Battleship, Movie - Boardgame Comparison

This comparison is only intended for people who have already played the boardgame and want to know how the film deviates from it. Possible spoilers for the story are clearly marked as spoilers. Despite the fact that there was no such thing as "story".

The film begins with the introduction of the shallow and humorous main character, Alex Hopper. A no-good, as it appears in the book and could not be stereotyped. Within a time jump, full of wonder and magic, he is suddenly the most talented marine in the whole US and maybe beyond that. Of course, he has learned nothing and begins still plenty of fights. Because of that he will be released of the Marine the next day. In spite of all that he is allowed to participate one last time in an exercise and commands a battleship. him touching a mystic tower like building in the middle of the sea awakes the aliens and everything goes henceforward wrong and it's up to him to save the world in the remaining 90 minutes of the movie.


The film has surprisingly much in common with the board game. As in the board game, there are two players. The first one are the stunning and brilliant graphical effectsthat outshines the second player, the story. It's like a adult playing battleship with a kid, that doesn't know the rules and absolutly don't want to behave at least. The only thing he does is randomly shouting out coordinates that miss, sometimes he calls them a second time and a third with the same result. One would think there would be no authors involved, but the story is too well filled with every imaginable cliché that there is, that it could be just a random arranged words. You have a beautiful woman, a disabled past box champion, the maniac scientist, the philosophical japanese officer and many more.

Spoiler: A great example would be the pensioner introduced in the beginning, honored for the work in the marine. They are the only ones who can help the main character to navigate a antique destroyer to defeat the aliens. They also need to lift a heavy rocket through the ship with teamwork and patriotisim only.
 

As a author my eyes began to bleed, not only because of such a unoriginal plot, but mostly because of disregarding such obvious story telling rules. The main character is supposed to be a underdog that struggels to archieve such a magnificent ending, but he does nothing for it. Every heroic act and talented is only reported by other, but not shown. It's like parents telling their child that he can sing pretty well, but the only thing you see is a kid who clearly can't sing anything.

Liam Neeson couldn't save the story, because he isn't really that much involved in it. Regardless of that he played his role as good as always. He is one of the few likeable characters, because he hates the main character as much as i did. On the other hand we have Rihanna, who suprisingly appears all the time in a really unimportant supportive role. She didn't acted that bad, but was far from being a great actress. He dialogue felt stiff and forced but maybe she will become as good as Justin Timberlake, who also started as a singer.

On the other side we have the technical aspect of the film. Gorgeous CGI Effects that won't stop. Everytime you see transformer like robots crawling and biting into the ships, blasting them off into tiny bits with phenomical sounds. There are so many Explosion all the time that you pretty easily forgett the plot holes and just like it.

For everyone who wants to know how a transformer fast paced action movie could have anything in common with the boardgame, this is the answer:

Spoiler: The alien space ships jump across the water. Without radar signals the japanese officer determine their position through the wave motion. He only can measure their location in a square tolerance zone, which looks on the map exactly like the board of battleships, with letters and numbers as the coordinates. The only thing that really suprised me =)

Should you watch the movie?

If you like special effects as I'am, than you definitely should! They the best i seen since Avatar and the sound is also great. With so many battles going on you can survive the boring parts easily, which are only around 40 minutes cutted in several parts. Otherwise you also should go. Everything the movie do regarding story are parts you can learn from to never do.

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Hunger Games, Movie - Book Comparison [Contains Spoilers]

This comparison is only intended for people who have already read the book and want to know how the film deviates from it. Basically, the film follows the story of the books exactly and contains no surprises, so I will not use spoiler warnings. I hope I got all the names right, because I watched the german version and there could be minimal changes in the names.

In general:

The film was good, but far below its possibilities. At first I thought that the production studio was to blame for the PG-13 rating, but with the further errors occur, the director is not entirely innocent of it. Especially people who have not read the book may have problems. The beginning feels rather stretched and bored and later parts got less screen time. A movie which relies on visuals should show more of the arena than about dialogue in district 12 in my opinion, which was the opposite.

