Battleship (2012)

I went into this with two things on my mind. First, I will watch any movie with Liam Neeson and at the very least enjoy his scenes. Second, I played the game Battleship often enough to realize that a game based upon it is like basing a game on yahtzee - it's mostly random with strategy only coming into play based upon your results. This thinking very effectively set the bar low. It became almost a logical impossibility that I could watch this movie and not be entertained.
Something happened while watching this movie - I actually found myself liking it. Sure, the story is a bit predictable, but that didn't stop me from liking Independence Day or Minority Report, and it didn't stop me from liking this film. For an Action/Adventure movie, it had surprisingly good acting and almost know catch-phrasism. Taylor Kitsch in the starring role was a very pleasant experience, supported by Rihanna and Alexander Skarsgard (who it turns out is more than just a sexy vampire) who both do an excellent job.
The special F/X were top of the line, and that's good since they no doubt spent top dollar on this bad boy. The aliens were pretty cool. They were us with more thumbs and more toys. The alien ships and the way they moved, kind of like giant water skeeters, was not something I'd seen done before. I know that science fiction isn't all about seeing a new spin on an old theme, but sci-fi action/adventure often is, and this movie offers that. The alien grinder balls were ingenious. I don't know how they come up with that concept, but it seems like something you might see in a comic book, but far more effective, as drilling devices in comic books when not being used for transportation have a way of crapping out or not doing very much damage. These grinders though were pretty kick ass.
This movie did something different from most alien versus earth movies, they had the aliens be fallible. In your typical AVE movie, the aliens are all powerful until the earthers discover the one weakness that will lead to their ultimate downfall, the alien Achilles' tendon if you will. But in Battleship, the aliens screw up right off the bat by running into space debris and destroying one of their own ships. Sure, the plot needs for that ship to be destroyed in order to work, but the ship's destruction is believable and I think it works.
I was thinking about Michael Bey while watching this film. I know, god help me. There was more than one occasion when the visual effects reminded me of one or more of his Transformers films, yet this film still managed to be largely character driven, for an action/adventure movie at least. I concluded that I'm glad taht Bey did not direct this, but also that I hope he watched this and is moved by the use of characters and lack of catch phrases for Transformers 4.

Battleship at IMDb