Battleship (Part 1): Not Stupid Enough

My family recently rented the awful big-budget action movie Battleship, which of course was based on the board game. I learned a great deal from watching Battleship, mostly about things that I don't like. Today I'll talk about the first thing that bugged me: stupidity.

Battleship was stupid -- in a Facebook comment I said it was "fractally stupid" because the stupid parts were made up of smaller stupid parts. But stupidity isn't enough to make a movie irritate me as much as Battleship did. I tend to like dumb action movies, because I realized a long time ago that all movies are stupid. Seriously: movies are good at manipulating the audience's emotions through visuals and swelling music, but are universally awful at actually discussing ideas.

When movies try to tackle ideas more complicated than "Nazis are bad" or "It's funny when a pompous person gets hit with a pie" they seldom succeed. The things movies do well -- images, movement, and music -- are simply not suitable for presenting complex ideas. So a movie which wants to tackle ideas winds up either just filming people talking to each other, which seldom works well, or it has to caricature one side to make a point. When people say they like a movie's presentation of ideas, they generally mean they agree with the ideas presented, and consequently don't mind the caricaturing.

This isn't a problem. Ballet is also a terrible medium for presenting ideas. Architecture is a terrible medium for presenting ideas. Pretty much all art forms that don't involve text or lectures are poor media for presenting ideas. That's okay. You don't have to present ideas all the time. As Samuel Goldwyn said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."

Anyway. Battleship. My problem with the movie wasn't the stupid parts -- the parts where Navy ships are fighting aliens, astronomers are fighting aliens, a legless veteran is fighting aliens, or the USS Missouri is fighting aliens. Those were the fun parts.

The problems came up in the parts where the movie tried to not be stupid. Because nothing reveals fundamental stupidity like attempts at sophistication. There's an interminable sequence at the beginning of the movie intended to show that the main character is an irresponsible, impulsive jerk. This undoubtedly comes from some story meeting at which a writer put down his much-loved copy of Robert McKee's Story and said "What's his character arc?"

At which point nobody else did the sensible thing and said "What character arc? It's a movie about battleships shooting at aliens! Shut up!" Instead they gave us twenty minutes of Taylor Kitsch being an impulsive jerk. It might matter if this had any connection to the rest of the movie, but it doesn't. 

Once the aliens show up and the computer-animated warships start shooting at them, none of this matters in the least. Kitsch's character is thrust into a position of command when his ship's captain is killed, and he does a decent job of shooting at aliens. Some other characters may doubt his fitness to command, but nobody acts on this. Sensibly enough, they're all focused on saving the world from alien invaders.

Which means Kitsch's character's background as an impulsive jerk is irrelevant. He could be a grizzled veteran who drinks to forget, or a rigid martinet who needs to loosen up, or a virulent racist who needs to respect others, or an incorrigible joker who needs to get serious, or a womanizer who needs to settle down, or a chronic nailbiter who needs a manicure. It simply doesn't matter. We spend a tedious twenty minutes watching him be a jerk for no reason.

So the first lesson I learned from Battleship is this: know when to be stupid. If you're making a stupid movie, have the courage to be really stupid. If you're stupid enough, you might do something clever. But if you try to do something smart, you pop the fragile bubble of entertaining stupidity. 

 

Comments

[Seth]

Well put.
It takes a brave creator to embrace the stupidity, and not cave to pressure.

[Nola]

All Kelsey Grammar comedies. Enough said.

[leslie cambias]

There are certain films that do convey ideas well, without bombast or explanation. One example is "Remains of the Day". In it, ideas and emotional responses are revealed by presenting situations. There are no long speeches. The viewer is left to determine the (obvious) messages.