Hollywood has now gone beyond turning the comics into movies. First came news that Ridley Scott was adapting the Monopoly board game into a movie. Now Universal has hired Peter Berg, the director of Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom, The Rundown and Hancock to bring another board game — Battleship — to the big screen.
Another day, another board game movie. Universal is adapting the Milton Bradley board game Battleship and has hired Peter Berg (The Rundown, The Kingdom, Hancock) to direct. Wow. Can anyone else believe this? Universal has a deal with Hasbro and has been setting up huge projects based on various board games like Monopoly and Candyland previously, but now Battleship? Brothers Jon and Erich Hoeber (of only the upcoming Whiteout so far) will write the script. The game will, obviously, be turned into an epic naval action adventure movie. Now I can use this pun properly – Peter Berg has “sunk” to a new low today.
Filmjunk says:
Not much is known about the movie at this point except that they are planning an “epic naval action adventure” (clearly the Hoeber Bros will have a few gaps to fill in). I will say that this is the first board game movie that actually sounds decent, but realistically, the Battleship name has absolutely nothing to do with it. Would you watch a Battleship movie directed by Peter Berg? Will any of these board game movies actually be worth checking out?
As for me, I’ve always wanted to find out which would win in a one-on-one: the IJN Yamato or the USS Iowa? Board games are different from movies in that although there is a value of the game, in any given turn of play the outcome may be different. In any board game worth playing, sometimes the Yamatos would win, at other times the Iowas. The value of the game would be the proportion of times each won over the long run. I don’t think technology has evolved to the point where versions of a board game movie can be displayed depending on audience inputs. So exactly how Berg will turn battleship into a movie is an interesting question.
The following video clip is, to the best of my knowledge, the only available YouTube video of two Iowa-class class BBs firing at a target ship. It was taken I think, in the late 1980s. They are probably the closest thing to what the Iowas would have looked like if they were in combat against the Yamatos. The striking thing about the images is how, contrary to the image of a battleship as a lumbering, ugly tub, these ships are actually cruiser-like in their lines and are almost beautiful.
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a new Hollywood version of water-bored?
Why is this a superior idea to, say, a movie about the Battle of Jutland, which was both historically significant and dramatic? Tsk. Hollywood is such a wasteland of ideas.
Not almost beautiful, Wretch, they are beautiful. The Yamato had 18″ guns to the the Iowa’s 16″, but the Iowas had a better fire control system. A classic night battleship to battleship action took place off Guadalcanal in October 1942 when the USS Washington slipped into the Slot to intercept the nightly Jap bombardment. The Japanese did not have radar, but had excellent night optics. USS South Dakota had to retire, leaving the Washington alone in restricted waters with about 14 Japanese ships. The Washington took them on single-handedly and sank the IJN Kirishima. South Dakota survived and went on to become known as the famous Battleship X of later battles.
Technical/Tactical question here:
In a situation such as Omaha Beach where, if memory serves, the German gun emplacements on the shore were subjected to just the kind of fussilade depicted in the clip, why weren’t the naval guns more effective?
Looking at the clip, one imagines every gun emplacement, bunker, machine gun pit or building of any kind being pulverized by such a broadside. Was it just a function of mid 20th century targeting not being up to the targeting task? Too few such ships? Just curious.
OK, another historical what-if fantasy: At Midway, with 3 times the number of battleships as Spruance/Fletcher, could Yamamoto/Nagumo have pulled off a victory (even after the loss of their 4 carriers) buy chasing down the US carriers with ships like these? Was Yamamoto prudent, or just a wimp?
Better question: why do I like thinking of such things 60-plus years after the fact:)
cellec @ 4: WWII battleships were just meat for aircraft. In the absence of carrier aircraft (after the Americans sank all 4 carriers at Midway), the Japanese battleship fleet, in all likelihood, would have gone to the bottom long before they got within gunnery range of the US carriers, in spite of their formidible armor and the Americans’ defective torpedoes. (Though the defective torpedoes, not fixed for good until Sept. ’43, were a big problem for the US Navy. The US submarine fleet probably could have shortened the war by a year if the US Navy Bureau of Ordnance hadn’t been run by a bunch of boneheaded bureaucrats who refused to believe their sub captains’ rather heated reports of torpedoes regularly running too deep and bouncing off enemy ships’ hulls without detonating.)
