Review - Battleship

Grade: C-

So, imitating Michael Bay is a thing now?

I was always under the impression that, despite Bay’s success, no director would ever want to consciously ape Bay’s signature style, with the exception of Tony Scott and Dominic Sena of Gone in 60 Seconds fame. 

Peter Berg apparently doesn’t share that perspective.

Berg’s Battleship is a ham-fisted hodge-podge of the worst Bayisms committed to film, particularly those culled from Transformers--obviously--and Pearl Harbor. Battleship follows the meteoric rise of slacker-turned-seamen Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) who was shotgun enlisted into the Navy by his big brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgard), after raising the ire of the Hawaiian police during an attempt to impress the attractive, vapid Sam (Brooklyn Decker), who just happens to be the daughter of a Navy admiral (Liam Neeson). At the same time Alex was courting Sam by burgling burritos from the local Circle K, a pair of NASA researchers (Hamish Linklater and Adam Godley) discovered a new planet mere light years away that could possibly sustain human life. In the absence of a credible deep space exploration program, the boys at NASA decide to send a homing beacon to the planet. What could go wrong? One year later, Alex is a lieutenant, preparing to participate in annual Naval war games off the coast of Oahu while NASA’s Oahu signal relay station finally gets a response from their signal to Earth-2. Within hours, a small squad of Cybertronian aircraft makes its way to Earth-1 and begins transforming and wreaking havoc across the planet with weapons that look vaguely like the red pegs from the original tabletop Battleship game. Three of the crafts plop down in the Pacific, right in the middle of the RIMPAC challenge between Alex and Stone’s fleets and a Japanese fleet lead by Hopper’s noble rival, Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano). Faced with the Go-Bots advance team, Hopper and a crew of misfits must do all they can to stop the transforming menace before it claims Earth or raises the ire of the Autobots, whichever comes first.

From the sun-drenched palette to the ridiculous slow-mo and 360 shots to the garish infatuation with military personnel and hardware, every element of Battleship is ripped, part and parcel, from Michael Bay’s imagination. The aliens are Transformers, no way around it. The only difference is that these Transformers are manned by pilots decked out in Master Chief armor. The cast is a conglomeration of diverse cut-outs that include a music star (Rihanna in a decent turn that produces the best line of the movie), a disabled vet who won’t be conquered by his injury (Gregory D. Gadson), and a cadre of real-life veterans. Kitsch’s Hopper is practically Armageddon’s A.J. Frost with a hint of Tim Riggins. Brooklyn Decker is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s Carly from Dark of the Movie. I could go on, but I’d be forced to take a shot for every character from Battleship that matches a character from a Bay movie. 

Berg not only rips Bay’s palette and casting strategy, he manages to snatch Bay’s simplistic approach plotting, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the hands of the write director, and makes a plot that’s less sensical than Revenge of the Fallen. For instance, the aliens come to conquer earth but leave the entirety of their fleet in deep space, waiting for the advance squad to activate NASA’s homing beacon. Somehow, the an army of Chitauri movie made the leap in the Avengers, but these guys, with their transforming spaceships, couldn’t do the same? 

Battleship is, indeed, a senseless, shameful knockoff of the Transformers franchise and Michael Bay’s vision, but it’s so similar to those films that any fan of Transformers and the rest of Bay’s oeuvre will be at least mildly entertained, as long as they don’t apply any amount of thought to the proceedings. At its best, Battleship is adequately-made crap--a loud, dumb experience filled with explosions, which is exactly what is to be expected of such a typical summer tentpole. Then again, what more should have been expected of an summer tentpole that turns a tabletop guessing game into an alien invasion flick with Transformers.

Yin, Yang and In-Between:

Yin: Big, loud and dumb, just like the Michael Bay movies it is ripping off.

Yang: Loud, simple, and filled with explosions and transforming robots, just like Michael Bay’s hit Transformers movies.

In-between: Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) has now been in two more mainstream movies than Vinnie Chase. Ari, do your job, man.

Review - Real Steel

Grade: B

Yang: Awesome robot-on-robot violence that rivals Transformers; a surprisingly heartwarming story centered on human beings rather than CGI creations; a classic Speilbegian tale of a boy with daddy issues and his robot.

Yin: Jackman is playing Wolverine with a kid; the kid (Dakota Goyo) is a love-hate character; May insult Transformers fans with its ambitions to replicate over-the-top robot action; a classic Speilbegian tale of a boy with daddy issues and his (fill in the blank with fantastic creature).

In-Between: The main robot, Atom, learns to dance like Justin Bieber. Take that as you will.

