Pa Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Show of hands who cheated during the game Armadillo? If your hand is down, you are lying. Trick your friends while playing Armadillo it’s a rite of passage, so for some reason Hasbro thought it would be the perfect property to capitalize on the rise of Transformers back in 2012. 14 years later, and one of Amazon Prime’s most popular streaming movies has finally reached its destination: Blame the Father.
Top Gun at sea
You can say Armadillo since the early 2010s because it starred Taylor Kitsch as Hollywood tried to make him the next big action star. If John Carter got the support it needed, it could have worked, but instead he starred in one box office bomb after another through no fault of his own. As naval officer Alex Hopper, Kitsch does an excellent job of channeling Tom Cruise’s Maverick. Armadilloup to trying to impress the admiral’s daughter.
where Armadillo it gets weird when an alien spaceships land and isolate Hawaii from the rest of the world under an impenetrable force field. This and the alien weapons look a lot like the pegs from the game Armadillo. Outgunned, outgunned, and with no one coming to save them, Alex must lead the survivors of the American and Japanese Pacific Fleet against an alien invasion. And now you’re wondering how this corny-sounding fantasy film has become mainstream streaming hit, well, it’s because of what comes next.
The greatest final act in movie history
For the entire first two-thirds of c Armadillo it’s an incredibly corny movie where everyone is from Liam Neeson as the admiral by Jesse Plemons and Rami Malek as the sailors, he has understood the task and chews every scenery. Then, when there is no ship left, Alex says, “We have a battleship,” and the camera pans to the USS Missouri docked at Pearl Harbor. If you’re wondering what makes this movie a modern dad classic, here’s that scene. Take your parents, your grandparents, let them see the movie and wait until they get to Missouri.
Aboard a ship converted into a history museum, the survivors have no idea how to operate the old-school analog ship. So one by one the veterans appear. Cast as actual veterans of the Missouri and other ships of the era (there’s also a USS Carolina cap!), the veterans get to work teaching the kids how the ship works to the sounds of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” This is boomer crossing catnip, and if you know any old sailors who haven’t seen it, you owe it to them to share it.
Battleship is a streaming success wherever it sails
Armadillo could become one of the biggest box office flops in history by losing both Hasbro and Universal at about $150 million each after grossing just $300 million at the box office, which after theatrical and marketing cuts wasn’t enough for anything resembling a profit. It’s also one of the greatest streaming success stories in history. Every time Armadillo hits the streaming service, it’s been in the top 10 for weeks. No one wants to admit they love this movie, but it’s okay, you can admit you’re locked in after Thunderstruck comes out.
When the final battle comes, when you’re not having the time of your life battleship, you don’t like movies. Find a boomer, sit back and keep streaming Amazon Primeand remember how much fun you can have when a movie doesn’t take itself seriously.
