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Lt. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is a weapons officer aboard the destroyer USS John Paul Jones, while his older brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgård), is the commanding officer of the USS Sampson. Unknown to Alex, Stone or the rest of the U.S. Navy, alien invaders have arrived on Earth with plans to steal Earth's resources. When a confrontation with the invaders knocks out the Navy's radar capability, American and Japanese forces must work together to find a way to save the planet.

Release date: May 18, 2012 (USA)

Director: Peter Berg

Distributed by: Universal Pictures

Budget: $209–220 million

Music by: Steve Jablonsky

Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back listeners.

Introduction and Initial Thoughts

00:00:02
Speaker
It is time for another review from Matt goes to the movies and maybe one that is going to have Rob and I at ends today with the movie battleship.
00:00:15
Speaker
I have a feeling we're going to have some probably different opinions on this movie based on a couple of things that we've said back and forth to each other.
00:00:26
Speaker
So this might be the rare one where we're kind of
00:00:30
Speaker
I don't know.
00:00:30
Speaker
I feel like we're going to be in disagreement here.
00:00:32
Speaker
So it's, it's going to be interesting to hear your thoughts on this overall, Rob.
00:00:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:40
Speaker
Might surprise you, but might not.
00:00:44
Speaker
I'm actually glad that I sat down and watched this tonight.
00:00:46
Speaker
My son actually really does like this movie.
00:00:49
Speaker
So when I told him that we were doing this, he was actually really excited and asked if he could watch it with me.
00:00:54
Speaker
So we watched this earlier tonight before we went on air.
00:00:57
Speaker
And, you know, there's there's definitely some fun parts of this movie that I think are worth mentioning.
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:05
Speaker
But yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about

Movie Giveaways and Tyler Kitsch's Career

00:01:07
Speaker
it.
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, me too.
00:01:08
Speaker
And before we get into talking about Battleship, we want to plug another giveaway here at Matt Goes to the Movies for the listeners to let them know that right now.
00:01:22
Speaker
we have another giveaway for mission impossible dead reckoning part one.
00:01:28
Speaker
Uh, that is actually out on digital.
00:01:31
Speaker
Now, uh, you do not have to spend money on it and purchase it though, which is awesome.
00:01:37
Speaker
You can listen to the show, follow us on social media and find out how to win one of our free copies of this on digital.
00:01:47
Speaker
So mission impossible dead reckoning stars, Tom Cruise, and,
00:01:51
Speaker
and the biggest and best action movie of the year.
00:01:54
Speaker
You can buy Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 on digital today and go behind the scenes with incredible bonus content and available at participating retailers.
00:02:03
Speaker
Rated PG-13 from Paramount Pictures.
00:02:06
Speaker
So we do want to say thank you as always to Matt 360 for sponsoring this portion of the show and making us able to give out these digital copies of movies to our listeners.
00:02:19
Speaker
So
00:02:19
Speaker
Thank you very much and follow the show and check out our show notes on how to win that.
00:02:24
Speaker
So Rob battleship battleship battleship 2012.
00:02:29
Speaker
Um,
00:02:33
Speaker
And for somebody who wasn't really around in 2012, you might not know that this was where Tyler Kish was supposed to be the next big thing.
00:02:47
Speaker
They were really trying to market this dude as like an action guy.
00:02:55
Speaker
I mean, yeah.
00:02:56
Speaker
John Carter goes to Mars battleship.
00:03:00
Speaker
He was in Friday night lights and he really was supposed to be like, like the next big guy.
00:03:06
Speaker
He was also an X-Men origins Wolverine.
00:03:11
Speaker
It seems like he's got, he should fire his agent.
00:03:14
Speaker
Like X-Men origins battleship and John Carter alone.
00:03:18
Speaker
Like though that those three should, or is agent fire worthy.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, as your main tent poles, like John Carter, I mean, killed his, like almost killed his career by itself, for God's sakes.
00:03:39
Speaker
That movie killed a lot of things.
00:03:41
Speaker
Mostly its audiences.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:43
Speaker
I mean, that came out March.
00:03:45
Speaker
Wow.
00:03:46
Speaker
I didn't even realize that came out March 9th of 2020, 2012.
00:03:51
Speaker
And Battleship was released in theaters.
00:03:58
Speaker
May 18th of 2012.
00:04:00
Speaker
So two back to I did not realize they were that close until this moment to back to back.
00:04:08
Speaker
I mean, realistically, I mean, we'll talk about whether or not we like this movie or not, or but two back to back flops where he was the leading man and movies that were not well received.
00:04:20
Speaker
And if I'm not mistaken, those movies are pretty much sandwiched by the Avengers being released.
00:04:25
Speaker
So you can pretty much forget about anybody caring about anything else at that point in time other than just the Avengers.
00:04:32
Speaker
Right.
00:04:32
Speaker
And you're certainly not going to get anything.
00:04:36
Speaker
You're not going to get any forgiveness when the Avengers came out.
00:04:39
Speaker
Like your movie had to be really good for you to get anything.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:42
Speaker
You know, maybe with Battleship, we'll talk about that.
00:04:45
Speaker
But over the years, John Carter certainly hasn't done itself any favors.
00:04:49
Speaker
I've never really seen anybody talk about like, oh, well, you know, after time went on, it was, you know, a cult following movie or it's definitely better than you remember.
00:05:02
Speaker
Battleship, I'll talk about that.
00:05:04
Speaker
I think you've got something there where John Carter has almost nothing I've ever seen to try to, you know, well, there is at least this scene or there is at least this idea, or if it wouldn't have been for studio interference, they probably would have been, you know, if you ever saw like the air cut of it or whatever that version of that movie is, you'd like it a lot better.
00:05:23
Speaker
You've never really heard that, but you, you do hear people that revisit battleship.
00:05:30
Speaker
And I think, you know, we've talked about this a lot, Matt, where,
00:05:34
Speaker
A bad movie happens and people are initially disappointed.
00:05:38
Speaker
Time goes on.
00:05:39
Speaker
We kind of forget about it.
00:05:41
Speaker
We forget why it was so bad.
00:05:43
Speaker
And then after that initial disappointment of this wasn't a good movie, like you've already gotten over the disappointment for it.
00:05:51
Speaker
So you can just rewatch it already knowing the outcome and just sort of appreciate it for what they were doing, despite the fact that it wasn't what anybody wanted.

