Less Than Meets The Eye
Wow. As a guy who grew up playing with Transformers toys but wasn’t enough of a fanboy to get offended by some big budget revisionism, you’d think I’d be the perfect audience for The Transformers, but it sucked. At times like this, I wish this was a podcast* so you could hear the revulsion in my voice. When I say “sucked”, I’m doing so in a multi-syllabic manner, like “su-u-u-u-u-ucked”, groaning the last syllable to further emphasize how much I hated this movie.
Michael Bay movies are shit. The man has never known a cinematic cliche that he hasn’t beaten to death. There hasn’t been a single moment in any of his films that hasn’t felt like an slick, contrived exercise in audience manipulation. His apologists may play the “his movies are great for what they are” card, but what’s the point in defending something that tries and succeeds at being unwatchable garbage?
That said, I went into this movie knowing it was gonna suck and it was still a disappointment. All I wanted out of this movie was to see cars turn into robots and destroy stuff, but Michael Bay’s obnoxiously flashy direction pretty much ruined that too. Why would a major studio spend tens of millions of dollars on cool effects of cars turning into giant robots and then hide all of their hard work with fast cutting and extreme closeups? You know it’s gonna look cool, so why not stop moving the damn camera so much and just focus on the action? In a movie like this, the audience shouldn’t have to mentally replay what they just saw just to try to figure out what just happened.
And while I’m talking about the action, what’s up with having the robots jumping through the air in slow-motion like The Killer? Or ripping off the “boy tries to hide giant robots from his parents” scene from The Iron Giant? Or having one of the robots piss on a guy? It would be nice if Hollywood spent some of their enormous budget to hire somebody who has an original thought or two.
* Probably for the best. My voice sounds like if Ray Romano was a Muppet.
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I used to think I was pretty much a liberal democrat, but after reading so many of your articles over the last two years, I find myself so often agreeing with conservative republicans more than you. Now, once more, I find myself so completely opposite you in opinion. Seriously, I should just stop trying to force myself into the LD pigeon hole and just admit that if being LD means agreeing with you then I am most definitely a CR instead.
Comment by Jason — July 9, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
And my review of The Transformers is what convinced you that you’re really a conservative Republican? Awesome.
Comment by greg — July 9, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
Greg, I’m told Transformers was chock-full of heroic, pointless slo-mo shots of American soldiers. Disliking this movie disrespects them, and your poor review of a movie that depicted fictional US troops has disheartened the American Military for at least a generation, possibly more.
See, conservatives(who “Support the Troops!”) have this mistaken impression that our soldiers and Marines are little puppy dogs who will get their feelings hurt and cry in their bunks if we don’t constantly praise them and let them shoot brown people.
Comment by Scott — July 9, 2007 @ 11:03 pm
The movie forgot what it was supposed to be about. With Transformers being the title one would think there would be more robots and less humans pushing products and trying to get laid. Why try to flesh out some robots or show some awesome fight scenes when you can just have them run around saying their names frequently, going totally unnoticed in someone’s backyard and breakdancing?
Comment by Kryten Syxx — July 10, 2007 @ 7:20 am
I totally agree with your points about the fast-cutting-editing… I wish hollywood would have the balls to leave a camera in one place for at least 10 seconds… I would also add that this movie couldn’t decide if it’s audience was 18-35 yr old action fans (over-the-top action and violence), or 10 yr olds (ridiculous bits of “humor” like the pee joke and a Soundwave character that reminded me of the annoying pod-droids from Episode 1). With that question in mind, it’s interesting to point out that the teenagers in the audience in front of me didn’t know who any of the characters were, so they had no nostalgia for the Transformers that we loved as kids.
But that said, I really enjoyed the hell out of this movie. I fully expected it to be a big turd with big Michael Bay action cliches, and that’s exactly what I got.
Can you really be that critical of a movie that has HASBRO as third billing in the opening credits? In the end, I think this movie was better than most episodes of the cartoon (though not better than the animated movie or the more recent Japanese Transformers cartoons). Sure, I’d love to see an interesting well made Transformers movie, but then I wouldn’t really want to imagine a more gifted action director like Del Toro or Verbinski having to take on the task of making a movie that’s only purpose is to sell toys.
Comment by tomN! — July 10, 2007 @ 10:05 am
Reading your review of Transformers has made me realize that you and I share the same political opinions. I am now LD! THX, GREG!
Comment by Joe — July 10, 2007 @ 11:41 am
I didn’t see this movie or Bad Boys II, but I really love that clip of will smith and martin lawrence looking around in slow motion..you know the one.
Wait, I did see the last 5 minutes of Bad Boys II where they’re driving hummers through the cuban huts. I really enjoyed it on the same level that I enjoyed death wish and red dawn.
Comment by Levon — July 10, 2007 @ 11:51 am
Multiple, fast cuts in an action sequence make sense if you have a couple of actors who can’t perform convincing fight choreography and too low a budget to create convincing special effects. But in a movie with a 147 million dollar budget and computer-generated combatants who can do whatever you want them to do? It’s like these directors have no confidence in their storyboard, so they have to grab your head and shake it violently.
Comment by Cris — July 12, 2007 @ 7:55 am
My voice sounds like if Ray Romano was a Muppet.
Ray Romano isn’t a muppet? Are you sure Frank Oz isn’t in there somewhere?
Comment by slim — July 12, 2007 @ 1:40 pm