Peter Berg’s Battleship arrived in 2012 with a board game for a title, a $209–220 million production budget, and a tagline that promised “The battle for Earth begins at sea.” It stars Taylor Kitsch, and it is loud, expensive, and almost entirely weightless — a film that mistakes scale for stakes and volume for tension. It is one of the most instructive failures of its year: a movie assembled from parts that never touch.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
From Hasbro to Oʻahu
Battleship is loosely based on the Hasbro board game, which is to say the connection is a brand name and a vague idea of ships. The screenplay by Jon and Erich Hoeber builds a real premise on top of it: in 2005, scientists find a potentially habitable “Planet G,” and by 2006 a communications array on Oʻahu is beaming signals into space. A reply comes back.
Five alien spacecraft arrive during the 2012 RIMPAC exercise. One clips a satellite and crashes through the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong. The others splash down off Hawaii.
That is a clean setup, and Berg stages the descent with some menace. Then the film puts a force field around the Hawaiian Islands, jams radar and communications, and turns the whole thing into a siege picture with three destroyers on the inside and the rest of the world locked out.
Alex Hopper and the Disciplinary Discharge
The human story belongs to Lieutenant Alex Hopper, played by Kitsch. In 2005 he is a slacker who gets arrested trying to impress Samantha “Sam” Shane, the daughter of Admiral Terrance Shane. His older brother, Commander Stone Hopper, forces him into the Navy. Six years later Alex is a lieutenant aboard the USS John Paul Jones, in a relationship with Sam, and facing a disciplinary discharge despite showing plenty of potential.
Liam Neeson plays Admiral Shane, Sam’s father and Alex’s superior. Brooklyn Decker plays Sam, a physical therapist working with wounded veterans. Alexander Skarsgård plays Stone, the model officer commanding the USS Sampson.
The film wants us to care whether Alex grows up. It gives him a brother who dies, a girlfriend to protect, and a father figure to impress, and then it buries all three under water and metal.
The Warning Shot
The battle begins after the humans decide to fire a warning shot across the aliens’ bow. The losses that follow are total. The Sampson is lost with all hands, including Stone. The John Paul Jones loses its command personnel, and Alex reluctantly takes charge as the next highest-ranking sailor aboard. The Japanese destroyer JDS Myōkō is destroyed.
The John Paul Jones disengages to recover Myōkō’s survivors, including Captain Yugi Nagata, played by Tadanobu Asano. Nagata begins as Alex’s rival and becomes his friend. It is the only relationship in the film that changes in a way you can feel, largely because Asano plays it straight while everything around him is exploding.
Rihanna, Gadson, and the Casting Bets
Rihanna makes her feature film debut as Gunner’s Mate Second Class Cora “Weps” Raikes aboard the John Paul Jones. Berg told GQ he realized she could act after her appearance on Saturday Night Live. She took the role, she said, because she wanted “to do something badass” and because it wasn’t too big for her to play. She is fine. The part asks her to fire a gun and look determined, and she does both.
“I know that he’s really good for Taylor and he makes Taylor better. So, I wrote that whole part for Jesse.”
That is Berg on Jesse Plemons, who plays Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Jimmy “Ordy” Ord, sarcastic and doubtful of Alex. Plemons and Kitsch had worked together on Berg’s Friday Night Lights, and Berg framed the reunion as “protection, bringing a trusted family member in.” Gregory D. Gadson, a double amputee U.S. Army colonel who had never acted, plays Lieutenant Colonel Mick Canales after Berg saw his photograph in National Geographic. Gadson is the best argument the movie has that it means any of this.
A Schedule Built for Chaos
The film’s release was its own kind of campaign, and the dates tell the story of a studio trying to plant a flag worldwide before word got out.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| April 3, 2012 | World premiere, Yoyogi National Stadium, Tokyo |
| May 18, 2012 | U.S. release, Universal Pictures |
| 2012 | RIMPAC exercise, the film’s on-screen setting |
| 2005 | “Planet G” discovered |
| 2006 | Communications array built on Oʻahu |
The premiere in Tokyo was a real event. The reception afterward was not.
The $150 Million Hole
Battleship grossed $303 million worldwide against a production budget of $209–220 million. Universal and Hasbro lost $150 million combined. It is one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time, and it earned generally negative reviews.
Those numbers matter more than any single scene, because they explain what the film actually was. This was not a movie that failed to find an audience. It was a movie that spent like a franchise before it had one, on the theory that a recognizable name and a global premiere could manufacture a hit. The theory was wrong. The worldwide gross cleared the production budget, but the film still lost money once the cost of getting it into theaters was counted.
What Actually Works, and What Doesn’t
The alien design is generic. The drones that destroy Oahu’s military bases are noise. The force field is a plot device, not a threat, because it exists to isolate the heroes rather than to frighten anyone.
What works is smaller. The John Paul Jones recovering Myōkō’s survivors is a decent sequence, because it gives the characters something to do besides shoot. Nagata and Alex finding common ground is a decent arc, because it is the only one that requires either man to change. Gadson’s Canales hiking near the communications array with Sam gives the film a second front and a reason to care about the island.
What does not work is the central bet: that Alex Hopper’s growth from slacker to commander can carry a $200 million movie. Kitsch is likable. The script gives him a disciplinary discharge, a dead brother, and a girlfriend in peril, and then asks him to save the world. None of it accumulates. The film keeps cutting away from him to explosions, as if afraid the audience will notice there is no there there.
Berg can direct action. The problem is that Battleship has no idea what its action is for. It is a film about a board game that forgot the board game was never the point — the point was the tension of not knowing where the shot lands. Battleship shows you everything, constantly, and feels nothing.
The Rihanna casting was the smartest thing in it, and the film gives her a gun and not much else. The Gadson casting was the most inspired thing in it, and the film uses him as a symbol. The $150 million loss was the most predictable thing in it, and nobody stopped it.
Battleship is not a disaster because it is stupid. It is a disaster because it is competent and empty, and competence without a point is just expensive. The battle for Earth begins at sea, and the audience never quite arrives.
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