Choosing Movie Enemies and Alien Design

00:06:00
Speaker
And you can kind of see it through new eyes.
00:06:02
Speaker
And what really occurred to me with this is, so, you know, you think about the Hasbro game, right?
00:06:07
Speaker
Everybody's played Battleship at one point or another.
00:06:09
Speaker
You know, my kids like it.
00:06:10
Speaker
It's a pretty, it's a pretty simple game to figure out.
00:06:12
Speaker
You know, there's, it's mostly luck, but there's a little bit of strategy to it.
00:06:16
Speaker
And if you're Hasbro and you just made a boatload of money with Transformers and you're looking at your lineup and trying to figure out what to do next, this is kind of an odd one to pick, like to green light as your next major film property.
00:06:30
Speaker
But if you had to pick how to do it, like how far, like if you were just going to write a treatment for a battleship based movie, how far down the list would you have gone before you got to Aliens?
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:44
Speaker
You know, certainly I think when I first saw this movie, it was one of those ones where, yeah, it was just like, yeah, that was stupid.
00:06:53
Speaker
And it might've been too, for the simple fact that like,
00:06:58
Speaker
I, you know, I knew who, who Taylor was.
00:07:01
Speaker
And certainly I thought about the fact that back then, and it really slipped my mind that like, wow.
00:07:08
Speaker
You know, he's in two movies that aren't really that well, you know, aren't really well liked, but also to like remembering, oh, this has Liam Neeson in it.
00:07:18
Speaker
And, you know, Liam Neeson was, you know,
00:07:21
Speaker
also in his own right, having a kind of career resurgence and things like that, um, around this time.
00:07:27
Speaker
So there was a lot of things against it at the time.
00:07:31
Speaker
And, you know, certainly looking back on it, I sit there and go, and it's funny how you were like, Oh, my son really likes this movie.
00:07:39
Speaker
You know, the reason I rewatched this movie was originally because of my son saying, Oh, I was seeing clips on YouTube about it.
00:07:48
Speaker
And, um,
00:07:49
Speaker
I want to watch it, which we've talked about that too.
00:07:53
Speaker
You know, does a movie have like YouTube credit, so to speak?
00:07:59
Speaker
Like we've talked about like, yeah, at least there's some parts in these movies where like I'll go on YouTube every once in a while and I'll type in that clip in my search bar just to that was a cool fight scene or a really good explosion.
00:08:14
Speaker
And yeah, I'm I am glad I went back and rewatch this movie.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, there is really something there.
00:08:23
Speaker
But it's hard for me.
00:08:25
Speaker
And as I was watching this, I kind of thought of another movie that we reviewed not that long ago where there's absolutely no reason to add aliens into it.
00:08:34
Speaker
And yet the filmmakers decided, you know what's going to make this movie better?
00:08:37
Speaker
Let's add aliens.
00:08:38
Speaker
And it was just hard for me to not see the parallels between this and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which can exist entirely on its own without having to have aliens in it.
00:08:47
Speaker
And as I started thinking about it a little bit, okay, so you want to have, if you want to do a military film or just any kind of combat action, you got to be kind of careful who you choose as the bad guys.
00:09:03
Speaker
And that's why, and we talked about this with Overlord, that's why you see Nazis or zombies all the time because you can just waste them and nobody in the audience is going to care.
00:09:11
Speaker
You're supposed to kill zombies.
00:09:13
Speaker
You're supposed to not care about what happens to Nazis.
00:09:15
Speaker
That's the way of the world.
00:09:17
Speaker
But when you get into and you just think about things like Red Dawn, you think about when that came out, they changed the enemies at the last minute from the Chinese to North Korea because they were afraid of what was going to happen with the Chinese market.
00:09:32
Speaker
I mean, look at, you know, I'm not going to get on a soapbox or anything like that, but when the NBA had a problem a couple of years ago with
00:09:40
Speaker
some comments that were being made from Daryl Morey about things that China was doing.
00:09:45
Speaker
Then all of a sudden you had all these NBA players that were realizing that they were going to get screwed in China, LeBron James being one of them because he knew he had Space Jam's reboot coming out.
00:09:54
Speaker
And if the Chinese market censored it or banned the film, that was going to cause massive, massive problems for the profitability of that studio.
00:10:02
Speaker
So you run into issues like
00:10:05
Speaker
you know, like North Korea is not really a viable enemy that you can throw up against, like with a full Navy.
00:10:11
Speaker
So like, you can't use them.
00:10:12
Speaker
You certainly can't use China because your film will never debut in China.
00:10:15
Speaker
And that's a massive, massive, massive commercial market for movies.
00:10:19
Speaker
So you can't use them because it'll just get banned.
00:10:21
Speaker
So who do you really use?
00:10:23
Speaker
You know, like Saudi Arabia, you're not going to do that.
00:10:26
Speaker
Like,
00:10:27
Speaker
you're going to run out of bad guys.
00:10:29
Speaker
So, you know, or you can do like what, uh, what happens in like modern warfare a lot where they make up a fake, you know, middle Eastern country.
00:10:36
Speaker
So they don't actually upset anybody.
00:10:38
Speaker
Um, you know, you'll see them do that a lot.
00:10:40
Speaker
So as I kind of thought about it, it's sort of makes sense that they went with aliens.
00:10:45
Speaker
Although initially I kind of thought it was dumb.
00:10:48
Speaker
Uh, but I actually understand their decision now.
00:10:50
Speaker
And I don't know that they had a choice.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think, uh,
00:10:56
Speaker
I think it works.
00:10:58
Speaker
I think what doesn't work, and this is one of the things that I think is a problem with the movie, as we'll start talking about some pros and cons here, is the simple fact that the alien design really sucks.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's terrible.
00:11:14
Speaker
That porcupine beard.
00:11:16
Speaker
I don't really get it.
00:11:17
Speaker
I don't think their faces are much better.
00:11:19
Speaker
I mean, the mech suits look cool.
00:11:21
Speaker
I think the ships look cool.
00:11:23
Speaker
But man, they just I remember the first time seeing it and just kind of laughing and going, who the hell came up with this design?
00:11:30
Speaker
And why did you and why did you say yes?
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's the best you could come up with.
00:11:36
Speaker
Legitimately, it's just kind of a dude with a spiky goatee.
00:11:40
Speaker
With sort of lizard eyes and four thumbs or whatever those are.
00:11:45
Speaker
I would have just kept the mech suits on them.
00:11:48
Speaker
You could have come up with the, oh, they wear the suits for protection because they can't handle the sun.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, the UV rays could have messed them up.
00:11:57
Speaker
You could have seen that.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, it still could have just been... I don't know.
00:12:01
Speaker
Just...
00:12:02
Speaker
Yeah, their designs are, you know, it was bad back then.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I think their designs are still ridiculous to this day.
00:12:08
Speaker
And, you know, that's a large part, not a large part, but, you know, that is a con of this movie is you're going to have aliens.
00:12:16
Speaker
You always got to have a cool design.
00:12:18
Speaker
I think that just goes to bad guys in general.
00:12:21
Speaker
It's hard to have a good movie with a bad, bad guy.
00:12:24
Speaker
Right.
00:12:25
Speaker
Like if they don't seem threatening, if they're not intimidating, if they don't inspire fear in you or, you know, there's, you just really,
00:12:34
Speaker
having a quality villain is so important to a movie success.
00:12:39
Speaker
And when these ones were just kind of like, they were strong, but then they also had some weird weaknesses too.
00:12:44
Speaker
Like, it seemed like they were trying to make them human-esque.
00:12:49
Speaker
And it's like, okay, but then you went with this whole other direction, which I suppose, you know, you can see that makes sense.
00:12:56
Speaker
If it's, if they come from a world that's
00:12:58
Speaker
similar to earth, you know, one of those Goldilocks planets, it's far enough away, but not too far away where life could be sustained.
00:13:04
Speaker
It's reasonable to think that that planet's life cycles would have eventually formed bipedal, you know, things that kind of look like us and have opposable thumbs.
00:13:15
Speaker
Although again, I don't know why they needed four of them.
00:13:17
Speaker
Um, it doesn't seem to really help in any way.
00:13:19
Speaker
Like you could see where that would logically make sense that, that life would evolve in similar ways, given similar circumstances, but
00:13:26
Speaker
But the design overall is just, I don't know.
00:13:29
Speaker
Like, and, and just other weird things about the aliens that I think work against them.
00:13:35
Speaker
It's, it's very strange how like, and I don't, and it's never clear why the ship doesn't just in that first battle, why the ship doesn't just wipe out all the naval forces when they can, they've got a superior firepower advantage.
00:13:51
Speaker
And when they can just go for the kill, it just seems like they collectively just be like,
00:13:56
Speaker
eh, I'm not going to do that right now, whatever.
00:13:59
Speaker
And just, we just completely neglect it.
00:14:03
Speaker
Um, and it's, it's presented as being so easy to them the same way it is for you or me to swat a fly.

