Mini-Rant - Sinking To A New Low

No, I didn't mock this up on Photoshop. It's real...

If you don't mind, I'd like to write about something that isn't cars. You see, I went to the cinema to watch Tintin in 3D yesterday, which was actually very good, featuring spectacular graphics and scenery, faithfully recreated characters (including a digital cameo of Hergé at the start), smatterings of light comedy, a good story, and lots of Citroëns. :D

Normally when a silly or crap film pops up in the adverts before the movie starts, like many, I just dismiss it as something I won't watch/care about, but today I actually laughed out loud at a trailer. Not to make a point or anything, genuine laughter. The trailer in question wasn't a comedy - since when is a Hollywood comedy genuinely funny? - but a serious action film with a big Transformers-esque machine jumping out of the ocean, missiles firing and serious faces, even Liam Neeson's in it, and then the title popped up at the end...... it's called Battleship. Yes, that kind of Battleship.

Are you actually kidding me?! I would expect such a trailer to be an online parody, like the Minesweeper movie trailer, but this is a real movie, which looked completely straight-faced, and stars serious action guy Liam Goddamned Neeson (I've decided that's his action name). I sincerely hope it's not taking itself seriously, because no-one, but no-one, could watch a stressed military-mode Liam Neeson gazing a long gaze at a radar screen and saying "......B Four" without laughing their face off as a missile lands in the ocean, hitting nothing, before Neeson's destroyer gets annihilated and he drops to his knees going "YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP! YOU BASTAAARD!!"

It couldn't get any worse than that, could it? Well put your elbows on the table and aim your palms at your face, because they're fighting against aliens. As if the word 'why' hadn't entered my mind often enough already at the idea of an action movie based on a board game, an alien race is involved, for reasons I can't even begin to work out. Maybe Americans are too sensitive about which nations the good guys can still shoot down? Maybe Hollywood wants us to believe it has a sense of humour? One person told me that they're also locked into battle zones so they can't move, making it the same as the board game, except its budget is not the £10 or so that, y'know, normal people pay to play Battleship, but $200million. Oh, and the aliens. That's different too. Normally.

It's an absolute joke, this film. I wouldn't pay to watch that at the cinema. I wouldn't even wait for it to come out on DVD. I'd wait for it to appear on Sky Movies during a slow day...