Video: The director of Battleship explains hows Stephen Hawking inspired the blockbuster’s alien invasion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIhzbqeBs88

The combination of Rihanna and Liam Neeson in the same movie was already our biggest attraction to next month's Battleship, yet this intriguing invasion featurette certainly helped too.

While the initial announcement of a $200 million blockbuster based around the classic board game Battleship Command raised more than a few eyebrows, the movie's latest featurette should keep the cynics quiet, as it poses an interesting take on the classic alien invasion tropes of movies past.

As the film's director Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) explains, the extra-terrestrial visitors that cause the likes of Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson huge hassle have not begun an alien invasion through any fault of our planet's own - we actually invited them.

The concept stems from the 'Goldilocks' hypothesis; that humans should attemot to send signals to planet which have a similar position to their galaxy's sun as Earth, where things "just right" (hence the Goldilocks term) to sustain life.

This activity has already been warned by Stephen Hawking as incredibly unsafe, as he believes that any such successful contact would undoubtedly result in an invasion. After all, if a planet's race has the means to visit Earth, they would surely also have the means to enslave us.

It's an interesting approach and one which hints that a lot more thought has gone into the concept of Battleship rather than millions on (admittedly fantastic looking) explosions. Have a look at the featurette above. Battleship opens in Irish cinemas on April 11.