There are moments in Battleship, though they’re few and far between, when the movie pauses to admit that, yes, it’s perhaps a little silly to adapt a strategy game about blindly firing missiles at boats in fixed positions. Hearing lines like “Echo-1… hit!” as a missile clears a tall obstruction and lands on the other side is a giddy callback to the game and a reminder of the dumb fun to be had in seeing those plastic choking hazards brought to cinematic life. The rest of the time, however, Peter Berg’s clanking noise-machine falls in line with Michael Bay’s Transformers model, ensuring that the Hasbro brand is treated with the proper gravitas. The Marines got that commercial where the recruit slays the fire-spewing lava monster, and now the Navy has its two-hour propaganda film about the glories of fighting alien invaders positioned in neat little quadrants at sea. Just try to forget it’s a toy.
