Talking to Aalgar, Part One

I was dicking around on the internet the other day, as I am wont to do, and stumbled upon the trailer for the upcoming film Battleship.

Being me, I took to Twitter to make fun of it. Because that's what I do. There to argue with me, as always, is my wonderful friend Ron "AAlgar" Watt. AAlgar is a very talented writer and noted internet funnyperson. He is the co-host of the Sarcastic Voyage and Post Atomic Horror podcasts.

I made friends with AAlgar on the often-mentioned Bendis Board. I have always been semi-fascinated by him. He's a smart guy, a funny guy, and he and I agree in a full-bodied way on very little. What we have discovered is that the things I am passionate about, he is a casual enthusiast of, and vice versa. But he's one of my favorite people to talk to, and I love internet-bickering with him, because he always forces me to think, and I suspect he is smarter than I. I thought it would be fun to "debate" the merits of the Battleship movie, and post it here. We talked so long that I am actually splitting this into two parts. The second half will appear next week. So if this first part bores you, you get a whole week off from my blog. Lucky you!

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Travis: So... The trailer for "Battleship". That happened.

AAlgar: I feel like I've seen this movie already. Seventeen times.

Travis: It's like Transformers meets Pearl Harbor.

AAlgar: And I hate both of those movies.

Travis: Wait. Were those both Michael Bay movies?

AAlgar: I think so. Maybe Pearl Harbor was Bruckheimer.

Travis: I've never seen them together. No reason not to think they're the same guy.

AAlgar: I dunno, I'm not into the big splodey action movies usually. Just not my thing.

Travis: I think my central premise is that I said "Why aliens," and your response was, "Why NOT aliens". And you wouldn't accept, "Because BULLSHIT! That's why" as an answer.

AAlgar: Well, starting with the basic idea that basing an entire movie around a simple board game is profoundly stupid. But if they're gonna make it... yeah. Why the hell not. Like I said, it's not like there's some kind of mythos they need to stay true to.

Travis: I played Battleship a LOT as a kid. And I have a pretty active imagination.  I never came up with aliens.

AAlgar: They want kids to go see this movie. Kids don't want to watch Das Boot.

Travis: Rihanna is in this. I would totally go see a version of Das Boot with Rihanna in it.

AAlgar: I assume it was your typical clichéd douchey movie producer. "What do kids like?" and it went from there.  Although... Somebody pointed out that there's kind of a cool idea in this premise. What I read (I was looking for it, and can't find it now)... Was that the aliens have technology to knock out the radar and GPS and stuff. Leaving the Navy blind. Which means the third act will probably boil down to "A5. Miss."

Travis: It's the very laziest kind of writing though. You and I could come up with a better, more marketable idea for a movie in ten minutes. Here: "A bunch of teenage naval cadets sneak onto a decomissioned battleship for a party. Then they get sucked into a time warp."

AAlgar: I mean, it's stupid. But it's a way to get to the essential core of the game. Such as it is.

Travis: If the aliens shot red and white missles, that would probably be more canonical.

AAlgar: Ooh, or a cannon.What's more canonical than a cannon?

Travis: "Cannon"ical?

AAlgar: I think my knee-jerk snark at you was a general disdain for people who obsess over canon. Caring about the canon of fucking Battleship is just... the worst. And I don't even think you were doing that. But for a split second, I thought you might be.

Travis: I'm not "they raped my childhood" over it. I'm just kind of amazed that they went to "aliens".

AAlgar: If this were the 90s, it'd start as aliens and end up being a military experiment gone wrong.

Travis: I'm not sure if you asked me to make a movie based on Battleship I could get to "aliens".

AAlgar: If I were making a Battleship movie, I'm not sure I could get to "Liam Neeson."

Travis: For the record, I'm in favor of Liam Neeson in every movie.

AAlgar: Let me put it to you another way: how much of the weird shit in the Pirates movies was in the original theme park ride? It's a fucking THEME PARK RIDE that they've made four movies out of. And maybe more.

Travis: How about "Clue"?

AAlgar: Clue... had a story. Sort of. There's an inherent plot in that game. Which they held to, basically.

Travis: It would seem to me that if tasked to write a movie based on a game, the first step would be "play game". The second would be "write down what happens".

AAlgar: Sure.

Travis: Which is why jumping to aliens is so amazing to me.

AAlgar: But seriously, Battleship is like... making a movie based on checkers. It's a simple strategy game. There's no inherent story there. No characters. Only the flimsiest of settings.

Travis: I completely agree on all of that. But that should mean that you have the widest possible freedom to make any movie in the world as long as it has a Battleship in it.

AAlgar: And you or I, as hungry writers who would love to do something fun and original, would do something weird and great. A lazy studio hack is gonna say "throw some fucking aliens in this."

Travis: They also have a movie in the works based on Candyland, purportedly. This, to me, would be like if they added vampires to that.

AAlgar: I would not be surprised if they did that! Maybe not to Candyland, because they'll try to market that to small kids, I bet. But I dunno, the game of Life, let's say. Or Monopoly. One of those will have vampires.

 Travis: Connect Four with Vampires?

AAlgar: "Pretty sneaky, sis. Bleh!"

 Travis: So the moral of the story is, when in doubt, add aliens? Or vampires?

AAlgar: I will bet you a thousand dollars Battleship will not do well at the box office. Nobody wants to see that. I guarantee EW has a pre-made BATTLESHIP SINKS headline ready to go.

Travis: But what if it's a box-office smash? Then that becomes the shitty summer movie version of "Dewey Beats Truman".

AAlgar: And I lose a thousand dollars! C'mon though... hit movies are so rarely a surprise. Sometimes the things you expect to do well tank. But very rarely does it work the other way around.

Travis: I suppose so. I just don't have the genetic quirks that enable me to look at the roster and pick what will be wheat from what will be chaff. It ALL looks like chaff to me. I still go see a lot of it, but that's because I love popcorn.

 AAlgar: I'm hardly Rain Man when it comes to this.

Travis: Well, in your defense, that would just mean counting the shitty movies.

AAlgar: Heh.

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Tune in on Monday for Part Two, which is AAl and I talking about superhero movies for what is probably a longer time than is healthy for two adult males.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis