The Aliens from Battleship

[darth_timon]

I saw this film a few months back, and a few things occured to me. Of course, it's hardly the most well-developed plot, or the best executed film (despite some rather pretty explosions), so some of the glaring plot holes are not surprising, but a few things about the aliens really irked me.

1. They have the ability to travel at around the speed of light, if not faster. To do this, they would presumably need some pretty strong ships to survive the rigors of interstellar travel, would they not? Yet their comm ship is KO'ed by a collision with a satellite as it approaches earth, and crashes.

2. Their defences are a very mixed bag. They have the ability to project enormous force fields that provide sturdy protection against modern earth weaponry. Yet their ships are extremely brittle, and don't appear to have much in the way of long-range weapons like missiles. Their anti-ship exploding shells are effective if they actually find the target, but the destroyers in the film were able to shoot down an awful lot of them. Why couldn't they develop shields for their ships, if they possess the ability to do so on a large scale?

3. Not really something that irked me, but something I found noteworthy (especially for a Hollywood film). They didn't go for mass civilian casualties- in fact, they only fired at the navy vessels after being fired upon first. They went out of their way to avoid civilian casualties too- or at least, recognised children and spared them because of that. The alien that was captured aboard one of the navy ships was rescued by one of his kind and then... they left, despite possessing the chance to slaughter crew members en mass at that point.

Just some observations. I could be completely wrong.

[PREDATOR490]

Most of this was mentioned before, it seems to be an unintentional quirk of the films stupidity that makes it look like a close encounters of the Third kind gone horribly wrong if a military idiot was on the other side.

The film is hilariously stupid and shit beyond belief.

The advertising was equally bullshitting when it implied Liam Neson would actually be involved which pissed me off to no end.
Instead we get a fuckwit washout subplot for added drama... for no goddamn reason. If your gonna make a battleship movie which is hopelessly pandering to an alien shootout, why the fuck would you throw in a stupid drama plot like this ?

By the end I was rooting for the Aliens to win simply because I loathed the bullshit and they killed or otherwise sidelined anyone worth watching.

[Batman]

Since he did appear in the movie, Liam Neson technically was involved. Granted, he didn't do much of anything, but he was in the movie.
And frankly I don't think anybody watched this movie for anything other than the pyrotechnics anyway.

[Darth Wong]

I saw this film a few months back, and a few things occured to me. Of course, it's hardly the most well-developed plot, or the best executed film (despite some rather pretty explosions), so some of the glaring plot holes are not surprising, but a few things about the aliens really irked me.

1. They have the ability to travel at around the speed of light, if not faster. To do this, they would presumably need some pretty strong ships to survive the rigors of interstellar travel, would they not? Yet their comm ship is KO'ed by a collision with a satellite as it approaches earth, and crashes.

This was one thing I actually kind of liked. I'm sick of people treating sci-fi vessels as if they have limitless abilities just because they've developed some sort of FTL drive. When we send real spacecraft somewhere far away, they start with thunder but by the end, they coast on fumes. How can we be so sure that alien spacecraft wouldn't be the same? For all you know, the things had no power left when they got here, and they had to suck up water from our oceans to use in fusion reactors to recharge their batteries once they landed.

2. Their defences are a very mixed bag. They have the ability to project enormous force fields that provide sturdy protection against modern earth weaponry. Yet their ships are extremely brittle, and don't appear to have much in the way of long-range weapons like missiles. Their anti-ship exploding shells are effective if they actually find the target, but the destroyers in the film were able to shoot down an awful lot of them. Why couldn't they develop shields for their ships, if they possess the ability to do so on a large scale?

Who knows? Maybe the shield generator is a huge apparatus and doesn't scale well. The bigger problem is that their weapons were so terrible. Why wouldn't they have guided missiles, or lasers?

3. Not really something that irked me, but something I found noteworthy (especially for a Hollywood film). They didn't go for mass civilian casualties- in fact, they only fired at the navy vessels after being fired upon first. They went out of their way to avoid civilian casualties too- or at least, recognised children and spared them because of that. The alien that was captured aboard one of the navy ships was rescued by one of his kind and then... they left, despite possessing the chance to slaughter crew members en mass at that point.

That might have simply been the enemy conserving his ammo. If you landed on an alien planet and you had a limited supply of ammo with a supply chain that is for all intents and purposes nonexistent, you would be very sparing with your ammo too.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Most of this was mentioned before, it seems to be an unintentional quirk of the films stupidity that makes it look like a close encounters of the Third kind gone horribly wrong if a military idiot was on the other side.

The film is hilariously stupid and shit beyond belief.

The advertising was equally bullshitting when it implied Liam Neson would actually be involved which pissed me off to no end.
Instead we get a fuckwit washout subplot for added drama... for no goddamn reason. If your gonna make a battleship movie which is hopelessly pandering to an alien shootout, why the fuck would you throw in a stupid drama plot like this ?

