlers of Catan/Director combo.  That works!

Quentin Tarantino's Sorry!  :why_so_serious:

Joel Schmacher's Chutes and Ladders  :ye_gods:

Hope no one beat me to it.

McG's Ouija was scrapped this week.

I mean that for real!

Joe Johnston's Jumanji.....

wait....

lol I'd watch that

David Mamet's Diplomacy

Go, a film by Darren Aronofsky (Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNOQUPmgbnY))

Railgun bishes! (http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2012/BAE-Railgun-Launcher-Prototype-Delivery.aspx)

this actually looks pretty cool, probably worth seeing on imax.

Apparently Battleship is screening in the UK. Matthew Buck REALLY doesn't want you to go see it. (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/fbv/projector/34908-projector-battleship)

That guy's voice is so annoying.

Wow. Its not often you get a deep heartfelt appeal from a reviewer to not go see this movie.

Seriously, some people shouldn't be be vbloggers, no matter how well formed an opinion they have. His voice is seriously bad.

Yeah, it was grating as fuck, and his review shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has seen any trailers of the movie.

If you like movies like Independence Day and aren't over critical of summer popcorn type flicks this really isn't too bad.  It's not stellar but it isn't horrible.

If you like movies like Independence Day then you are the reason that shit like this gets greenlit and you should feel bad about that.

Considering I was 14 when Independence Day came out, and had some of the best effects available at the time (you know, when they still actually blew up shit instead of CGI'ing everything except the actors), I loved Independence Day.  So fuck you  :grin:

I'm looking forward to this movie. Not every flick needs to redefine drama, cinematography or writing.

I'm not sure shitting all over them does anything but leaves a stinky mess.

You people are broken.

Seriously... not every movie has to redefine cinema.  If you can't just turn your overcritical brains off and watch a movie just for the fun of it.. then I pity you.

See, here's my problem.

1 - Bay is shit.  He's awful.  His films are awful, brain or no brain.

2 - I pay and I'm surrounded by fuckwits.  The film better be good.  Switching off my brain I can do on my massive fuck off TV in the house, but if I'm at the Cinema, I want my brain to at least be there.

3 - Bay is shit.

4 - Wait, Bay is shit.

What Michael bay got to do with this film?

The director, Peter Berg, appears to be filming an homage to Michael Bay's cinematic genius with this movie.

Who says he has anything to do with this film ?

 :why_so_serious:

HaemishM seems to think so!

To be honest, I could easily be forgiven (from the trailers I've seen) for expecting Bay or that asshole who did Skyline to be the chap that did this one.  They look utterly interchangable.

But Bay is Shit.

You're just figuring this out now?

And as much as I like Peter Berg, this movie will probably be a Bay-worthy shit show.

Strange feeling to see a movie before you all do.

It's not bad. Not good, but not Michael Bay bad either. it's stupid in places, and the entire girlfriend plot needed to be cut. I wanted time spent showing Damage Control and how you actually go about firing 14" naval gunfire.

How can a film about battleships with WW2 guns fighting aliens on the water not be bad?

But Michael Bay gave us Bad Boys and The Rock.   :awesome_for_real:

Which were both shit.

But enjoyable shit. Especially Bad Boys.

Oddly, I thought "The Rock" was good fun, but bad boys was drivel.

Me= this camp.

I enjoyed both The Rock and Bad Boys (the first one - the sequel I couldn't stomach for more than half an hour), but both were literally brain dead movies.

The Rock is the king of modern brain dead action films. One of the few modern films, let alone action to get the Criterion treatment. Very very good american action film. Very well crafted.

Bad boys is alright... then Bay went to COMPLETE shit.

It's not a matter of need.

If we thought we could just settle for any old film, we wouldn't have The Dark Knight, after all, it's just a comic book movie.

You can always hope and strive for a well constructed, written, acted movie.

None of this, aside from effects, seem to be true of Battleship.

Going to quote myself from a different forum because :effort:

Battleship is clearly a result of the Bay Transformers movies making a fuckload of money, and some dude at Hasbro in a suit points to TF and says
"DO THAT WITH THIS!" (http://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2012/02/battleship-board-game.jpg)

And you can't turn off your brain and enjoy a Bay movie. You have to drink bleach until you go blind and then die to enjoy a Bay movie.

I have no problem turning my brain off for retarded action flicks.

I *DO* have a problem when they want me to pay $10 to do so.

Very well said IainC.

I shouldn't have to turn my brain off to enjoy a movie, even an action movie. There's no law that says a blockbusters has to have a nonsensical plot or inane dialog, it's not like those things are mutually exclusive with a big fun movie.

I mean ffs, Predator has something like a story and character development. Its "Mouthy marine musclemen compleatly fail to beat an invisable alien Hunter (who sportingly wont kill them if they are not holding a gun) until Ahnold drops a rock on it. Oh yeah something about the American goverment bieng assholes." Can anyone here say that Predator was a bad movie?

The hunt for red October. Total amount of action is a plane drops a torpedo in the water which chases the Submarine till Connery orders a right turn, and later 2 subs circle one another for a bit and launch a total of 2 torpedos. Anyone wanna claim that THFRO was a bad movie?

Thats the thing about the "good" action movies. If you look at them most of the movie was not actually raw action. Even Robocop had a lot of "who am I?" filler between the bullets flying. And I think Robocop is a great Movie.

