Peter Berg’s Battleship is better than the Transformers trilogy in the same way that having a cold is better than having the flu. And yet it’s very much cut from the same cloth as Transformers, not just because both feature outer space robots but also because both are noisy, thoughtlessly inundated with action and special effects, and generally free from any semblance of plot, character development, or theme. I guess one should expect nothing less when the basis of an ad campaign is not, “From the director of....” or, “From the writer of....” or even, “From the producer of....” but rather, “From Hasboro, the company that brought you Transformers.” I’d mockingly call this movie Transformers 4, except that Michael Bay is already at work on it. You have no idea how excited I am right now.

Beginning as a two-player pencil-and-paper guessing game in the early twentieth century, Battleship was eventually acquired by Milton Bradley and updated to feature plastic grids and pegs. The object of the game was to deduce where on the grid the enemy ships lie and sink them by firing missiles – which is to say, by calling out a grid location and marking it with either an X or a peg. After several decades and variations, and even after Milton Bradley was taken over by Hasboro in 1984, the one constant was that the game had nothing to do with space aliens. The only conceivable reason the film features aliens invading Earth in big, clunky machines is because Transformers and its sequels feature the same thing, and they have all been tremendous box office hits. If there’s one thing nobody likes, it’s a ripoff. If there’s one thing I personally can’t stand, it’s a ripoff of a franchise so unendurably awful that just thinking about it makes my blood boil.

Battleship, like most big-budget special effects extravaganzas about invaders from outer space, opens with trite, meaningless scenes establishing character – or, more accurately, caricature. Taking place in Hawaii, we meet brothers Alex and Stone Hopper (Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgård), the former a reckless and unmotivated slacker, the latter an officer in the United States Navy. Alex tries to impress the girl of his dreams, Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker), by breaking into a convenience store for a chicken burrito. This results in him getting tasered and arrested. Although this does adequately get Samantha’s attention (the two immediately fall in love), it lands him in hot water with his fed-up brother, who forces him to enlist in the Navy under the command of Samantha’s father, Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson). Alex has talent, and yet he continually wastes it with his antiauthoritarian behavior.

As this is being established, we learn that NASA has discovered a planet beyond our solar system with a climate virtually identical to Earth’s. Believing it could contain intelligent life, a communications array capable of sending a signal up towards an orbiting satellite is set up on one of the Hawaiian islands. One of the scientists, who factors into the story later on, remains pessimistic: “It’ll be just like Columbus and the Indians. And we’re the Indians.” Sure enough, five alien ships arrive in response to NASA’s signal. One crash lands in Hong Kong, causing glorious destruction. The other four land in the waters just off the coast of Hawaii, where RIMPAC naval exercises are underway. One of the ships, a monstrous robot entity, encapsulates the entire state of Hawaii and several battleships under a dome-like force field. Admiral Shane is trapped outside, whereas Alex and Stone are trapped within.

And so begins scene after scene of relentless alien attacks and human resistance. I won’t describe the bountiful displays of extraterrestrial technology. The ads have done a pretty good job of that already. For the first time, Alex must be in command. Part of this involves learning to get along with a rival Japanese officer (Tadanobu Asano), who eventually comes up with the idea of tracking the alien vessels’ movements with strategically placed tsunami buoys. Meanwhile, on mainland, we learn that Samantha is a physical therapist for wounded soldiers. Her newest patient, an embittered amputee with prosthetic legs (real-life amputee and Army veteran Gregory D. Gadson), are hiking on a hill on Oahu when the invasion begins; they team up with the aforementioned scientist and try to stop the aliens from reaching the communications array. The aliens themselves are tall, bipedal beings with catlike eyes and pale skin.

All will eventually depend on the museum ship USS Missouri and a mighty band of retired Navy veterans who, despite being geriatric, are still patriots through and through. This is depicted in an inappropriately humorous light, as if having served your country was something to be mocked instead of revered. Indeed, the story is a bit too dependent on comedy relief. We have, for example, Rihanna as the badass weapons expert, who contributes nothing apart from military posturing. We also have a subplot involving Alex being afraid to ask Admiral Shane for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, yes, a couple of battleships do in fact founder. No, at no point does anyone shout, “You sunk my battleship!” Considering the game Battleship is based on, that was one detail the filmmakers probably shouldn’t have omitted.