Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Transformers

Man, that was stupid. Michael Bay has done it again. He’s managed to make yet another two and a half hour car commercial and make us pay to see it. That was probably the worst Chevrolet commercial I have ever seen, including the ones that are shown in Louisiana with country singers. One hundred fifty million dollar budgets and extraordinary special effects cannot legitimize the juvenile core of Transformers. They will always be robots that turn into cars, and it will never be interesting to any thinking person over the age of ten. It’s obvious who this movie was aimed for with scenes where robots speak Ebonics, robots urinate on humans, and cheesy lines are dispensed by the dozens. This movie caters more to fans of Bad Boys 2 (another Michael Bay bore) than that of The Matrix. The movie proves that Michael Bay still has learned nothing about story telling. He breaks all the rules without even knowing there were rules to begin with. His dizzying camera angles continue a trend amongst action directors who fill the need to spend fifty grand on the special effects for one shot and then show you NONE of it. Did we really need to see a character from the perspective of a bike chain? The constant switching of camera angles during intense scenes creates a disorienting array of rapid movement that makes the action indiscernible. Why spend all that money on CGI, and not let the audience see these spectacular fights. The rare instances where they pulled the camera back and stuck with one angle for more than ten seconds created unbelievable visuals including the best shot of the movie where Optimus Prime and Megatron tumble from several freeway levels. Had they done that more throughout the movie, it might have held my interest for more than ten minutes of the two and a half hours (did I mention that this movie was two an a half hours!?). The writers did try to keep the smarter crowd interested by tying the Transformers into American history with them being responsible for the Hoover Dam and such. The notion of a secret organization (Sector 7) reverse engineering all our inventions from aliens would have been interesting had I never seen a movie called Men in Black. I’ve just read that they Bay has mentioned plans for a sequel. Thank goodness because I didn’t get to vomit at this one.

1 comment:

Allen Gladfelter said...

Tell us how you really feel, Patrick. I loved this movie. I did not think for a whole two hours. It was just like toking a big ol' bong hit. Fuckin' A! A movie like this, you're not supposed to THINK about it, you're supposed to sit back and let thoe onslaught of awesomeness make you seasick! This movie pulls the underwear up the buttcracks of movie snobs everywhere! But if you don't dig this sort of thing, that's okay. We can get you a nice Strawberry Shortcake DVD from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart.

Oh, and happy wedding-day, man!