Questioning Alien Logic

00:14:10
Speaker
And it's, I feel like they should have had some kind of explanation for why they didn't just sink everything right away.
00:14:16
Speaker
Like some kind of, you know, needing to reload or being out of ammo or something like that would have, I think cleared that all up, but it's never really explained.
00:14:25
Speaker
Um, why they, why they do that.
00:14:28
Speaker
Um, and there's other parts of it where the aliens in general just don't really make a lot of sense.
00:14:33
Speaker
Like, you know, the, in that first battle, none of the human missiles seem to work, but when we get towards the end of the movie and the final battle, all of a sudden the missiles do work.
00:14:43
Speaker
Like, I don't, I, you know, I don't really get it.
00:14:48
Speaker
It doesn't make a ton of sense to me.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, no, I don't understand.
00:14:52
Speaker
And I was like, okay, did I miss something?
00:14:55
Speaker
But I don't understand why they kind of work because it's not the, it's not like, oh, let's take them somewhere because the sun's out, everything like that.
00:15:04
Speaker
But sun's out, guns out.
00:15:06
Speaker
That's, that's the magic of it.
00:15:08
Speaker
Unless, and it wasn't like they took them outside of the force field because, you know, the force field drops when they destroy the one ship.
00:15:19
Speaker
Um,
00:15:19
Speaker
So yeah, I didn't really understand that one line where he's like, let's take them somewhere where they don't want to be.
00:15:26
Speaker
Unless we're just both missing something.
00:15:28
Speaker
So, you know, if you're looking too deep into a stupid movie.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:33
Speaker
But I will say that again, rewatching this, and I don't know if you've, you've lightened on this from the first time that we kind of talked about this or, you know, maybe I was a little bit lighter on this movie because I was watching it with my son and I could tell he, you know, I could tell he liked it.
00:15:48
Speaker
So,
00:15:49
Speaker
I may be a little less critical on it because it's just, it's something to do with our kids and well, you're having a good time.
00:15:56
Speaker
I'm having a good time.
00:15:57
Speaker
Like, so I overlooked things, but you know, one thing I remember very vividly when I first watched this movie was Jesus, the dialogue is horrible.
00:16:09
Speaker
Like my God, how bad is this dialogue now?
00:16:13
Speaker
I'm going to go and I'm going to say, and I think maybe this is where we might disagree on certain things.
00:16:18
Speaker
Um,
00:16:19
Speaker
the dialogue is not as bad as I remember because there's not as much as I remember.
00:16:25
Speaker
And what I mean by that is the, the really bad dialogue to me in this movie only comes from actually a few characters.
00:16:35
Speaker
Now I'm not saying it's, I'm not saying the dialogue is good, but there's certain actors in this movie.
00:16:44
Speaker
One of them is the, uh,
00:16:48
Speaker
you know, the retired soldier because he lost his legs.
00:16:55
Speaker
I think he's terrible in this.
00:16:57
Speaker
Like, his dialogue is horrible in this movie.
00:17:00
Speaker
Like, there's... When they first are on the mountain and he's with...
00:17:07
Speaker
the main character's girlfriend because they're going for a hike with his new legs and things like that.
00:17:13
Speaker
The whole, oh, we're being attacked.
00:17:15
Speaker
By who?
00:17:16
Speaker
Someone saying aliens.
00:17:17
Speaker
Aliens?
00:17:18
Speaker
Like, nobody gives themselves any time to breathe and actually say a sentence before that other person is trying to get their lines out.
00:17:28
Speaker
But then you switch back and it's, to me...
00:17:32
Speaker
the dialogue on the ships and like even Taylor Kish in this movie, um,
00:17:39
Speaker
He's not terrible.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I don't think his line delivery is bad.
00:17:43
Speaker
There's not a lot of great things to work with, but it's not as much bad dialogue as I remember.
00:17:49
Speaker
It's just when they go to certain characters, every scene that they're in, their dialogue is terrible.
00:17:57
Speaker
But to me, it's not the whole, it's not the whole cast.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's just, it's a select group.
00:18:02
Speaker
There's four people in this movie who I think are horrible actors who,
00:18:08
Speaker
on every level.
00:18:10
Speaker
And, you know, just, it was, to me, it was terrible, but maybe this is where we're going to disagree.
00:18:19
Speaker
Not much.
00:18:19
Speaker
I, I, I'm not going to disagree with some of the bad writing, some of the bad dialogue and some of the bad delivery of that dialogue.
00:18:28
Speaker
You know, all credit to the, the actor's name is Gregory Gadsden that plays the amputee army vet,
00:18:38
Speaker
who is a legitimate Army vet and double amputee, which, you know, good luck finding...
00:18:44
Speaker
a real actor who can pull that, that off.
00:18:46
Speaker
True.
00:18:47
Speaker
So, so what you have to do there is you're, you're not dealing with a trained thespian, you know, you're dealing with somebody who's like fits the role.
00:18:57
Speaker
You know, you, you got to find somebody who can do that.

