Giant Freakin Robot

The “board game adaptation” Battleship hasn’t been getting the best buzz online. The idea of a big action film based on a board game is absurd, and it doesn’t help that the trailers have made it seem like a bad rehash of Transformers territory. That makes press events like WonderCon extra important, because the studio and filmmakers have the ability to appeal directly to the fans and prove through clips that there is validity in their concept. This is exactly what director Peter Berg tried to do with his WonderCon panel and, honestly, it kind of worked.

Berg was joined at the panel by stars Alexander Skarsgard and Brooklyn Deckar, but the real focus was on Berg’s surprisingly cogent explanations for the film’s existence and the lengthy clips he brought along. Berg began with the question that is probably most on everyone’s minds: why do this film and why do it under the Battleship brand?

This new Japanese trailer for the upcoming alien invasion flick Battleship does a number of genuinely hilarious things. For instance at 1:11 they’ve randomly worked in a shot of an Asian man, who I’m pretty sure is just one of the crew hanging around on the bridge and likely doesn’t even have a speaking role. But I’d watch this trailer just to hear the announcer shout “Battleship!” at the end. Priceless.

Also there’s some new footage of stuff being blown up. Watch…

In theory the upcoming Peter Berg movie Battleship is based on the board game of the same name. In practice, aside from using the board game’s font on the movie’s logo, it has absolutely nothing to do with that game of warring fleets. In fact, the new trailer sort of makes it clear that there isn’t even really a battleship fleet involved. Actually, it’s a three ships against the alien invasion movie.

Here’s the new, full trailer for Battleship which makes the movie look so much like Transformers you’d think it was directed by Michael Bay.

By now you’ve heard they’re turning the board game Battleship into a movie. There’s even a trailer. Except, instead of fighting other battleships, now it’s the story of a naval fleet fighting aliens. Watch the trailer and believe:

Why aliens? That’s the question I’ve found myself asking not only after watching this trailer, but after watching just about every science fiction movie released in the past two years. Aliens have somehow become the defacto villain for nearly every blockbuster movie being released by Hollywood. Just this year alone we’ve already seen aliens play the bad guys in Cowboys & Aliens, Attack the Block, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Green Lantern, Thor, Super 8, Battle: Los Angeles, Mars Needs Moms, and I Am Number Four. Some might call this a science fiction boom, but I call it a cop out. In fact I’d say even the most outer spacey of these movies isn’t science fiction at all. You see…