Peter Berg and Universal took a small group of journalists to visit an actual Navy battleship stationed in San Diego. Berg gave them a tour and it seems as though he’s been working close with the Navy on this movie already. The story, up to this point has been very vague, but it will reportedly involve a fleet of five ships that come across aliens, called The Regents, that are out in the water building something that will be a “power source.” Our hero is the Commanding Officer of a destroyer and he has a team of five guys.

The aliens don’t have superior technology, aren’t here to take over the world or kills us all, and best of all, we’re going to see the battle from both sides.

You’ll understand [the aliens]. ILM’s doing a terrific job of creating The Regents, the folks who inhabit these ships. Some of them are very scientific and very intelligent, not violent at all, and others are more violent. But they’re all concerned with the fact that they have a very real mechanical problem with one of their ships, and they’re trying to deal with that.

This apparently won’t be a high-tech showdown either. The alien ships are stuck here (possibly damaged), the tiny fleet of ships providing the last line of defense do have some hit/miss technology which leads to some cool strategic warfare but they’re also cut off from the rest of the navy. Berg is also going international with the film, since aliens attacking would obviously have an impact on the entire globe, which means that the U.S. would not be the only country to fight.

The idea of finding a credible context for that eluded me. The idea of a film where America goes to war against China, or a movie where America goes to war against England or Australia or Japan, one of the countries that has a credible navy, felt like it would borderline on some kind of jingoistic American military exercise I couldn’t get my head around. I like the idea of something bigger, larger than life and the challenge it presented.

As for the appearance of The Regent, Berg referenced “District 9” as his inspiration for the realistic tone of the film and that while the aliens would be humanoid in some way, they would also have CG elements close to, but not as detailed to the work ILM created for the Davy Jones character in the last two “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.

“Some are intelligent, some are more violent, but they are all concerned with the fact that they have a very real mechanical problem with one of their ships and they are trying to deal with it”

So, are you wondering if someone will say ‘You sank my battleship!’ in the movie? Berg says;

Hells Yeah!