The problem iwith Bay and his ilk can be shown by that scene shown in the review where you see the ships firing on one another. Its basicly shot the way a porn movie is. If I want to see ships blasting at one another, I want to see ships blasting at one another. I dont want to go inside the barrel of the gun and see the flaming shell in slow motion traveling slowly up the barrel then the camera lovingly roams down the outside of the gun barrel and then pans back to see the turrets firing. And then a flash of the 2 ships exchanging fire as an afterthought. FFS if they had just had that it wouldnt have been so bloody dumb. Same with the endless shots of these chainsaw things blowing up whatever.

And every shot of any violence is the same. Guys getting blasted back by an explosion? You see it, then the camera revereses time till the explosion happens and then we see it again. Guy dying by a window? Torturous slow motion. When someone gets punched by the Hulk you dont want to see punch slowly traveling twords his chest and then the shockwave travel all around his body. You want to see the Hulk punch the guy into the middle of next week.

This isn't bad becasue its brain turn off movies. They are bad becasue they are violence and explosion porn. Porn movies sometimes also try and be "meaningful" as well. And hey, porn movies make money. But nobody can claim porn movies are good "brain turn off" movies.

What spoils such films for me is when an invisible stupid-threshold is breached and the film goes from merely dumb to dumb-dumb.

For some reason I can accept aliens hunting marines for sports and honour without deconstructing it too much, but destroyers slogging it out with spacecraft on the water is too much, even with suspension of disbelief turned ON.

Thus Alien & Predator GOOD, Battleship & Peal Harbor BAD.

Also too much jingoistic flag waving. Makes me puke. *points at The Patriot & Mel Gibson in general*

God, the Patriot made me want to punch baby kittens in front of a kindergarten class. It was so goddamn bad.

Action movies DO NOT HAVE TO BE STUPID. There is a certain amount of stupid that you can get away with, but you have to be at least internally consistent with the setting you establish. And context in action movies matter a fuckload. The action has to have context. Explosions have to have context. Bay and the shitheels who follow his style just want shit to blow up as loud and extravagantly as possible. SirT has it right. They are violence pr0n. Transformers 2 had shit that exploded FOR NO REASON, and most of the "story" consisted of nonsensical exposition shoved painfully in-between idiotic racial stereotypes masquerading as comedic relief, long panning shots of people running in between explosions and giant robotic BALLS.

Two dumb but good action movies to me:

Independence Day-Jeff Goldblum uses his Mac to hack an alien spacecraft.  "Welcome to Earf."  Don't matter, great movie.
Armageddon-Shuttles fly like X-Wings and drillers become astronauts in a week.  Don't matter, lots of fun.

Two words.

"Die Hard"

Even the bad ones were good.

ID4 I can enjoy in a good-bad movie way.

Armageddon... jesus christ. I saw it in the theater and would have walked out if I hadn't been with a good friend and didn't want to spoil her treating me to a movie.

Armageddon was a taste of the stupid to come from Bay. That thing sucked on every level I can think of.

"Armageddon" had a decent supporting cast. Good actors can often improve bad dialogue.

The thing is movies like Transformers have a lot of down time as well, but the down time is spent with terrible actors doing stupid nonsensical things or on incredibly insulting comedy bits. It's like the stuff between sex scenes in a porn.

So apparently this film is doing pretty badly. Does this make Taylor Kitsch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Kitsch) the lowest grossing actor of all time?

Audiences are pissed that 45 mins in, someone guesses "G-7," and the movie ends.

But did they sink his Battleship?

One could only wish.

Abyway, rumours of losses from this piece of shite could be premature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_%28film%29


I hate people. This crap cast 200 million to make and just about broke even on raw box office and will turn a profit in home video easily.

So can we blame the rest of the world on shitty movies now?  Its you people who are propping up horrible movies and enabling Hollywood to keep making them instead of something better!   :why_so_serious:

I am reassured that Americans aren't the only ones with bad taste.

What can I say giant robots and explosions translates between languages reasonably well.

Actually, that's almost a word-for-word justification I heard on NPR over the winter of WHY such films continue to be made, even though they are continually critically panned in the US.

Plus movies that are simple, with little plot other than "blow up the US/ parts of the US" are less likely to get banned in those foreign countries.

Imagine if the Avengers had not come out around the same time.

Read every line Rihanna has in the movie 'Battleship' (http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/read-every-line-rihanna-says-in-battleship.html)

Okay, so I saw this. I actually liked it. Sure, a lot of it made no sense whatsoever - especially the alien stragtegy. They don't attack until a button is pushed, they don't attack until something is openly hostile, They go out of their way to not harm noncombatants, and they bring five ships, one of which is so fragile it's destroyed when it hits a satelite, three others are destroyed by one destroyer. And yet their plan is to exterminate humanity?

Anyway, it's not boring, has good special effects, and the 3 minutes of the Missouri fighting gave me a giant muzzle flame boner.

I always thought the Aliens were only defending themselves the entire time. They just wanted to phone home.

This somewhat bothered me also, especially the satelite thing.  I mean, if their ships were THAT fragile, all 5 of them would have been smashed to scrap on impact with the water, given how fast they "landed".  Would have been like driving directly into a block of concrete.

My son is fascinated with naval warships and trains. So reluctantly I placed this into the Netflix que, it arrived today and I figured I would get it over with.

I went in not expecting much, and it delivered slightly above mediocrity. My son loved all the explosions and there were a couple unexpected surprises. 


I totally agree the aliens made no sense in their actions. They really should have shown them as more hostile/wanting to take over the world.

It probably wasn't as bad as it was lambasted, Avengers was 10x the movie, but my son loved it and will probably be getting a copy for Christmas.