Casting Challenges and Enjoyable Moments

00:19:00
Speaker
And, you know, you don't want to green screen that.
00:19:01
Speaker
And I think by 2012, we were starting to be a little more sensitive to like, okay, we should probably, you know, cast people,
00:19:10
Speaker
like not let's not cast Johnny Depp as Tonto.
00:19:13
Speaker
Like that, that seems like a terrible idea.
00:19:15
Speaker
I think we were starting to really kind of understand that a little bit better.
00:19:18
Speaker
So I'm, I'm glad they gave this guy a shot, but that also means that you gotta, you gotta meet him where he's at.
00:19:25
Speaker
You gotta write dialogue in scenes that he can be effective in.
00:19:28
Speaker
And I don't think that that was accomplished at all in this movie.
00:19:32
Speaker
There's, there's some really weird things.
00:19:35
Speaker
There's some very unbelievable scenes that happen in this.
00:19:38
Speaker
And obviously we're talking about aliens and stuff like that.
00:19:40
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, I already get that.
00:19:42
Speaker
But I kind of want to start at the beginning of this film.
00:19:44
Speaker
And it opens up with Taylor Kitsch's character, Alex Hopper, who is, you know, his older brother, played by Alexander Skarsgård, who I actually really like in this movie.
00:19:54
Speaker
And I do notice some of his dialogue that's actually written pretty lousy.
00:19:59
Speaker
But because he's Alexander Skarsgård, he can pull it off.
00:20:02
Speaker
Um, you know, he, he's, he's kind of the, it's that older brother that's got his stuff together.
00:20:08
Speaker
He's, you know, moving up in the military and the younger brother, that's kind of a screw up and doesn't really have much of his life together.
00:20:13
Speaker
Like when, uh, uh, Brooklyn Decker's character comes in and she wants the, uh, chicken burrito at the bar and the bartender.
00:20:22
Speaker
So if you haven't seen this movie in a while, kind of set it up for you.
00:20:24
Speaker
The bartender closes a microwave and says, sorry, the kitchen's closed.
00:20:28
Speaker
Um,
00:20:29
Speaker
Now, that's probably the single most unrealistic thing that happens here, and I'm including the alien life forms visiting from another planet.
00:20:36
Speaker
Because in what alternate timeline does a woman who looks like that not get her chicken burrito?
00:20:44
Speaker
Stephen Strange himself could sit crisscross applesauce with the yoga fingers as long as he likes and never see a reality where that bartender doesn't make that woman a chicken burrito.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, I certainly agree with that.
00:20:57
Speaker
And just very quickly, I'm going to say I thought she was good with him.
00:21:05
Speaker
But I also think when the scenes that she has outside of, you know, being Samantha and what's his name?
00:21:14
Speaker
Is it Alex?
00:21:16
Speaker
His character name is Alex.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:19
Speaker
She always calls him Hopper, which is weird.
00:21:20
Speaker
Like who calls their boyfriend by their last name?
00:21:23
Speaker
Right.
00:21:23
Speaker
Exactly.
00:21:24
Speaker
The guy's in permanent trouble.
00:21:26
Speaker
It sounds like I thought they were actually pretty good together, but I did not think she was good.
00:21:33
Speaker
And maybe again, like.
00:21:36
Speaker
Again, not trying to pick on this guy because he's not a trained actor.
00:21:42
Speaker
So maybe it was just the partner she was with, but I don't think she's good with anybody else in this movie.
00:21:48
Speaker
She just doesn't seem to have chemistry with anybody else.
00:21:53
Speaker
So, you know, I thought her performance was, you know, left a lot to be desired.
00:21:59
Speaker
But again, yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
she's not really, it didn't seem like she was really working with top talent.
00:22:05
Speaker
And I don't mean that disrespectfully, but it's just, you know, this is what we talk about.
00:22:11
Speaker
It's yeah.
00:22:12
Speaker
It's hard to play catch by yourself.
00:22:13
Speaker
If you're going to play catch, you need somebody to throw the ball back.
00:22:16
Speaker
And that's, and that's sometimes challenging.
00:22:18
Speaker
When, when what you're working off of doesn't give you a lot to go with.
00:22:22
Speaker
And, but that's, again, you, you write around that you direct around that you create scenes that accommodate for that.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:31
Speaker
And, you know, it's with the aliens and everything.
00:22:34
Speaker
I did think, too, you know, yes, the scene in the bar, it's it's unrealistic to think that she wouldn't get that.
00:22:43
Speaker
That whole opening is kind of funny, like crashing through the 7-Eleven or the Hawaiian version of a 7-Eleven.
00:22:49
Speaker
Like that was actually really funny.
00:22:51
Speaker
There was a lot of that that I laughed out loud and I didn't expect to do that.
00:22:54
Speaker
Well, the funny thing is, is I actually, when I watch this with my son Peyton and I, I text you like, Hey, guess, like, guess what Peyton wanted to do?
00:23:02
Speaker
We're watching battleship.
00:23:04
Speaker
I, I text you was like, I don't understand what, like, this is not as bad as I remember at all.
00:23:12
Speaker
And then I got to the point that we've already talked about being on the mountain.
00:23:15
Speaker
I'm like, Oh, now I remember.
00:23:17
Speaker
But then I sat there and went,
00:23:19
Speaker
wait a minute.
00:23:20
Speaker
Like I just had like 35 minutes of this movie where I really don't have any complaints.
00:23:26
Speaker
Like the Naval games.
00:23:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:28
Speaker
I thought it was funny that he's obviously got a concussion and he's like, after getting hit, but,
00:23:34
Speaker
And he's like, no, I'm taking the penalty shot.
00:23:37
Speaker
And he kicks it 800 feet over the goal.
00:23:41
Speaker
But to me, like the first 35 minutes of this movie, I was like, I enjoy this.
00:23:46
Speaker
I like the concept of they're going to send a transmission out into space.
00:23:50
Speaker
There's somebody who, you know, is the voice of reason of.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, this probably isn't smart, because if there is somebody else out there and they're that far away, they're probably way more advanced than us.
00:24:05
Speaker
And if they come here, it's not going to be good.
00:24:09
Speaker
Like.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:10
Speaker
Anybody who can receive the signal and has the technology to receive the signal is likely going to be way ahead of us.
00:24:16
Speaker
I love how in movies, aliens are always shown as having superior weapons and technology.
00:24:22
Speaker
But at some point, I'd love to see a movie where we as humans stumble across an alien species and they just have biplanes or stagecoaches or something like that.
00:24:31
Speaker
Right.
00:24:32
Speaker
Right.
00:24:33
Speaker
Maybe their weapons are all like muskets or something based on that.
00:24:36
Speaker
You know, I would love to see that sometime because aliens are always shown as being like way more advanced than us.
00:24:42
Speaker
I mean, I guess Avatar is kind of the exception there, but they do have friendship magic.
00:24:45
Speaker
So they, you know, they kind of have that over humans.
00:24:48
Speaker
Right.
00:24:49
Speaker
You know, so in regards, again, because I think...
00:24:55
Speaker
The design of the ships is pretty cool.
00:24:57
Speaker
I think the mech suits are pretty cool.
00:24:59
Speaker
And that first part of the movie, I thought, was very entertaining.
00:25:04
Speaker
And then, you know, it's the second half of the movie where
00:25:08
Speaker
where it starts to lose its momentum because you have, you know, really bad dialogue.
00:25:14
Speaker
Um, that's inner that's interchanged and you go from having, at least for me, 35 minutes of like, this is actually pretty interesting.
00:25:23
Speaker
The ships have shown up.
00:25:24
Speaker
You can tell they're hostile.
00:25:26
Speaker
Um, you know, he has to take over because his brother is killed.
00:25:31
Speaker
I think there's some good stuff there, but then you get into, um,
00:25:36
Speaker
the flip flop of, all right, there's maybe five to 10 minutes of ship stuff.
00:25:43
Speaker
And then they're back to the mountain and they're with the technology there with the tech guy who was against sending the signal in the first place.
00:25:53
Speaker
And he's really bad.
00:25:55
Speaker
Once he actually has more dialogue and he's on screen where he's like a character of,
00:26:02
Speaker
but you just get, it constantly flips back and forth between, okay, these guys are good.
00:26:08
Speaker
The, the actors who are on the ship are passable.
00:26:12
Speaker
Even Rihanna, who I remember got like mangled when this movie first came out, I didn't think she was terrible.
00:26:20
Speaker
I I've seen much worse acting from musicians, celebrities, and,
00:26:25
Speaker
you know, I've seen much worse acting from people in her genre, at least on my end.
00:26:31
Speaker
I thought for what she was given to do, she was good.
00:26:33
Speaker
Like I might be on an Island here, but I was like, huh, why, why hasn't, I mean, I know she was in them.
00:26:38
Speaker
I think it was home was, it was an animated film with her and, and the guy that plays Sheldon on a big bang theory.
00:26:46
Speaker
Like that was a fun movie.
00:26:47
Speaker
And I thought she was good in that too.
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:49
Speaker
So yeah,
00:26:50
Speaker
But it's just because once the movie gets past that point, for me, it just it flip flops so much in between the characters and the actors and actresses who aren't very good and the stuff that's actually interesting way too much.
00:27:06
Speaker
And that's where the movie loses a lot of momentum for me.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, for me, it starts right when pretty much when you get like the hedgehog quills on the dude's like weird goatee.
00:27:15
Speaker
Like once they get that helmet off, that's when I think things really do start kind of falling apart.
00:27:22
Speaker
Because shortly after that, there's a scene where the aliens get in and they extract their guy and they just leave all the humans like they're in there and they're big and they're they've got their mech suits and they're stronger.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker
but they don't like take out, like, clearly these are combatants.
00:27:37
Speaker
Like, why do they just be like, grab their guy and leave?
00:27:40
Speaker
Like, why not take that opportunity to eliminate hostile forces?
00:27:45
Speaker
Like that, I just don't understand that.
00:27:48
Speaker
Like it's never really clearly defined why they decide to attack who they do and when they don't like, and there's even that scene on, on the Island, you know, where the scientist has his, his briefcase and there's, there's like that struggle there.
00:28:01
Speaker
Like it's almost like they kind of stole that,
00:28:04
Speaker
bit from the T 800 where they kind of like identify if something's a hostile, like, you know, a threat or not, but their technology to figure out who's the threat and who isn't, or who's going to come back and bite them.
00:28:15
Speaker
It kind of sucks.
00:28:16
Speaker
Like, yeah, I don't know why they even bother not eliminating every hostile species.
00:28:21
Speaker
Like,
00:28:22
Speaker
And it's one of those kind of vague things because there's that moment where Taylor Kitsch's character, Alex, kind of mind melds with the prisoner to realize that their world was taken over in a hostile whatever.
00:28:37
Speaker
I'm sorry, every other alien movie that's ever been out.
00:28:41
Speaker
Literally all of them.
00:28:42
Speaker
Like, can we just come up with something new?
00:28:43
Speaker
And it's always supposed to be like a vague metaphor for our own planet and our own species.
00:28:48
Speaker
Heard it.
00:28:50
Speaker
Give me something new.
00:28:51
Speaker
Like I would rather have something else.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's that's definitely a good point.
00:28:57
Speaker
And they get like, you know, once once you see what these aliens look like, they actually get really proud of it because there's so many scenes where now all of a sudden you just you get to see them.
00:29:13
Speaker
I just again, I don't understand the design, but.
00:29:18
Speaker
You know, one thing that I was surprised at to.

