Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Transformers Series

Michael Bay made the same movie three times in a row, so it's going to be easier for me and for all of us if I just don't give off a synopsis on all of these movies and on why all of these movies are terrible, festering pieces of monkey chunks thrown at the audience while they were being too busy being distracted by all of the explosions going on to notice that their popcorn was tasting a little funny midway through the movie.

I saw the first movie when I was in 8th grade, my last year of middle school. This was probably around the age where things would have been more impressionable for me to where anything would seem good enough for me(I was an xbox live, multiplayer, Halo fan nut back then and a lot has changed), but even the first Transformers movies didn't seem to live up to actually being good to my 14 year old's standards. I never saw the other two when it came out. But, the thing is that I didn't like the first movie back then even before I became a "high-minded, well-respected, universally-loved intellectual" But now that another movie is coming out, I decided to actual sit through all three of these movies. So, how did they fare to the me of "now" than to the me of "back then"?

Well....


Would have made a more compelling story if all they said was "protect" or "destroy"

IT GOT WORSE!

I seriously cannot believe how low a movie can go. After watching the first movie, I realized that "Holy shit! There are still two more of these movies that exist." I don't know how else to put it than just to use a quote, which called this movie "One of the worst films of the ****ing decade!" I've never seen such a blatant disregard to story-telling, characters, consistency, plotting, or everything. After actually watching the other two movies, I've just come to the conclusion that these movies have ruined everything!

Not just Transformers or movies in general, but EVERYTHING!

So, here are the plots to all three of these movies. The military gets involved into finding out that there are giant robots or that they find out there's an end of the world macguffin. Suddenly, off to another part of the world, we are introduced to Sam Witwacky who is going through relationship and life problems. What does his story line have to do with the Transformers? Well....he eventually gets involved in their story-line and then he eventually learns something in the end and he gets the girl. Actually, a really, really, really weird thing about these movies is that you could take out the Transformers out of the Transformers movies and you wouldn't have affected the movie a lot. The title characters are inconsequential in their stakes and conflicts in their own movie. How is it that the Transformers feel like they're getting in the way of their own movies?

Also, the Transformers themselves are basically the worst from their design all the way down to their personality. All of them are one note, boring, and sometimes just out right racist(that part specifically goes to the second movie). Maybe the idea was to make a car changing into a giant robot look more realistic by giving busy and ugly designs with all of the moving parts look like they're being strung together by junk yard piles, but did anyone realize that they'd be worse off for doing it?


"Haha, very funny guys. Who smeared this crap all over my sunset picture?"

I think one of the biggest problems about this movie is how scattered it all feels. The movie is always running 4 or 5 different plot threads and they usually have nothing to do with each other besides having something to do with the giant robots. It's not just jarring to me that to movie has the audacity to switch from a complicated military issue to Sam's love life to government politics to a Tyler Perry movie, is it? And that's what it all seems to come down to as the movie just throws so much at us without giving any of it time to be fleshed out or workable in a story, making all of these movies feel like 500 hours long.

I have to give a special mention for the first movie as some people have told me that it was actually "pretty good, it just all went down hill by the second one" To that I have to say is...did we just watch the same movie? Did we see the movie that displayed blatant contempt for the franchise, its own characters, and even the audience? I'll say that out of all three of the movies, this one definitely felt more scaled back in terms of "noisiness" but I'm left in shock that anyone is able to say that "this was the 'good one'" without any hint of irony.

Really though, this isn't anything that you probably haven't heard already. We all know that these movies are bad and we all know the reasons why they are bad. Mostly because these movies are directed by Michael Bay, who isn't really a bad director(I really liked his last movie "Pain and Gain"), he just didn't seem to care to make these movies. There's a story that I've heard where he declined directing these movies the first time he was requested to do so, saying "I'm not doing that stupid, silly toy movie".


But it might have worked out with a toy car movie...

Of course, he isn't being done any favors when he's helped by *shivers* Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. I swear to god, everything those two writers touch just turns to solid crap by their inability to even tell the most basic of stories. I mean, they probably could, but it feels like they just don't want to. If Star Trek Into Darkness shows anything, they'd rather give off a plot that seems really complicated and meaningful only til you realize that there really isn't a plot at all and it's all being strung together by references and action scenes.

So, it's really all coming down to the fourth movie now and if it will be any good. Well, in the midst of all things, even if the first three were horrid abominations without any respect for anything ever, I'm still hoping it turns out to be...well, I was about to say good, but even just hoping for the movie to be "good enough" seems like your raising the bar too high. Let's just say "watchable" It does feel like that Michael Bay is getting pulled back in because the studios feel like he's the one for making them all of the money they need to build that dooms-day device, but at least the series looks like it's going to try something different. In the end, we can only wait and find out. But I guess I can say I'm caught up now.

Having said all of this, I think all I need to say is that the next person who asks me "What's the difference between Transformers and Pacific Rim?" is getting strangled.

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