Applying Battleship's formula for success

Despite being one of the loudest, dumbest and profoundly ridiculous films released in ever, Battleship has performed remarkably well at the box office. So how did a plotless board game consisting of alpha-numerical grid references get turned into a money-making blockbuster? It's genius, really. Mindblowing, in fact. One word: 'aliens'.

Battleship 'sank' its cinematic competition over the weekend, meaning that it was a 'hit' financially... and herein ends the bad pun portion of this article. But the point is, the film's success can surely only be attributed to 'aliens' (with maybe 2% profit made up by Rihanna fans). Why? Because we just simply wouldn't watch the film otherwise. Two battleships firing pot-luck missiles at each other in the sea is nowhere near as enticing as one battleship defending the Earth AGAINST A LEGION OF INVADING ALIEN BASTARDS.

You would think we'd learn from our mistakes. Battle Los Angeles? Terrible. Skyline? Fucking awful. Battleship? (*throws head in hands and wails*) But we all got sucked in by shiny trailers with floaty robot things and explodey laser-nukes.

So maybe it's time to test this theory. If the inclusion of a badass extra-terrestrial threat can make a boardgame that even my parents don't remember playing seem vaguely exciting, let's see what it does to another film that desperately needs to appear remotely interesting:

Man, that looks awesome! I'm so there. I'm pre-booking my ticket at the IMAX, etc, etc.