“The Yamato”

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3d, a-z challenge, action, anime, april, battleship, blog, cinema, drama, film, japan, live action, meme, movie, review, smurfin the web, space, star wars, yamato

As we near the end of my journey through modes of transport in TV & Film, the obvious choice for “Y” was the Y-Wing from Star Wars, but instead I thought I would surprise you all with my expertise in internet research and tell you about the Space Battleship Yamato.

Developed in the 70s, this was an anime series from Japan. It basically is a cross between Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, but out before either of them, so that begs a question, was Yamato ripped off by Hollywood? Answer – probably…as usual. The Yamato is a giant battleship in space with awesome weaponry and fighting the great fight against evil oppressors. Its pretty much World War II in space.

In 2010, a live action movie was released and some of the original characters were recast as women for a modern audience. I have to admit that I haven’t actually seen this movie, but on the strength of the following video, I may just have to try to watch it one night. The special effects remind me of that classic show Babylon 5 and these action scenes do look pretty epic. Tomorrow, I will finish off my A-Z Challenge so I hope you stop by for it.

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Battleship (2012) – A Review

Tags

2012, action, aliens, battleship, blog, board game, cinema, films, hasbro, independence day, meme, movie, review, sea, smurfin the web, special effects, transformers, war

Synopsis: Loosely based on the board game (for reasons of only the name as far as I can see), during some at sea war games, a handful of warships encounter an unworldly foe who is vastly superior in all ways except one, they’re not American…

Main Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Alex Skarsgard, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, Brooklyn Decker, Peter MacNicol, Jesse Plemons, Rihanna

The Hype: This movie was a reasonable success at the box office and it did what it was supposed to – get bums on seats. I saw this trailer and fancied the look of it, but did wonder how you could get a movie from a board game.

What I Thought: Surprisingly entertaining. Lets get one thing, ok so maybe a few things straight – there is no great acting here, there is no tugging at the heart-strings, there is no huge twist at the end – this is a movie that is basically Independence Day on water. Now I actually quite like Independence Day despite it’s obvious “America is better than anyone” attitude, and Battleship is no different in that respect, it has some superb special effects and a kick ass soundtrack. I would say it was a little too long for what it was trying to achieve, but that didn’t make me want to switch it off.

Conclusions: I would describe this movie as a mix of Independence Day’s story with Transformers’ special effects. It doesn’t attempt to be anything it’s not and I certainly wasn’t bored even though I knew the good guys were going to win in the end in a completely predictable plot, but hey, sometimes its just nice to remove your brain and watch some mindless FX fun for sheer entertainment right?

Smurfin’ The Web Rating:

Trailer: