FA+
Shop
Revenge of the Craptacular (UPDATE)
15 years ago
General
UPDATE: Well, it's official. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen officially won the Razzie award for the worst picture in 2009 ( http://www.razzies.com/history/09release.asp ), beating out it's Hasbro sibling "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra". I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt the same way!
Hello everyone,
I’m sure this posting will anger some of you, offend others and the rest will say, “yes, I already know that”. But tonight I finally got to witness the spectacle by Michael Bay and his “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” on BluRay. And what a piece of cr@p.
Although I am sure that most everyone has seen this movie by now, spoilers are ahead.
There are few movies that have ever made me want to just get up and walk out of a theater. “Nothing But Trouble” and “Highlander II: The Quickening” top my list. It’s amazing how we can subject ourselves to such drivel by saying to ourselves, “It’ll get better in a few minutes” and then repeating that mantra over and over again when we reach that deadline. It is amazing, and far too numerous to list, what made me disgusted with this movie, and disgusted at myself for allowing that much of my life to be lost forever. But first, I have to give credit where credit is due, and that is to the actors that carried the film for me. No, it wasn’t Sam or his girlfriend, whose character’s name is already lost to me, but to Sam’s mother and the Agent from the first movie who ends up with a bagel shop. At least those characters showed some sort of character development, if not some comic relief to help dull the pain and agony.
As for the rest of the movie, where does one begin? I’m guessing that with Michael Bay, his philosophy is that “if one explosion is good, then creating a supernova in downtown Shanghai must be better”. So much happens between fast camera shots and explosions that it’s near impossible to see exactly what is going on. The Transformers all seem to have some brutal finishing blow, but unless you have the dexterity to observe 1/30th of a second, and have the ability to discriminate between two silver robots slugging it out, you’re gonna miss it! Also, the Autobots are like the Teen Titans, they may get the job done but at the expense of billions in damages! And how do you keep something like that a “secret”? It would seem to me that as soon as someone in NYC saw a giant robot knocking off the US flag from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, mass hysteria would quickly follow. And that tiger Decepticon that steals the shard, it reenters the atmosphere from orbit, crashes into the ocean as a fiery meteor right next to some super secure military installation, and no one knows. ..until it scratches a glass vial. How about how the Fallen knows exactly when Optimus Prime is terminated, but when Megatron is resurrected, he has to fly all the way to see The Fallen? Seems like such a wasted trip when a phone call is all that was needed.
There was once a time where eye candy was a good thing. Special effects were expensive and difficult to do, but there’s a point where you can have so much instant gratification with CGI that everything is lost, even the detail. There is so much information that your brain just filters out all the work and talent used to make these special effect and says, um… what happened to the two vulgar wannabe ghetto subcompact GM Autobots who are proud that they are illiterate, or that vulgar little Decepticon radio controlled truck that got its eye burned out? Perhaps they sacrificed their lives for the better of man and Autobot in glorious battle, or perhaps they just got lost in all the explosions. Perhaps the writers just got lost themselves and forgot they even existed and just dropped them from the storyline. And why… why oh why, would you try to defend yourself against giant, armored robots that shoot missiles and extremely large caliber bullets with a government issue M-16? It seems like that gun would be so terribly ineffective that it wouldn’t even irritate or even be noticed by a giant robot. And if that railgun worked so effectively, why not just “go to town” with it and terminate anything that landed on the pyramid? If the railgun could terminate a robot that is so big it requires it’s own genitalia, it could surely put Megatron back into a coma.
Perhaps in a later journal, I’ll discuss why I preferred Macross (Robotech) as opposed to Transformers back when I was in high school, but for now I’ll just talk a little about shows based on Hasbro toys. Hasbro shows seemed to be the most incongruent to me. All kinds of stuff blows up and gets destroyed, especially in Transformer/GI-Joe, but no one, *AT ALL* ever gets hurt. Hey, didn’t you know that just before your Cobra plane explodes into a fireball, you always get to parachute to safety. Wow, ain’t war grand? At least in Macross, people who went to war, often paid the ultimate sacrifice, and you felt their pain. At least now with this Transformers movie, you can’t help but keep the body count in the five digit range. But again, with the shock and awe of Michael Bay’s explosions, even the tragedy of so many lives lost is dulled.
So there you have it, my opinion on Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. If you enjoyed it, if you are angry that it didn’t win the Oscar for best picture, or if you have every single Transformer toy ever produced in triplicate, then I’m sorry if I offended you. I just wish I had those two hours back.
Love,
Neysa
Hello everyone,
I’m sure this posting will anger some of you, offend others and the rest will say, “yes, I already know that”. But tonight I finally got to witness the spectacle by Michael Bay and his “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” on BluRay. And what a piece of cr@p.
Although I am sure that most everyone has seen this movie by now, spoilers are ahead.
