After Battleship, er, sank at the box office, director Peter Berg blamed it on two things.
One was Avengers Assemble hoovering up punters like it was a two-hour rubdown from Scar-Jo; the other was the vitriolic reaction from everyone to the idea of making a boardgame into a film.
Leaving aside the obvious rejoinder - making a better movie might have helped - he perhaps has a case.
The fury prompted by this brand-synergy exercise would have been hard for anybody to overcome, and Battleship’s thorough critical trouncing upon its theatrical release was surely out of proportion to this bulging blockbuster’s sins, plentiful though they are.
Berg’s $209m behemoth is far more insane than you’d have thought possible.
Even leaving aside some slapstick around a burrito and Liam Neeson playing a dad seemingly imported from 1873, there’s a late story twist that not only justifies the title and underlines the US Navy’s enthusiastic involvement, but boggles the mind.
It’s so naffly flag-waving it would have seemed OTT on VJ Day, and so skull-shakingly nuts that it’s hard not to crack a smile at how far Berg has taken the carte blanche of his already ludicrous premise.
Sure, the action is standard post-Transformers flying metal, the dialogue is as declaratory as it gets and the cast, led by John Carter’s Taylor Kitsch, is patchy at best.
But behind all the cynicism lies one of the strangest major studio tentpoles of recent times.
