Checking all the Boxes: Battleship (addendum)

“You men have given so much to your country, and no one has the right to ask any more of you… but I’m asking.”
“What do you need, son?”
“I need to borrow your boat.”
Alex Hopper and Old Salt in “Battleship”

Yeah, I’ll admit, that movie (Battleship, see this posting) struck me on an emotional level. Kinda like “Braveheart”, just with boats. Sorry, ships. But it really does check all the boxes. There’s a clear a concrete goal (stop the aliens from contacting their homeworld/fleet), a group of capable people on the job, and some creativity (with a lot of suspension of disbelief) to make it happen.

Yeah, it even ticks all the childhood boxes. And with those things it’s like, let’s make the basic stuff work, otherwise the fancy stuff won’t (to quote Randy Pausch, who likely quoted someone else). And yeah, there are things that just scream at you. You know what is really useful to transport an over thousand pounds round? Something with wheels. They’ve been around for a while, just saying. And yeah, you might not get them through some bulkheads, but they are really useful to get to that bulkhead.

Still, both preparing the museum ship for war (YouTube will likely drop that video for copyright reasons; context: aliens landed on earth and they have just sunk their destroyer and last ship in a large area that the aliens contained beneath an impregnable force shield):

as well as the inevitable slugfest (activate suspension of disbelief regarding how anchors work and how much a chain can take):

… I mean, damn, that’s a sight to see. There’s just something incredibly satisfying in seeing a ship delivering a broadside to a … deserving target.

Still, something to watch. With some popcorn. And a lot of suspension of disbelief. 🙂

 

Update: Watching a few scenes again, this movie really is a strong contender against my #1 favorite movie (“Braveheart”). There’s just one thing that really bugs me. In the “Battleship Slugfest”, when the spotter says something like “Oh-my-god, are you kidding me?” (Really? An adult says these words with this tone?)  … I really think the writers dropped the ball here. I think something akin to “… !!! … [non-verbal] [then softly] we are going to die.” [. not !] followed by the reply by the older veteran “Son, dying isn’t bad, as long as it’s for something you believe in. I’ve been willing to die a couple of times, and I haven’t regretted it once. And I’m not going to regret it now. Do you?” [swallowing, then taking a moment to take hold of himself] “No, sir.” “All right, so let’s get them their target coordinates, even if it kills us to do so.”