Liam Neeson's Role and Memorable Scenes

00:29:22
Speaker
Rewatching this movie and.
00:29:24
Speaker
it's really what was, was it just for the name at the time?
00:29:28
Speaker
Like what's Liam Neeson?
00:29:30
Speaker
Like, why is he of all people have to be the, what is he?
00:29:34
Speaker
Is he the general, the admiral?
00:29:37
Speaker
Like, uh, yeah, he's the admiral.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:39
Speaker
Like why?
00:29:41
Speaker
Like just because of the name.
00:29:43
Speaker
Cause what he's probably got seven minutes of total screen time in this movie.
00:29:50
Speaker
I'm thinking he accepted it just for the vacation in Hawaii.
00:29:53
Speaker
That's my guess.
00:29:54
Speaker
That could, that really could be.
00:29:57
Speaker
I'm fairly certain I read something that that's why Adam Sandler shoots a lot of his movies where they are.
00:30:02
Speaker
It's just basically, it's an excuse for him and his friends to go on vacation together.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's yeah, that I totally believe.
00:30:10
Speaker
Like, I'm like, unbelievable.
00:30:12
Speaker
That's that's actually kind of a cool idea.
00:30:16
Speaker
Right.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:17
Speaker
So, you know, it's just like, all right.
00:30:22
Speaker
But I again, I will say the at least the effects for the ships and their technology and those.
00:30:34
Speaker
what do you want to call them?
00:30:34
Speaker
Like those giant, like rolling spike balls.
00:30:39
Speaker
Like all of that stuff is actually really well done.
00:30:42
Speaker
Again, when you stop and go, well, you could have just wiped out every ship.
00:30:47
Speaker
Why didn't you like, why didn't you send more of those?
00:30:50
Speaker
Um,
00:30:52
Speaker
A lot of that doesn't make sense, but there's some pretty good effects in this movie.
00:30:57
Speaker
There's some pretty good destruction.
00:30:59
Speaker
And, you know, as cheesy as it sounds when you start getting towards the real ramp up of the battles and stuff like that, it's fun.
00:31:09
Speaker
It's stupid, but it's fun.
00:31:11
Speaker
And just kind of the...
00:31:13
Speaker
you know, Thunderstruck playing at the end when they're getting, you know, when they're getting the ship ready.
00:31:17
Speaker
Like I found myself like getting pumped, like, yeah, I'm, I'm having a good time again.
00:31:23
Speaker
So this movie does have fun moments.
00:31:26
Speaker
And again, like my whole thing is we've talked about this so much during our movie discussions, but I don't need something to completely
00:31:40
Speaker
overwhelm me with emotion every single time.
00:31:43
Speaker
Sometimes I do, especially if I'm just sitting at the house.
00:31:47
Speaker
Sometimes I just, I want to have fun.
00:31:49
Speaker
And this movie is a lot more fun than I remember it because I remember despising this movie.
00:31:57
Speaker
And we're certainly not, we're not rating it yet, but that was something that was very interesting to me overall was the,
00:32:06
Speaker
wow, I really did despise this movie in my memories.
00:32:13
Speaker
This was a terrible movie.
00:32:14
Speaker
And I even said that to Peyton when he asked me to watch it.
00:32:17
Speaker
He said, I would love to watch it again because I despise that movie, and that's funny to me.
00:32:22
Speaker
I will watch it again because you asked me to, but in my head I'm like, I will watch it because that to me is funny.
00:32:30
Speaker
To watch something that's so bad, I'll get a laugh at it.
00:32:33
Speaker
And I found myself more often than not.
00:32:36
Speaker
And don't get me wrong.
00:32:37
Speaker
There's still some really bad stuff about this, but going, wow, I'm having fun.
00:32:42
Speaker
Like, I don't remember having fun with this movie before.
00:32:46
Speaker
And again, it was 2012.
00:32:48
Speaker
That is 11 years ago.
00:32:51
Speaker
A lot has changed in 11 years with myself included.
00:32:54
Speaker
So I was, you know, very pleasantly surprised.
00:33:00
Speaker
You mentioned that scene with Thunderstruck.
00:33:02
Speaker
That's the best scene in this movie.
00:33:04
Speaker
It's just such a totally badass moment when they're like,
00:33:08
Speaker
all right, well, we don't have a ship.
00:33:09
Speaker
And he's like, uh, we got that one.
00:33:11
Speaker
And he's pointing at the USS Missouri, you know, which is a retired ship.
00:33:14
Speaker
It's a museum.
00:33:14
Speaker
And they're like, it's a museum.
00:33:15
Speaker
What, how do we even operate?
00:33:17
Speaker
And he's going through all the ways that that ship is different from what those people were trained on.
00:33:21
Speaker
And just kind of out of nowhere, like apparently these old geezers were literally just sitting in the crow's nest, just waiting for them to call them out.
00:33:28
Speaker
Cause they're literally all over the ship and the weirdest places for them just to appear from.
00:33:33
Speaker
And it's like, and I almost don't even care because it's such a bad-ass moment.
00:33:37
Speaker
Um,
00:33:37
Speaker
You throw in that ACDC track and that's a legitimately cool scene.
00:33:42
Speaker
Like it's, this is a bad movie, but that, that is a very cool pump up scene.
00:33:48
Speaker
And it got me thinking,
00:33:50
Speaker
you know, and we've kind of talked about this with a variety of different things.
00:33:54
Speaker
There's, there's different versions of bad movies, but I really feel, I feel pretty strongly about this idea that bad movies and just movies in general, I guess, but definitely bad movies really have like an alignment chart.
00:34:06
Speaker
You know, like there's like true neutral and lawful good and chaotic evil and stuff like that.
00:34:11
Speaker
There's different kinds of bad movies.
00:34:13
Speaker
There's like plain bad, like irredeemably bad, like the super Mario brothers movie, irredeemably bad.
00:34:20
Speaker
There's awesomely bad, kind of like Batman and Robin.
00:34:22
Speaker
Like, yeah, it's a bad movie, but it's like, it's awesomely bad.
00:34:27
Speaker
And then you've got like summer blockbuster, dumb, bad.
00:34:31
Speaker
And that'd be like Armageddon.
00:34:33
Speaker
It's dumb.
00:34:34
Speaker
It's bad.
00:34:35
Speaker
But it's like awesomely like bad in a big blockbuster Michael Bay kind of way.
00:34:40
Speaker
Right.
00:34:41
Speaker
And I was actually really surprised when I looked up the details that Michael Bay was in no way associated with this movie, because this does feel like a Michael Bay kind of movie to me.
00:34:50
Speaker
And I kind of feel like this one fits more in that summer blockbuster.
00:34:55
Speaker
It's dumb and it's bad, but it's a summer blockbuster kind of feel and that there are redeemable parts of this.
00:35:04
Speaker
And that to me is, I think, where this movie kind of fits.
00:35:07
Speaker
You can't really defend it as a good movie.
00:35:10
Speaker
Nobody in their right mind would try to tell you that Battleship is a good movie or that Armageddon is a good movie.
00:35:17
Speaker
But if somebody said they enjoyed it, that's different than defending it as a good movie.
00:35:22
Speaker
Those are those are separate things.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah, no.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I think, too, there was, you know, you look at, again, some of the stuff that came out in 2012.
00:35:34
Speaker
There was.
00:35:39
Speaker
there was sort of a lot of this hitting the market that were like really dumb movies, but you also had things like, and I don't know if you've ever seen this, but you also had the movie safe house with Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, which I really liked.
00:35:54
Speaker
You had 21 jump street, which was a surprise hit.
00:35:59
Speaker
Oh God, that was so funny.
00:36:00
Speaker
You had Pitch Perfect.
00:36:02
Speaker
You had The Dark Knight Rises.
00:36:05
Speaker
You know, you had Prometheus.
00:36:07
Speaker
You had The Amazing Spider-Man.
00:36:09
Speaker
You had This is 40.
00:36:13
Speaker
Skyfall was released in 2012.
00:36:15
Speaker
The Avengers.
00:36:18
Speaker
Regardless if it's your cup of tea, Magic Mike, which was a huge hit.
00:36:23
Speaker
But you had a lot.
00:36:25
Speaker
That's a hell of a year.
00:36:27
Speaker
The first Hunger Games was out in 2012.
00:36:32
Speaker
Dread released in 2012.
00:36:34
Speaker
Chronicle.
00:36:39
Speaker
There was so much of this kind of thing, though.
00:36:43
Speaker
Because you had Resident Evil Retribution.
00:36:45
Speaker
So you already have a big, dumb, stupid movie.
00:36:50
Speaker
You have Journey to the Mysterious Island with The Rock when he was just starting to get his...
00:36:57
Speaker
What's it called?
00:36:58
Speaker
Like starting to really rise in popularity.
00:37:01
Speaker
Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter.
00:37:04
Speaker
I forgot that existed.
00:37:06
Speaker
But like you had a lot of things that were going to be like big, dumb and stupid.
00:37:11
Speaker
So.
00:37:13
Speaker
It feels like it was just it's so easy for this to get lost in the mix, I feel, with everything that was released in 2012.
00:37:23
Speaker
And especially when you consider like when they, when Hasbro sat down to make a movie and somehow threw a dart at the wall and hit battleship as the next property that they were going to do.

