Battleship (2012)

Directed by: Peter Berg | 131 minutes | action, science fiction | Actors: Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Josh Pence, Rihanna, Peter MacNicol, Jesse Plemons, Tadanobu Asano, Hamish Linklater, Reila Aphrodite, Beau Brasseaux

For director Peter Berg, the film ‘Battleship’ is, in his own words, ‘a dream come true’. The US Navy is a lifelong love of his. As a child, he became fascinated by the history of these gigantic ships and developed a great passion for them, a passion that he was taught by his father. Making the film ‘Battleship’ (named after the board game of the same name that we know as Sea Battle), in which gigantic warships take on the leading role in their struggle to save the earth from destruction, was therefore made for him.

In ‘Battleship’ Earth is once again attacked by aliens. In this case, it’s about giant metal aliens that fall haphazardly from space. The only ones who can stop these aliens are the men and women of the US Navy. The protagonist in this whole is Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch, known for the title role in ‘John Carter’). Alex is a pretty lax person who seems to make everything he does go wrong. To discipline him, his older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård) thinks it wise that he join the navy, where Stone himself is already in service. When the gigantic aliens fall from the sky, as mentioned, two of the three largest ships in the navy are destroyed in no time. When the captain of Alex’s ship is killed in the attack, Alex, being the highest in rank, must reluctantly take over command and try to defeat the aliens.

There is nothing wrong with the cast of ‘Battleship’, because in addition to the aforementioned protagonists, there are supporting roles for Liam Neeson as Admiral Shane, the leader of this division of the Marines and also father of Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), Alex’s girlfriend. Another notable supporting role is for pop star Rihanna, who makes her film debut as tough soldier Raikes and holds her own between the rest of the crew. Now the film itself doesn’t ask too much of the cast: don’t expect to encounter interesting dialogues or intriguing characters in ‘Battleship’ because there are none. The main characters are the expected ‘standard marines’, tough, clean-shaven men, but all of them uninspiring characters.

As can be concluded from this, there is little to no depth in ‘Battleship’. It’s a pure action movie that relies on big explosions, lots of fight scenes and even bigger explosions. Pure muscle showing, which is nothing wrong with every now and then, but to be honest you’ve seen this after a while. The macho behavior of the US Navy (cheers after every hit), the bad dialogues (after two ships of the Navy have been destroyed in the beginning, many have been killed and the chaos is complete, Alex comes with the laughable ‘I have a bad feeling about this’) – after a while you’ve had enough. It’s a shame that the film never tries to surprise the viewer in any way. You also get to know nothing about the aliens themselves and the idea behind the attack, which is an extra shame because the film tries to create the illusion by means of a number of shots through the eyes of the aliens that they are not just murderous monsters that attack the aliens. want to destroy humanity. Unfortunately, we will never know whether this is actually the case.

‘Battleship’ is nothing more than a hard action film that has very little to offer besides the many impressive explosions and special effects. An action film can succeed without an in-depth story, provided this is compensated by, among other things, a healthy dose of humor or well-thought-out action, such as ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol’ previously demonstrated. ‘Battleship’ fails to do this and it’s basically become a kind of ‘Transformers’ at sea, which isn’t surprising given that both films are developed by Hasbro. For film lovers, ‘Battleship’ has not exactly become a dream come true.