By the end I was rooting for the Aliens to win simply because I loathed the bullshit and they killed or otherwise sidelined anyone worth watching.

Something that occurred to me the other day is that the plot is almost a dead ringer for ST 09, and yet still failed. And the absence of Liam Neeson from the actual battleship (which featured for a disappointingly short time) really sucked.

[Srelex]

My main beef with the movie is that the trailer seemed to suggest a big epic clash with a whole combined navy against the aliens, when really it was a couple of little cruisers or whatever. And yes, not enough Liam Neeson.

But to the OP, maybe the aliens came from a water-bound homeworld which lead to a different set of thinking for warfare or something like that? I dunno.

[Sidewinder]

They didn't go for mass civilian casualties- in fact, they only fired at the navy vessels after being fired upon first.

The Navy vessel fired a warning shot, i.e., one intended to MISS its alien counterpart. Considering the aliens were trespassing on foreign soil (or water), they should have expected something like that.

They went out of their way to avoid civilian casualties too- or at least, recognised children and spared them because of that.

In case you forgot, the aliens collapsed a section of a highway, inflicting multiple (unseen) casualties in the process. They also attacked and killed the police officers who ordered the physical therapist off the hill- police officers who were NOT going around hunting aliens, but were trying to evacuate the area.

The alien that was captured aboard one of the navy ships was rescued by one of his kind and then... they left, despite possessing the chance to slaughter crew members en mass at that point.

The alien that stayed aboard the USS John Paul Jones, was about to destroy the ship's engines and cripple her. This is NOT the act of a non-combatant. A more likely explanation is the alien didn't consider humans- who were unarmed at the time, as seen when that seaman swung a crowbar at the alien, instead of drawing a firearm and shooting it- a threat, and put priority on disabling their technology.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

It certainly looked like the alien was trying to sabotage the engines or something, we don't know. I get that the alien shredder things were going to try to sabotage infrastructure by taking out transport links, but what I want to know is, where did those things go after attacking the military base and the highway? Did they run out of power or something?

Seemed the only real action Admiral Neeson took was to scramble fighters as soon as the shield dropped, though it seems they never made any serious attempt to breach said shield.

Something I did wonder though, was whether the film's depiction of the Phalanx CIWS was accurate or not?

[Eternal_Freedom]

No serious attempt to breach the shield? They attempted to fly an F-18 through it, it exploded, and the Admiral refused to risk any more men (despite orders from Washington). They also said something about the shield extending the sea floor so no subs.

As for why the ships don't have shields, it's possible there sheild tech doesn't work/isn't feasible on smaller scales, or they simply didnt expect to have to wait around after their comms ships was destroyed.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Serious, as in firing weapons at the shield instead of slamming a fighter into it. Or setting off some kind of EMP, in some SF circles EMPs seriously fuck up energy shields.

[TimothyC]

Something I did wonder though, was whether the film's depiction of the Phalanx CIWS was accurate or not?

I've yet to see the movie, but how was it depicted? Was it used to shoot down inbound shells? Because if so, Phalanx in land based applications does just that.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Something I did wonder though, was whether the film's depiction of the Phalanx CIWS was accurate or not?

I've yet to see the movie, but how was it depicted? Was it used to shoot down inbound shells? Because if so, Phalanx in land based applications does just that.

Yes, it did shoot down quite a few. Seems its radar was unaffected by the environment as it was able to track and destroy several in quick succession, the above trailer shows it briefly just after 2 minutes in.

Link

[Batman]

It should however be noted that despite the incoming projectiles being quite slow by real-world standards, a lot of them still made it past CIWS, though in its defense, CIWS as deployed on US Navy warships likely was designed primarily to deal with antiship missiles, which tend to be a bit more bulky than the threats the land-based adaptions were, well, adapted to.

[Darkevilme]

Serious, as in firing weapons at the shield instead of slamming a fighter into it. Or setting off some kind of EMP, in some SF circles EMPs seriously fuck up energy shields.

Firing weapons okay. But i'm pretty sure to get EMP nowadays you need nuclear weapons, and i'm pretty sure that if the admiral was armed with nuclear weapons they weren't going to be given authorization to let off nukes a dozen miles off Hawaii.

And it wasn't the kind of movie to go on and show the fleet achieving sod all by pounding the shield with missiles once the fact that no they can't get in was established using the flattened jet. Narrative focus and all that.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Serious, as in firing weapons at the shield instead of slamming a fighter into it. Or setting off some kind of EMP, in some SF circles EMPs seriously fuck up energy shields.

Firing weapons okay. But i'm pretty sure to get EMP nowadays you need nuclear weapons, and i'm pretty sure that if the admiral was armed with nuclear weapons they weren't going to be given authorization to let off nukes a dozen miles off Hawaii.

