Merrick here...
An AICN reader named Jake Walsh attended yesterday's Tokyo premier of Peter Berg's bigscreen adaptation/alienificaton of the famous Hasbro game BATTLESHIP.
What follows are Jake's thoughts on the film. I've tweaked his contributions slightly to extract a SPOILER or two which maybe wouldn't have been fair to release so far out, but substabntively this is very much his report in full. We deeply appreciate his time and effort when sending this along.
His verdict? It's huge, oversized, Bay-esque extravagenza but without the heart and charm of Bay. I'll let Jake speak for himself from this point forward.
We can judge for ourselves when BATTLESHIP opens next month.
Just walked out of the world premiere of Battleship at the old Tokyo Olympic Stadium while weather conditions outside were like being on board a ship in a storm at sea.
Universal Pictures set up a huge screen and kicked things off by playing a 5 minute 100th Anniversary tribute montage set to the score of Jurassic Park. Close ups of big stars and some great characters including Atticus Finch, Marty Mcfly and Maximus Decimus Meridius. T
hen Peter Berg and the producers came out on stage followed by the cast. Asano Tadanobu and Rihanna got the warmest receptions. Berg thanked everyone for braving the rain.
Is Peter Berg a second rate Michael Bay? Set on a battleship in Hawaii, it's hard not to feel the similarities with Bay's Pearl Harbor at first but that movie didn't have aliens so obviously it can't be.
As the story unfolded further it definitely still felt familiar and I succumbed to the journey, I was expecting to be moved by sentimental cheese amidst Hollywood action. Like when Ben Affleck swings Liv Tyler around in slow motion while her Dad belts 'I don't wanna miss a thing'. It's a good cheese.
But this movie wasn't achieving the level of cheese of an Armageddon or Pearl Harbor. Not even close. This is Michael Bay without the cheese. And it's just not as entertaining, because those movies had good actors in comedic supporting roles. The sound was amazing, the acoustics shook the whole stadium, I thought another earthquake was hitting Japan.
The alien pod saws or saw pods were cool, the alien ships were detailed and the aliens were very human-like under their robotic armor suits, facial hair and same skin tone. The CG was second to none, competing with Transformers quality and the Hasbro people sitting in front of me were cheering aloud.
As an alien invasion movie, the story was weak and not as entertaining as Independence Day. Roland Emmerich is the man. His pacing of disaster movies work. Casting Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum was genius. They were funny. Taylor Kitsch isn't. He plays it straight, one layer which is not interesting enough to feel something for but he pulls off the gig and I suspect he'll get better. I haven't seen John Carter yet, but I have a bad feeling it's gonna be the same guy.
Asano Tadanobu's good and hopefully he gets more recognition world wide. You can tell Tadanobu pulls out the best of Ktisch because in their scenes together I'm finally engaged with the characters.
Halfway through you realize it's based on the board game of the same name that we've all played because the battle sequences are basically the actors playing Battleship. There's an ambitious Titanic 'propeller man' shot that rocks with Kitsch and Tadanobu climbing to the top of the capsizing ship and jumping off almost hand in hand.
The studio made a big deal of the synergy of US and Japan as a theme for this movie and the reason to premiere it in Tokyo. Bunch of bullsh*t, there was hardly any Japanese collaboration except for Asano Tadanobu. Rihanna's good, she'll have an acting career.
There's a very small Turtle cameo which tripped me out, then I remembered Berg was recurring on Entourage.
The blonde looks the part but sometimes her acting causes unattractiveness. Pretty but lacking in substance. Plus most of her scenes are with a non-actor in his first movie, Greg Gadson, a real life ex-army soldier who lost both his leg limbs in combat, and he did a good job, especially a hand to hand combat scene against an alien.
Liam Neeson must have shot his scenes in a few days.
Alexander Skarsgaard's good but he's not in it much.
The grand finale is a maneuver we've seen before a la October Guard. For me Taylor did not pull off the gravitas a leader of that quality should posess and I couldn't help but imagine if Jeremy Remner had chosen not to pass but understandably he did and Taylor sure looks good.
The CG was incredible, but it was nothing new. I was never moved and didn't fall in love with characters but one things for sure, Berg's a crazy man. The action was insane and explosions non-stop. A mediocre 'Big Mac movie'.
When you're at home alone, about to eat a fast food meal and you just want to pop something on, when Armageddon is too emotional for you. As the end credits rolled, I asked myself if a hundred years from now, Universal made another collage, would Battleship make the cut?
An epilogue in Scotland, strictly shock value if you can even call it that. When the movie ended, I realized it had given me a headache but I had to chuckle. So much money spent, Berg rushing out surrounded by producers. Michael Bay the Second, will this movie be a hit? I don't know. Funny, even though I did not like Bay's Transformers, I knew it would be a hit.
