SET SAIL FOR MORE ALIEN INVASION BULLSHIT

Posted by: Hawaiian Organ Donor Posted on Posted in: , , , ,

I was going to start off my review with some cliched smart ass comment about how Battleship will sink the careers of almost everyone involved.  I figured at a price tag of $200M, this thing was going to be lucky to pull in Battle: Los Angeles numbers.  But I see that it’s already brought in $215M overseas so after the domestic and international runs are over, this ironclad turd will make bank and then some.  Meaning we’ll continue to get shitty insulting alien invasion flicks for quite some time.

THE GOOD

Rihanna is barely in it and when she is she’s mostly firing guns and cannons into aliens.  And, frankly, as an actress in a shitty action movie she’s fine.  She is however given some of the worst dialogue in the movie talking about how her father predicted the day aliens would come to Earth and how he wished he would be dead not to see the fallout.  Yeah, that’s a conversation that every father has with their kids.

Unlike movies like Super 8 and War of the Worlds were aliens walk around a completely foreign and fairly violent environment naked or Independence Day with those idiotic bio-suits that are anything but bulletproof, we finally get some realistic body armor on alien invaders.  These suits are totally generic looking (think of the armor in Halo), but no amount of bullets can penetrate them.  And that makes sense to me.  I’m no genius military tactician but I know enough that if 21st century soldiers are wearing body armor in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, then an alien species with 31st century level technology ain’t going to visit us in the nude.  A lack of shame is one thing, utter stupidity is another.  So let’s end this argument right here and right now.  Naked aliens coming to a hostile environment is really fucking stupid.  And here it’s one of the only things they get right.

The first twenty minutes are actually very promising.  Yes, we get that stupid shit about the discovery of a goldilocks planet and us beaming a signal directly to it at the speed of light hoping there will be somebody to receive it and say hello back.  And then there’s the intro of our hero who, surprise surprise, is a major fuck up who is pissing away his potential.  When he meets the hot girl, we get the best scene in the whole damn movie: the hero breaking into a 7-11 to get her a burrito.  The whole sequence is seen through the lens of security cameras and watching Kitsch fall through the ceiling and wipe out an enter aisle is sort of charming.

But the whole sequence is wasted because as soon as boy gets girl, they flash forward 7 years and we never really see boy and girl together again.  It’s a complete non-romance so other than trying to appease the female demographic, you wonder why they shoehorned it into the movie in the first place.

THE BAD

Everything else.

So yeah, they fast forward 7 years and the fuck up is now a goddamn lieutenant in the Navy.  I guess they really are as desperate and sad as Xiphos says they are.  And of course the hot girl is the Admiral’s daughter and he doesn’t approve of her dating a fuck up, even though he managed to go from convenience store felon to Naval lieutenant in 7 years.

I knew the movie was starting to go south when the aliens arrived.  The trailers have you believing the aliens have been here for a while and are hiding under the sea.  Which is sort of cool.  But we actually see them arrive and it’s a really shitty reveal, especially since after having traveled countless light years to get here and encountering all sorts of crazy shit in space, one of the ships hits a satellite upon arrival and it just so happens, it’s their communication ship.  Yup, they send 5 ships and only ONE of them is capable of sending a signal back home.  So while the remains of the communication ship rain down over Hong Kong, the other 4 head for Hawaii.  Why?  Because that’s where the relay station is and the aliens need to take control of it so they can fucking phone home.  And yes, they have a fucking E.T. phone home joke in there.

Unfortunately for the aliens, it just so happens there’s a huge international naval exercise going on around Pearl Harbor.  And lieutenant fuck up and Rihanna aren’t going to go down without a fight. And you know what, I’m getting tired of talking about this fucking worthless movie so I’m going to speed it up.

Essentially what we have is a second hour that’s like one prolonged game of Battleship.  Yup, they manage to work a grid system in there.  The aliens put up a huge force field around one of the Hawaiian islands so that nothing can get through, but it also traps the naval ships inside.  And the naval ships have zero radar function so they use a grid of weather buoys to detect motion in the water.  And the alien ships that have traveled light years to get here are not capable of flying in our atmosphere it seems.  Instead they leap frog on the water.  So every time they splash down, they set off a buoy and that tells the good guys where the ship is so they can fire on it.  And while we have guided missiles, the aliens who have mastered space travel only have weapons that are line of sight.  Yeah sure they have those cool buzzsaw things you see in the trailers but apparently only a limited supply as they only fire those twice.  Otherwise, their primary weapon are cannons that fire line of sight.  And take absolutely forever to get a shot off.  So needless to say, we fire our guided missiles, they fire their line of sight cannons and guess who wins.

