Great review on Deadspin here.

In case you missed it, the in-cinemas-now Battleship is a sci-fi naval action movie bafflingly based on the license for the Hasbro board game. And by ‘based on’, I mean they have the same name. That’s it.

I was fully expecting this to be absolutely terrible. But after reading the Deadspin review (‘Why Can’t Michael Bay Make Stoopid Movies Like This?‘) I kind of want to – it sounds like a really good lesson in how simple plots are often the best:

• “it’s actually pretty smartly plotted, and by that I mean it’s really basic”
• “a nice, succinct beat-the-clock storyline that anyone can follow”
• “if this all seems like rather obvious stuff to compliment, anyone who sits through a lot of bad action movies will tell you that it’s not”
• “[the director, Peter] Berg keeps things moving along with a blazing competence. It’s shocking how novel that is”

Three-act structure? Check. Hero’s journey? Check. Obvious external and internal conflicts? Check. (Alien invasion and being kicked out of the Navy. Doesn’t get much more obvious.) You can’t beat the classics. And if it was good enough for Aristotle…

Plus – ALIENS!