IotD #16

Alright, first real blog post since my little illness break.

Today I am writing about an inspiration that actually came about from a movie. Most of the people I talk to about this movie are...less than enthusiastic about it. The movie in question is 'Battleship'. It was supposedly based on the game of the same name, but there was only really about ten minutes of reference to the game, and I think it was pretty clever, however realistic it was.

The movie as a whole is not the inspiration though, so I won't be going too deeply into it. There was one particular part, where they were retrofitting a decades old battleship for combat, where a song played. The song is 'Thunderstruck' by ACDC.

While this scene is often a cause of much of the criticism the movie receives, from myself as well, I find it very inspiring. Yes, it is awfully convenient that dozens of vets who served on the ship are not just alive and present when they need the ship, but are still physically capable of crewing it. They also managed to find active and working ordnance for the guns in a couple of hours, without going to the military at all. Presumably this was just lying around. The engines are also still in working order, and they fueled up the ship at some point. Since it runs on coal, I am wondering where this came from and how all of this was accomplished so quickly.

But anyway...

What I find so inspiring about the scene and the song is the idea of these old, retired soldiers coming back to the war because their country needs them. I also found the idea of old soldiers mentoring the new ones very moving. But the most inspiring part is the chorus, 'you've been....thunderstruck!' Every time the song gets to this point I imagine artillery, cannons, ships, tanks, ships, etc, firing all at once. It is a huge piece of the reason I find large, clumsy, loud, slow firing and inaccurate guns so very enticing. A sniper is so precise, so efficient. Even a missile can be guided and accurate. But an artillery barrage, a volley of cannon fire, to me it speaks to the brute force side of war. There is no refinement, no precision, they will just fire until you are dead, the land leveled around you, your fortifications demolished. It is the grinding, slow, steady advance of inevitable destruction that cannot be avoided. It is clumsy, inaccurate, and utterly devastating.