By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated 1 hour ago

Show of hands, who cheated while playing Battleship? If your hand is down, you’re lying. Cheating your friends playing Battleship is a rite of passage which is why, somehow, Hasbro thought it would be the perfect property to cash in on the rise of Transformers back in 2012. 14 years later and it’s one of the top streaming movies on Amazon Prime, finally achieving its destiny: guilty pleasure Dad movie. 

Top Gun By Sea

You can tell Battleship is from the early 2010’s because it stars Taylor Kitsch back when Hollywood was trying to make him the next big action star. If John Carter received 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 a great job channeling Tom Cruise’s Maverick in Battleship, right down to trying to impress the Admiral’s daughter. 

Where Battleship gets weird is when the alien spaceships land and isolate Hawaii from the rest of the world under an impenetrable force field. That and the alien weapons look a lot like the pegs from the game Battleship. Outgunned, outmanned, and with no one coming to save them, it’s up to Alex to lead the survivors of the American and Japanese Pacific Fleets against the alien invasion. And by now you’re wondering how this corny sounding sci-fi movie is a massive streaming hit, well, it’s because of what comes next. 

The Greatest Final Act In Movie History

For the entire first two-thirds of Battleship it’s an incredibly corny movie where everyone, from Liam Neeson as the Admiral to Jesse Plemons and Rami Malek as sailors, understood the assignment and is chewing up every bit of scenery. Then, with no ship left, Alex says “we have a battleship,” and the camera pans to the U.S.S. Missouri docked at Pearl Harbor. In case you’re wondering what makes this a modern classic Dad movie, it’s this scene. Get your parents, get your grandparents, have them watch the movie, and wait until they reach the Missouri. 

Onboard the ship-turned-historical museum, the survivors have no idea how to run an analog, old-school ship. That’s when the veterans appear, one by one. Played by the real veterans of the Missouri and other ships of the era (there’s a U.S.S. Carolina cap in there too!), the veterans get to work teaching the kids how the ship works, all set to the sounds of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” This is catnip for boomers, and if you know any old seaman who haven’t watched this, you owe it to them to share it. 

Battleship Is A Streaming Success Wherever It Sails

Battleship may be one of the biggest box office flops in history, losing both Hasbro and Universal roughly $150 million each after earning only $300 million at the box office, which after theatrical cuts and marketing, wasn’t enough for anything resembling a profit. It’s also one of the greatest streaming success stories in history. Every time Battleship arrives on a streaming service, it’s in the top 10 for weeks. No one wants to admit they love this movie, but it’s okay, you can admit that once “Thunderstruck” hits you are locked in. 

When the final battle hits, if you aren’t having the time of your life with Battleship, you don’t love movies. Find a boomer, sit down, stream it on Amazon Prime, and remember how much fun you can have when a movie doesn’t take itself seriously.

Fashion collabs are taking over the world right now; I’ve seen some partnerships that I’d never thought would happen (Naomi Osaka’s Wimbledon dress sold out within hours). But with the World Cup ending on July 19, everyone’s trying to get a piece of that soccer advertising pie, including T-Mobile.

Today, T-Mobile announced that it’s teaming up with Umbro (an iconic sportswear brand) to create limited-edition jerseys exclusively for T-Mobile members. And from the photos, they don’t look half bad (most collabs are kitschy and just short-lived fads). I could definitely see someone wearing one of these jerseys while running errands or going about their day.

Credit: Atiba Jefferson

The drop won’t happen until Tuesday, July 7, and as I mentioned above, you have to be a T-Mobile member to get one. They’ll be available exclusively through the T-Life app for $60 on a first-come, first-served basis. Once they sell out, they’re gone.

T-Mobile is framing the surprise collab as a way to celebrate a “record-breaking Member Month” (apparently, nearly 14 million members engaged during the first week alone).

