Liam Neeson Was Not In Battleship

The Big Dirty Article

“Liam Neeson Was Not In Battleship”

by Tim Appelbaum

After watching the trailers, I really wanted to see this movie. As I was watching it, I really wanted to enjoy it, but the film just would not let me. It didn’t give me anything to grasp as a redeeming element. Let me sum up my entire thought process during this movie.

“All right, so they’ve been keeping Liam Neeson on the backburner until now. I’m sure he’s going to start busting heads in the next scene.”

Spoiler: That scene never comes. My honest recollection is that Liam Neeson is in the movie for maybe four minutes total. The rest of the movie consisted of a blonde lady, a disgruntled vet, and two frat guys that said “copy that” at every possible moment. Also starring Rihanna, who not only was a petty officer, but also: a SEAL, marine, and a battleship gunner who yells “Mahalo motha f-” followed by a cannon explosion. I’m pretty sure the writer didn’t know what “mahalo” meant at the time of writing. If my two second google check is accurate, it means “we didn’t try that hard.” The marketing team tricked me into seeing this film by posting all of Liam Neeson’s scenes in the trailers. I’m really glad whoever did Cuba Gooding Jr.’s marketing for Pearl Harbor is still working.

Anyways, one of the frat guys, Captain Kirk, wants to run his ship like the Enterprise and do things himself and with the other senior officers rather than send in one of the many other people enlisted in the Navy that aren’t in leadership positions. Oh, Kirk gets command because the other officers died. No one is wondering why they are putting more and more commanding officers in the line of fire? Great. Gripping story. What about the commanding officer who was the entire reason of me watching this film (See: The title of this article)?

Let’s talk about the aliens. They look like ugly men from years past and have porcupine spines for beards. They also wear the armor from the video game Dead Space. It’s complete with shitty comic relief from a frightened man who says, “oh shit, is this a cyborg?” What other technology do they have? Well, they have no firearms. Not for ground troops or their space crafts. The ship lobs gas canisters that explode.

So the aliens put a barrier sphere around Hawaii, to which you wonder,

“How is Liam Neeson going to get past that barrier to save the day?”

He doesn’t. The barrier is to protect the aliens while they set up communications with wherever they came from. “You saying ET wants to phone home?” I’m sure the writing staff exchanged high fives after that line.

Racist undertones between a frat douche and a Japanese captain. Let’s resolve our differences with a game of battleship! I guess the Japanese track our boats using water displacement illustrated by the movement in buoys, and it takes them more than one shot to learn how to lead their shots. Which, aren’t shots, they are missiles which implies fly time. The time it took to hit the aliens, allowed me to question the craft that flies through space, but hangs out in water. “But that’s more realistic! They wouldn’t waste the fuel flying around!” Valid argument, but why would the aliens have the ship swim in and out of the water like Michael Phelps doing a butterfly? Except it doesn’t look like Michael Phelps, it looks like the anti-metal gear from Metal Gear Solid 2.

Kirk, you know how to operate 50 cal sniper rifles? Awesome! You bringing your friend out too? Good, because you need a spotter to help with… oh wait, he has a rifle too? Awesome, two 50 cal snipers right next to each other and you both think that it’s a good idea? I’m more surprised that they both can hear after blasting off rounds into the spaceship.

Oh no, the aliens merc’d all of our new top-of-the-line destroyers. I guess we have to use the old battleship that we turned into a museum at the beginning of our adventure! Oh no, we need more people to help get this boat moving… Let’s ask the 80 year old men that we honored earlier! Kirk says something along the lines of “you’ve already given so much for your country, but we need your help.” Uck. I guess we should rebuild the boat to “Thunderstruck!” I was hoping that when AC/DC starting playing, that Tony Stark would come save the day and end this terrible movie.

This film pales in comparison to the detailed and compelling storyline of Transformers. I’m upset that frat guy and blonde chick weren’t able to convey the range of emotions that were in films such as Resident Evil or Bio-dome. Most of this bitterness comes from the fact that I was honestly wondering in every scene how they were going to introduce and develop Liam Neeson’s character, and it never happened.