10 Classic Movies You've Always Misunderstood
9. Battleship - It Knows It's Dumb
Hate it as much as you can, the Michael Bay school of filmmaking, where PG-13 sexiness and lumbering CGI action are horrendously shot, makes a lot of money. When Battleship came out in cinemas in 2012, many thought Peter Berg was simply going in and attempting to cash-in on this.
And yes, in many parts he is. Theres a gross misunderstanding of military hierarchy, a terribly shot soccer match and robots with superfluous designs, not to mention a run-time only just shorter than the full cadet training programme for the U.S. Navy.
But what stops this film from being quite in the same level as Bay's output is that it seems to know what it is. I'm not saying Battleship is a good film; it was one of the worst blockbusters of 2012. But at least it knew it was. Numerous plot points, most notably an entire sequence near the end where a bunch of war vets commandeer the USS Missouri and take on the aliens, are little more than the filmmaker's just taking the piss.
Everyone immediately dismissed Battleship without seeing it and thus few are aware of these self deprecating moments. Battleship is a bad film, but it's far from a dumb one.