Battleship -2012-2012 [TOP]

No discussion of Battleship that excludes the year 2012 can avoid discussing the actor Taylor Kitsch. In 2012, Kitsch was simultaneously the star of two of the biggest box-office bombs of all time: John Carter (also 2012) and Battleship (2012). The keyword excludes the year, but Kitsch’s career trajectory is the ghost in the machine.

Kitsch plays Lieutenant Alex Hopper, a reckless, directionless slacker who joins the Navy after a humiliating attempt to steal a chicken burrito for a girl (Brooklyn Decker). This opening sequence—the "burrito incident"—has become legendary in its own right. It is, by all accounts, the most jarring tonal shift in modern blockbuster history. One minute you are watching a romantic comedy about a man-child; the next, you are watching a naval officer sacrifice himself to save humanity.

Director Peter Berg has publicly stated that he cast Kitsch because he saw the same raw, bruising charisma that made actors like a young Mel Gibson famous. The film asks Kitsch to transform from a punchline into a Patton-esque strategist in under 90 minutes. Does he succeed? That depends on your tolerance for earnestness.

And then there is the late, great Liam Neeson. Neeson plays Admiral Shane, Hopper’s future father-in-law and a man who looks perpetually disappointed. Neeson reportedly took the role because his agent told him, "It’s a big ship movie." In an interview, Neeson joked, "I didn't read the script. I heard 'aliens' and 'boats' and said yes." His performance consists of standing on bridges, squinting, and yelling the film’s only memorable line of dialogue with apocalyptic fury: "Let’s drop some lead on these mother... ships." (The censors cut the intended profanity, leaving a bizarre, staccato pause).

A small international naval fleet must use old-fashioned warship tactics to fight back against a technologically superior alien invader that has cut them off from the rest of the world, just as a decommissioned WWII battleship and its aging veteran crew become their last hope. Battleship -2012-2012

The film was an expensive gamble. With a production budget estimated between $209–$220 million, plus massive marketing costs, the film needed to be a global smash to break even.

Without modern electronics (GPS, radar, missiles), as the aliens jam all digital systems, the Missouri’s crew relies on old-fashioned analog methods. Alex deduces that while the aliens’ shields stop high-velocity rounds (missiles), they cannot stop slower, heavier projectiles like the massive 16-inch shells from the Missouri’s main guns.

Using a WWII navigation technique (“landing by the seat of your pants”) and a floating ocean buoy as a reference point, Alex synchronizes the Missouri and the remaining destroyer to fire simultaneously. The battle becomes a naval slugfest from the 1940s.

Samantha, trapped on land, uses a deactivated satellite dish to briefly transmit a Morse code message to a Navy satellite, allowing the Pacific Fleet outside the dome to see the battle. Admiral Shane launches a full counterattack. No discussion of Battleship that excludes the year

Key climactic moments:

The story follows Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), a reckless and undisciplined young man who joins the U.S. Navy to impress his girlfriend, Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker), and appease his older brother, Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgård), a Naval Commander. Despite his potential, Alex is on the verge of being discharged due to insubordination during a friendly naval exercise with international fleets, including the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force.

During the RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercises near Hawaii, NASA transmits a signal to a newly discovered exoplanet dubbed "Planet G." The signal is answered by an alien armada. One of the massive alien ships crashes into Hong Kong, while the others land in the Pacific Ocean, deploying an immense force field that traps three destroyers—including Alex’s ship, the USS John Paul Jones—inside.

The alien ships, housed in massive amphibious structures, launch devastating attacks. Through a series of tragic events and chain-of-command successions following the deaths of his brother and superior officers, Alex finds himself thrust into the role of Captain. He must lead the surviving crew of the John Paul Jones and forge an unlikely alliance with Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) of the Japanese destroyer Myōkō to combat the technologically superior alien invaders. One minute you are watching a romantic comedy

Meanwhile, on land, Samantha and a retired Army veteran, Mick Canales (real-life Medal of Honor recipient Louis Zamperini), discover the aliens are using a satellite array in the mountains of Oahu to phone home. The narrative culminates in a spectacular final stand where the surviving crew must reactivate the 70-year-old battleship USS Missouri, manned by elderly veterans, to engage the alien mothership before it can signal for reinforcements to invade Earth.

Critics scoffed at how a game about grid coordinates could translate to film. The filmmakers addressed this with a clever, if cheesy, sequence. Using tsunami-detection buoys, the crew creates a grid map of the ocean. They cannot see the alien ships due to cloaking technology, but they can detect disturbances in the water when the aliens move.

Hopper looks at a grid board and calls out coordinates like "E-11" to fire missiles, effectively gamifying the climax of the movie. It is a moment of literal adaptation that walks the line between clever and absurd.