The fights are completely shown in a shaggy cam. They are just a mess and don’t let the movie look dynamic. It’s sometimes like a bad youtube video in which the camera holder forgets to stand still for a second. It was great to see the character dying, because the fight was over and you could watch something, not just a mess of pixels. Blood is seen only rarely, or hardly at all. Too bad, because a slightly higher rank than PG-13 would certainly have been sufficient, without degenerating into an Saw orgy. Most of the characters fall in an unconscious rather than dying. Furthermore, not many things are explained. Examples: The importance of the camp of the career tribute and their inability to hunt.

At this point I may ask a question about the book. Why do the career tributes put their stocks onto a mine field, without even fearing to lose them entirely? There could be about 18 enemies and only one of them needs to be a crazy starving bastard to run into it, to cut off their entire supply. It’s like destroying your own base to kill a single person. In my opinion a big disadvantage, especially given that most others could hunt to survive.

Now I tell you more about the comparison. The fire which serves katniss to distract the carrer tribute  is revealed only in retrospect to the audience. Furthermore, it’s not shown that the transporters collect the dead bodies. The Mockingjay  brooch is given to her by Greasy Sae, who owns these in huge quantities. Madge Undersee was cut out, which wasn’t bad, as the Avox girl. Rue's death is a little differently, but no major change. Basically, the above mentioned things aren’t a big problem, but they were, due to lack of inner monologues. I don’t understood why they didn’t used them, because they needed so many tricks to explain a lot of things, which would be a lot easier to handle with inner monologues. They just don’t care and show it without explanation most of the time.

Some changes to the characters:

Cinna: I'll start with him because he was the weakest character integrated into the film. He appearing is not only explained, also his role is nearly cut off. He says something along 5 sentences in the whole movie, in which he mostly praises Katniss beauty and of course the obligatory farewell before she enters the arena. His appearance was unexpected normal. His Role as a huge supporter of her is not that clearly shown and explained by the movie. The dresses were nice with some CGI effects, but they never made ​​such a lasting impression as they needed. Showing them felt forced and happened rather along the way.

Haymitch: In the beginning he is shown drunk on the train. Visually not like as I would have expected him, especially after years of alcohol addiction. Although he behaves calmly and defiant as in the book, it looks in the movie more like that kind of cool uncle guy, the one envied by all cousins, than a good for nothing, who he looked like in the books at the beginning. His alcoholism is in fact shown, without further negativity effects on him. Precisely because of his eloquence, the looks and Athletic ability, he seems to be fine with drinking all day. In the second half of the film his glass of whiskey disappears without a hint and he is no problem without it, as if there wasn’t anything at all. There are two smaller scenes added in which he talks with sponsors and the game master. The good point is that he is as funny as in the books with his statements towards Effi and her moral concerns all the time. Overall he was one of the crowd’s favorites. [Question: Had Haymitch in the first book an eye patch, or was that later? If not than this part would also be missing. ]

President Snow: He got a lot more screen time than in the books. After the descriptions of the book, I would have expected him to be a slick botulinum infested Armani carrier. He was portrayed more as a wrinkled Santa Claus, who predicts the following problems with Katniss. Mathpahern about the spark as it will be told in the second book.

Peta: He is basically the same as in the book, but with the exception of the final battle. This time he doesn’t lose his leg. One change I absolutely liked, because I had problems to understand the need of it in the book, which just looked forced to me. Something like there can’t be a “perfect” happy ending happen to them. It also makes things easier in future installments.

Buttercup: The cat was indeed shown, but only briefly. It’s questionable why it was kept, since it occupies an insignificant role.

Seneca Crane: I can’t remember the fact that his beard was described in the book, but his look is fantastic in the movie. He was granted quite a few new scenes, in which he directs the outcome of the arena or has deep dialogues with President Snow. The only blemish was his surprise at the Wolf Mutts, as if he was not the one who instructed the worker to create them. They also looked more like bulldogs and were teleported in a magical way out of the ground. Human eyes were also missing. All in all, he was one of the most successful added aspects.

And the highlight at the end!

Flickerman Caesar: He also got more screen time. Things that were usually told in the book by inner monologues were explained by him instead of Katniss. Be it the Wolf Mutts or the Tracker Jackers Mutts. He was the most positive enrichment for the film.

All the other characters were felt exactly like in the book and hadn’t any changes. For example Katniss, among others like Primrose, Gale and Effie.

i hope you like it. If you have any unanswered questions left, just contact me and i will try to help you! Tell me what you liked and disliked about the movie or something i forgot to tell in the comments below please.

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