Battleship was worse than I thought it
would be.
First, the protagonist is a fuck up
aged 26 who is bullied by his brother to go into the Navy (as he is
in the Navy). I thought that meant “enlisted” but at the movie's
beginning he is an officer. Now . . . there are three ways to become
an officer. The first is to go to the Naval Academy, the second is
the Naval ROTC program and the third is to serve as an enlisted
sailor for years with distinction and go to Officer's Candidate
School.
The Naval Academy is a hard to get into
school. Not only do you need the kind of grades and SAT scores of
top Ivy League schools, you need things like a letter from your
congresscritter. The NROTC program is basically a scholarship
program, merit based, meaning that you need, again, a great high
school career. Fuck ups do not get into either.
Then the fuck up officer fucks up and
is told he's going to be kicked out of the Navy. His response is,
“Oh, golly, I'm so ashamed” and not “Yay! I hated this job, it
was a bad fit and I was bullied into it in the first place!” I
mean, SHOCKER, a job a dude was bullied into doesn't work out.
Then they call the battleship Missouri
the “greatest warship in US naval history”. That's . . . almost
offensive. The greatest warship in US history is either the USS
Constitution or the USS Monitor. I'd tend to say the Constitution,
myself, a Revolutionary War ship that repeatedly won engagements with
better armed and more numerous British warships. Considering the
time, that was pretty epic. The Monitor was the victor against the
CSS Merrimac in the Civil War. The battle was a technological
turning point, the death of sail powered, wood hulled warships for
steam powered, steel hulled ships.
The Missouri, on the other hand, was
obsolete when constructed. It was just a leftover from the early
20th century's focus on big ships. Everyone knew,
militarily, real sea power was with aircraft carriers and submarines
and everything else was just support for aircraft carriers and
submarines. Battleships were always kind of pointless, an
egotistical race for side. Easy to target, slow to maneuver, with
guns that could not track small, fast ships, they were always utterly
pointless. Even for the wars in which the Missouri served, it was
militarily insignificant.
But then, cut to the female romantic
lead, who is a physical therapist (they probably found “nurse”
too cliched, but clearly did not stray far afield) talking to this
dude who had his legs blown off in Afghanistan. He's got a bad
attitude because, y'know, he has lost his legs and IS SURROUNDED BY
CONDESCENDING IDIOTS. He is introduced in physical therapy being
told by a dull eyed therapist to correct his form on his artificial
legs and to focus. I know different people respond differently to
motivation, but a whole hell of a lot of us, when we're tired and in
pain, really, really object to people telling us what we already
goddamn know.
Then the new pretty white lady
therapist shows up and says he's still the same man who won the
Golden Gloves and was an elite soldier. That's . . . an awful thing
to say to a guy who's lost his legs. Because those are precisely the
kinds of things he can't do, anymore. Your stick and move really
suffers when you've got not fucking legs. And, of course, the Army
puts you on 100% disability when your legs get blown off. He will
never be a boxer nor soldier, again. Saying he's the same man is
just wrong. And cruel. He has suffered a terrible, permanent injury
that is preventing him from doing many of the things he loves.
Of course, in the end, he'll get an
attitude adjustment and be okey-dokey. Because a positive attitude
solves all wrongs! (I have now watched it all and I was of course
right. Stupidest moment in the movie – the legless boxer
submitting an alien with a reverse triangle with artificial legs.)
Then they gave us, about the aliens,
“No material on the periodic table!” Except for . . .
lawrencium! My soul, it aches. I mean, it's quite possible that
alien materials would be hard to analyze because any really foreign
compound is liable to be hard to analyze, and it could well be
produced with technologies we don't know. But atoms are the same
everywhere in the universe and some form of stabilized lawrencium,
sure, maybe there's a stable allotrope, would be just as hard to
analyze. I mean, how do you even figure out something is a stable
allotrope of lawrencium? The stuff barely exists on this planet.
OHEMGEE! The Navy fired first! They
sent out a warning horn, got a much more powerful one in return and
then OPENED FIRE. The aliens might have been peaceful but some idiot
yahoo OPENED FIRE on an ALIEN SHIP.
What the aliens were trying to say: “We
come in peace. Our planet's environment has been destroyed and we're
looking for a new home. We're a primarily aquatic people so you'll
barely notice we're there, except for all the incredible technologies
we're willing to give you in payment for part of your ocean.”
Afterward: “Fuck you guys.”
Then the cowardly academic! Of course,
no academics are intelligent, well-adjusted people with lots of
social skills. It's all Big Bang Theory, yep, where academics are
awkward, socially inept yobs. (By the end, the Cowardly Lion finds
his courage.)
A big part of the “plot” is the
aliens need to coopt human communications equipment to phone home
because theirs was destroyed in reentry. The idea is that a land
based system fired off a command to a satellite that “boosts the
signal”, apparently with sufficient intensity to break the light
barrier, I dunno. I kept asking myself, “They have space ships.
Why don't they just go up to the satellite, directly, and send the
signal from there.” I, of course, do know the reason. The script
writers are either fools or (and I think this is more likely), well,
unmotivated. Some guy comes up to me and says, “So, we're making a
movie based on the game Battleship.” “You mean, that double
blind target finding game based on WWII sea duels?” Yeah, except
instead of that, we're going to have aliens.” “Aliens?”
“Aliens. We'll pay.” Not exactly the best material to work with
so I'll give them a pass. Indeed, I'll give everyone in the movie a
pass except the producers who pushed this through to completion. I
understand that everyone else, the director, actors, CG guys, best
boys, I understand all of these people need to put food on the table,
they need to work. But the producers? Fuck those guys.
And let's talk length. The movie is
over two hours long. Which is admittedly over two hours too long,
but there's a reason action movies used to be around ninety minutes.
Then they use the Missouri. With WWII
and Korean era vets that conveniently happen to be on hand. Now,
Korea ended in 1952. By my reckoning, that's sixty years ago. Since
enlistment age is 18, the MINIMUM age of any vet of the Missouri is
SEVENTY-EIGHT.
Then they fire up the boilers of the
Missouri, which is physically demanding labor in extremely hot
conditions. Remember, minimum age, seventy-eight. And some of them
are from WWII, meaning they're no younger than EIGHTY-FIVE. Of
course, some of them will be older.
And then they do that thing that they
did in the one horrible Pirates of the Caribbean movie – not that
one, the OTHER one – where they drop anchor to swing a ship around
by ninety degrees. Well, it would not have worked in the Pirates of
the Caribbean movie, that kind of sudden deceleration would either
snap the chain (if you're lucky) or rip the chain through the hull of
the ship or some combination of the two. When you do it with a
BATTLESHIP . . . the ship would either snap in two or the capstan
would be ripped out or the chain would shear through the hull, or
some combination of the three.
In the denouement, of course the fuck
up saves the day and he's awarded a Silver Star – which is the
third highest honor a military person can get.
HELLLLLLO, the person who is
responsible for saving the SPECIES would get a Congressional Medal of
Honor – and then spend the next six months touring the planet while
every nation on earth hands him the highest honor they can give to
foreigners.
His brother, who DIED, and started the
conflict by opening fire on an alien ship, got the Navy Cross, a
higher honor than the guy who SAVED THE SPECIES.
They get nothing right. No thing.
I will also say that the screenwriter,
at least, realized that these aliens were not military. Their
weapons could not instantly destroy our ships. They had no weapons
of mass destruction, no armed aircraft much less spacecraft. Our
weapons could hurt their ships. Their people on the ground, while
wearing powered armor, had no guns. (Lots of reasons, too, why they
had powered armor, the Earth has higher gravity, maybe, and they did
do a lot of heavy lifting). It's like . . .
Imagine a Spanish galleon from the 16th
century fighting a modern destroyer. The galleon would vanish under
the power of the destroyer's weapons – the least powerful of the
destroyer's weapons could easily sink a galleon before the galleon
was in range of hitting the destroyer. Which it would never get into
because it is a wind driven craft and the destroyer has diesel
engine.
Now imagine that galleon up against a
cargo ship with a top speed of around six miles an hour. Sure, the
crew have some weapons, guns and such, but they have no armor, no
training, and the galleon's guns would be able to blow holes in the
cargo ship's hull – it isn't designed for war. It wouldn't
necessarily be an easy fight, but it would be a winnable one for the
galleon.
That's what happened in Battleship. We
destroyed essentially unarmed recon ships full of civilian crew.
And so what if they don't contact their
world? Will that necessarily stop additional exploration of earth?
Would it stop humans? And they more less said that the aliens' world
is fucked – they might not need to move but they definitely want
to. Somehow, I doubt one failed recon mission will put the matter to
rest. And next time, they will send a warship. It's what we'd do.
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