Battleship

[soonforgotten]

Sounded like a boozy FMUK film screening!

I wouldn't call Budweiser beer. It's lager for toddlers.

If only I liked wine.

[valda]

was really glad they didnt do the whole 'take you phones' thing and put it in bags before the film and of course nice for the free drinks and popcorn on the seats

now the film i actually really enjoyed it, would have thought rihanna would have been rubbish but she wasnt so bad. a few jokes in the film and thought it was pretty gripping especially with the sound practically blasting

9/10

I was the mug who left my phone at work to save time As a result of that, I forgot to take my Warfarin and got told off the next day at my blood test

[Preston1990]

This is riddled with spoilers so don't click the link if you havent seen the film yet!!

[spoiler]OK, here's one for you!....

You're an alien race with all the skills and technology required to enable you to travel with ease from your home planet, orbiting a star way off in a distant galaxy half way across the universe, to mount a credible attack against the Earth, right?.....

The sheer distance is immense! Your talking millions if not billions of light years away! Yet you complete that journey incredibly rewriting the very laws of physics within at most just a couple of weeks or months after the very thing arrived that allerted you to the Earth's presence. It's like ....not going to happen is it?

So leaving that aside for a moment, what's your weapon of choice going to be then?......Some sleek efficient cool looking starship armed to the gunnels with phasers and assorted deathly plasma rays maybe? or....

Would you chose instead some archaic, massively heavy and terrifically inefficient hydraulic powered piece of tat that looks like it was designed by some victorian industrialist and assembled by the late Fred Dibnah using parts from left over traction engines and all them bits from the spares room at the York Railway Museum that they didn't quite know what to do with?

Now no- one respects the late great Fred more than me, but come on now you're a forward looking cool alien race - you're not going to get it that wrong are you?....Purrllease!!


As if that wasn't bad enough, apparently you would come armed with the latest "schoolboy flicknife" technology, WW2 depth charges, and massive griding gear wheellike machines that look as though they were taken from the transmission cases of automotive differentials (sdmittedly bloomin' big ones)...... Well actually no, you wouldnt, would you!

And......Why do the aliens arrive in pretty much human form (you know 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 2 eyes, 2 feet etc etc with just a few embelishments) ...You know it's not just going to happen is it!!

And another thing.....No-one likes cheap peurile humour more than me but it's got to be in the right place. I like my action films to be serious affairs, after all when your very planet is under attack and you and your mates are all about to be killed, you're not going to be cracking amusing one-liners and delivering dodgy puns, now are you?

We even had the sickening TopGun back slapping crowd scene with the equivalent of the cringeworthy "you can be my wingman anytime" line. Like all good alien invasion films their downfall was at least in part delivered by a natural phenomenen. Remember the rain in War of The Worlds. You'd never have seen it coming would you.

Leaving all of the above aside for a moment and despite (many) further flaws in the film I really quite enjoyed it. Yes I know, no-one was more surprised than me.

The CGI and effects were pretty impressive and there were bangs, flashes and loud explosions aplenty.

I give it 7/10 .[/spoiler]

[raj101]

yes, but aha [spoiler]the hydraulic alien ships may have been ancient sleeper technology parked locally rather than current bright shiny models arriving from Betelgeuse.[/spoiler]

Borag Thunng, Earthling.

[Preston1990]

Yes, but aha back......

[spoiler]Quaequam Blag!

Raj, on the surface it's a fair point, and at first glance I can see that that explanation may seem credible, but answer me this....


If the aliens were able to park their Dibnahs "Locally", then by definition they must have known where the Earth actually was. If they did know our location before we had initiated the signal to the Goldilocks planet, then what would have be the point of parking their machines up at all - surely they would have come right on over lickity split to kick our asses immediately, otherwise if they had waited in the meantime we may have identified Planet G as a likely home for ETI and their element of total surprise would then have been lost, which is what actually happened in the end. [/spoiler]

[Preston1990]

Edited to say "Oops double post - there must have been a glitch in the space/time continuum!"

[raj101]

I cant believe you said Quaequam Blag!

[Preston1990]

I cant believe you said Quaequam Blag!

Got to get around Beate's swear filter somehow Raj

[TheyCallMeMrGlass]

Got round to finally seeing this today.

The sci fi concept is as benign as Preston's analysis made it out to be. The amount of scientific implausibilities in this film was astronomical. Hawkins would have a serious heart attack if he saw this film, even if he was told its a comedy. Thankfully the implausibilities starts right off the bat, so that prepared me for some kind of spoof comedy. Nevertheless throughout the film, I found myself smacking my forehead in disbelief so hard, I nearly knocked myself out. This film is stupid. If I had not known Michael Bay had nothing to do with this, I would have thought he directed it. Whoever is the director must have made this film as some kind homage to Bay's lunacy.

And for all that, I actually enjoyed it. The beginning was actually the most fun, I was laughing out loud as there was some good comedy here as star boy tries to impress girl with hilariously extreme determination. The film's first hour was almost similar to Armageddon. Ie Boy gets girl, boy works under girl's father's command, father not impressed with boy as boy wants his blessing to marry his daughter. Same meal, different sauces. Then the film shifts into gear 5 with an hour of pure destruction, war and full fat cheese. It got very tiresome during the middle because it was all being taken so seriously, so I was bored. The typical gung ho soundtrack was grating on me too. The landmark destructions were a bit numbing. But then final act brought back the cheese and fun.

6/10 Nonsensical cheesy stupid fun.

[spoiler]On top of all what Preston listed. The very beginning had me in fits. So they found an Earthlike planet and sent a signal to it, from which they received a response within 4-5 years. So does any of the film crew realise light would take 4 years to just reach our nearest star? Man, it would have been more credible to use Voyager 1 as an Alien rendezvous instead. Maybe this whole film is a naked gun style spoof of Michael Bay films? As Patrick Moore would say, I wonder?[/spoiler]

[akh43]

For anyone who missed this at the cinema this is on Channel 4 at 8pm on Saturday.