Hollywood’s idea of Navy-themed movies in the 1950s? Run Silent, Run Deep and The Caine Mutiny. (And Operation: Petticoat, which at least Cary Grant and Tony Curtis going for it.)
Hollywood’s idea of a Navy-themed movie today? Battleship: The Motion Picture, which merges the board game that everyone had as a kid with a CGI-overloaded Transformers-esque sci-fi movie. Co-starring Liam Neeson, the glory days of Shindler’s List receding even further into the past.
High-concept? You’re not just soaking in it, you’re underwater — which the film may or not be itself, when it opens next summer:
I know it’s an old joke that Hollywood is officially out of ideas but seriously, Hollywood is officially out of ideas.
I mean — Footloose.
They “remade,” supposedly, The Killer Elite, but it really looks like they just bought the name and wrote a completely different (standard action dopiness) script.
And for those of you who can’t get enough of boardgame-based movies and bizarre remake choices, you’ll be happy to know that the cheesy and crappy but sort of good Clue movie is, yes, being remade too.
Also coming soon? Total Recall, starring Kate Beckinsale. I’m not sure if she’s playing Arnold Schwarzenegger or not, though.
I generally despise remakes, and battleship does look moronic, but I might give it a shot. But Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel in the same movie? I’d watch that if they were just reading the phone book.
Then you should get your hands and eyes on “The Last Days of Disco,” with Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny. Plus, it’s actually got a good script!
My favorite from these trailers is the “Based on a True Story” assertion hung on “The Killer Elite.” The original movie was based on a novel, a not very good suspense thing with a cool title. And this has always been a bugaboo of mine: all fiction is more or less based on a true story. “Star Wars” is based on a true story. “The Lord of the Rings” is based on a true story. Every piece of fiction you’ve ever read has characters the author based in part on people he’s met in his life, and things he made up. Some books are more a product of the author’s imagination, and others less, but I repeat, all fiction is based on a true story. It’s like saying it was written by a person.
Yet my copy of Spartacus with Kirk Douglas has this at the end: “all persons in the film are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” The real life Spartacus, Casear, Crassus, et al would surely dispute that were they still alive.
You know what we really need, movies based on the following games:
Operation!
Monopoly
Life
Risk
Sorry!
You are right about Hollywood being out of ideas. I can’t believe what hits the screen these days. Most of them are really weak in plot and story.
Help me SyFy Channel, you are my only hope. Thank the gods for cheap eastern european production companies. If they’d just get away from monster of the week, mebbe try putting some Hugo or Nebula winning novellas on film…
And I’d love to see a film about the voyage of the Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet around the world to it’s doom at Tsushima
If Hollywood did such a film, they’d show the Imperial Russian Fleet being destroyed by Japanese amphibious flying “Gundams” (giant robots from Japanese “anime”) armed with directed energy beam weapons, “smart” missiles, and rapid-fire cannons.
When I first heard about the Battleship movie, this is what I wrote:
“You’d think Hollywood studios would realize they could make a movie about a fleet of ships, in whatever time and war they like, without paying Hasbro a dime. They could even throw in the ‘C-6, you sunk my battleship!’ as an in-joke. It’s not like GI Joe, which has actual established characters and continuity, making all those kids who watched the cartoons in the 1980′s more likely to watch a GI Joe movie than Randomly Named Squad of Tech-Laden Heroes Fights Randomly Named Squad of Supervillains.
“And in the meantime, dozens of Hasbro properties that could be developed into interesting movies will go undeveloped. I understand that more people have played Battleship than have played Dungeons and Dragons or Magic: the Gathering, but those latter properties have actual worlds, with histories, conflicts, personalities….”
Suffered through Footloose last time it was on. Couldn’t make it, though it was on the DVR. Even my wife fast forwarded through to get to the end. Perfectly dreadful.
How about a movie based on an actual battleship, or at least battlewagons, some cruisers and other ships? Hollywood has done WWII on land by now, even island-hopping in the Pacific – but has not made a viable, historically accurate film about naval warfare in WWII in a long time. The surface encounteres between Japan and the U.S. in the S. and Central Pacific were some of the largest battles in naval history, and most consequential – but you’d never know it by the attention Tinseltown has given them since “Midway” in the 1970s. There are many excellent and gripping books upon which to base a script, such as “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors,” or “Ghost Ship” or perhaps an original script could be written. Don’t want to do surface warfare? Then do something on the “silent service” – who get no love from Hollywood these days.
I totally agree with you about potential good Navy movies. The “tin can sailors” is certainly one and so is the fantastic story of the surface battles of Guadalcanal. More sailors died at Guadalcanal than Marines. The story is in a new book. American cruisers were fighting Japanese battleships at ranges of 400 yards.
I still spend the most time with old Hollywood movies.
Midway had great actors but the FX was very poor, the used clips from Tora Tora Tora. CGI with some excellent WW II models would look great on the big screen.
What the hell is wrong with you?!?!
This movie looks like great entertainment!!!
Why the outrage? BATTLESHIP Director Peter Berg is a solid storyteller, movie looks pro-Navy, pro-boobs, anti-aliens.
