Battleship

[Lencho01]

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[Paroxysm]

I finally got around to watching this...

I gotta say, it wasn't that bad.

 

[Call Me Darkman]

This reminds me of 2008 when Peter Berg's Hancock was getting all sorts of bad press and yet it managed to be a success at the box office.

 

[Lencho01]

Odd...

http://www.slashfilm.com/universal-...erican-battleship-asylum-universal-publicity/

Universal Sues Global Asylum Over ‘American Battleship;’ Asylum Thanks Universal For Publicity

Posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 by Germain Lussier

One stars Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna as Naval Officers trying to save the world from aliens. The other stars Mario Van Peebles and Carl Weathers as Naval Officers trying to save the world from aliens. If those two descriptions sound somewhat interchangeable to you, you aren’t alone. The company behind the former, which obviously is Universal’s upcoming mega-budget blockbuster Battleship, is suing Global Asylum, the company behind the latter, a film called American Battleship. One will be released on thousands of screens May 18. The other will hope to fool thousands of people into believing its the former on DVD shelves May 22. Read more about the situation below.

TMZ exclusively broke the news of the lawsuit, which claims Global Asylum is trying to piggyback off Universal’s ultra-pricey marketing push for Battleship. They also claim American Battleship infringes on their copyright to the boardgame Battleship, which the Universal film is based on. There’s certainly much more to it (the full lawsuit can be read here) but that’s the jist.

Global Asylum responded to Universal’s claim with the following statement found on Deadline:

The Global Asylum has promoted the feature film American Battleship for nearly a year while Universal raised no concerns. The timing of Universal’s recently filed lawsuit coincides with mixed reviews of its big-budget film, Battleship — the first movie based on a board game since Clue. Looking for a scapegoat, or more publicity, for its pending box-office disaster, the executives at Universal filed this lawsuit in fear of a repeat of the box office flop, John Carter of Mars. The Universal action is wholly without merit and we will vigorously defend their claims in Court. Nonetheless, we appreciate the publicity.
​

Didn’t Disney release John Carter? That’s a weird mistake to make. I digress.

Battleship is already a monster international hit for Universal, even before it opens on U.S. screens, so it makes little sense they’d go out of their way to try and recoup funds potentially lost if the movie bombs here from a relatively tiny company like Global Asylum. Not to mention Global Asylum makes their money doing exactly this: releasing films that sound and look just like huge Hollywood blockbuster in hopes someone will pick it up on the cheap at Wal-Mart or rent it by mistake on Netflix. They’re the company behind Paranormal Entity, Titanic II, 2012: Ice Age, The Terminators, Transmorphers and Battle Of Los Angeles not to be confused with, well, you get it.

What do you think happens with this case? Will Global Asylum buckle and pay off Universal? Or does Global Asylum have some sort of legal loophole that allows them to keep doing this?

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

This reminds me of 2008 when Peter Berg's Hancock was getting all sorts of bad press and yet it managed to be a success at the box office.

Hancock was staring Will Smith. Everyone knew that it was going to be a world wide box office hit.

Battleship ain't making 227mil domestically.

 

[Marvin]

Film wasn't bad.
Would have been a huge it a few years ago(at least 7 years ago).

 

[Destructus86]

woot, can't wait to see it. I thought it looked great.

 

[Lencho01]

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[Ultimatehero]

I might sound like a prick, but I hope Universal takes that company down for all it's worth. As a film guy, I dunno - just those kinds of films and pornos made/inspired by films have usually rubbed me the wrong way (pun not intended).

 

[Lencho01]

http://io9.com/5908627/the-aliens-in-battleship-could-have-been-much-weirder

The aliens in Battleship could have been much weirder

By Charlie Jane Anders
May 8, 2012 1:07 PM

We've already glimpsed the marauding swarms of aliens in Battleship, with their shiny armor and sinister goatees. (In fact, if you live outside the United States, you've already seen it.)

But the aliens in Battleship could have been a lot more bizarre than just humanoid creatures in spaceships. We spoke to the film's writers, Jon and Eric Hoeber, and they told us some of the alien ideas they and director Peter Berg had toyed with. Plus they explained why this film needed to have aliens.

Battleship could have been more like The Thing

The Hoeber brothers went through a few different ideas for Battleship's alien threat before they settled on the alien soldiers you see in the film. At one point, they considered having an aquatic monster of some kind, that lived in the water and could attack these naval vessels.

