BATTLESHIP: One year later

At the risk of alienating the 50% of my regular readership that consists of serious film connoisseurs (the other half being my wife and mother - hi ladies!), I feel compelled to say a few more words about Battleship, last summer's resounding box office dud from director Peter Berg. In this piece, published last July, I speculated on why it might have been such a failure, while somewhat apologetically admitting that, for what it was worth, I enjoyed the film. At the end of my piece, I remarked that I'd likely end up buying a copy on Blu-ray if I could find it for ten bucks or less. (This price point has nothing to do with my opinion of the film; I'm pretty militant about holding out for good deals on movies, and I've acquired most of the Blu-rays in my collection for $8 to $15.) After nearly a year, this magic threshold was finally passed, and I am now the proud owner of a Battleship Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Copy combo pack.

Having watched the film again last night, I must say that my opinion of it has changed somewhat over the past year, or rather, my concern about what others might think about my opinion of it has changed. I'm tired of pretending. Let me state for the record that I unashamedly, unreservedly and without irony, love Battleship, and I don't care who knows it. After seeing it for the second time, it has become clear to me that, in its own way, it's a masterpiece. It's a given that American summer movies have come to mean one thing and one thing only: blowing shit up, and Battleship blows its shit up with the best of them while still managing to work on a human scale. I'm not generally a huge fan of CGI, as I think it's overused, and it usually makes movies look more like video games, but while a few of the sequences might have lost a bit of their lustre on the small screen, in general, Battleship's VFX work is stunning.

More than that, though, it's simply a likeable dog of a movie. I went back and reread some of the favorable reviews of the film from other critics (we're in the minority, believe me), and the consensus is that Battleship succeeds (at least in our eyes) by approaching its subject with an earnestness that's often absent from this type of film, and it presents us with characters we can feel great about rooting for in the midst of its apocalyptic fury. Folks, this is a film so big that it requires not one but two AC/DC songs on the soundtrack. It's an enormously loud and bombastic film that wears its heart on its sleeve. It approaches you, hat in hand, smiling its $209 million smile, and kindly asks you to check your logic and, let's face it, your common sense at the door while promising you a hell of a good time if you acquiesce. It's a film that extracts a naturalistic and even appealing performance from Rihanna, a person whose public persona irritates me to no end. It's a film that manages to celebrate the military in an entirely apolitical way, by pitting them against an extraterrestrial threat, which is a stroke of genius in my book, and it makes Battleship perfect for viewing this Memorial Day weekend, especially given the fact that it features real-life veterans, past and present, among its cast. It's a film that, I think, deserves a second chance.

Light 'em up.

The sinking of Battleship

Peter Berg's alien invasion film Battleship is arguably the biggest failure of the 2012 summer movie season. As I write this, the film, which cost in excess of $200 million to produce, has grossed a paltry $65 million in the United States after having been in release for nearly two months. (A discussion of box office receipts is perhaps the only time I'll unironically use the word "paltry" when referring to tens of millions of dollars.) The overall critical reaction to the film was unsurprisingly savage, as it represents nearly everything serious film critics despise: it's big, it's dumb, it's loud and it's derivative. But let's be honest; critics rarely influence the moviegoing public, and I expected the film to do at least somewhat better business than it has. What I have found surprising is the largely ambivalent, even negative reaction to the film among moviegoers and internet commentators. Clearly, based on its box office returns, a lot of people simply chose not to see Battleship, and after reading a lot of what's been written about it, you would expect it to be one of the worst films ever made. But it isn't, not by a long shot. I saw it in a theater, and I have to say, it's not that bad. I thought it was perfectly enjoyable, and I certainly didn't walk out of the theater regretting having seen the film. (It may have helped matters somewhat that we saw it for free by using a gift card.) Although the plot was ridiculous to say the least, the acting was reasonably competent, the special effects were spectacularly well-done, and overall, I was honestly entertained more than I expected to be. I'm not going to expend any more words trying to defend the film (at least not in this paragraph), because on a certain level, it's indefensible. An obscene amount of money was spent to produce this film, but that's nothing out of the ordinary in today's Hollywood; it only becomes an issue when that money isn't recouped. The bottom line is, either you'll have fun with Battleship or you won't, but frankly, I'm mystified as to why it bombed so thoroughly, and I'd like to try and figure out why.