Might be a nice companion piece to this year’s hit, BATTLE:LA, which was strongly pro-Marines, anti-aliens.
You got to support these projects, people. Would you rather see ERIN BROCKOVICH 2?
Hey, what’s wrong with Operation: Petticoat? It’s funny and fun and Grant and Curtis have a terrific chemistry. One of my favorite Cary Grant comedies.
Agreed. Funny movie, and the two stars were great together.
“We sank a TRUCK!” (Cary Grant)
What? No digs for a re-make of “Conan, the Barbarian”? Not even a “Conan, the O’Brian” joke?
I’d pay a dollar to see Conan, the Librarian.
Geesh.
Glad you posted this. I would have thought from the title it was about battle ships like the Arizona, Iowa and other famous battle wagons. Marine transformers? Arghhhh!
Nothing wrong with an action movie, we’re not really expecting great plot there. Do have to agree it’s odd they spent the money on the mane, unless they bought the rights a long time ago and never made it.
Of course Hollywood is out of ideas. There are, what, 7 plots for all of fiction that everything derives from? Doesn’t mean you can’t still make decent flicks if you do it right. Total Recall was completely wasted on Arnold, it’s got a lot of potential if it’s plot is treated relatively seriously rather than as “commando on mars”. It could be done well (although anything with colin unibrow in it will probably reek). Footloose on the other hand looks like an almost exact copy — although I expect it will be used as a political and racist platform to beat conservatives, christians, and rural whites with.
I hear they’re remaking “Straw Dogs”, now, as well.
Brilliant minds at work!
More and more these days I find myself coming back to the only satisfying answer I know of:
“I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
14. Walter Sobchak
More and more these days I find myself coming back to the only satisfying answer I know of:
“I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Of course, by the time he made “Avatar”, Cameron had forgotten his own good advice.
There is quite a lot of value to re-doing old properties with better writing, effects, drama, actors, etc. Battlestar Galactica: The Gritty Remake kept me paying for a full price DirectTV subscription until the month it ended. You can remake, or make serious sequels to, all sorts of old schlock.
For example, I had an idea about making a good sequel to “The Final Countdown”. That was a cheeseball original.
Premise: Super top secret records are found in Japan: The Yamato and Mushashi were not the only two battleships of their class, but merely the final two. Six others had been made in secret, and their orders on Dec 7th, 1941, were to sail past the destroyed wreckage of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and lead a task force to establish a beachhead on the US mainland at San Francisco, capturing the port with overwhelming force. Obviously, this task force never arrived, and in fact the rear echelon troop ships returned to Japan. Soon thereafter, a delivery delayed package arrives at the Pentagon, containing the combination and location of a safe hidden in the bowels of the building dating back the the construction of the building. In it are details of the next appearance of the time worm hole and matching details of the Japanese attack plan. The battleships must be destroyed, without a trace, in the past, or history will be changed forever. No precision guided munitions, no high tech aircraft that may be lost, no remnants or weapon effects that may be found later to change history. The task of the greatest sailors and engineers of 2020: build two battleships to go back in time and destroy the most powerful battleships of WW2 and then escape!
Throw in some love interest, inter-service rivalry, equipment glitches, plot twists, maybe a Japanese SDF volunteer crew contingent and cap it all off with 16″/50 broadsides, and a race against the clock, and you have a Sci Fi/Action summer blockbuster.
I started into this paragraph with a “feh, sounds like the Final Countdown” but ended it with an “f yeah, that’s a movie I want to see”. So many great ideas, so mcuh utter garbage being made, cf, Battleship the Movie.
I like it!
A different take on the time-traveling Navy concept may be found (and handled rather well) in John Birmingham’s Axis of Time series, which starts with “Weapons of Choice.” I learned about it about a year go in a PJTV interview with the author, an Australian who unabashedly admires the US and its military. He has another series (which I am about to read), starting with “Without Warning,” whose premise is the sudden removal of the US from the world, and the effects of that change. =^[.]^=
I thought it looked fun. But I’ve enjoyed all of the Transformer movies I’ve seen and I’m sure I’ll enjoy the last one when I get around to seeing it, too.
As for Total Recall… the original was good. I’m afraid I wasn’t suitably impressed with Inception because of it, though. I was all… hm… I’ve seen that twist before. And Adjustment Bureau was meh… even if I did rather enjoy the “scooby doo multi-door chase” scenes. Watching (and reading) too much science fiction means it would take a whole lot to impress me… and *nothing* is new or groundbreaking or awesome.
So it had better be fun.
Battleship looks fun.
What, not “Battle Axes: The Bea Arthur Story?”
Worst Hollywood film adaptation ever? Hands down, it’s Paul Verhoeven’s utter butchery of Robert Heinlein’s novel, Starship Troopers. Verhoeven cut out every bit of redeeming social value, not to mention anything that was remotely cool in the book.
The funny thing about the movie version of Starship Troopers is that critics hated it, because it came out while Clinton was still in office. A decade later, they would have declared it a boffo two-thumbs up must-see smash.
Totally seconded. I first read ST when I was still a liberal, and it was both one of the most disturbing and the most compelling reads of my life. Later I reread it.. and reread… and reread.
