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Jim Van Nest: I think it can be summed as simply as: the studio marketed this as though it were "Transformers without Optimus Prime, but hey...we got Rihanna!". And frankly, who wants to see that? I've heard it's a pretty good turn off your brain summer popcorn flick...but I'll wait til it hits cable.

Reagen Sulewski: I alluded to this a little in my forecast, but it ultimately failed moviegoers' laugh test - just imagine someone saying "hey, you want to go see that movie about the game where you guess coordinates?" There's a lot of self-respecting people out there (all other evidence to the contrary) who just couldn't get past the silliness of the concept, not to mention that the ads themselves were not that inspiring.

The comparisons to Transformers are on point in terms of how they tried to make the movie look, but there's a couple of key differences - most people remember playing with Transformers and/or watching the cartoon, and can imagine building a story around the toys pretty easily. With Battleship, it's just way too much of a stretch. It'd be like trying to make a story about Connect Four (though I bet Steven Soderbergh would be game to try). I have to agree with Samuel that audiences this year have renewed my faith in them somewhat, as they've rewarded films in rough relation to their quality.

Who I really feel bad for is Taylor Kitsch, who must have felt like 2012 was going to be his year. Now, he's got two pretty big bombs on his resume that weren't really his fault. He, Sam Worthington and Jake Gyllenhaal should form a support group.

David Mumpower: Reagen took my answer on the laugh test, which is something we discussed during the Trailer Hitch for Battleship. He and Matthew both touch upon the most engaging aspect of this failure. Hasbro attempted to modernize their property by developing Battleship into a major motion picture. The inescapable flaw is that the premise of the game itself is outdated. We create games now that allow for actual naval combat. A coordinates-based guessing game exists in an era gone by that is utterly irrelevant not just to teens as was mentioned before; it's all of us. Who here has chosen to play Battleship in the last ten years? We live in a cellphone/tablet apps era. This concept fails. Rather than let Battleship go without a fight, they chose this one desperate gamble in an attempt to revitalize their iconic property. The results were predictable. What is unacceptable is the production cost of the movie. This is a $75 million production *at best*. $209 million is unconscionable. And yes, I realize that some of our readers are lining up to point out its international revenue. The irrefutable fact at the moment, however, is that foreign revenues are much less lucrative due to tariffs, translation fees and differing marketing plans. Hasbro convinced Universal Pictures into creating this feature in hopes that the movie would earn enough to satisfy their Transformers partner. Hasbro's goal was to sell Battleship to a new generation of kids. They have failed on both counts, making this the second least successful project of 2012 behind John Carter.

Max Braden: I really don't think the concept here is truly fatally flawed. After all, there are elements here from Under Siege and The Hunt For Red October, and the plot of this movie really isn't any less ridiculous than Independence Day. ID4 benefited from bigger names in the the middle of the summer, and Battleship suffered from the association with the name. Even if you hook unsuspecting viewers with the nifty visuals in the trailer, they still get to the title and are hit with that "no, wait, seriously?" stigma that you can't make a movie from such a simple board game. (I think you could make a phone app for the game though that would sell.) It's too bad, because the massive firepower of these obsolete war machines would make for good modern movies like a remake of Sink the Bismark, or a depicting the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

I went to see Battleship because I thought it looked worth a big-screen trip. I went in with low expectations and came out okay. It was what it was.

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