Sea Too You Adapted my Battleship Problems of Narration and Adaptation
forthcoming adaptation of their game, Battleship; an announcement that was met with collective cynicism. Writing for the Rotten Tomatoes film review website, Jeff Giles titled a very straightforward report on Hasbro's long range adaptation marketing strategy, 'Hasbro, Universal Roll Dice On Monopoly, Battleship, More' and included the sarcastic sub header 'Aren't you glad the strike's over? (2008) This is in reference to the Writers' Guild of America strike of 2007 2008. More scathing is Margaret Lyons's statement for Entertainment Weekly, Wait, what kind of horrible world do I live in where I'm resigned to and unsurprised by a movie version of a guessing game? (2009) However, a film was made of Battleship, which successfully adapts most elements of the board game in accordance with contemporary adaptation theory. In light of this, I will be analysing Battleship as a case study in postliterary adaptation, and how it works in practice, addressing the features of the game Battleship before moving on to the formal qualities of Hollywood narration. In doing this, I aim to demonstrate in depth why the news of a Battleship adaptation was met with cynicism by critics. Following that, I will address how Battleship works as a postliterary adaptation in practice, with a close observation of how the individual elements of the board game are communicated through the aesthetic qualities of the film. Finally, I will address various adaptation theories that are applicable to the resulting Battleship film text, to ultimately demonstrate how the initial critical response failed to foresee the possibilities in the production of film adaptations from sources outside traditional literary sources. The fact that Battleship is a game that doesn't seem to lend itself easily to adaptation is at the core of the critical cynicism shown. As noted by Lyons, there is little room for narrative development due to the fact that the game is largely based on formalised guesswork. On the website Geeks of Doom, contributor 'The Movie God' observed that 'At first, the announcement that a Battleship movie was even being made was confusing, but now that we've seen fellow August 2014 www.intensitiescultmedia.com