I'll bet they're feeling a bit inadequate

First of all, the argument that it tanked because it's a dumb movie is invalid. It's not like stupid movies haven't cleaned up at the box office in the past; just look at Michael Bay's Transformers series, which Battleship actually has a lot in common with. Both were developed by the toy company Hasbro based on their products, both feature robotic alien machinery that can reconfigure itself into different objects, and both are, well, stupid. That's where the similarities end, however. The three Transformers films (of which, full disclosure here, I've only seen the first), have grossed well over a billion dollars in the US alone. On the Rotten Tomatoes website, which tracks a film's popularity among both critics and audiences, Battleship receives a dismal 34% score from critics and doesn't fare much better with audiences, who score it at 56%. By contrast, the first Transformers movie scored 57% with critics and 89% with audiences. Why the huge difference? Is Transformers really a better movie? If you asked me, I'd say no. While I enjoyed the first film to a certain degree, it clearly didn't make me want to rush out and see the other two films upon their release. I haven't even bothered to rent them yet. Transformers is deafening, obnoxious and infantile to a much greater degree than Battleship, and personally, I find the star of the series, Shia LaBoeuf, to be irritating, much more so than Battleship star Taylor Kitsch. Speaking of Kitsch, he was also the lead in another huge 2012 flop, John Carter, leading some people to hypothesize that he's somehow box office poison. I think it's just bad luck on his part. No, despite the recent, massive success of a truly intelligent and thought-provoking sci-fi/action film like Christopher Nolan's Inception (or for that matter, his Batman films), the fact remains that dumb movies are as popular as ever (Twilight, anyone?).

"Get to the choppa! Wait, get away from the choppa!"

I suspect the fact that Battleship's lowly origin - it is, in fact, based on a board game - has a lot to do with its negative perception. Like a lot of people, I groaned inwardly when I first heard about it. Hollywood's well of inspiration has been pretty dry as of late; they've gone from remakes of foreign films to "reboots" of their own properties to movies based on TV shows and video games. Basing a film on a board game would seem to be the absolute nadir of creativity, and to a certain extent, it is. Countless jokes along the lines of, "What's next, Chutes and Ladders: The Movie?" were made when Battleship was first announced, and I laughed along with them. Speculation ran high as to whether or not someone in the film would utter the famous line, "You sank my battleship!" in a petulant tone, as seen in the TV commercials for the game. The fact is, however, that Battleship the movie has next to nothing to do with Battleship the game. This rather tenuous connection was nothing more than an attempt to align the film with a familiar and beloved product to boost its visibility, and in this case, it backfired horribly. When you strip all that away, however, what you're left with is an alien invasion flick that has far more in common with other films of its ilk, such as Independence Day and War of the Worlds, than with any game. If Battleship had been called something else entirely and had not been promoted as an adaptation of a board game, it might have done better. This also might explain why it's done reasonably well outside the United States, pulling in over $200 million overseas. The connection with the game may have gone over the heads of non-US viewers who aren't familiar with it and therefore it avoided the negative connotations associated with that relationship.

A snazzy suit of alien armor

Ultimately, though, I think Battleship's failure was mainly the result of unfortunate timing. To see what I mean, you only have to go back two weeks in time from its opening date (May 18) and look at which movie premiered on that date: The Avengers. This admittedly superior film became an unstoppable box office juggernaut that simply left no room for an also-ran like Battleship. The Avengers has grossed nearly ten times as much as Battleship has. It's a better film, yes, but is it ten times better? With all due respect to Joss Whedon and crew, of course not, but that's not really a valid comparison anyway. Any sci-fi/action film that went head to head with The Avengers would have had its work cut out for it, and Battleship just wasn't up to the task. What I don't quite understand is why Battleship didn't benefit more from spill-over business from The Avengers. I'm sure a lot of people who wanted to see The Avengers were turned away due to sold out shows, and I would have expected a healthy percentage of those people to have elected to see Battleship as an alternative. I guess they either walked away or bought tickets to a later showing of The Avengers instead. Of course, it's also possible that Battleship only made as much money as it did because of the patronage of those disappointed moviegoers. I suppose the studio could have played up the patriotic aspect of the film a bit more (it features real-life war veterans in both small and leading roles), seeing as how it opened around Memorial Day, but that probably wouldn't have helped much. In retrospect, if they had waited until July 4th to release the film, things might have worked out slightly better, although they would still have been competing with The Amazing Spiderman and then, two weeks later, The Dark Knight Rises.

Someone just read the reviews to Liam Neeson

We may never really know why Battleship failed so resoundingly. It's worth noting that the film does have its supporters (or at the very least, its apologists). I looked up Roger Ebert's review; while he dutifully points out all of the film's faults, he gives it two and a half stars, and he and I are on the same page about it being better than Transformers (yes, I just compared myself to Roger Ebert). Nick Pinkerton's amusingly witty review in The Village Voice is what ultimately made me decide to see the film; in particular, the last line of the review, which reads, "And when the F-14s came out for a triumphant flyover, I looked around the room to find the moron who was applauding only to realize that it was me." Finally, while searching the web for photos to accompany this post, I stumbled upon another blog post whose rather high-profile author saw Battleship back-to-back with The Avengers and ultimately found Battleship to be more satisfying. The blogger? Oliver Stone. It will be interesting to see if the film develops any sort of second life on home video (at the very least, as the subject of some sort of drinking game). I definitely think it's worth a repeat viewing, especially if you have a decent home theater system that can approximate the room-shaking quality of the theatrical experience, and it's highly likely that I'll rent it, or even buy it on Blu-ray, if the price is right (say, ten bucks or less). While I've found most of director Peter Berg's other films to be instantly forgettable, for once, he made one that I'd like to see again, and it bombed. I feel his pain.