Before I get started, I will be the first to admit… I was very adverse to the idea of a movie being created about a board game that really didn’t have any premise except to try to sink the other player.

How do you base a whole movie on that? Well… as it would turn out, you don’t. Instead Battleship the Game was really a small ten to fifteen minute clip out of the entire film, while the rest of the film was a battle between the humans and the aliens who came to planet Earth with the intent of taking it over.

Best quote of the whole film?

Cal Zapata: If there is intelligent life out there and they come here, it’s going to be like Columbus and the Indians, only we’re the Indians.

This is going to be fun!

Well to be honest, I originally had no intention of watching this film. Didn’t even cross my mind. Then I was on a twelve plus hour flight between Chicago and Seoul and I found myself needing to find something to do with my time. After watching a series of movies on my own… I was trying to nap when I noticed someone a row or two in front of me watching Battleship.

As in the last thirty minutes of Battleship… and I found that I couldn’t help myself but watch. So I did. And was hooked, so I had to go and pull up the movie myself and watched through some of the movie, but really I fast forwarded until the last thirty or so minutes of the film and just watched and rewatched and watched that section over and over and over again.

And I was shamelessly hooked.

So when my beau came to visit me earlier this month and he wanted to see a film or two I suggested Battleship for the sheer fact that I wanted to see the last thirty minutes of the film and it would probably be best if I saw the remainder of it as well.

He obliged and that was the first of two films we watched together. Granted the storyline was rather weak in areas, and the acting was about average across the spectrum… but dammit it was a fun shoot ’em up movie with really big guns and semi-fantastical situations. Then again when aliens are part of the pictures can you really be surprised?

But where does the game “Battleship” find itself in this film? Well when the night is up, it would appear that neither side is able to gain a handle of where exactly the other party is located. As thus the humans use the wave buoys as a way to gauge approximately where the alien ships could be located. Also the alien ships seems to have technology that would propel the ships in an exact increment so they would align with the grids exactly. Almost too good to be true… almost.

I couldn’t help but jump for joy when the vets of the U.S.S. Missouri that was just recently turned into a museum were called into action. I rather enjoyed seeing Rihanna having a little bit of fun with her character… I definitely enjoyed watching Taylor Kitsch’s character grow from a low life kid with no direction in life to a hardened marine who still needs to be reigned in once in a while but has amazing aptitude.

The film also introduced a true to reality double-amp as opposed to using CGI for the film. In fact according to IMDB.com

Retired Army LT. Col Mick Canales is played by real life active duty Army Colonel Gregory Gadson. In March 2012 Gadson became Garrison Commander of Fort Belvoir just south of Washington D.C. in Northern Virginia. Col. Gadson is the first bilateral amputee to serve as a Garrison Commander to any post in the United States Army.

Now if that doesn’t make me proud…

However, as my beau said… it was a fun movie to watch… and I have to admit… I agree with him. Would I purchase the film willingly? Probably not, but dammit, it was a fun guilty pleasure nonetheless. With the good guys winning and after the end credits there was a scene that seem to indicate the possibility of a sequel…

Well that explains everything… after all if they were hoping the movie would do well so they could expand the movie into a series then the storyline of the first movie has a tendency to be rather weak… or overly linear and easy to follow. However, considering that the film appears to have “bombed” in the box office according to some critics… is a sequel really all that realistic?

Considering that there appears to be other films in the pipeline that is also inspired or based off of other popular board games… never say never.