In the grand tradition of summer block-blustering, the
new trailer for Battleship is
ditching the family drama elements and instead sheds light on just how you go
about spending $200 million dollars making a board game movie.
So between the cast of military shouty types, lens-flaring
metallic intertitles and constant electronic groaning noises, you’d be forgiven
for assuming this was an ad for Transformers
4: Aloha Autobots. The little tag
at the beginning letting you know this is from “the company that brought you
Transformers” pretty cleverly makes you think the movie and not the toys. Seeing
as is the one making Battleship,
that’s kinda like a street-cart vendor saying his burger was brought to you by
the makers of the Big Mac because he gets his meat from the same place as
McDonalds.
But what about the footage? Well it certainly looks
like the budget was put to good, if not familiar use: a lot of things blow up and
despite the tag line that “the battle for earth begins at sea,” there are glimpses of pretty big coastal destruction as well. We also get our first
look at the aliens ... sort of. While the big reveal as to what they really look
like will have to wait, giving us some human-versus-mech-suit violence was a
nice touch.
As for the flesh and blood stars, we get some
ominous “they should have listened!” voiceover from Rihanna and a mini Friday Night Lights reunion between star
Taylor Kitsch and Jesse Plemmons. Also there’s that shot of Alexander Skarsgard looking like he’s
getting blasted in the face with hair dryers instead of glass that demands
gif-ification, which we’ll hopefully see before the film’s May release next
year.
So what did you think? Has this latest trailers sunk your expectations,
or was it a direct hit? Expect plenty more coverage, and Battleship-related
puns, in the next few months.