The Surprisingly Decent “Battleship”

As previously documented, we love Friday Night Lights and Taylor Kitsch… enough to even see John Carter for him. Since Battleship was not only directed by FNL’s creator Peter Berg, but also co-starring Jesse Plemons a.k.a. Landry, we were immediately there. Alexander Skarsgard’s presence certainly wasn’t a deterrent, either.

What some haters kept saying every time we talked about Battleship: “That looks like a Transformers knockoff. Also, isn’t Rihanna in that? Why are you going to see a movie that Rihanna’s in?”

Well, haters to the left, because Battleship was actually surprisingly decent. Obvi there were some questionable points, but overall we really liked this movie!

Good parts:
-Rihanna. No, we’re not kidding. Weird outfit during the soccer game aside, she was surprisingly believable as a naval officer and kept it together throughout the movie. Also her chemistry with Landry was hilarious and awesome.
-Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard as brothers. We would watch these two as brothers as many times as you wanted us to. It was so amazingly excellent. Skarsgard is like a foot taller than Taylor (not short himself) and their dynamic was just perfect. We completely believed them as brothers!
-FNL characters in Battleship. Basically Taylor Kitsch and Jesse Plemons got to keep on just playing Riggs and Landy, albeit with far more responsibility than either of them had on TV. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
-The entire first 15 minutes or so of totally-messed-up Taylor Kitsch. It was basically still Tim Riggins so obvi we loved it, but it was also an absolutely hilarious introduction to the main characters.

Questionable:
-Brooklyn Decker. Sorry, we just weren’t invested in the love story thing. Her entire storyline could have been erased, and really all we would have lost was one excellent exchange between Liam Neeson (playing her father) and Taylor Kitsch at the end.
-Those aliens. We didn’t really get how the ship survived even the first ten minutes of contact. The aliens seemed to ignore them at really convenient times. Like, if you were an alien who had managed to blow up everything else before, would you just kind of stop and get distracted with something else, leaving a ship alive? Probably not, because you are BLOWING UP EVERYTHING METAL. Come on.
-That force field thing around Hawaii. What? How did that even work?
-Alien ethics. Guys, are we really going to assume that when we first make contact with other forms of sentient life it’s just going to be all-out war? Do we not have more optimism than this? No efforts to communicate, even?

While this movie definitely could have cut 20 minutes of things blowing up without us being too upset over it (and still keeping like 40 minutes of things blowing up), overall Battleship exceeded our expectations and proved that Taylor Kitsch is capable of putting over some questionable dialogue… just not an entire movie of it. Sorry, John Carter, but Battleship wins.

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• Battleship’s Taylor Kitsch Admits He Loves Living Where People “Don’t Give a Sh*t” About Hollywood (popsugar.com)
• Movie Review: ‘Battleship’ (theepochtimes.com)

Taylor Kitsch: The [Terrible] Things We Are Seeing For You This Year

For some reason, Taylor Kitsch has taken all of the goodwill that he earned from being on Friday Night Lights and being ridiculously gorgeous and has decided to spend 2012 starring in action movies about aliens. Is this going to stop us from seeing them? Probably not. We are maybe slightly over invested in the FNL cast doing well, and Taylor Kitsch is no exception.

 

1. John Carter (March 9, 2012)

Ok so for starters there is the whole premise of the movie. According to IMDB.com, the movie goes a little like this: “Transplanted to Mars, a Civil War vet discovers a lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians.” Yes. Indeed. You read that correctly. A Civil War Veteran goes to Mars. Why has no one made this movie before?!!! Oh wait… Probably because it sounds ridiculous.

Then there is the fact that in the trailer he is the only not-CGI characters for like the first 40 seconds. People (who are not green) eventually show up in the trailer about a minute into it, and we learn that there is a princess (who needs rescuing) and some kind of a battle involving other aliens and other people. This is the part where we ask what are Mark Strong (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and Dominic West (“The Wire”) doing in this movie? What is anybody doing in this movie?
The trailer is so ridiculous that it is almost difficult to sit through. But are we still going to see it? Yes. Are we looking forward to it? Not really.. YOU’RE WELCOME TAYLOR KITSCH.

 

2. Battleship (May 18, 2012)

So it starts off with Taylor Kitsch on the beach, wanting to marry a girl? And then he is the best officer that the Navy has ever had… but he’s wasted himself for some reason? Not sure how, but evidently he has to cut his hair for it, which is kind of weird. It’s definitely a new look. And wants to marry his boss’s daughter, so his boss sends him places because he doesn’t like him?

Landry (also from FNL, actor’s name is actually Jesse Plemons)  finds unknown contact, so Taylor has to go investigate. And he’s blown out of the ship into the water by some mysterious force in the water (or electricity? Unclear) that is creating a huge bubble in the ocean.

Then a Transformer pops out of the sea and we get very confused about what’s happening. Also apparently Alexander Skarsgard is in this?

Finally, we get this gem of a conversation:
“Prepare to fire.”
“Sir, which weapons?”
“All of them.” So they do.

We would really like to like this movie. It’s being directed by Peter Berg, who created FNL. Landry and Tim Riggins are both in it. However… it’s Battleship. Apparently about aliens. And a key component of this (mysteriously left out of the trailer) is that RIHANNA is supposed to be believable as a Naval officer.

There aren’t really words for that. And yet, will we be seeing this mess? Naturally.

Taylor Kitsch, we love you. Please make some movies that we don’t have to defend our decision to go see.

Related articles

• Taylor Kitsch Talks ‘All-Or-Nothing’ 2012 (mtv.com)
• Taylor Kitsch Talks ‘John Carter’ Storyline, Action, & Alien Creatures (screenrant.com)