Even if you miss out on the jersey, the other perks it’s throwing at qualifying members right now are pretty great. Along with bringing back a free year of DoorDash DashPass, T-Mobile’s basically paying for its members’ streaming subscriptions with free Netflix, Hulu, and MLB.TV. It even added Apple TV+ for $3 per month, plus free texting and high-speed data in more than 215 countries if you happen to be traveling this summer.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 17 seconds ago

We’re still living in the Golden Age of Television, with new must-see shows popping up all the time. However, there’s one that has yet to be dethroned as arguably the greatest series ever made: Breaking Bad. Courtesy of showrunner Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad captivated the entire world with its tale of a cancer-ridden science teacher (Walter White) forced to sell meth in order to afford medical care. It soon went beyond this provocative premise with a tale about power, corruption, and redemption. Breaking Bad even became a cross-generational hit, appealing to Zoomers as much as it does to Millennials. 

The Breaking Bad franchise continued with a movie focusing on Jesse Pinkman (El Camino) and a spinoff show about Walter’s hilariously shady lawyer (Better Call Saul). All were well-received, and the entire franchise is regarded as the standard of modern storytelling. Unfortunately, everyone’s favorite dramatic franchise just sold out. IMG Licensing and Sony Pictures Television have teamed up in order to develop an entire global licensing program dedicated to the Breaking Bad Universe.

He Is The One Who Snacks

According to The Hollywood Reporter, IMG and Sony are developing a Breaking Bad licensing program as part of a “multi-year collaboration” that “will deliver consumer products, brand partnerships and immersive fan experiences worldwide.” In conjunction with franchise creator Vince Gilligan, they hope to “identify strategic partners across key categories including premium apparel, collectibles, food and beverage, home decor, travel, publishing, and experiential activations.” The goal is simple: to appeal to existing Breaking Bad fans while bringing some new ones into the fold. What makes all of this notable is that this is “the first time Sony has appointed an external licensing agency to develop a global licensing program for the franchise.”

When I first heard this news, my heart sank a little bit. I’ve never had a problem with basic Breaking Bad merchandise; after all, as one of the most popular shows ever made, it was inevitable that the show would get its predictable bevy of t-shirts, action figures, and even blue rock candy made to look like Walter White’s signature brand of meth. However, I absolutely despised the 2023 Super Bowl commercial that brought Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul back together to sell Popcorners. It badly recreated memorable Breaking Bad scenes and ended with Cranston uttering the cringiest line of all: “I am the one who snacks.”

Breaking Bad: The Search For More Money

Maybe I’m just old and cranky, but I hated that commercial because it cheapened the entire Breaking Bad brand, all to sell some freakin’ potato chip alternative that nobody ever has or ever will actually care about. Now, that was the kind of weird stuff that was happening before executives started working with a global licensing program. Things have the potential to get a lot worse, like Star Wars-style Happy Meals, AI-powered parody commercials, reality shows, etc. Trust me: no matter how bad you think it will be, this is ultimately going to get much, much worse.

For example, I’ve got a bad feeling about those aforementioned “immersive experiences.” Are we going to get pop-up stands where you can lie down on a huge stack of fake money for a photo opportunity? Competitions where we see how well you can land an oversized pizza frisbee on top of a house? Maybe there will be an interactive game where you can attempt to save Hank from certain death. Could some of this be fun and memorable? Maybe. But all of it would serve to further dilute the IP, making Breaking Bad more like Star Wars. That is, nothing more than an excuse to sell as much merchandise as humanly possible. 

As always, I could be wrong. Maybe we’ll get plenty of tasteful merch and genuinely awesome experiences, especially since Vince Gilligan is involved. But if this licensing program produces mostly crap, it will be the worst of both worlds, keeping Gilligan from meaningfully working on anything new while lowering our general opinion about his integrity as a creator. With that said, though, we can agree on one thing: all will be forgiven if they introduce Los Pollos Hermanos as a global brand selling fried chicken. Be sure to get a side order of blue meth for the most immersive experience of them all!