Who watches boxing these days? Honestly. I occasionally hear people talking vaguely about organizing a fight party, but, outside of a few whispers from folks old enough to remember when Mike Tyson was actually a pugilist, I don’t hear much in the public consciousness about the sweet science. The media has, in particular, long left the sport behind, with the most recent kerfuffle over the Mayweather-Ortiz bout being the most significant ping on the cultural radar in years. So, when Hugh Jackman’s character, ex-prize fighter Charlie Kenton, in the new Rock’em Sock’em Robots movie (and make no mistake, this is Rock’em Sock’em Robots: The Movie), Real Steel, tells his son Max (the chipper, fey, Bieber-esque Dakota Goyo) that the fight game left humans behind decades ago, it’s a not-so-subtle commentary on the very real phenomenon of sports fandom abandoning boxing.

Despite sports fans generally ignoring the once-dominant spectacle of pro boxing in favor of MMA tourneys, moviegoers have not abandoned movies about boxers. In the past year, audiences have seen awards heaped on David O. Russell’s The Fighter while smaller pictures like the MMA drama Warrior draw consistently positive reviews. Why? My theory: America, despite being top dog for decades, has always loved an underdog story, even more so now that the country is sliding right into underdog status among world powers. Real Steel is the perfect flick to satiate that taste and it does so by combining the mainstream audience’s ‘love’ for a calculated combination of gloss and heart. Run Transformers into Rocky, add a dash of Over the Top and a pinch of The Iron Giant and witness the unsurprisingly fun, but shockingly heartfelt, Real Steel.

Real Steel follows Jackman’s Charlie Kenton as he scrapes out a living by fighting remote-controlled giant robots with jackhammers for fists and wicked names like Ambush, Zeus, Midas and Noisy Boy. Kenton is a bit of a deadbeat, a could’ve-been-contender with a propensity for welching on debts. When he loses two robots to separate hubris-inspired tragedies, he is forced to find something, anything, to keep him in the game. To complicate matters, the son he long abandoned, Max, has resurfaced after the death of his mother, one of Charlie’s old girlfriends. Forced to hold onto Max for the summer after making a deal with his son’s adoptive parents, Charlie is now backed into a corner where he just may have to bond with the son he never wanted to know. Things turn around for the Kenton boys when a trip to scrap yard leads them to discover Atom, a sparring robot with a smile carved into its faceplate and, maybe, a soul. Atom is special because he is the rare robot who doesn’t require remote control—he shadowboxes—and can, literally, take a licking and keep on ticking. With a new robot in tow, the three begin a journey to learn about each other—Charlie and Max teach Atom how to fight, and dance like Justin Bieber, while Max teaches Charlie how to be a father—and climb their way from unknowns to genuine contenders, in the ring and in life.

Real Steel seems terribly hokey at first glance. Nobody asked for a Rock’em Sock’em Robots movie, but now we have it, and it’s so much fun that it qualifies as something audiences didn’t know they wanted. This is a far better merging of the Speilbergian, an executive producer on the film, ethos with contemporary tastes than Super 8 ever was. The fights, alone, are amazing. Taking a note from Michael Bay’s Transformer epics and delivering ridiculous robot-on-robot violence in far clearer manner. Director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum I and II, and Date Night) shows a much better command of an action scene with CGI ‘bots than Bay did on his first time out. While Steel doesn’t come anywhere close to the carnage of Transformers, particularly Dark of the Moon’s assault on Chi-town, it is still frenetic and colorful enough to match, and surpass, some of Transformers' lesser action scenes.

One thing Real Steel has over Transformers is the necessity of the human performances. Real Steel is about people first and that bodes well for the schmaltzier material, which keeps scenes between humans from appearing like a stopgap. Jackman is adequate as washed up ne’er-do-well, but much of what he brings to the table is just toned-down Wolverine. Dakota Goyo actually carries more of the movie as Max, building a makeshift father-son relationship with Atom that recall’s Brad Bird’s underrated animated classic The Iron Giant. While Goyo carries a lot more of the film than the trailers would lead one to believe, he can be grating. His character was obviously based of the kids from 80's blockbusters, either total enthusiasm or overwrought attitude and angst. There will be no in-between in how audiences respond to him. He’s either adorable or insufferable. Evangeline Lily shows up for a few scenes as the daughter of Charlie’s former trainer who probably, definitely is in love with Charlie, but offers little more than a voice of concern or support when necessary. The ever-reliable Anthony Mackie is also hanging around the edges of the proceedings as an underground fight promoter, being underutilized, as usual.

Thankfully, the story has enough heart to overrun the stock performances. The underdog fight plot and the father-son reconciliation threads are typically win-win scenarios, and those threads are even more effective when woven together. Audiences may not be moved to tears, but even the most jaded viewers will feel that weird warmth in their left ventricle, if only for a second. Between the solid action and legit amount of heartwarming, Real Steel proves to be a surprisingly entertaining, and slyly moving, summer flick stranded in the middle of Oscar season. It may not knock audiences out, but it will surely make them smile.