Things get absolutely fucking stupid when our heroes conclude that the aliens must be light sensitive because of the visor on their helmets and draw one of the ships close to an island where Kitsch has set up a sniper position.  And yup, you guessed it, they draw the ship in the direction of the sunrise, lieutenant fuck up shoots out the bridge windows, the aliens are temporarily blinded and are unable to react as they are fired upon by the Navy.  Jesus, what moron comes up with this shit?  And who agrees to film this garbage?

And contrary to popular belief, Liam Neeson, the Admiral, doesn’t die.  He’s just barely in it, but he pops up again at the very end to give his approval of lieutenant fuck up for killing all the aliens and saving the world.

Oh, you also might have heard that it’s never really clear whether the aliens are good or bad as it’s us that fire first.  The aliens are sort of like the Predator in that they scan people and decide whether they’re a threat or not (green means don’t kill, red means KILL) but there’s a really fucking stupid sequence where one of those rolling buzzsaws decides not to kill a kid at a little league game and then proceeds to destroy an entire fucking freeway killing thousands of civilians.  So I think their intent to fuck us up is made pretty goddamn clear.

The only new thing that this movie adds to the alien invasion genre is unprecedented levels of stupidity.  It may be the most pointless movie ever made.

Comments (14)

  2. Bahahah I remember when I once thought Berg was going to be the next Berg. Now judging from that photo looks like he’s only got maybe five years to live at best.

    Also are those tats on Riri’s arm real or fake?

  4. Tragic about Summer…that horrible music was the soundtrack to my childhood until I discovered Van fucking Halen.

    Was there any doubt this film would suck? I’ll watch it…if only to affirm the rumor that it is even more stupid and insulting than Transformers 2.

    And Rhianna vexes me…, so nasty I bet you could skim the dried spunk off her back with a credit card and watch her snort it; yet that middle finger looks like the perfect prostate massaging tool while she tickled her tonsils with your devil stick.

  5. I still think it looks like a lot of fun. Those TV spots are fucking hot. Especially the Kid Rock/American Bad Ass one. My one hang-up has always been that awful fucking cast. Not just Rihanna, I mean yeah she sounds like a retarded rastafari pot-dealer, but whatever, fuck her….I’m talking the lead bad asses….they couldn’t get an actual LEAD BAD ASS in either of the main roles? What the fuck do suits see in that main generic motherfucker?

    It may do alright worldwide, but if anything comes outta this and Carter, I hope it’s the nail in the coffin of that douchebag nobawwwdy’s career.

  7. The flaccid python in that painting has more charisma that fucking Taylor Kitsch. Thinking back on John Carter…It’s not that he is a bad actor…its that he isn’t an actor at all.

  8. Hollywood can officially go fuck itself. Just watched John Carter. It may have been a good book but so are a lot of classic books and they are essentially unfilmable. This should have never been made.

    Between Avengers, Battleship and John Carter, I’m fucking done. I mean goddamn, This Means War was better than all three and that movie was mediocre at best.

  10. What’s next, Operation: The Movie? Stratego? Those games–and Battleship–were popular like 30 years ago when I was a kid. I’m not aware of anybody playing them between 1985-2012. I almost feel badly for Remy Labeau, whose 15 minutes are burning fast.

    • It’s not gonna do so hot domestic because of fucking Avengers and Borat 2 all battling it out, not because nobody likes board-games.

      I don’t think board-game popularity would have much impact good or bad on it regardless, but board-games actually seem to be on the upswing lately. Once video games started catering mainly to online player/obsessive creep types, it seemed there was a resurgence in kids and families being into an old school board game. Target has that whole line of classic shit in those wooden boxes.

      The more I think of the Hasbro shit, the more I kind of appreciate it…if I was 10 years old I’d be going on 3 days of perpetual piss boner over this fucking thing, and making fun of all the homos into Avengers bullshit.

    • There you go bro…

      _________________________________

      February 6, 2012
      Hasbro Reports Revenue and Earnings Per Share Growth for 2011

      Full-year net revenues increased 7% to a record $4.29 billion compared to $4.00 billion in 2010;
      Full-year International segment net revenues up 19% to $1.86 billion; Up 16% excluding the positive impact of foreign exchange;
      Boys category revenues increased 35% and Preschool category grew 4%;
      Eleventh consecutive year of full-year earnings per share growth; Full-year 2011 EPS of $2.82 per diluted share versus $2.74 per diluted share in 2010;
      Repurchased 10.5 million shares of common stock during 2011 at a total cost of $423.0 million and an average price of $40.42;
      Paid $154 million in cash dividends during 2011; On February 2, 2012, Board approved a 20% increase in the quarterly dividend to $0.36 per share.

