In Response to Misconceptions about the Movie “Battleship”

I love “Battleship”. It is a much better movie than its 2012 critics made it out to be. I think one of the reasons why the movie did so poorly at the box office is that the entertainment media decided to bury Taylor Kitsch. They kept writing about how his earlier movie that year, “John Carter”, had bombed at the box office (when in fact “John Carter” was one of the highest grossing movies of the year).

There is no disputing the fact that “John Carter” lost money. It was just too expensive. But the skepticism that followed “John Carter” seems to have poisoned Kitsch’s box office for the rest of 2012 (he has since redeemed himself with critics in “Lone Survivor”).

On the other hand, there were severe challenges for “Battleship” that audiences may not have been flexible about. For example, there are no longer any battleships in service anywhere in the world. So the idea of a modern movie set on a battleship may not have seemed very appealing to audiences.

It probably didn’t help that a lot of people were familiar enough with the classic game that they had preconceived notions about how the movie would be tied in to the game. There were relatively few tie-ins and no cheesy product placements.

One of the criticisms directed at the movie is that the aliens are inexplicably reluctant to attack anyone. Some comments on Web forums seek to point out that the five ships were a recon unit sent to establish a beachhead and communicate with their fleet or home world. In such a situation it would behoove them to conserve resources and only respond to active threats. Hence, every time you see the aliens’ scanning perspective, things are either labeled as green for “not dangerous” or red for “dangerous”.

The aliens’ intentions were clearly indicated by the fact that they sent a command ship capable of establishing a defensive perimeter, three escort ships, and a communications ship. A civilian fleet would not have used such specialized ships. There should be no doubt in viewers’ minds that the aliens came looking for a fight. All their exposed crew members were equipped with scanners that assessed the threat capability of creatures they encountered.

There is a critical scene where Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) momentarily connects with one of the aliens through a mental exchange. He gleans from the alien’s thoughts or memories their intention to conquer the Earth. It’s unfortunate that the movie introduces this connection and then does nothing else with it.

Movie aliens are almost always portrayed as hostile monsters who just want to kill people. The aliens in “Battleship” are soldiers who actually display restraint. We can speculate on why the aliens would send a military force as an advance scouting party but the point of the movie is that the Earth is attacked and humans find a way to respond.

Some people argue that the aliens would not have taken out the marine base in Hawaii if they had not been attacked first. However, given that the alien ships were incapable of scanning anything that wasn’t within line-of-sight they would have had to scan the area for military capabilities before they crashed into the sea. Hence, they were probably going to take out any nearby defensive installations regardless of whether they were attacked.

We can debate the quality of the plot and characterizations all day long but I think it’s pretty clear from the evidence provided by the story itself that the aliens were not supposed to be peaceful or friendly.