And it wasn't the kind of movie to go on and show the fleet achieving sod all by pounding the shield with missiles once the fact that no they can't get in was established using the flattened jet. Narrative focus and all that.

Yeah, presidential authorisation of nukes would be a problem, though I was thinking of setting off one a few hundred KMs above the surface. Of course what would be more worrisome would be the effect of an EMP on the islands since the nature of an EMP hits a very large area

[Darth Wong]

And it wasn't the kind of movie to go on and show the fleet achieving sod all by pounding the shield with missiles once the fact that no they can't get in was established using the flattened jet. Narrative focus and all that.

Indeed. I had always assumed they tried firing some missiles at it off-screen, and possibly even having one of the smaller vessels tentatively contact it with its bow. But it just didn't seem like something you'd want to waste screen time on.

As I said, the biggest problem I had was with the really terrible quality of their weapons. They used unguided dumb-fire missiles, for fuck's sake!

[TimothyC]

Firing weapons okay. But i'm pretty sure to get EMP nowadays you need nuclear weapons

When the movie came out that was true, and while it's not in service yet, CHAMP has had a successful test.

[Sidewinder]

Seems its radar was unaffected by the environment as it was able to track and destroy several in quick succession, the above trailer shows it briefly just after 2 minutes in.

IIRC, new model Phalanx mounts can track by infrared.

As I said, the biggest problem I had was with the really terrible quality of their weapons. They used unguided dumb-fire missiles, for fuck's sake!

Are you referring to the aliens, or to the USN and JMSDF? In the latter's case, the missiles' guidance radar was unoperable, due to interference from the aliens' shield; in the former's case, I thought the "peg" launcher was the equivalent of the USS John Paul Jones' 5-inch gun, and the wheel-things (whatever they're called) the equivalent of the Tomahawk missile.

[Darth Wong]

As I said, the biggest problem I had was with the really terrible quality of their weapons. They used unguided dumb-fire missiles, for fuck's sake!

Are you referring to the aliens, or to the USN and JMSDF? In the latter's case, the missiles' guidance radar was unoperable, due to interference from the aliens' shield; in the former's case, I thought the "peg" launcher was the equivalent of the USS John Paul Jones' 5-inch gun, and the wheel-things (whatever they're called) the equivalent of the Tomahawk missile.

I was talking about the alien weapons. The flying wheel thing was actually pretty neat (although weird), but the missile launchers were dumb-fires. Sure, you could say that they were just the equivalent of shell-firing guns, but if that's the case, why not use guns? Look at how long it took for the shells to actually reach their targets.

Their projectile weapons looked like depth-charge launchers: they hurled barrel-shaped objects which tumbled through the air for fuck's sake. Either real guns or real missiles would have made much more sense.

[Zwinmar]

One of my problems that really breaks the suspension of disbelief is the Mighty Mo's guns firing, there is no recoil on screen.

[Seele]

In my personal head canon of the movie. The aliens was just a survey mining group with a light military presence. Their "peg" like things being some sort of mining explosive. And the buzzsaw wheel being their only "legit" weapon. That being said, I also believe that their CiC equivalents was in the "communication" ship. And the person left in charge was pretty much their Taylor Kitsch equivalent making stuff up on the fly just to escape this shithole of a primitive world.

[Eternal_Freedom]

One of my problems that really breaks the suspension of disbelief is the Mighty Mo's guns firing, there is no recoil on screen.

Your suspension of disbelief is broken by the leck of recoil. I can understand that. What broke mine was the big guns firing twice before the guy said "Reload!"

[Sidewinder]

One of my problems that really breaks the suspension of disbelief is the Mighty Mo's guns firing, there is no recoil on screen.

The battleship's mass is too great for the gunfire to produce visible recoil- see Do Battleships move sideways when they fire?

Your suspension of disbelief is broken by the leck of recoil. I can understand that. What broke mine was the big guns firing twice before the guy said "Reload!"

That can easily be explained as the result of editing, e.g., the guy said "Reload," offscreen, before the gun fired a second time.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Your suspension of disbelief is broken by the leck of recoil. I can understand that. What broke mine was the big guns firing twice before the guy said "Reload!"

That can easily be explained as the result of editing, e.g., the guy said "Reload," offscreen, before the gun fired a second time.

I just went and watched the scene again (yay for DVDrips) and there isn't a gap, it's one continuous slavo, two shots per gun, with only a brief cutaway to show the impact of the shells.

I would also add that my SOD was broken when the anchor chain trick worked rather than snapping the chain.

EDIT: To be more precise, they fire at least six salvos (for certain, they may have fired more given the way the scenes cut from showing the guns fire to the shells hitting, but there are at least six clear salvos) with only one visible reload, and at a far higher rate than is realistic.

[dragon]

The sniper rounds through the window of the ship was a bit contrived. I mean it seams as much armor they had seems like they would had armored glass.
That and they had to have been already in route as the signal we sent wouldn't even had reached their world.