      PAWTUCKET, R.I.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS) today reported revenue and earnings per share growth for 2011. For the full-year 2011, the Company reported record revenues of $4.29 billion, an increase of 7%, compared to $4.00 billion in 2010. Foreign exchange had a $64.3 million positive impact on full-year 2011 revenues. Absent this impact, revenues grew 5.5%. Net earnings for the full year were $385.4 million or $2.82 per diluted share, versus $397.8 million or $2.74 per diluted share in 2010.

      For the fourth quarter 2011, the Company reported net revenues of $1.33 billion an increase of 4% versus $1.28 billion in 2010. Foreign exchange had a $13.3 million negative impact on revenues in the quarter. The Company reported net earnings for the quarter of $139.1 million or $1.06 per diluted share versus $140.0 million or $0.99 per diluted share in 2010.

      “In 2011 we delivered strong growth in our international business driven by continued investments in advancing our global capabilities,” said Brian Goldner, President and Chief Executive Officer. “However, we did not meet our expectations for growth in the U.S. and Canada segment, as we experienced weaker demand than we had anticipated, especially post-Thanksgiving, including challenges in the Games & Puzzles category. We have taken significant steps by putting new leadership and new plans in place to re-accelerate growth and innovation in both of these important areas.”

      “Globally, the Hasbro team is focused on the key tenants of our branded-play strategy, which is centered on relentless innovation of our core brands, the invention of new brands, and the expansion of play experiences into new immersive brand expressions,” continued Goldner. “We are confident that through the execution of our branded-play strategy Hasbro is well positioned to deliver the innovation and brand experiences that our global consumers want and that will drive long-term value for our shareholders.”

      “Over the past several years, Hasbro’s financial strength and discipline has enabled us to invest in our business to develop innovative new products and increase our global footprint. While doing so, since 2005, we have repurchased $2.6 billion worth of Hasbro common stock and with the recent announcement to increase our dividend, over the same period our quarterly dividend has grown from $0.09 per share to $0.36 per share,” said Deborah Thomas, Chief Financial Officer. “Despite the challenges we encountered in 2011, we grew our business, effectively managed our capital structure and maintained a healthy balance sheet. For the full-year 2012, absent the impact of foreign exchange, we expect to again grow revenues and earnings per share.”

      For the full-year 2011, worldwide net revenues grew in the Boys and Preschool categories. The Boys category increased 35% to $1.82 billion led by growth in TRANSFORMERS and BEYBLADE and the Preschool category grew 4% to $553.0 million supported by the introduction of SESAME STREET. These increases were partially offset by a 10% decline in the Games & Puzzles category to $1.17 billion and an 11% decline in the Girls category to $741.4 million. Despite declines in these categories several brands posted year-over-year growth including MAGIC: THE GATHERING, MY LITTLE PONY and BABY ALIVE.

      U.S. and Canada segment net revenues were $2.25 billion for full-year 2011, compared to $2.30 billion in 2010. The segment experienced growth in the Boys and Preschool categories offset by declines in the Games & Puzzles and Girls categories. The U.S. and Canada segment reported an operating profit of $278.4 million compared to $349.6 million in 2010.

      Full-year 2011 International segment net revenues increased 19% to $1.86 billion versus $1.56 billion in 2010. Absent a positive $59.3 million impact of foreign exchange, full-year 2011 International segment net revenues increased 16% year-over-year. Net revenues in the International segment reflect growth in the Boys category. The International segment reported an operating profit of $270.6 million, up $60.9 million or 29% versus $209.7 million in 2010.

      Entertainment and Licensing segment net revenues for full-year 2011 were $162.2 million, up 19% from $136.5 million in 2010. The growth in the segment reflects the sale of television programming globally, as well as movie and merchandise related revenue from Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The Entertainment and Licensing segment reported an operating profit of $42.8 million versus $43.2 million in 2010.

      The Company repurchased a total of 10.5 million shares of common stock during 2011 at a total cost of $423.0 million and an average price of $40.42 per share. During the fourth quarter, the company repurchased 1.0 million shares of common stock at a total cost of $36.3 million and an average price of $35.31. At year end, $227.3 million remained available in the current share repurchase authorization. In 2011, the Company paid $154 million in cash dividends to shareholders.

Leave a Reply