battlewagon , in shell you missed hear about it , is the movie about the U.S. Navy ( and some Nipponese bluejacket ) fighting against some aliens who come looking to start some trouble . And as usual , David ’s novelization takes a reasonably stalwart movie hand , and transforms it into a PADsterpiece , full of all the common Peter David humor , type and mealy nihilistic delusion that we ’ve all come to await .
The fun start on the back cover , where a jumbo tagline proclaims , “ You Sank The Wrong Battleship . ” Yes , it ’s a reference to the factual control board biz ’s famous catch phrase , which the movie has assiduously avoided mentioning in its marketing textile , and left out of the literal film .
The actual novel is fun and breezy , as a good movie novelization should be , and it ’s suffuse with the Peter David writing style , in which legal action , humor , sarcasm and some tongue - edge suspense combine into a fun package . There ’s the common amount of Davidian mood , ranging from puns to slapstick to well - observed character mood . Oh , and stack and lots of pa refinement character reference . Like , tons .
After the alien actually show up , the lineament do nothing but patronage movie and telecasting references for like 10 - 15 pages . There ’s even a scenery where the President of the United States quotes from Liam Neeson in Clash of the Titans , talk over the ten - Files spin - off The Lone Gunmen , and then cites the movie Independence Day . All in like two or three varlet . Later , he has Rihanna ’s character make a Harry Potter joke . And so on .
The fundamental arc of the book ( and , I ’m guessing , the movie ) is how Alex “ Hopper ” Hopper rifle from being a rebellious roll in the hay - up who ca n’t handle authorization to becoming a seasoned commander who take out the foreigner . It ’s the same electric discharge that Captain Kirk has Star Trek , and it ’s also in infinite other movies . And without having seen the celluloid yet , I ’m guessing David does a agency better problem of betray it than the actual picture — he turns Hopper into the archetypical Peter David Smartass , who ’s excessively competent but too snarky and hot - headed for his own good . In David ’s hand , the character is cut from the same textile as the BannerHulk , Madrox , Mackenzie Calhoun , Chuck Simon aka Psi - Man , and uncounted others . And it totally works .
The key relationship of the film — Hopper ’s bromance with his real chum “ Stone ” Hopper — is still there , but David supervise to give it a tremendous free weight and philia . He also dream up an account for the brothers ’ differing approaches to life that ’s so flimsy , it really makes total common sense . Some of David ’s major innovations include a number where Hopper record his pal ’s lips from a distance using a telescope , mighty before something traumatic bump , and it ’s really quite displace .
And then of path , Hopper is surrounded by the common stamp of Peter David maladjusted suporting grapheme . Half the fun of reading this novelization is imagining Rihanna talking like Siryn from X - Factor .
you may really watch Peter David shoring up this account and punching up a batch of the little moment , in the week or however long he had to write this . David understands cameraderie , and he ’s really good at portraying the mode people pull together in a bad situation . And he observe all the strategical “ naval struggle ” stuff engaging , while still being quite sappy and tongue - in - brass about the whole matter .
There are italicized passage from the POV of the foreigner , which are passing helpful in understand what ’s proceed on , and also twine with fishy alien monologue stuff , like :
Their head break loose in a shower of blood and brain . The peril readout on both of them run low from red back to green . The humanity go down immediately , leading the warrior to conclude that the inefficiently create humans only have one brain apiece rather than a far more graceful three . badly designed slipstream . Next matter you know , they ’ll reverse out to only have one center .
I ’m not saying that the novelisation of Battleship is a desirable substitute for keep an eye on the film — although it might be . It is unquestionably a play , spirited read , which contains enough of the poppycock that ’s always fun about David ’s penning to be enjoyable . The basic story is fun enough , and it ’s interesting to see how David finds his means into it and charges it up . Most of all , when our descendants are mounting their elaborate studies of David ’s employment in the novelization area , they may detect this particular book to be a essential example of how his personality suffuses and transforms an natural action - movie tale . Put this on your syllabus , for certain .
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