I know your favorite part of the game Battleship. I know because it's my favorite part of the game Battleship: when it's over. I bet I know your second-favorite part of Battleship. It's when the aliens come down and demolish the earth.
Instead of tackling that, let's examine the overriding issue. They've made a movie out of a game? Far be it for me to criticize the adaption of other forms of media into games. That's why the Academy Awards choose to honor both the best Original and Adapted Screenplay each year; some of the best movies are based on other sources -- usually books, but not always. A sampling:
The Shawshank Redemption (short story)
The Godfather (all three parts; book)
12 Angry Men (play)
The Dark Knight (and every other Batman film; comic book)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (book)
The Lord Of The Rings (all three; book)
Fight Club (book)
The Silence Of The Lambs (book)
Forrest Gump (book)
Apocalypse Now (book)
The Shining (book)
A Clockwork Orange (book)
To Kill A Mockingbird (book)
The Green Mile (book)
2001: A Space Odyssey (book)
Die Hard (book)
Sin City (comic book)
Jaws (book)
The Wizard Of Oz (series of books)
The Grapes Of Wrath (book)
Gone With The Wind (book)
Stand By Me (short story)
Harry Potter (all of them; book)
The Exorcist (book)
Beauty And The Beast (fairy tale)
You'll notice this list contains no movies based on games. That's because a list of movies based on games looks more like this:
Mortal Kombat
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Doom
The House Of The Dead
Street Fighter
The difference is that all the movies on the first list are great and all the movies on the second list suck.
The movies on the second list were all based on video games, which generally have stories and characters, just like movies. The problem with board games is that they lack both stories and characters. How is it possible to make a movie based on a board game lacking these important ingredients? Make up a bunch of shit and slap the Battleship name on it!
From the looks of the trailer, Battleship is a smorgasbord of plot points, technology, and action sequences stolen from successful science fiction films. Haven't you always wanted to see Star Wars/Star Trek on water? Me neither.
The trailer ends in dramatic fashion, with a character screaming at the top of his lungs to "fire everything" at the enemy. I've never heard this line, nor could I imagine it being delivered with such force.
How about the giant spinny spiky metal ball things that kickoff the adventure that is this trailer? They look like the bastard love child of destroyer droids, Hailfire droid tanks (those things from Revenge Of The Sith), sentinels (those squid things from the Matrix sequels), and Optimus Prime.
And what about that shield thing the aliens put up that doesn't let anything in or out? This is a completely new concept that I haven't seen used recently.
I do have to give the filmmakers some credit; they've created villains with a sleek, futuristic look I haven't seen depicted elsewhere.
No matter how many times I watch this trailer, I can't seem to shake the feeling that the entire movie is designed to sell action figures. I wonder why that is.
Oh.
Well, at least this will be the first movie that's really just a two-hour commercial for toys.