Wow, I guess it’s just a matter of time before they do a movie adaption of Hervé Villechaize’s Fantasy Island (Da plane!) or the inspiring life story of the secular Oba-messiah. Movies based on Monopoly and Battleship sound like just more of the same Hollywood un-creativity to me. (Can you say Happy Meal tie ins and toy boats?) I thought the “Speed Racer” movie adaptation was bad, but will this get even worse before it ever gets better?
Oy vey.
Video says “Embedding disabled by request.”
Games on computers are designed with alternative story lines, why not movies? Collect audience feedback by an interactive device during the presentation and that changes the upcoming segments that are fed to the digital projector.
Some reviews can be written before the event. What is planned for this opus?
Last night Talluhlah Bankhead barged down the Nile as Cleopatra, and sank.
The Iowa class were extraordinarily beautiful, long low and slopped with four shafts they were the most graceful things on the water. I had the honor and pleasure of being the First Lieutenant Afloat when the USS England refueled from the USS New Jersey and stood there with Deck Division while we handled the lines.
#4 cellec
Shore positions have always had an advantage over naval guns before the advent of PGM’s. Firing from a moving platform -vs- a fixed position. Further, many of the positions being fired upon are higher in altitude than sea level. Naval gunnery, especially for major caliber weapons [say 6"-8" on up] are optimized for plunging fire to penetrate other ship’s armor at sea level. WW II fire control systems could not alway deal with this problem as easily as traditional naval gunnery. At least that is my conjecture.
#6 Dave the Kapampangan
but will this get even worse before it ever gets better?
Are there any indications that it will ever get better? Actually, in reference to the lack of using history for movie scripts; if you use history, especially recent [last 200 years] history, as a basis for a script you have to take a stand one way or another on events unless you just “make shit up”. If you are doing anything historical, and take a stand, you risk being politically incorrect which is the career kiss of death. That plus most Hollywood types, especially the “creative” types have less knowledge of history than the herd of deer near my house does.
Subotai Bahadur
celec @4
willdofoodformath is correct. Nagumo’s battlegroup could not have come within gun range of the US fast carriers, and would have been dog meat for the dive bombers. On your other question as to why shore bombardment failed to inflict mortal damage to shore batteries, etc, the answer seems to be that naval guns fire in a flat trajectory. Taking out dug in guns requires high trajectory fire for maximum effect.
Lifeofthemind
The New Jersey is now anchored across the Delaware river from me, in Camden, NJ, and hosts parties and such. She is now a bring-your-own bottleship.
Subotai Bahadur,
One question is whether the inaccuracies are do to ignorance or design? The Left believes, as thoroughly as The Party did in Nineteen Eighty Four that the message is reality and that the past can be changed. If the masses believe that Dick Cheney caused Global Warming or Freezing, or that George Bush was paid to allow the 9-11 attacks, because they saw it in a movie, then that is Reality. The only differences between the current hacks in Hollywood and the Blacklisted writers who had given us pro-Soviet propaganda such as North Star and Mission to Moscow are that today the directors have better special effects to play with and the effects of 70 years of public school indoctrination have crippled the critical thinking skills of millions of Americans.
Al Nofi and James Dunnigan wrote about the hypothetical meeting of the Yamato and the Iowa in their naval history of the Pacific war, Victory at Sea. Bottom line was that the 16 inch rifles on the Iowas were able to to deliver almost the same weight of shell more accurately, so the Iowa would probably have won.
“The Ultimate Battleship Battle” Victory at Sea, pp. 145-149
“The differences between the two classes of battleships are interesting. Since speed in a ship is partially a factor of hull length and fineness, her more powerful engines made Iowa about 20 percent faster than Yamato. In addition, Iowa‘s deeper draft made for greater stability, making her a better ‘gun platform’ than her rival. Both of these factors would have been imprtant in an engagement at sea. Moreover, Iowa was a much handier ship. responding to the helm more rapidly, with a smaller tactical diameter (the minimum diameter necessary to make a full circle), which made her more maneuverable.