Plot Development and Sequel Setup

00:37:33
Speaker
Like there, I refuse to believe that this movie was written any other way.
00:37:40
Speaker
Then how do we take the battleship letter and number combo attack?
00:37:45
Speaker
And like, you know, a four miss, like, how do we put that in a movie and make it work?
00:37:51
Speaker
And they worked backwards from there.
00:37:53
Speaker
Correct.
00:37:54
Speaker
That is exactly how they made this movie.
00:37:58
Speaker
It 100%.
00:37:58
Speaker
I refuse to believe there's any other way that this movie was made besides that, because that's how you get things like, oh, well, if they have to target that way, why do they have to target that?
00:38:06
Speaker
Well, probably there's something wrong with their communications.
00:38:08
Speaker
Well, why is there something wrong with the communications?
00:38:11
Speaker
It's being jammed.
00:38:11
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:12
Speaker
Who's it being jammed by?
00:38:13
Speaker
I don't know.
00:38:13
Speaker
Aliens.
00:38:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:14
Speaker
Make a movie.
00:38:17
Speaker
So he must.
00:38:19
Speaker
So Peter Berg directed this movie.
00:38:24
Speaker
Wow.
00:38:24
Speaker
He must have some sort of relationship with Mark Wahlberg because he has done Lone Survivor, Mile 22, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day, which are all Mark Wahlberg films.
00:38:39
Speaker
Hmm.
00:38:39
Speaker
Interesting.
00:38:40
Speaker
He also did the rundown, though, with The Rock.
00:38:43
Speaker
Oh, no, that's a lot of fun.
00:38:44
Speaker
I will defend that as a lot of fun.
00:38:46
Speaker
And he did Hancock.
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, which is better than people remember, as we discussed.
00:38:52
Speaker
That was him.
00:38:52
Speaker
He's also good, but it's better than people remember.
00:38:55
Speaker
He did collateral.
00:38:57
Speaker
Oh, I like that.
00:38:59
Speaker
Wow, he's actually done some.
00:39:01
Speaker
So yeah, he did the losers.
00:39:04
Speaker
I like that movie actually a lot.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
Wow.
00:39:07
Speaker
All right.
00:39:09
Speaker
Yeah, Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.
00:39:12
Speaker
Jamie Foxx, I'm sorry.
00:39:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:15
Speaker
That is a heck of a movie.
00:39:17
Speaker
I did like that a lot, actually.
00:39:19
Speaker
I thought it was really, really good.
00:39:21
Speaker
But this guy has a very diverse filmography.
00:39:27
Speaker
He really does.
00:39:28
Speaker
Like, looking through it, like, wow.
00:39:30
Speaker
Like, whew.
00:39:31
Speaker
You wouldn't have connected any of those dots.
00:39:33
Speaker
No.
00:39:33
Speaker
Jeez.
00:39:34
Speaker
Corky Romano.
00:39:35
Speaker
Like...
00:39:39
Speaker
Like, that's funny.
00:39:43
Speaker
But I will say, too, one thing I'm just going to mention this very quickly is I did not know this until just my watch.
00:39:53
Speaker
And I mean, for God's sakes, Rob, this is our thing now.
00:39:56
Speaker
I did not know until three days ago or, well, no, six days ago now that this movie had an end credit scene.
00:40:05
Speaker
It does, and it's pointless.
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's I mean, it teases a potential sequel that would never see the light of day.
00:40:14
Speaker
But I mean, Independence Day got one.
00:40:16
Speaker
So who knows?
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, maybe in 30 years.
00:40:18
Speaker
So for those of you who are listening who haven't seen this movie, by the way, it's not streaming anywhere, so it's not easy to find.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:25
Speaker
at least not anywhere that I noticed that it was streaming and I checked a bunch of places, that you get to the end of the movie, it's got an end credit scene because in 2012, every movie had to have an end credit scene because that's what the MCU was doing and now everybody has to do it.
00:40:40
Speaker
And there's some kids in Scotland, they're coming home from school and they find something in the field, it's a big, looks like a meteor,
00:40:47
Speaker
And there's a there's a local handyman that tries all sorts of different ways.
00:40:51
Speaker
He tries a chainsaw to get through space rock because clearly a chainsaw is what you use for for something that's not wood.
00:40:58
Speaker
Did I really quick?
00:40:59
Speaker
Did I miss something in that scene?
00:41:01
Speaker
How does he even show up?
00:41:03
Speaker
Is it supposed to imply that the kids called him?
00:41:07
Speaker
I think so.
00:41:08
Speaker
He just sort of materializes.
00:41:09
Speaker
And then he's got the settling torch and he's got the goggles and he cuts into it.
00:41:13
Speaker
And then they have like this freak out.
00:41:15
Speaker
And it's it really doesn't go anywhere because you don't like if you want to make a sequel to a movie, just make a sequel.
00:41:21
Speaker
Like you don't need an end credit scene to set up something like just make a sequel.
00:41:26
Speaker
If that's what you really want to do, if if the studio likes the returns, if the audience scores are pretty good, which honestly, you don't even need audience scores to get sequels.
00:41:35
Speaker
look at the fast and the furious franchise and look at resident evil.
00:41:38
Speaker
They just keep spawning sequels, despite the fact that they're largely not good.
00:41:44
Speaker
But anyways, you know, you can just make a sequel.
00:41:46
Speaker
You don't need to bother with a stupid end credit scene that goes nowhere.
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was a really, it was definitely a weird scene, like obviously, but I, it was just funny that I had no clue that there even was one.
00:42:02
Speaker
Um,
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:42:06
Speaker
I mean, I struggle with this movie a little bit because, again, it's not as bad as I remember, but it's still one of those movies that... Is there... You know, again, you just said that ending scene with battle, you know, with Thunderstruck.
00:42:30
Speaker
Is there anything else that is very...
00:42:35
Speaker
like is anything else memorable about this movie?
00:42:37
Speaker
And that's where I kind of struggle of going.
00:42:40
Speaker
So what is this?
00:42:41
Speaker
Like, and I think you summed it up pretty nicely, but for me, I still kind of go, all right, what is this?
00:42:48
Speaker
What is this supposed to be?
00:42:50
Speaker
Is it supposed to just be a big, dumb action movie?
00:42:52
Speaker
Is it like, what do I overall think this is?
00:42:57
Speaker
You know, it's something that you, you can put on when you don't want to have to think about anything.
00:43:03
Speaker
Like there's a few things you're going to like here.
00:43:05
Speaker
There's, there's some of the, like that opening scene is legitimately laugh out loud.
00:43:09
Speaker
Funny, you know, you, you had mentioned the visual effects, like the visual effects in this, I was kind of prepared to just dump on, but they're actually not bad.
00:43:21
Speaker
Like they're, they're actually pretty, not terrible at all.
00:43:24
Speaker
Which I was kind of surprised by.
00:43:25
Speaker
Cause it's been, it's been at least a year or two since I've seen this.
00:43:28
Speaker
Cause I know my wife and my son had watched this.
00:43:30
Speaker
It was streaming somewhere not that long ago.
00:43:33
Speaker
And they had it on and I was like, why are you guys watching this filth?
00:43:36
Speaker
Like, and I sat and like made fun of it and they, then they kicked me out of the room.
00:43:41
Speaker
So like when I was watching it again, like they're like kind of trying to figure out if I, like my son kept asking me like, dad, are you going to just like, just like watch the movie and not just like rip it apart the whole time?
00:43:52
Speaker
I'm like, yes, but I'm going to, I'm going to watch the movie.
00:43:55
Speaker
He's like, you know, not everything has to be like good.
00:43:57
Speaker
He's like 10 and he's like negotiating with me on what my score is going to be for it.
00:44:01
Speaker
I'm like,
00:44:02
Speaker
leave me alone.
00:44:03
Speaker
Like this, watch this movie with me.
00:44:06
Speaker
And, and it's funny because you mentioned like, you don't know what to make of it.
00:44:10
Speaker
And, you know, I, I was not sure where I was going to score it either when we get to that point.
00:44:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:19
Speaker
It's certainly an interesting one, but before we do that, are there any other major parts of this movie that you want to point out?
00:44:29
Speaker
Uh, last thing that I've really got the fist fight with the alien at the end by the paraplegic vet, like he, he like knees him in the armor and that's supposed to somehow do something like, uh,
00:44:43
Speaker
I was just like, this is terrible.
00:44:44
Speaker
Like they, these, these things against active duty Navy, just thrash them and like smash their hands and rip them to pieces.
00:44:54
Speaker
And then this, you know, he's a big dude, but he's paraplegic.
00:44:58
Speaker
He's, he's compromised in terms of his physical strength and what his capabilities are and his agility.
00:45:04
Speaker
And he somehow takes this thing down in hand to hand combat.
00:45:07
Speaker
And I think he secures a triangle choke at the end because clearly alien anatomy works the same way that ours does.
00:45:14
Speaker
I was just like, all right, this is so stupid.
00:45:17
Speaker
Like the second half of this movie really does fall apart at points.
00:45:20
Speaker
And that one, I was just like, this is atrocious.
00:45:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:25
Speaker
It is.
00:45:26
Speaker
It is funny to look at that and just be like, all right.
00:45:30
Speaker
And again, not,
00:45:33
Speaker
trying to be rude, but we know why that scene happens.
00:45:37
Speaker
Like, yeah, it, because it, but in this, the sense of the movie, it doesn't make sense for God's sakes.
00:45:46
Speaker
Are your aliens strong and good at war?
00:45:49
Speaker
Are they stupid and suck at war?
00:45:51
Speaker
Because the movie can't decide.
00:45:53
Speaker
Right.
00:45:54
Speaker
Exactly.
00:45:55
Speaker
That's exactly right.
00:45:57
Speaker
Like,
00:45:59
Speaker
It's so strange, but I think that was... And it sucks, too, because it's towards the end of the movie, and that's where I say it loses momentum.
00:46:08
Speaker
And that's what you remember.
00:46:09
Speaker
When you turn the movie off or walk out of the theater, however you're partaking in the movie, that's what you remember is how it ends.
00:46:15
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:46:17
Speaker
Exactly.
00:46:19
Speaker
But if that's all that you had, I think it's time to score this and kind of give our final thoughts.
00:46:27
Speaker
Let's reach for some popcorn.

