You sank my...BATTLESHIP! Teaser Trailer

Well Gaith, more perplexing to me than Neeson's incredulity at our hero's impressive rank-climbing is he still doesn't think he's good enough for his daughter.

Well sure.

Unless they don't.

Hell, just take a page out of Dr. Strangelove there: The Admiral claims the United States has been attacked, launchs a pre-emptive strike, has a radio shut-down, and then his fleet have to be destroyed.

Or some the fleet is rogue from some other country. Or seized by some bad guys. There are a million half-assed rote plots you could trot out without bringing in aliens.

 

The Coast Guard got that shitty Kevin Costner/Ashton Kutcher movie. I'm sure they were thrilled.

The presence of Liam Neeson and Alexander Skarsgard (who I admittedly have a bit of a man-crush on) give me some cause to think this might be okay. Those aliens better not mess with Liam Neeson's daughter, though, or shit's gonna get real.

I am a bit disappointed that no one said "Target Grid F-9" or anything, although the alien weapon at the end was reminiscent of the pegs going into the holes to mark a hit.

I don't know, though, I'm down for some good ole' fashioned battleship fighting.

 

Peter Berg has some talent as a director (see: Friday Night Lights and the subsequent TV series); he's not Michael Bay, but he's not Spielberg either (see: Hancock; though I imagine the ultimate authority on that was Will Smith, not Berg).

Also, Rihanna's in the movie, though the trailer oddly doesn't mention that - you'd think they'd want to let her fans know. The US Navy's main characters thus consist of an Irishman, a Swede, a Barbadian, and one actual American.

 

@ Kegg: but then he screwed up... because he's the chosen one and a rebel!

The Coast what-now?

... Oh, those guys Ashton Kutcher hangs out with?

No aliens for them!

 

The international nonsense can be handled easily.

1. Pick a real country with a real navy to be the enemy.

2. If you're worried about how they'll deal with it, don't market the stupid movie in that country! They won't like it, they won't need to see it! In fact, market it heavily in countries that are the enemy country's strategic rivals! (i.e., Pick China and Japan and Taiwan would pay assloads to see the US Navy sink Chinese "battleships"!)

 

I don't think that would work with a modern naval fleet which can pickup CNN (not to mention short wave). A submarine sure but not a whole fleet.

Yeah I agree you can get pretty half-assed but I'm just wondering if you could be more realistic.

 

Ugh I forget about that.

Like I said. Poor Coast Guard.

 

Thus needlessly cutting yourself off from valuable $$$? China's a big market. Use aliens and everyone will like it.

And, like I said, I imagine they just want the cool sci-fi stuff.

 

@Admiral 2: I don't get it. How would that involve laser beams, the wanton yet guilt-free slaughter of enemy sentients, and possibly a Life of Brian-style wacky spaceship adventure?

 

The same thing about money is also probably true for North Korea.

I don't think anyone cares about Yakitobi box office though, so my non-point stands.

Submarine fleet!

There we go.

If you want realism it would need to be a period piece. As has been observed, the age of battleships is kind of defunct (and the logic of it was being challenged back in World War II anyhow).

I don't expect realism, I just expected a film involving two fleets shooting at each other.

 

No country has a navy with 10 aircraft carriers, 6-9 ballistic submarines, and a "boatload" of other warships.

Did you know that the Navy is the second largest air force in the world?

Yeah but the only realistic MODERN adversary is China and even with all their piracy, Hollywood makes a ton of money hence why North Korea not China is Hollywood's newest whipping boy.

I read once that Chinese don't like pro-American military movies which hurt the performance of Transformers (but it was probably piracy), so even if you have Japan as the enemy that doesn't mean the Chinese will buy into it.

 

[pedant]The pilots in Stealth were Navy, not Air Force.[/pedant]

As an Air Force brat, I'd rather not have that movie associated with that particular branch of the military, thank you very much.

 

It looks like an Asylum film. A well budgeted Asylum film.

 

The Iowa is actually still owned by the Navy (and is required by law to be kept in a state of readiness for future service - though it's expected to become a permanent museum within a year or so). Both Iowa and Wisconsin were listed on the Naval Vessel Register until 2006, and Wisconsin was kept in a similar state of readiness after it was struck (at the same time as Iowa), until December, 2009.

If the Marine Corps had their way, the Iowa-class would still be in service, as naval gunfire platforms. Even today, WWII-era battleship guns are the heaviest artillery available.

 

Yes but using North Korea makes it more realistic

Though an attack sub or two are assigned to the aircraft carrier task forces most submarines don't travel in fleets.

Sorry realism is the wrong term. Logical is better.

 

They do now.

Admiral Jack Ripper's Special Submarine Task Force, a fleet of secret submarines all equipped with tactical nukes for maximum first strike capacity.

And there's your movie.

Well honestly the film trailer seems fairly logical. It's an alien invasion involving a battleship firing at a flying ship. That's as old as H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

 

Why wouldn't aliens attack from orbit? Oh wait they are from Atlantis. Kewl. Unleash the submarine fleet

 

The US Navy so ridiculously outguns every naval adversary in the world today that you kind of have to go with aliens in order to find someone who can pose a credible threat to defeating an entire naval task force.

China is only a realistic threat if you're in range of their land-based aircraft, in which case it's not really "ships battling" any more. Their subs could take out a few ships, but after that they'd be screwed, and again, there wouldn't be much in the way of exciting surface fighting between ships.

 

I heard sailors love them too. Soviet submarines would lock on and attack the ship with the largest noise signature which happened to be the battleships. The joke was on them since no Soviet torpedo (outside of a nuclear one) could penetrate the hull of an Iowa-class.

As for the Marines, they're as obsessed with laser guided, GPS enabled munitions as the other armed forces so i'm not sure your statement is as true anymore.

 

Looks like it could be fun. Surprised they didn't show Rihanna in the trailer!