Suggestions To Improve "Battleship" (SPOILERS)

Since I don't like criticizing without offering helpful suggestions, here's something for Battleship.

Many critics have pointed out that Liam Neeson, who plays Admiral Shane, does not do a whole lot in the movie.  One of the few scenes he has in the middle of the film is when most of the fleet is trapped outside of the Hawaiian Islands by the aliens' energy field.  It does not appear they're doing very much to try to break through.  There's a federal VIP (Secretary of Defense?) who is pushing Shane to try to probe the field, and after being pestered about it one too many times, Shane tells him he'll order another plane at the shield when the VIP is co-piloting it.

(This is based on a real incident when a Clinton Administration official suggested to General Hugh Shelton that the U.S. could allow an aircraft to be shot down over Iraq in order to have the pretext for war.  Shelton got really angry and said he'd order the mission when the person who made the suggestion--they're not named--was trained to fly it.  That shut them up real fast.)

Although the force field took an aircraft flying into it without being overly affected, it doesn't seem like anyone made any effort to break it afterward.  Given the amount of firepower a carrier battle group has at its command, one doesn't necessarily have to risk the lives of pilots to do this.

While Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) and company are busy fighting the alien invaders inside the energy field, Shane could pull the fleet back and try to breach the field by firing on it with the conventional missiles the fleet's aircraft and missile boats carry.  If that fails to breach the force field, Shane could then request permission to use nuclear weapons.

Given how close the fleet was to the force field--the three destroyers leading the group were cut off when the shield went up--the fleet would need to pull back even farther before even a tactical nuclear device could be used.  And tactical weapons are relatively small as far as nukes go.  The W70 variable-yield bomb could go as high as 100 kilotons, over five times higher than the Hiroshima bomb, while the Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons, 1,400 times the combined destructive force of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and around a quarter of the explosive force of the Krakatoa volcano.

(Since I assume the force field works by dissipating kinetic force all over the entire surface much like how a bulletproof vest does, and the force field is large enough to enclose the entire Hawaiian chain, it would take some serious nuclear firepower to breach it.)

So we cut between Hopper and his destroyer playing cat-and-mouse with the alien invaders inside the force field and Shane pulling the fleet back a safe distance before he begins nuclear bombardment of the energy field.  Just when the nukes are about to fly, Hopper and the U.S.S. Missouri manage to destroy the emitters on the alien flagship and the force field collapses.

Given how the general public irrationally fears nuclear energy and nuclear weapons (I've seen people suggest using a dozen WWII-era nuclear weapons could cause a nuclear winter when you'd need many, many more powerful modern devices to even get that in theory), this could be a means of building suspense.

It could also get more out of Liam Neeson.  We could see him agonizing about the use of nuclear weapons and perhaps even flashing back to the death of a relative from cancer as a result of exposure to nuclear testing or being part of the American force occupying Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings.  If he's an admiral now, he might be a Vietnam veteran, which would mean his father and uncles would be the right age to be WWII veterans or in the military in the early Cold War, when radiation dangers were not as well-known.

(It would need to be made clear that even if a hole were blown in the force shield, the fleet would need to rush through the blast zone, where the radiation is most severe, in order to have a chance of getting through before the aliens seal the breach.  Thus there's great risk of radiation exposure to the crew.)

Movie Review: "Battleship" (2012) (Spoilers)

Just saw Battleshipwith my friend David.  Here's the review...

The Good

Once the actual alien invasion starts, things get fun.  I liked how Nagata devised a way to track the aliens without using radar using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys.  It also provided a way to have naval combat resembling the Battleship game realistically.  I'd talked with friends about how this would do just as well without tying it into the game at all, but this actually justifies the fact they made this based on a board game.

Although it's dubious that the U.S.S. Missouri could be made ready for battle that quickly and that it has ammunition for its big guns handy, the modern Naval crew and the retired WWII and Korean vets working together to get the ship running and setting off to do battle against the main alien ship was awesome.  In addition to the action coolness, there's some humor in the timing of the shots in the "move the shell" scene.

I really liked the beginning in which Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) tries to impress Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker) by breaking into a convenience store to get her a chicken burrito.  And then he flees the cops and gets Tased repeatedly to make sure she gets the burrito.  All that was hilarious.

They foreshadow Mick Canales (Gregory Gadson)'s hand-to-hand tooth-breaking brawl with the aliens by having Sam reference him being a Golden Gloves boxer when we first meet him.  Having him suddenly beat on the alien soldier without foreshadowing would have been an eye-roller.

The film does give some of the characters story arcs.  Alex has to grow out of his slacker ways and man up, especially once his effective brother is killed in battle.  He also has to put aside his pride and acknowledge the superior skills of Nagata, despite the soccer-game incident before.  Meanwhile, Canales has to put aside his self-pity and belief his injuries have left him incapable when the aliens attack and the NASA scientist has to face his own cowardice.  He starts out fleeing while the aliens massacre his graduate students, later abandons Sam and Canales, and ends with a surprise intervention into Canales' fight with the alien warrior..

Also, Rihanna didn't do a bad job as Petty Officer Cora Raikes.  It wasn't an outstanding performance, but she wasn't a bad actress.  The same for Decker.  If you want someone from a non-acting profession who cannot act, that British girl in Transformers: Dark of the Moon who had no chemistry with the male lead and only one good line ("Sentinel Prime's bitch!") is the way to go.

The Bad

There are some military issues.  I'm assuming Alex entered the Navy as an enlisted man due to his apparent lack of higher education (his brother is trying to get him a construction job).  Furthermore, assuming Alex was given the choice between jail or the military, which used to be fairly common and could explain why he wasn't in jail the next morning after breaking and entering, that's going to be another strike against advancing his career.

So how did he end up an officer again, especially in a relatively short time period?  Although it is possible for enlisted men to become officers (the "green to gold" program or something like that), very few long-service enlisted men become officers.  Where else do all these venerable sergeants and deck chiefs even low-ranking officers fear come from?

Also, there was some bad dialogue, especially early in the film.  When Stone laws down the law on his brother after the burrito incident, the culminating line ("YOU'RE JOINING ME IN THE NAVY!") was just lame.

The aliens are too human in appearance.  They're basically horse-faces with lizard eyes that don't take the sun well, four fingers on each hand, and funky beard-looking things.  Non-humanoid aliens would probably cost an arm and a leg to animate, but they could have looked a bit more different.

The aliens' odd military attitudes.  They smash two of the human destroyers but leave the third one alone when it breaks off to rescue survivors.  The aliens do a commando raid on the destroyer to rescue one of their personnel who's been taken prisoner and then walk off without taking the opportunity to kill the humans present (which include the ship's captain).  And then either they either left another soldier behind (the one who attacks the engine room) or were overconfident to the point they were willing to pull most of the rescue party off the ship and leave one to wreck it.  One of their soldiers catches the guy who runs the Beacon communications system and for some strange reason does not register him as a threat.

Either they were trying to fight a war with one hand behind their back (why?) or they were really overconfident.  If they'd been a bit more ruthless, they'd have won (or at least succeeded in phoning home with valuable intelligence that could aid a larger follow-up force, even if the initial attackers got nuked into oblivion later).

The Verdict

It was a entertaining movie, especially once the mayhem starts.  6 out of 10.  If you want to see this first-run, go to a matinee.