The society described there — as Heinlein himself explained — was just a backdrop for Heinlein to explore answers to the questions ‘why do men fight?’, ‘why do some people sacrifice themselves on behalf of others’ and ‘why do some societies die, and others thrive’?
Two quotes from the movie hang above my desk:
“All correct morals derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior [taken] above the individual level.”
“Correct morality can only be derived from what man *is* — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.”
And you expected better from a Dutch director? A country with a unionized armed forces, with weekends off. The idea of actually having to serve before you were allowed to make decisions for the general society, was utterly foreign to a socialist, raised in a nanny state, European. You noticed that, he could only think of using the WW2 Nazi’s as an example of a “volunteer” military.
‘Dune’ was worse, in the same way; Ideas inverted in desperate denial of truth.
They lack ideas because they lack talent. They spend hundreds of millions on effects and $20 on scripts. The themes have to be PC. No imagination. No balls.
No talent. Too much drug money being laundered. Deadly combination.
Seriously? So many GOOD books, and they make a movie out of the game Battleship? Time to dust-off and nuke the entire site from orbit… it’s the only way to be sure.
I guess that Hollywood thinks there are really only two movie audiences: 14 year old boys, and hipster film geeks. I dream of what sort of films could be made with modern CGI if Hollywood still had the motivations they had in the 50s and 60s when they did their best to make epic war movies but of course didn’t have access to thousands of tanks and planes and ships to make it look perfect: “Kursk”, the German offensive in Russia in 1943 that ended up with some 1500 tanks basically deciding the course of postwar history in the largest tank battle ever…”Ploesti”, the daring B-24 raid on Romanian oil refining at low level….”Jutland”, the largest naval fleet battle in history…others have already pointed out “Guadalcanal”. Instead we get more comic books. Logic: why would spacefaring aliens fight a navy on water? Why wouldn’t they sink all the ships from, well, space?
Cable TV is in a similar drought.
Now is the time to launch my epic 10 part series: “Hydraulic Pumps of the Third Reich”. Followed by “German Industrial Ladder Safety, Key to Victory”.
First on the History Channel, then as major movies.
It’s amazing to me that nobody understands, and therefore denigrates. See, there’s a battleship, and young lovers, and a father who is angry with his daughter’s boyfriend–he states very clearly in the trailer that he doesn’t know what she sees in him–and then there’s the issue of the boyfriend having wasted his great promise, since he’s twenty and obviously washed up with no hope. Then there’s an alien attack, which must be dealt with by firing the weapons–”all of them.” Watch the trailer again in slow motion, and then you will finally get it.
Yeah…there are amazing stories out there are wicked wild scripts. Most of them tied up in legal knots with studio rights, character rights, author rights…etc. Hundreds of them. Fortunately there are thousands of budding script writers with an army of aggressive agents ready to sell more ideas to the Hollywood money machine.
Cowboys & Aliens = Westworld the 1973 Western Sci Fi with Yul Brenner as the android space ranger! Yep, they are recycling scripts old enough that their younger, target audience doesn’t remember them.
Here’s a little secret about making movies. You know how children like to have the same story read to them again and again? That desire isn’t actually limitted to children. We as adults also like to see the same story again and again even if we know how it is going to turn out. (Titanic anyone?) This can be done very successfully if the story is told well.
plenty of good ideas out there, but hollywood won’t touch them because they aren’t properly progressive.
I agree with juandos – WTFIWWY?
Chill out, relax and enjoy what you can of the movie, no matter how hokey it turns out, it’ll sure beat the crap out of, say, “Redacted II”.
Well, it does have Brooklyn Decker, so at least the visuals shouldn’t be too bad. Short shorts and a bikini top? I could live with that.
LOL!
How on earth do they work an IOWA-class BB **full broadside** into the movie? In the first 99% of the trailer, the biggest capital ships seen (apart from CVN-76, the carrier USS RONALD REAGAN–there’s your tip off on where this film stands in terms of red-blooded patriotism) are ARLEIGH BURKE-class destroyers–each sporting a single 5-inch gun.
The movie clearly takes place in Hawaiian waters–if the script somehow gets MISSOURI out of the museum berth, able to sortie, and popping off all nine 16-inch monsters simultaneously, I’ll be first in line at the box office. But that seems far-fetched.
K Street:
How lucky was the production company that the Navy allowed them access to shoot footage of RIMPAC 2010, which just happens to be what the “Naval Exercises” in the movie seem to be about? The Navy gets to show some of its prized assets operating out of Pearl Harbor in the largest multi-national naval exercise of 2010, and the production company doesn’t have to use CGI to recreate a fleet. This is the type of cooperation that was done in Top Gun and The Hunt For Red October as an example (I was involved with The Hunt for Red October when I was serving in the Submarine Force and we bent over backwards for the production company).
In Crimson Tide, the Navy did not allow access to assets due to the scripts inaccuracies of an operating FBM submarine. Although the story line was improbable and the depiction of submarine life a joke, the acting of Denzel and Gene made it bearable to watch.
We will need to see the whole movie to rate it because there is a lot of alien and/or Transformer crap being released at the moment.