Final Verdict on 'Battleship'

00:46:29
Speaker
All right.
00:46:29
Speaker
So we are going to hit popcorn time where we rate this movie out of five buckets.
00:46:34
Speaker
And, uh,
00:46:36
Speaker
still not knowing exactly like what I'm supposed to think this movie is supposed to be.
00:46:42
Speaker
I do have a grade for it.
00:46:43
Speaker
And actually I think maybe it's a little bit higher than I thought it was going to be.
00:46:48
Speaker
It's certainly higher than what I would have given it years back or even just, Oh, I'm going to watch this again.
00:46:56
Speaker
I actually give this three buckets for the simple fact of it is not three buckets because it is good dialogue.
00:47:04
Speaker
or it's a good movie.
00:47:05
Speaker
It is three buckets because has some pretty cool action scenes.
00:47:09
Speaker
It's got good visual effects and I had fun.
00:47:13
Speaker
I legit had fun with this movie.
00:47:16
Speaker
Now again, maybe I am skewed because I had watched it with my son and that tends to just be a good time.
00:47:26
Speaker
But this was a much more fun experience than I remember.
00:47:33
Speaker
Uh, two and a half buckets, which I'm very much in that neighborhood.
00:47:38
Speaker
Um, I think you were expecting me to probably go much lower.
00:47:42
Speaker
Frankly, I was expecting me to go much lower.
00:47:44
Speaker
I was fully prepared to just write down the number one and, uh, and put it at that.
00:47:49
Speaker
Um, that's, that's where I anticipated seeing it.
00:47:52
Speaker
Um, because when we, when we talked, when I watched it, that's why I was like, Oh, we're going to probably be definitely in disagreement here.
00:48:01
Speaker
Um,
00:48:03
Speaker
Was because when I was like, oh, I'm watching this.
00:48:05
Speaker
You're like, oh my God, that's like, that's so bad.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:09
Speaker
So that's child abuse to your son.
00:48:11
Speaker
Right?
00:48:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:12
Speaker
So, you know, it's kind of cool to see that we both actually got more enjoyment than we remember from this movie.
00:48:19
Speaker
Because, yeah, I was expecting this to be either a one or a half bucket.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:25
Speaker
And I think it.
00:48:27
Speaker
you know, we've talked about this a lot.
00:48:28
Speaker
When, when I rate something, it's just, that's literally just a representation of how I feel about it in that moment in time.
00:48:37
Speaker
And yeah, I watched it with two of my three kids earlier today.
00:48:41
Speaker
There was parts we laughed at.
00:48:42
Speaker
We had a good time.
00:48:44
Speaker
It wasn't as bad as I remember.
00:48:46
Speaker
There's parts of it that are definitely stupid.
00:48:49
Speaker
Uh, but the parts that are actually effective were more effective than I remember it.
00:48:53
Speaker
So this will be, you know, mark this down as another one where on a rewatch,
00:48:57
Speaker
my opinion of something went up slightly compared to where I, you know, sort of had it categorized in my head.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's, you know what?
00:49:06
Speaker
And hey, it's not as bad as we remember.
00:49:10
Speaker
Hopefully that might be the case for the next movie that we're going to do as unlikely get ready.
00:49:17
Speaker
Yeah, that one I don't think I'm going to change very much on.
00:49:21
Speaker
But the next movie we are going to talk about will be the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy.
00:49:28
Speaker
And then
00:49:29
Speaker
Maybe it will only be fair to have a palate cleanse.
00:49:34
Speaker
Maybe talk about the mummy and the mummy returns.
00:49:38
Speaker
Oh, I have a crime to talk about those tomb of the dragon emperor.
00:49:44
Speaker
I don't know.
00:49:45
Speaker
Maybe we just have to do it because it's part of it.
00:49:49
Speaker
But maybe because we have talked about forever doing the mummy movies.
00:49:56
Speaker
I'm honestly shocked as often as we, that's probably the series we've talked about the most and never actually done.
00:50:03
Speaker
And I think it's time.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:05
Speaker
I think that that'll be one of the ones though, where we have to figure out a way to get Harrison.
00:50:10
Speaker
Cause we've talked about that with him.
00:50:13
Speaker
Like most of our conversations about the mummy have always been when the three of us are talking.
00:50:17
Speaker
He needs to emerge from his cave.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:20
Speaker
Well, I give him a little bit of a break.
00:50:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:26
Speaker
But this next one.
00:50:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:28
Speaker
The Tom Cruise version of the mummy.
00:50:29
Speaker
You might have to change the initials of the show from MG TTM to MIABF for Matt is a bad friend.
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:36
Speaker
That that one.
00:50:37
Speaker
We'll see.
00:50:38
Speaker
We will see what happens, but I'm not expecting good things.
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:43
Speaker
from that view, which again, that's, that's going to be fun because that was supposed to, you know, that was the big thing.
00:50:50
Speaker
And, you know, when shared universes, everybody was going to have one and they had already made the, the dark pictures, uh,
00:50:58
Speaker
you know, logo.
00:51:00
Speaker
And they took that, that picture of all of the actors with Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe.
00:51:06
Speaker
And, you know, oh my God, like look at this cinematic universe we're going to have, we're going to have all the monster, you know, the monster movies together.
00:51:15
Speaker
And it took one movie and now nevermind.
00:51:18
Speaker
We're not doing that.
00:51:19
Speaker
Hmm.
00:51:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:21
Speaker
Psych.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:22
Speaker
Like literally it was like the movie before it was released was all about how it's going to be this and it's going to be that.
00:51:30
Speaker
And it's going to lead to this.
00:51:31
Speaker
And literally one weekend at the one week at the box office, it was like dark pictures.
00:51:38
Speaker
Cinematic universe is scrapped.
00:51:40
Speaker
And it was like, wow, you gave up quick.
00:51:43
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:51:46
Speaker
Yeah, Batgirl had more of a chance than the Dark Universe did.
00:51:49
Speaker
Right?
00:51:49
Speaker
So I will be interested to rewatch that.
00:51:53
Speaker
I'm not expecting that one to really change my opinion because that, like, with Battleship, I don't have anything to compare it against.
00:52:02
Speaker
But, you know, I think with The Mummy, I still think about the movies with Brendan Fraser and how they're just, at least at that time, we're going to see, they're just so much better.
00:52:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:17
Speaker
Nostalgia is one of those weird things.
00:52:19
Speaker
It will be hard for me to watch the first two mummy movies with any kind of objectivity because I absolutely adore those films.
00:52:29
Speaker
Yeah, there's.
00:52:30
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah, well, those have to be next.
00:52:33
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:52:35
Speaker
But because those are those are so much fun.
00:52:39
Speaker
But.
00:52:40
Speaker
That will be after.
00:52:42
Speaker
Hopefully, Rob and I still remain friends through this next review.
00:52:49
Speaker
I always wonder what's going to be the movie to do it.
00:52:51
Speaker
But it wasn't Super Mario Brothers, so I'm not sure what will.
00:52:55
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:52:56
Speaker
I'll have to dig deep.
00:52:57
Speaker
But...
00:53:00
Speaker
So listeners, thank you so much.
00:53:03
Speaker
It feels good to kind of be back into the swing of things.
00:53:06
Speaker
It's been a while since there's been some consistency here just with the work schedule.
00:53:11
Speaker
So it's good to be back and doing reviews.
00:53:14
Speaker
Thank you for sticking with us, listening.
00:53:17
Speaker
Don't forget at the beginning of this review, you know,
00:53:20
Speaker
Listen for your chance on how to win one of those copies of Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all of those social media sites.
00:53:30
Speaker
All of those links are in our show notes, and we will see you very soon at Matt Goes to the Movies.