Silver Screen Saucers Upcoming board game adaptation promises “good old fashioned city destruction from flaming projectiles, alien ships and artificially induced earthquakes.”
Footage from Universal’s Battleship was previewed recently for a small gathering of journalists in Santa Monica, California. Among those present were ComingSoon.net's Scott Huver and Silas Lesnick. Here is some choice info from their interview with the movie’s director, Peter Berg...
Of Battleship’s inspiration / origin, Berg says:
"We were looking for a title and looking for something to do... 'Transformers' had come out and I was a huge fan of it, and I was starting to think about other brands and I was just thinking about 'Battleship,' as the son of a World War II historian and a naval fanatic - my father was all about ships and all about World War II battles... So, I went and talked to the guys at Hasbro. I said, 'I want to do a film about naval warfare, the modern navy.' They said, 'What's the story?' I said, 'I'm not sure what the story is, but I'll figure one out. But I'm your guy.' We were pitching it, for some reason they were like, 'Okay, you're our guy.' I was maybe the ONLY guy pitching it, or maybe the loudest guy, but I got it and started to kind of come up with a way of bringing in alien component to the film that I thought was credible."
Berg says that Universal wanted him to go into production as soon as possible:
"I was like, 'Right now?' I was planning on doing something else.' 'Right now. Can you do it?’ I'm a pretty competitive person and I was like, 'Of course I can do it.' They said, 'Are you sure?' I said, 'Of course I can do it.' They said, 'Anything that we can do for you we'll do. We'll help you as much as we can, or as little as you want us to.' I'm really happy with the way that it's coming together. I'm happy to bring you all on the ride."
Based on conversations with Battleship’s producer, Sarah Aubrey, ComingSoon.net explains that there are two major variations of aliens in the movie: “some are scientists and others are ‘Thugs,’ used as shock troops. As far as the design goes, think Halo's Master Chief, but larger and more mechanical.”
The journalists were also shown the new trailer for the movie (due for release in the very near future), which features “quite a bit of destruction on a Michael Bay scale, both at sea and on land... Overall, the new trailer does an excellent job at communicating a level of spectacle that fans may not have been expecting from the initial teaser, including land, sea and air combat as well as good old fashioned city destruction from flaming projectiles, alien ships and artificially induced earthquakes."
Berg also confirms that his movie has been produced with the full cooperation of the US Navy:
“We filmed a lot of real Navy ships, a lot of real sailors. We had Navy consultants all over our ships because they speak their own language, like, 'What would you do here? How would you ask for this information?' And they're real happy with that and I was really happy to be able to bring that kind of reality to it. Throughout it we maintain a real sense of this is how the Navy would react to this.”
Of his movie’s aliens, Berg says: “Our aliens, again, are not so powerful that our weapons can't engage them. I mean, it takes a lot. They're hard to sink. We have to figure it out. Our radar can't see them. Their radar can't see us. We can't communicate with each other. We have some communication issues. But our weapons systems work. We have to figure out a way to make contact with the enemy without being able to see them by figuring out where we think they are which is a throwback to the game. But if we hit them properly with enough ordinance we can hurt them.
The aliens come from a planet that... has a similar geology, a similar environment, a similar temperature to ours. There's a resemblance. They're somewhat human. They're not machines. Most of them are actually quite intelligent. Most of the ones that come are more scientific. These are guys who are basically tasked with going and looking for other planets that might be of interest for a resource data point for them. So, these guys are super-intelligent. They're not that big. They're average height maybe, five-foot-eight, five-foot-nine. They're very worn. They've done this before. They've been to other planets. They've never encountered anything with quite as much resistance as us, but they've fought before and they're not inherently violent. If you meet him his interest is not to kill you. He's not really interested in you. He's just interested in the minerals and the resources of your planet. If you get in his way he'll kill you without prejudice, for the most part.”
Battleship hits cinemas May 18, 2012.
