Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-07-04 (Friday - The 4th of July!!)

On 7/6/2025 3:02 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

Jul 6, 2025 at 10:45:34 AM PDT, Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>

 

Battleship (4K disc) 2012 sci-fi movie based on the board game.  A group
of young sailors must battle an alien invasion force at sea.  I know
this movie has a bad reputation, but I actually like it a lot.  I
especially like towards the end when in order to get back into the fight
they retrofit the USS Missouri and set sail with it along with some old
timers who still knew how to operate the ship.

 

I know you've expressed your love for this movie before but for me, there's a
limit to how absurd a movie can be before I really can't suspend the disbelief
anymore.

 

The sequence with the Missouri was such a bizarre plot development on so many
levels. The ship has been stripped of all its engines and the barrels are all
that's left of those big guns. All the breaches and internal firing mechanisms
are long gone. But even if we were to assume that all of that equipment was
still inexplicably in place and functional, why would a floating museum be
fully fueled?

Because what if one day aliens invade and the only ship left is the Missouri?  Are they supposed to wait for a refueling tanker?  Better to just keep the ship fueled at all times.
And where did all the ammo for the guns come from? The powder

bags that fire those guns weigh 660 pounds and are loaded in by crane. Are we
supposed to assume the Navy was storing live ammo for the 16-inch guns on
board just for the hell of it?

No, they're storing it because what if one day aliens invade!  What more of a reason does the navy need?
And even if we assume all of that, the final

cherry on that ridiculous sundae was how all those octogenarian geezers were
apparently just hanging out on the masts and yardarms of the ship in dramatic
poses for... what? Hawaii is under attack by space aliens, so all the
80-year-old WWII vets psychically decide at the same moment to go down to
Pearl Harbor and pose dramatically on their old ship?

 

Sure.  What else have they got to do?

It was just too, too, too much for this viewer to 'just go with it'. The movie
wouldn't have been any more ridiculous at that point if Taylor Kitch had
suddenly and inexplicably become Superman and started flying around killing
the aliens with his laser-beam eyes or something.

 Hey! I sort of liked him as John Carter! No laser eyes though.

John Carter is another under rated movie.