Watch BATTLESHIP Trailer - It Doesn't Exactly Blow Us Out Of The Water!

On those rainy bank holidays when the family board games came out did you ever think you would see the day when a movie based off Battleship would be one of the biggest tentpoles of the year? No, we didn't either but such is the sign of the times when a major Hollywood studio are obsessed with playing dice on brands (Monopoly, Stretch Armstrong and Oujia are coming soon!) and starting to wonder whether it's worth bothering with sci-fi epics like Stephen King's The Dark Tower. Perhaps we should remind Universal not to ignorantly turn their nose up at such material when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has made as much money as it has. You know I was listening to the rather excellent Creative Screenwriting Podcast some months back when Jeff Goldsmith used to run it and he had a great discussion with Battleship writers Eric and Jon Hoeber (they wrote Red and Whiteout too) over just how you go about adapting Battleship into a feature film and they made some great points that I've been saying for a while that actually adapting a board game like this is kind of freeing. I mean think about it. What do we know about Battleship? We know that there is two opposing armies of submarines, there is an element of cloaking/strategising and the objective is to blow the opponents out of the water. The writers are then given a huge $200 million budget to write a summer action blockbuster with no other parameters, no lengthy back-story between characters and they can almost add any genre elements they want. So baring that in mind... with all the freedom in the world... the following is what they came up with; So it stars off as a very boring rom-com (father doesn't want the rebel bad boy going out with his beautiful daughter) before it becomes yet another 21st century alien invasion movie and one where Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) seems to follow the Michael Bay school of big-assed action (there's PLENTY of panning shots of ships), mixed with a Transformers feeling CGI, plenty of exploitative shots of the hot model on their books (this time Brooklyn Decker and her assets over Megan Fox) and a feel of the military vs. invasion aspects of Battle: Los Angeles. Oh and there's Liam Neeson doing his now commonplace action growling. The trailer truly doesn't have anything we haven't seen before. Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgaard and Rihanna are in there too, somewhere, but it's the over-budgeted CGI effects you are supposed to be admiring. And Decker's body. That's what these guys have done with all the freedom in the world. Can Universal hope to get its $200 million back from this project? I would say there's a chance. Those wondering if the fall-out from the similarly marketed and dire Battle: Los Angeles and Skyline, which also had glossy but completely forgettable bland ship designs, might effect the gross of Battleship are probably over-estimating the intelligence of the $35 million who went to see Battle: LA on it's opening day. Though of course it all went downhill after that as word of mouth spread and it only scrapped through with a decent amount of profit. Battleship on a budget of more than twice of Battle: LA you feel has a tougher battle on it's hands not to sink. Oh and P.S. - Don't we miss the days of things like Independence Day when the ship designs were cool and intriguing? And shouldn't the screenwriters, with all the freedom they had, just done a Top Gun at sea with submarines movie?? Battleship is due May 18th, 2012.