There are few movies that have ever made me want to just get up and walk out of a theater. “Nothing But Trouble” and “Highlander II: The Quickening” top my list. It’s amazing how we can subject ourselves to such drivel by saying to ourselves, “It’ll get better in a few minutes” and then repeating that mantra over and over again when we reach that deadline. It is amazing, and far too numerous to list, what made me disgusted with this movie, and disgusted at myself for allowing that much of my life to be lost forever. But first, I have to give credit where credit is due, and that is to the actors that carried the film for me. No, it wasn’t Sam or his girlfriend, whose character’s name is already lost to me, but to Sam’s mother and the Agent from the first movie who ends up with a bagel shop. At least those characters showed some sort of character development, if not some comic relief to help dull the pain and agony.
As for the rest of the movie, where does one begin? I’m guessing that with Michael Bay, his philosophy is that “if one explosion is good, then creating a supernova in downtown Shanghai must be better”. So much happens between fast camera shots and explosions that it’s near impossible to see exactly what is going on. The Transformers all seem to have some brutal finishing blow, but unless you have the dexterity to observe 1/30th of a second, and have the ability to discriminate between two silver robots slugging it out, you’re gonna miss it! Also, the Autobots are like the Teen Titans, they may get the job done but at the expense of billions in damages! And how do you keep something like that a “secret”? It would seem to me that as soon as someone in NYC saw a giant robot knocking off the US flag from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge, mass hysteria would quickly follow. And that tiger Decepticon that steals the shard, it reenters the atmosphere from orbit, crashes into the ocean as a fiery meteor right next to some super secure military installation, and no one knows. ..until it scratches a glass vial. How about how the Fallen knows exactly when Optimus Prime is terminated, but when Megatron is resurrected, he has to fly all the way to see The Fallen? Seems like such a wasted trip when a phone call is all that was needed.
There was once a time where eye candy was a good thing. Special effects were expensive and difficult to do, but there’s a point where you can have so much instant gratification with CGI that everything is lost, even the detail. There is so much information that your brain just filters out all the work and talent used to make these special effect and says, um… what happened to the two vulgar wannabe ghetto subcompact GM Autobots who are proud that they are illiterate, or that vulgar little Decepticon radio controlled truck that got its eye burned out? Perhaps they sacrificed their lives for the better of man and Autobot in glorious battle, or perhaps they just got lost in all the explosions. Perhaps the writers just got lost themselves and forgot they even existed and just dropped them from the storyline. And why… why oh why, would you try to defend yourself against giant, armored robots that shoot missiles and extremely large caliber bullets with a government issue M-16? It seems like that gun would be so terribly ineffective that it wouldn’t even irritate or even be noticed by a giant robot. And if that railgun worked so effectively, why not just “go to town” with it and terminate anything that landed on the pyramid? If the railgun could terminate a robot that is so big it requires it’s own genitalia, it could surely put Megatron back into a coma.
Perhaps in a later journal, I’ll discuss why I preferred Macross (Robotech) as opposed to Transformers back when I was in high school, but for now I’ll just talk a little about shows based on Hasbro toys. Hasbro shows seemed to be the most incongruent to me. All kinds of stuff blows up and gets destroyed, especially in Transformer/GI-Joe, but no one, *AT ALL* ever gets hurt. Hey, didn’t you know that just before your Cobra plane explodes into a fireball, you always get to parachute to safety. Wow, ain’t war grand? At least in Macross, people who went to war, often paid the ultimate sacrifice, and you felt their pain. At least now with this Transformers movie, you can’t help but keep the body count in the five digit range. But again, with the shock and awe of Michael Bay’s explosions, even the tragedy of so many lives lost is dulled.
So there you have it, my opinion on Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. If you enjoyed it, if you are angry that it didn’t win the Oscar for best picture, or if you have every single Transformer toy ever produced in triplicate, then I’m sorry if I offended you. I just wish I had those two hours back.
Love,
Neysa
Now, for the fatality in Macross vs TF/GI Joe, I believe the core difference here is the origin of the writing. Japanese Anime tends to take a more mature turn when approaching the concepts of life and death, but American writers seem to have trouble believing they can introduce these concepts to a younger audience. I mean, fuck, ROBOT HEAVEN D:< So yeah... TF: Animated was one of the first transformers cartoons I'd seen where the concept of life and death and such came into play (ie, Starscream blows up a plane being piloted by a member of the military. No parachute comes from the wreckage. we can only assume the pilot is deep-six'd.)
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/vi.....ritic/8875-tf2
Fun review, with a few great additions. His take on it is pretty funny overall. He claims that he liked the film, but he still manages to tear into it. His videos are usually more structured than this, but I thought you'd like this.
Also, going back to the only REAL Transformers movie, I came across this recently and it's improved my life greatly.
http://www.amazon.com/Transformers-.....653&sr=8-4 Enjoy.
Still, I would concede the point that, with some proper recon, they could've made a couple more shots at least. Unless the ammo is expensive as hell.
Also, am I the only one who wanted to hit that idiot near the beginning? The one who was blabbing about where they were keeping the shard of Allspark over a "secure" line? Even though the first movie demonstrated that the Decepticons had "l337 hacking skills" that this guy should know about? Honestly. Let's just hand them a map and a brochure as well. Can't be making it much easier for them.
GO BAY WOOOO!
but...i already saw TF3 D8!!!! they're still gonna make the movie!