Battleship - Taylor Kitsch (2012) - Central, Hong Kong

The final post from this very quick snippet of Hong Kong is an overhead shot of Central as it burns from the crashed spaceship. The buildings on fire include the two towers of the Lippo Centre, the gold-glassed Far East Finance Centre and the new Govt HQ on the left.

Battleship - Taylor Kitsch (2012) - Bank of China Building, Central

Unfortunately for the poor people working in the BOC building, they are right in the path of the oncoming spaceship and are duly incinerated when the ship cuts the top third of the building off and sends it crashing to the street below. I seem to remember the building was in for a bit of wear and tear when the Transformers came to town a few years later.

 The remains of the ship then crash into the harbour next to the Convention Centre.

Battleship - Taylor Kitsch (2012) - Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

As the spaceship crashes into Hong Kong it hits the radio masts at the top of Victoria Peak. This time the Buddha is noticeably missing - a bit of a continuity balls up seeing as it was supposedly right behind Victoria Peak in the earlier shot. Anyway, after crashing on the top of the mountain it then heads straight towards Central to cause a bit more damage.

The collection of houses in the bottom of the top picture is a development called Overthorpe. If you fancy putting yourself in the firing line of a crashed spaceship and buying one of these houses, the last one sold back in 2007 for $88M. That was before prices started getting REALLY stupid.

Battleship - Taylor Kitsch (2012) - Tian Tan Buddha, Lantau...or not?

As the crashed spaceship heads into Earth's atmosphere it plummets towards Hong Kong and, on the way, passes the famous big Buddha on Lantau Island. The thing is the film makers decided that this shot would only work if they superimposed the Buddha on to Hong Kong Island instead. So, what we end up with is a composite of both places giving the impression that the Buddha towers over Victoria Peak and the Harbour when in reality it's located about 25 kilometres away to the west.

Battleship - Taylor Kitsch (2012) - Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

A bit of a weird entry I must admit, and I am still trying to fathom why Hong Kong even features on this film at all given that most of the action is set in and around the Hawaiian island chain. The film is basically about aliens invading Earth after responding to a deep space message from the human race. The HK connection arises from their journey to Earth when one of their ships hits a satellite and breaks apart with a massive chunk flying in and hitting Hong Kong.I can only think the film was aiming to have some appeal to Chinese audiences and destroying a city on the Mainland (such as Beijing or Shanghai) would probably have not made it past Chinese censors...but I'm just guessing.

Anyway, we start with a couple of establishing shots filmed around the harbour area. First a view of the Wanchai waterfront with the Convention Centre on the left. The second angle (third image) was taken mush further to the west with one of the Shun Tak Centre towers in view.