Battleship

Movie Review: «Battleship».

English Title: Battleship.
Production: USA, 2012.
Release Date: 03.04.2012 (Japan).
Russian Distributor: UPI (19.04.2012).
Official Website:
Genres: Action / Adventure / Sci-Fi / Thriller / War.
Director: Peter Berg.
Starring: Liam Neeson, Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna.
Running Time: 131 minutes.

The Water World

Many remember playing the Battleship (1931) game, when they were young. The American board game has successfully spread all around the world creating various local variations. Still the first version was of the U.S. origin and appeared in 1931. Nearly half a century later, all the rights to it were acquired by Hasbro, also owning the Transformers (1984) brand. By the way, the film trilogy under the same name from the director Michael Bay known as Transformers (2007-2011) earned 2,7 bln. USD in the box office. The Battleship film will try to reach the same heights for anoher game universe.

The Transformers film series no longer interests many of its original creators, who helped it to earn so much money. The new take on by Universal Pictures plans to occupy the vacant place. After watching the movie we noted the ready potential for sequels there too. However, as always their fate will be decided by the box office figures collected from the public all around the world. The main markets for the new franchise could be the U.S., Russia and Japan as the main lovers of the Sci-Fi stories. However, Hasbro does not lose hope yet, courting producers Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Steven Spielberg, director Michael Bay and even actor Jason Statham, discussing the plans for the second trilogy of Transformers to be launched in 2014.

Battleship pretends to be an unique film project in many ways and not only with its team. Directed by Peter Berg, who assembled the War Drama named The Kingdom (2007) and the Sci-Fi Action Comedy titled Hancock (2008), which grossed about 625 mln. USD, he decided to play with the rules of the Sci-Fi genre, to actively work with different generations, provide the abundance of humor and some innovative ideas as well. For example, he appealed for help to the U.S. Navy and received the full support from the military that helped the motion picture to look even more realistic in many ways.

When Peter Berg invited Taylor Kitsch to play a major role in his new film, he described this project as a cool blockbuster making the viewers hold their chairs tight with the action unfolding, while laughing as often as possible. That is a good reflection of the feelings you might think of, when watching, since that was what the Director was trying to create on the set. Such a mood we witnessed in Moscow with hundreds of other journalists watching the movie with us. The hall was full, and even the security guards kept on staring at the screen being completely dissolved in the colorful landscapes presented by IMAX projection technology and enjoying the spectacular action with all the available senses.

There was no plot for the original Battleship board game, so a couple of scriptwriters were brought to the project to handle the challenge. Brothers Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber, who already wrote the story for the RED (2010) action comedy earning 200 mln. USD in the world, what was three times more than the costs, were the ones for the job. However, the main nautical theme for the Battleship film was fueled by the creative leaders of the team.

Ocean Fighting

Read on further to learn about the plot and characters of Battleship.