New 'BATTLESHIP' trailer

[Manticore]

I never bothered with the second or third Transformers, but the first certainly had immature humour that went nowhere. "This is a sextant." "Heh heh, you said sex."

Oh, definitely. It's just turned up to 11 for the sequels.

 

[God Magnus]

This looks like it will be a couple hours of totally silly fun. I'm really looking forward to getting some popcorn and soda, kicking back and laughing at the absurdity of the flick.

It makes total sense to me to use aliens instead of another country. In our super PC age (and for the purposes of marketing) Hollywood is very sensitive about possibly offending a potential market. Also, aliens allow them to use scifi fx that are reminiscent of "Transformers" (which I'm sure is not coincidental).

 

[FordSVT]

This looks ... generic, for a lack of a better word. It's like someone took scenes from a dozen alien invasion movies and copy-pasted them into this trailer.

This amazes me...yes we've had 4-5 recent alien invasion movie/tv shows, but for the better part of my lifetime, we havent seen anything of this scale or with such effects. I would have loved to have seen more of it over the years. It amazes me how we take this for granted these days...generic indeed...

Yup, there have been TONS of movies made where battleships fought an alien invasion from beneath the sea. I mean really, how broadly are you casting the "generic net" here? Is every alien invasion movie with spaceships and explosions now "generic" and not worth seeing, no matter the spin they put on it? That's a bit like saying all cowboy movies are "generic".

I completely agree... but I went conservative (30%0 on the intelligent thoughtful estimate so I wouldn't be chastised. I actually think it is an extremely intelligent film. i would go see more films like that gladly.

Regretfully, I jumped into the wading pool with the other nattering nabobs who insisted the film was an affront to Asimov's legacy. When I finally got around to seeing it on DVD, not only did I find it a remarkably good film, but found very little objectionable about it from an orthodox Asimov perspective, either. It was a thoughtful exploration of human-AI relations. And it had a lot of great action, too.

I agree. It had a different take of Asimov's Three Laws, which were sci fi rules he always felt should be shared and reinterpreted.

thanks for sharing.

Watching the Batttleship trailer makes me wish summer was filled with more I, Robots.

It wasn't even an "adaptation" of Asimov until quite late in the game, long after the original story was written and the movie rights were purchased. There were some similarities so they got permission from the Asimov estate to tack the name on and they fiddled with the script a bit, but it's not really a ground-up adaptation of I, Robot.

All the more reason to excuse its flaws, I say.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I think soulless might be a better word than generic if I read Shurik correctly.

 

[Shurik]

I think soulless might be a better word than generic if I read Shurik correctly.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Bad English, sorry.

 

[FordSVT]

I think soulless might be a better word than generic if I read Shurik correctly.

I think it looks fun, does that mean I think it has a "soul"?

Honestly, I'm not going to get into a debate about something like this, it's obviously subjective.

 

[IndyJones]

. In our super PC age (and for the purposes of marketing) Hollywood is very sensitive about possibly offending a potential market.

You use that term, I don't think it means what you think it means.

 

[God Magnus]

. In our super PC age (and for the purposes of marketing) Hollywood is very sensitive about possibly offending a potential market.

You use that term, I don't think it means what you think it means.

To clarify, I meant that if you're going to market a movie that you want as many people as possible to see, you do not want to potentially offend anyone, hence the need to be politically correct.

In our current age, marketers and those who develop entertainment have to be very conscious of potentially offending people. Language is changed to accommodate political correctness (ex: "vertically challenged" vs. "short" in describing height). Even old Loony Tunes cartoons have screens before them on the DVDs warning that they could offend people etc. This is what I refer to by the "super PC age".

If the bad guys in "Battleship" were anything but aliens, marketing is probably afraid someone would be offended based on their ethnicity/language/skin color/flag etc. Making the enemy aliens makes them a universal threat that anyone regardless of religion, ethnicity or geographic location will be okay seeing in the flick.

Just my take, feel free to disagree.

 

[nvek86]

^I wonder who the bad guys will be if we ever make contact with actual aliens then.

 

[The Wormhole]

They could have made up a fictional country, though I suppose that would be risky since it would likely be too similar to an actual country.

Of course, wasn't the Battleship board game based on WWII naval battles anyway? A period piece showing the Americans vs Nazis could have worked. After all, Everyone Hates the Nazis.

 

[nvek86]

Of course, wasn't the Battleship board game based on WWII naval battles anyway? A period piece showing the Americans vs Nazis could have worked. After all, Everyone Hates the Nazis.

No, the first versions of the game predate even WWI and may go back to the 19th century.

 

[JarodRussell]

These trailers remind me of Crysis pretty much. And I dunno, except for the name, I wouldn't know that it's a movie based on the Battleship game.

 

[Talosian]

. In our super PC age (and for the purposes of marketing) Hollywood is very sensitive about possibly offending a potential market.

You use that term, I don't think it means what you think it means.

To clarify, I meant that if you're going to market a movie that you want as many people as possible to see, you do not want to potentially offend anyone, hence the need to be politically correct.

In our current age, marketers and those who develop entertainment have to be very conscious of potentially offending people. Language is changed to accommodate political correctness (ex: "vertically challenged" vs. "short" in describing height). Even old Loony Tunes cartoons have screens before them on the DVDs warning that they could offend people etc. This is what I refer to by the "super PC age".

If the bad guys in "Battleship" were anything but aliens, marketing is probably afraid someone would be offended based on their ethnicity/language/skin color/flag etc. Making the enemy aliens makes them a universal threat that anyone regardless of religion, ethnicity or geographic location will be okay seeing in the flick.

Just my take, feel free to disagree.

That's less a matter of being politically correct than economically and market demographically correct. When the international market did not comprise such a large share of movie revenues, this wasn't such an issue. That shift, more than politics, is the reason why movies have more of an international and even post-national flavor these days.

Hopefully one day, national tensions will decline to the point where this won't even matter anymore.

 

[TheNatureRoy]

These trailers remind me of Crysis pretty much. And I dunno, except for the name, I wouldn't know that it's a movie based on the Battleship game.

 

[God Magnus]

That's less a matter of being politically correct than economically and market demographically correct.

I guess the two are always connected in my mind hence me linking both ideas into the same post. ::