Battleship

While this past July’s teaser trailer for Peter Berg’s Battleship focused mostly on establishing the character dynamics between the rebellious soldier and human squealing guitar solo that is Taylor Kitsch, his shapely girlfriend and Urban Dictionary sex act Brooklyn Decker, and her disapproving father and Kitsch’s commanding officer, played by Liam Neeson’s pool that ain't gonna pay for itself. But Universal didn’t shell out $200 million just to see some convoluted love story that has nothing to with the classic board game. It spent that $200 million on some convoluted space alien robot thing that has nothing to do with the classic board game, and now that the effects shots are done, that’s what they aim to get. (Get it? "Aim"? That sentence now also qualifies as an adaptation of Battleship.)

Set to a soundtrack of digital distortion and explosions, giant robots from the sea, who may or may not also be reptiles or something, set about shredding every skyscraper along the coastline, with only Kitsch and his crew (including Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, and former Friday Night Lights pal Jesse Plemons) able to engage them from within their force field—a barrier that has also left them firing blindly without radar to guide them. That and the previously glimpsed peg-shaped bombs remain the only recognizable connection to the Battleship game we used to play (well, that and all the screaming), but judging by the trailer’s “From Hasbro The Company That Brought You Transformers”—as well as absolutely everything else about it—Hasbro and Universal are obviously hoping this will remind of you another toy franchise altogether. (Check it out in HD here.)