They also considered having the monster be "a creeping alien mold, but that didn't last long," laughs Jon Hoeber. The idea behind this was, "What if you took a The Thing-type alien, that was disembodied and would take them over and have them fight [each other's] ship and start to change and metamorphise our indigenous technology."

Adds Eric Hoeber: "So essentially, they're cannibalizing us and our ships for their own nefarious purpose. So we're, in a certain sense, fighting each other. That was an idea we explored early on, but it wasn't really as conducive to the big action kind of stuff. It was more of a horror movie. So at the end of the day, we thought that's a fun idea, but it's not going to be for this picture." Considering lots of different kinds of alien monsters was part of the fun of putting this project together.

But ultimately, they wanted a movie that allowed for lots of ship-on-ship combat action, and a certain amount of homage to the sort of war movies that used to be made in the 1940s and 1950s, which you don't see any more.

Why a Battleship movie needed aliens

The notion of putting aliens into Battleship was director Peter Berg's idea. They worked much more closely with the director than they usually do with movie assignments, and he threw out the concept of an alien-invasion movie right when the brothers joined the film as writers. "That was something we really ran with," says Jon Hoeber.

And the reason why this movie needed aliens? That's simple. Explains Jon:

In reality, there's very few people in the world who would be a fair match for the U.S. Navy at this point in a sea battle. So I think part of it wa just the idea of making a big summer movie, and part of it is just [asking], "Who could these guys credibly fight?"
​

Of course, you could have the Navy fight the Chinese, or Somalian pirates, or terrorists at sea, but then it becomes something more like Black Hawk Down on the water, which was never the goal.

In order to create a fun action movie with believable stakes, you need a threat that is huge "but not absolutely dominating," and that's where these aliens come in.

The brothers actually got to see the Navy up close, going on board some of their ships and interviewing lots of sailors. "The hardware they have is absolutely awesome, the sailors are absolutely awesome," says Jon.

When aliens invade, you need to turn off your brain a bit

In real life, if aliens were advanced enough to travel all the way to Earth, they would kick our ass. The movie even acknowledge's this, by having a SETI employee discuss Stephen Hawking's theories that aliens who came to Earth would be hostile and overwhelming. But in this case, the aliens are just a scouting party (more on that below) making them beatable.


Jon Hoeber says there's never been an alien invasion movie that stood up to determined scrutiny. "I've always loved big summer action films, and when it comes to alien films, it's so funny. There are certain things you have let go and embrace and enjoy the fun of."
Adds Jon:

You see this in every movie that's ever been done, in terms of aliens. In Independence Day, is a computer virus really going to do take down [the mothership]? Really? Battle: L.A., I mean that whole thing is just stupid! [But] oh my god, I love it... That's the thing, I love those movies. [But] if you pick something apart hard enough, it'll ****ing unravel.
​

Both brothers seem pretty happy that Battleship has a 50 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is "actually not kind for this kind of movie," laughs Eric. The 50 percent of critics who enjoy Battleship are the ones who are willing to let go and enjoy the ride, adds Jon,"versus people who are really trying to nail you to the wall for how it's unfolding. And I think the tone Pete [Berg] captured is a good balance of rock 'n' roll, muscley, tongue-in-cheek, and 'how the **** can this be happening?'"

On the other hand, he wants the characters to be the most important part of the film, and he always applies this test: If you take away all the action and explosions, is there still a good movie here? He also wants the film to be true to the military hardware and to the reality of the Navy. The movie spends a surprising amount of time with its characters before the aliens ever actually show up.

Says Jon, "Is this a movie that's going to change the world? God, I hope not. That's not what we're going for."

Alien world-building

As we mentioned above, this is an alien expeditionary force, not a full-fledged invasion. If the aliens showed up in force, we'd be screwed. (Although both brothers are hopeful that this film will get a sequel, so you never know what we'll see next time.)

"We definitely get the feeling that if they sent more than a scouting mission, we're toast," says Eric. "We're attempting to contain the scouting mission. That's the point of the film."

Also, the alien scouting mission runs into some problems on its way to us — on their way down to Earth, one of their ships runs into a satellite, gets damaged, and winds up crashing. "Even for a little scouting mission, they've had a bunch of bumps before they ever encounter us."