“On paper, of course, Yamato‘s thicker armor suggests a much better protected ship, but this is rather deceptive. Thickness of plate must make an allowance for quality. In the years before World War II, the U.S. Navy had made considerable strides in armor technology. As a result, the protection offfered by its new armor plate was equivalent to about 25 percent more thickness in therms of the older type of armor carried by Yamato….
“An additional important factor was that the Iowa appears to have been much better constructed than the Yamato. On December 25, 1943, for example, Yamato took a torpedo that demonstrated that the jointing between the hull and her armor belt was faulty. As a hull repair would have entailed the addition of over 5.000 tons to the ship’s displacement, the Imperial Navy merely patched up the damaged section and pretended there was no problem.
“Of course the big difference was in the main batteries, Yamato‘s 18.11-inch rifles (as battleship gguns were traditionally called) making Iowa’s 16-inchers seem puny by comparison, what with the Japanese armor-piercing shell weighing nearly 20 percent more and having almost 7 percent more range. But this is a superficial comparison.
“A deeper look proves more interesting.
“Gun caliber is given in inches and barrel length, so if a piece is described as 18.11″/45 the bore is 18.11 inches in diameter and the barrel is 45 times that in length, or slightly less than 70 feet. The 16″/50 was about 66.6 feet long. Longer barrel length lends stability to the shell in flight, which increases range, which is one reason why, although the Japanese gun had a bore diameter 13 percent greater than the American piece, its maximum range was only 7 percent greater.
“Other factors of importance were the propellant used (the ‘gunpowder’) and shell aerodynamics. On this score the U.S. piece was better, with a slightly higher muzzle velocity (the speed with which the shell leaves the barrel, measured in feet per second, or fps).
“Incidentally, the marginally greater maximum range of the Japanese gun would have been of no consequence…. The longest-ranged deliberate hit at sea in naval combat occurred on July 9, 1940, off Calabria, Italy, in the Mediterranean, when the British battleship Warspite put a single 15-inch round into the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare at 26,000 years, about 12.8 nautical miles….
“The number of rounds per minute that the pieces were capable of firing is a rather optimistic figure, since it was dangerous and exhausting to attempt to sustain maximum rates of fire for more than a few minutes. Of course, this still gave the U.S. gun a higher rate of fire.
“In effect, on technical grounds, the U.S. 16″/50 battleship rifle was by no means inferior in performance to the Japanese 18.11″/45. And in action, that performance would have been enhanced by fire control radar, a development with which the Japanese had very little success.
“So in the ultimate battleship brawl of all time, a squadron of four Iowas would probably have defeated a squadron of four Yamatos.”
The largest caliber gun the US Navy has is 5″. The British have no guns larger than 4.5″. If a modern Main Battle Tank is hit by such a round it really pisses of the tank crew who have to repaint it. These are all considered Medium Caliber Guns. Large Caliber Guns start at 6″ The US Army does have 155mm, that is 6″, guns but nothing larger. This is insane. Gunnery works, artillery is the Queen of the Battlefield. Air support is a ridiculously expensive way to drop ordnance on positions that could be handled by tube launched firepower. As I have said if the aim in war is to achieve a political, that is a psychological effect, then the ability to project massive firepower through the use of gunnery has an impact that no other conventional delivery system, except maybe massive wave attack B-52 plane carpet bombing, can match. If that psychological effect compels compliance then lives are saved.
Artillery brings class to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.
Subotai and Walt are directly in conflict. Walt is right. The error pattern for Naval Gunfire is an ellipse with the long axis parallel to the gun. Thats by design because the target’s range is the most significant variable and is magnified by the shooting ship’s movement.
When marketers are the creative element of film – the film as art dies. RIP
Hollywood would trivialize the Dreadnoughts and Superdreadnoughts, the people who built them, and the men who fought in them.
I was on New Jersey BB-62 in 1969.
For four glorious hours when I was 12. At Yokosuka.
CGI animation can do wonderful things nowadays. Hollywood could make a fine flick about Jutland, or Guadalcanal, or Surigao Strait, but they won’t.
Battle 360 doesn’t suck.
