{"id":174,"date":"2011-06-30T22:50:20","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T22:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2011-06-30T22:59:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T22:59:00","slug":"transformers-et-al","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=174","title":{"rendered":"Transformers et al"},"content":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed Michael Bay\u2019s first Transfomers movie.\u00a0 People wanted to say it sucks, and while there\u2019s an argument to be made for its suckage (and for the suckage of his films in general); I\u2019d say most of those comments take the film outside its proper context.\u00a0 Its irresponsible to compare a Transformers movie to Inception<\/em> or District<\/em> 9<\/em> or Men in Black<\/em> because they\u2019re sci-fi.\u00a0 It\u2019s not really even appropriate to compare it to other movies about fighting evil robots like Terminator 4: The Suckening<\/em>.\u00a0 Transformers<\/em> is a live action film about a Saturday morning cartoon from the 80\u2019s and its related line of toys.\u00a0 In rating it, a more honest comparison would be against Masters of the Universe<\/em> or the Power Rangers Movie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Compared thusly it stacks up rather well. \u00a0But, people like to tear shit down (it\u2019s fun) so they go after the easy targets.\u00a0 And While I maintain that Michael Bay is a Special Effects guy who really has no business as an overall director, he\u2019s more suited to the task than George Lucas.\u00a0 Despite my initial concern, Bay won me over before the first film\u2019s release with an interview he gave explaining why Optimus Prime would not appear as the iconic cab over semi from the original cartoon and comic book line.\u00a0 When his effects team was engineering the transformation he found that a cab over only netted 15 or so feet of robot.\u00a0 He wanted Optimus Prime to be taller than that, hence the larger truck.\u00a0 While this may or may not have been true; that was the way to answer that question.<\/p>\n

But anyway, in the first movie I found Shia and family hilarious, Megan Fox hot, and the action suitable.\u00a0 The fight between Megatron and Optimus Prime is better in the animated film from 1986, but Optimus murdering Bonecrusher beneath the overpass was suitably gristly.\u00a0 I found the backstory stupid, a good piece of the transformers\u2019 dialogue lame, and about half the human cast a waste of time.\u00a0 However the other half (surprisingly) wasn\u2019t half bad.\u00a0 But in pros vs cons, the pros scored a solid win.<\/p>\n

The basic issue with the backstory was excessively compounded in the 2nd<\/sup> movie.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the problem: whatever reasons you come up with for living robot aliens who transform in to cars and trucks fighting a war on earth is going to be retarded.\u00a0 The reason it\u2019s going to be retarded is because of the 8th<\/sup> through 22nd<\/sup> words of the previous sentence.\u00a0 There is no way to have an exhaustive explanation of implausible, idiotic silliness that is even remotely compelling.\u00a0 Therefore: keep the backstory simple and keep it vague.\u00a0 Only explain what we need to know.\u00a0 And all we need to know is there are giant space robots fighting a civil war.\u00a0 They can disguise themselves as shit we have on earth (like cars and trucks).\u00a0 They do it because earth is strategically significant.\u00a0 Why Earth is significant should be kept to 3 or 4 words.\u00a0 And that\u2019s it.\u00a0 We never need to refer to the past ever again.<\/p>\n

Trying to tell a dumbass backstory is half the reason the 2nd<\/sup> transformers movie was a step backwards.\u00a0 The other half was Michael Bay can\u2019t fuck gently or slowly.\u00a0 He crammed as much robo shit as possible in every shot he could and made it all move fast as all hell.\u00a0 The overcrowding of the action shots made them boring because we weren\u2019t given time to appreciate what was taking place, let alone enjoy it.\u00a0 Also, some of the humor was bordering on too stupid for the genre (and that is a low bar).\u00a0 However, the robot balls, negro-stereotype midget cars, and Bay’s jackhammer^3 bedside manner didn’t bother me near as much as all the screentime devoted to the absurd backstory.\u00a0 I’m not going to get into the inane particulars but I was not a fan of the 2nd movie.<\/p>\n

So, with its first portion devoted to yet more backstory, the 3rd Transformers didn’t start particularly well.\u00a0 And not only does this happen, but the new stupid backstory negates the previous 2 films stupid continuity.<\/p>\n

But whatever, I’m here to see robots fight.\u00a0 And I get plenty of that.\u00a0 And Mike has apparently learned to vary the jackhammer^3 with some slow and deep and a little 20 and 5 style, so my brain was more expertly fucked during the action scenes.\u00a0 And besides being more fluid, the robot on robot action is just better.\u00a0 It’s mostly of the Optimus vs Bonecrusher level of visceral which was nice.<\/p>\n

This movie is also the funniest by far.\u00a0 Ken Jeong (Community<\/em>) is fantastic.\u00a0 Shia himself has nailed what is funny about his character.\u00a0 There are at least 2 parts in the film (one with Ken and the other with Shia) that I laughed my complete ass off.<\/p>\n

There’s the usual Mike Bay transition problems between action scenes but the scenes themselves are interesting enough that you find yourself not caring.<\/p>\n

While there’s plenty of stupid shit in this movie, I liked it.\u00a0 But I’m a sucker for giant robots fighting.\u00a0 It’s better than the first one and waaaay better than the 2nd one.\u00a0 Just don’t think too much about the why of any of it and you should be good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed Michael Bay\u2019s first Transfomers movie.\u00a0 People wanted to say it sucks, and while there\u2019s an argument to be made for its suckage (and for the suckage of his films in general); I\u2019d say most of those comments take … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}