The brothers promise we learn quite a bit about the aliens over the course of the movie, and they're a "complete race" with a lot of explanation as to their backstory. They come from a "goldilocks planet," just the right distance from its sun, and they are "very water based." They're obviously humanoids, and they're very tech-savvy — most of their prowess comes from their use of technology, although they do have a couple surprising biological powers too.

Not a Transformers clone

This is definitely a Hasbro joint, and the brothers point proudly to Hasbro's track record with the Transformers films as well as G.I. Joe. At the same time, they think the meme that this film is another Transformers has been played up too much because of the Hasbro connection — the main things the films have in common are Hasbro, the U.S. military, extraterrestrials, and music by Steve Jablonsky.

"There are some of the same people involved," says Eric, but the ships look different. "From our point of view, we didn't feel we had to go there at all." One huge difference between Battleship and Transformers? Pretty much all the people in Battleship are in the military, or connected to the military — there's no teenage civilian in the mix.

A major difference between Battleship and the other Hasbro movies is that there's never been a cartoon of Battleship, the brothers point out. The Transformers and G.I. Joe movies were based on the 1980s cartoons, more than the actual toys. Because of the lack of a cartoon, "we got to create all that stuff," says Eric. The only thing people know is the title and maybe the game — and the movie does include a few little homages to the game.

"People are going to see the movie, not because they like the game Battleship, but because they think it's going to be a cool movie," Eric adds.

Red 2 will have some surprising new stars

The other project the brothers have in the pipeline is the sequel to Red, which they hope will start shooting in the fall. "If the last one was domestic, this one's going international," says Jon.
Adds Eric: "Pretty much all the original cast is back. All the surving cast. So John Malkovich, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Mary Louise Parker, they're all back. And we're going to be introducing a couple other stars of that Oscar-winning caliber, who will be additional characters whom we'll see. Not quite locked down, but we're close. The script is written, but we're doing some last-minute tweaking."

 

[terry78]

That Thing-like idea would have been better I think. At least it would have had shades of the actual game theme.

 

[Figs]

Rihanna couldn't act!

I didn't even need to see the movie to know that.

 

[Spidey Rules 2]

I saw the movie last night (special sneak peek at the Navy base in Virginia Beach). It was a great movie. My kids and I really enjoyed it. Sure there are some plot holes here and there, but no different from other alien invasion movies. Lots of action! Lots of things being blown up. I'd rank it up there with the first Transformer movie, definitely a lot better than Transformers Part II.

 

[Raiden]

It's going to be a showtime between The Avengers and Battleship when this movie opens next week in the U.S.

 

[chesslover]

Give Rihanna the Oscar stat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ShadowBoxer]

I am not sure about this movie. The trailers all looked meh to me, and the reviews aren't that good. If I do decide to see this in theaters it will most defintely be a matine showing. No way I am paying 10 bucks to see this.

 

[Immortalfire]

What my dad said of the trailer: "What is this, Transformers at sea?"

 

[obin_gam]

What my dad said of the trailer: "What is this, Transformers at sea?"

No, it's not Transformers at sea, it's much, much worse. The Transformers films still had that Bay-cheese. This has nothing of that.

 

[Project862006]

^and that bay cheese is a good thing lol

the fact that it does'nt have it is a good thing

 

[Drizzle]

It's going to be a showtime between The Avengers and Battleship when this movie opens next week in the U.S.

I don't think it's going to be close at all. I'd bet my left testicle that The Avengers destroys it at the box office.

 

[obin_gam]

^and that bay cheese is a good thing lol

the fact that it does'nt have it is a good thing

haha i disagree. with Bay-cheese you can laugh at its sillyness. Battleship was just bland in its suckyness.

 

[rayc1971]

Hancock was staring Will Smith. Everyone knew that it was going to be a world wide box office hit.

Battleship ain't making 227mil domestically.

i saw it and thought it was just another battle La.cant believe they spent 250mill on it,battle la only cost 70mill.this wont do well domestically its the same alien invasion film we see over and over before.they should have did a hunt for red october or u-571 type of film for battleship.

 

[Spideyfan93]

I like how there are DVD quality bootlegs online already...

 

[Liam_H]

With it being released overseas for over a month now its not surprising. Happens to almost any major movie.

 

[Spideyfan93]

[YT]ueZ6Y8G6thY[/YT]

My review of this...movie...thing.