Rihanna's Disastrous Sci-Fi Movie Flop Is Finally Finding An Audience On Prime Video

The proliferation of streaming services means that audiences are constantly bombarded with things to watch, and it's easy for individual movies to get lost in the fray. Yet, every once in a while, a film that might very well have faded into obscurity before the streaming era manages to secure a new lease on life when it hits, say, Prime Video.

Time and time again, Amazon's streaming platform has proved itself to be a golden opportunity for movies that failed at the box office. Prime Video helped Gareth Edwards' ambitious 2023 sci-fi movie "The Creator" find an audience, but it has also benefitted films that are, for want of a more polite phrasing, pretty bad. Ryan Reynolds' worst-reviewed movie became a Prime Video hit 12 years after its release, after all — and Nicole Kidman's 2025 critical flop "Holland" did the same immediately after it hit streaming platform. 

Now, singer Rihanna's first major blockbuster movie, the 2012 box office bomb "Battleship," has joined the ranks of critically-panned films that are killing it on Prime Video. As of May 27, the movie was the second-most-viewed Prime Video movie in the U.S., right behind the juggernaut that is "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning." Talk about a second wind, right?

When you look at the cast of "Battleship," it's easy to see why the streaming audience might be quick to pick the film for a movie night. It boasts frankly absurd star power, and some of the names in the cast have become considerably more famous in the years after it debuted. Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, Taylor Kitsch, and "Shōgun" star Tadanobu Asano are all here, and you can spot folks like Jesse Plemons, Rami Malek, and Hamish Linklater in assorted supporting roles. 

There's also Rihanna, of course, playing the fearless gunner's mate Cora Raikes — a fairly important job, considering the movie's premise. "Battleship," as it happens, is one of the stranger results of Hollywood's knee-jerk tendency to turn every available entertainment IP into a tentpole movie. It's based on the classic board game, though it should be noted that fans of the source material aren't going to see the most faithful of adaptations. Instead, "Battleship" happily interprets the game's tactical ship-sinking as a clash between humans and an alien race, pitting an assortment of heavily-armed marine vessels against a group of alien warships on the forcefield-covered coasts of Hawaii. 

Critics didn't love the movie, it lost about $150 million for its studio, and it's anyone's guess whether the people who have been watching it lately would have been happy to see it in a theater ... which, come to think of it, makes "Battleship" the exact kind of movie that benefits from streaming. After all, since we live in a world where a person can just casually decide to spend the next couple of hours watching Rihanna fire a powerful gun at a CGI spaceship, why should lackluster reviews prevent anyone from embracing the opportunity?