Lifeofthemind,
“The Left believes, as thoroughly as The Party did in Nineteen Eighty Four that the message is reality and that the past can be changed. If the masses believe that Dick Cheney caused Global Warming or Freezing, or that George Bush was paid to allow the 9-11 attacks, because they saw it in a movie, then that is Reality.”
But then would the Leftists not have to admit that the Biblical Creationists could become correct via a political victory, and all the dinosaur fossils go “poof”?
Gallileo has the final answer to the Left -”But it does move”.
Life, Artillery is KING of Battle.
Infantry is Queen.
I like Subotai’s conclusion that writers don’t want to be tied to history because history needs to be “unthought” and as we know all wars were wrong. And beyond that, with debunking it is hard to remember who the relatively good guys were in any conflict. They are presently doing a remake of “The Dambusters” and unfortunately, historically, the “n-word” was used as a codeword. Serious cause for consternation with regard to an effort that those few who do remember history revere.
The Civil War may be safe to an extent because the Navy was NOT segregated. As for the Spanish-American War there is a story Dewey sought to intercede when USN Chinese coalpassers were not allowed to set foot on American soil. After that Jim Crow sets in. WWII is semi-sacred. Everything after that was a bad war…though integrated.
Lord of the Rings is an epic conflict that didn’t happen, so we can be angry and emotional but still maintain correctness.
I’m forever amazed at the Star Wars troopers, the Trekkies, and WWII buffs, who know their conflicts inside out but who look at you with shocked disbelief if you asked them to really don a uniform.
Yes, “Battleship” by all means. The crews will have to be from unidentiable navies, surely, and carry no historical baggage. May I suggest the Pomeranian Navy (Gene Kelly wore their uniform in “On the Town,” I think).
No? The darkside and the lightside?
Not “On he Town,” it was “Anchors Aweigh.”
IF hollywood plays this as a straight historical acion-adventure it could be awesome. Imagine Leyte Gulf, with hught IJN and USN fleets sluggig it out. The battle off Samar, with the Yamato battle group fightin US destroyer escorts and escort carriers, would be uttrly cool. Or, a modern version of Sink the Bismarck, perhaps. Of course, knowing hollywood it will be full of PC nonsense, unfortunately.
The Iowa would trash the Yamato in any realistic scenario.
Their faster speed means that they would always dictate the onset of the gun duel.
With radar directed gunnery it is only necessary to wait for foul weather — foggy and overcast would be ideal.
In such a situation the Yamato is blind and slow while the Iowa can dance like a butterfly and strike with impunity.
BTW, there was little chance that the USN would ever let the IJN even get numerical equality with there battle line. The Iowa’s were preceded by the South Dakota which were slower clones of the Iowa’s. In other words IJN has 2 Yamato… USN has 4 South Dakota BB57 plus 4 Iowa BB61. On top of that the USN had the North Carolina Class BB55 &BB56. It was never going to be an even fight.
We may be rushing to conclusions. I don’t recall “Battleship” being played by identifiable navies or named battleships or having any historical references. The ship against ship battleship era runs from 1906 to 1945.
Remember the movie “Clue?” “Clue” was about a game also. Time and place were vague and the characters were cartoonish (but entertaining).
I guess Tim Curry will play an admiral this time around.
According to “Last stand of the Tin Can Sailors” Japan saved their BB’s until it was too late. The served them up for the Battle off Samar where they were made fools of by a buch of DE’s, DD’s and CVE’s before they beat a retreat.
Interesting on the Video. All of the shell splashes were brown. According to the book, ships color coded their shells so they could correct their fire. They’d make orange or green or pink or yellow splashes depending on the source of the fire.
Clue (the game) at least has elements of a plot.
Monopoly is about the same level of abstraction.
Battleship is almost as abstract as Chess.
I don’t know who it was, but some Hollywood producer or director one responded to the question “What are the most important aspects of a movie?” answered “Story, story and story.” There are a few people left in Hollywood who still understand this, and tell a good story. Everyone else is a crap shoot.
Harlan Ellison says he was once at a studio meeting where someone proposed remaking “The Wiz” with a white cast. Somewhere in LA, right now, someone at a studio meeting is pitching a movie based on the “James Bond 007″ videogame.