The Bay-Perry Theory

Michael Bay. Tyler Perry. Hearing those names will make you cringe or gush. These two “prolific” directors consistently elicit nothing less than extreme responses from audiences and critics. Depending on your taste, education, location, and a glut of other circumstances, you will believe that Mr. Bay and Mr. Perry are either brilliant auteurs with their fingers on the pulse of contemporary audiences or manipulative, unimaginative hacks.

The record-breaking success of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) this past weekend has brought the well-known-but-rarely-discussed enmity between the average moviegoer, the discerning moviegoer, and the critics and their opinions of Bay and Perry’s movies into the spotlight. While no one expected ROTF to be a masterpiece of storytelling, the amount of vitriol it has received from critics and more discerning moviegoers is staggering. This film is currently at 20% on Rotten Tomatoes with many professional and amateur critics slamming it for its scant plotting, poor characterization, weak dialogue, gratuitous sexuality, racism, and general stupidity. At the end of the weekend, the preaching of the film world’s “intelligentsia” had little effect on average/casual moviegoers who made ROTF one of the fastest and highest grossing films in history, and had mostly positive comments for Bay’s metal grinding epic.

In many ways the wildly different responses from casual moviegoers and critics are reminiscent of the divergent responses to controversial “filmmaker” Tyler Perry. Critics and savvy moviegoers repeatedly bemoan the nonsensical plotting, stereotypical characterizations, and overwrought theatrical melodrama of Perry’s films, yet his target audiences never fail to push his films to the #1 box office spot. This phenomenon once baffled critics and savvy moviegoers but now only seems to enrage them. It leads them to label audiences as easily manipulated, unrefined, and stupid. They decry these audiences for turning away from intelligent fare for formulaic fluff. But, as a any math major will tell you, formulas are effective because of the potential for mass application.

Michael Bay and Tyler Perry have crafted films built on strict adherence to a simplistic formula, which manipulates audiences into having specific emotional responses that allow for catharsis and wish fulfillment. Simply put, they use a simple formula to make films that make audiences feel good. Their films are candy for the soul of the malnourished. Yes, they appeal to lowest common denominator. But, the thing about the lowest common denominator is that it’s common. Most moviegoers would prefer a movie experience with safe yet cathartic fantasy and wish fulfillment than one with profound, challenging, thought-provoking and, likely, painful content. This is nothing new. The troubling revelation is that today’s casual audiences do not actively engage in balanced viewing habits. Casual audiences are content to be entertained and are not bothered in the slightest to pursue material that might expand their mind or break their hearts. This is the phenomenon that disturbs critics and discerning moviegoers most.

Generally, it’s fine to enjoy guilty pleasures and popcorn entertainment. But, without balance, those forms of entertainment become the so popular and profitable that they threaten to dominate the cultural landscape. Consequently, intelligent, challenging work begins to fade away because it is no longer marketable. The growing possibility of a dumbed-down culture causes many critics and certain audiences to go at filmmakers like Bay and Perry full bore because they don’t want good culture to disappear. And, really, who can blame them?

While critics and moviegoers of particular taste are not the vanguards of culture they are still voices that represent culture and it is their right—and at times their responsibility—to defend culture that will show the future that we weren’t idiots. When watching ROTF, or any of Bay or Perry’s work in general, I think to myself, “this is ridiculous.” But, beyond that thought, I hope that other members of the audience know it’s ridiculous too. In all honesty, that’s a real roll of the dice. Much of the audience for these films is too young and unbalanced in their cultural exposure to accurately interpret these movies as fluff. Conduct an exit poll on audiences from any of Bay’s or Perry’s films and see if that audience isn’t dominated by people who believe movies like ROTF or Madea Goes to Jail aren’t masterworks of cinematic storytelling. This is particularly demoralizing to African-American audiences, who make up such a small segment of the population--with so few films to represent their experience, positive, negative, or indifferent--and whose tastes are doomed to be defined solely by the Tyler Perry standard. Even worse, an entire generation of moviegoers may grow up disregarding intelligent entertainment in favor of youth-skewed fluff that never dares to evolve beyond wish fulfillment and consider the human dimension of facing extraordinary circumstances and the subsequent triumphs and consequences.

As our culture becomes more youth-oriented, high tech, and generally hyperactive, we can only hope that audiences will grow out of the phase where they only enjoy the work of Bays and Perrys. We hope they realize there’s more to life than explosions, pissing robots, hot babes, pot-smoking-fist-fighting-drag-queen grandmas, chubby bigots, and happy endings, and will in turn demand more from their entertainment. But with ROTF breaking box-office records daily and Tyler Perry’s movies consistently reaching top spots on the box office, all we can do is hold on to a hope that is vague and fleeting at best.