Battleship

[Sir T]

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

[Engels]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[Evildrider]

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.

[IainC]

If you like movies like Independence Day ...

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.

[luckton]

If you like movies like Independence Day ...

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 

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[Furiously]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

You people are broken.

[Evildrider]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

What Michael bay got to do with this film?

[HaemishM]

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

[Ironwood]

What Michael bay got to do with this film?

Who says he has anything to do with this film ?

 

[Mrbloodworth]

HaemishM seems to think so!

[Ironwood]

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.

[Surlyboi]

You people are broken.

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.

[Comstar]

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.

[calapine]

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?

[Evildrider]

But Michael Bay gave us Bad Boys and The Rock.   

[Ironwood]

Which were both shit.

[Surlyboi]

But enjoyable shit. Especially Bad Boys.

[Sir T]

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

[shiznitz]

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

Me= this camp.

[HaemishM]

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.

[sickrubik]

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.

[sickrubik]

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

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.

[IainC]

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.

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

I have a problem with this attitude and the assumption that people who don't like mindless action films are only interested in super-niche art films.

I hate mindless action films because they are disrespectful to their audience and an exercise in cynicism. I don't need a film to be a Cronenbourg or Lynch style head-fuck or to redefine the limits of cinematic excellence but I do ask that it tell an entertaining story with characters I will enjoy following, a plot that is internally consistent and dialogue that sounds believable. That seems to me to be a fairly low bar to clear but most 'popcorn flicks' don't manage it; instead of a story they put the CGI set-pieces in a row and figure out how to get from one to the other. Instead of characters they rely on paper-thin caricatures who don't develop or grow during the story. Instead of dialogue they insert 'witty' one-liners and overly-dramatic plot exposition because they assume the audience is too dense to understand what is happening otherwise.

By saying that you should just turn your brain off and enjoy the film for what it is, you are making an excuse for the production of shit. Not only are you making excuses for people who feed you shit, you are rewarding them and ensuring that the bar drops ever lower. You don't have to be a fan of foreign art cinema to realise that the blockbuster movie is getting dumber all the time and that this is happening because people will excuse that behaviour. You want better action films? Stop watching bad ones.

[Ratman_tf]

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.

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!"

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.

[KallDrexx]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[Sir T]

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.

[calapine]

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*

[HaemishM]

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.

[Tannhauser]

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.