Transformers
Jul. 8th, 2007 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberVerdict: A bad movie, not much worth seeing.
Longer: It reminded me of "The Da Vinci Code" and that ain't good. Not plotwise, at all, but they both have the same mickeymouse modern movie style. Most evident in: 1. blendered action scenes, ostensibly to make them seem more interesting and startling, but in fact demonstrating pure laziness and the lack of enough intelligence on the director's part to think up long cuts in which the viewer could follow the action and see that it was exciting inandof itself. 2. characters motivated solely by getting to the next setpiece. 3. Too goddamn long.
The Bad: 1. God, the product placement was gross. Yeah, hi there, Citibank, Burger King, Mountain Dew, GMC, Nokia. The whoring out of the movie was so in-your-face that it began to impact how I interacted with the movie while I was still watching the movie. "Why is this major city 15 minutes away from the Hoover Dam somehow not Las Vegas? What a critically missed opportunity. Did they not pony up?"
2. Every character was a cliche. The cowardly silly fat black comic relief. The geeky and yet somehow socially ept white world-saving boy. The woman who has a British accent so it's ok that she's smart who is also gorgeous who also can't speak sensibly to convey the seriousness of a situation. The hispanic woman from the wrong side of the tracks with the knowledge of mechanics. The black sidekick who is only good guy who dies.
3. The casting director needs to be smacked upside the head. The least you can do with your cliche characters is give them to fresh actors. Instead: the poor man's Brad Pitt. The poor man's Samuel L. Jackson. The poor man's Christopher Walken. The poor man's Penelope Cruz. The poor man's Wil Wheaton, fer crissakes.
4. Mindless cliche situations. What the hell, dumbasses, no one on the planet at the end of that movie is going to believe there aren't giant death-dealing robots. Why even try to play the "government covers it all up" card?! Laziness! Likewise got ridiculous how giant death-dealing robots perched on buildings/ducked behind trees/silouhetted against horizons were never noticed by multitudes of people everywhere.
5. OMG the soundtrack was horrible. Obviously there's no danger of anything going wrong with the airstrike into the melee in the dust, because the stirring music is blaring now. And what the hell was with Linkin Park's "What I've Done" as the last song? Were they high? What does a song about self-destruction have to do with anything?
6. Sloppy-ass script. Frex, what happened to the tree-climbing stoner? In a good movie something amusing would wrap that bit up. Feh.
The Medium: 1. Interestingly difficult to get their take on current events and America. Seems very rah rah, but also has bits about the government lying to us.
The Good: 1. Did a pretty good job of pointing out how it would be to face much more advanced alien technology and get our asses fucking kicked. Lots of great camera angles focused on what the view from the ground, running, would be like, and sometimes the cuts did give the impression of getting your head smashed. For some reason I've been smelling dust all evening (gardening today?) and that helped make the many desert scenes real for me.
2. Made good sense out of the basic setup... Yeah, I can see how the robot planet was destroyed, and why the robots coming here would take the forms of vehicles. And the robots actually acknowledged that their power struggles weren't much good for us poor saps living on the random planet they hit, which was an unusually refreshing bit of good-guy self-knowledge.
Eh. Every time I was getting interested again, the movie would do something so stupid I slumped back again. Basically? Competent characters? Cool. Drama from competent characters making ridiculous moves to create drama? Whatever.
Longer: It reminded me of "The Da Vinci Code" and that ain't good. Not plotwise, at all, but they both have the same mickeymouse modern movie style. Most evident in: 1. blendered action scenes, ostensibly to make them seem more interesting and startling, but in fact demonstrating pure laziness and the lack of enough intelligence on the director's part to think up long cuts in which the viewer could follow the action and see that it was exciting inandof itself. 2. characters motivated solely by getting to the next setpiece. 3. Too goddamn long.
The Bad: 1. God, the product placement was gross. Yeah, hi there, Citibank, Burger King, Mountain Dew, GMC, Nokia. The whoring out of the movie was so in-your-face that it began to impact how I interacted with the movie while I was still watching the movie. "Why is this major city 15 minutes away from the Hoover Dam somehow not Las Vegas? What a critically missed opportunity. Did they not pony up?"
2. Every character was a cliche. The cowardly silly fat black comic relief. The geeky and yet somehow socially ept white world-saving boy. The woman who has a British accent so it's ok that she's smart who is also gorgeous who also can't speak sensibly to convey the seriousness of a situation. The hispanic woman from the wrong side of the tracks with the knowledge of mechanics. The black sidekick who is only good guy who dies.
3. The casting director needs to be smacked upside the head. The least you can do with your cliche characters is give them to fresh actors. Instead: the poor man's Brad Pitt. The poor man's Samuel L. Jackson. The poor man's Christopher Walken. The poor man's Penelope Cruz. The poor man's Wil Wheaton, fer crissakes.
4. Mindless cliche situations. What the hell, dumbasses, no one on the planet at the end of that movie is going to believe there aren't giant death-dealing robots. Why even try to play the "government covers it all up" card?! Laziness! Likewise got ridiculous how giant death-dealing robots perched on buildings/ducked behind trees/silouhetted against horizons were never noticed by multitudes of people everywhere.
5. OMG the soundtrack was horrible. Obviously there's no danger of anything going wrong with the airstrike into the melee in the dust, because the stirring music is blaring now. And what the hell was with Linkin Park's "What I've Done" as the last song? Were they high? What does a song about self-destruction have to do with anything?
6. Sloppy-ass script. Frex, what happened to the tree-climbing stoner? In a good movie something amusing would wrap that bit up. Feh.
The Medium: 1. Interestingly difficult to get their take on current events and America. Seems very rah rah, but also has bits about the government lying to us.
The Good: 1. Did a pretty good job of pointing out how it would be to face much more advanced alien technology and get our asses fucking kicked. Lots of great camera angles focused on what the view from the ground, running, would be like, and sometimes the cuts did give the impression of getting your head smashed. For some reason I've been smelling dust all evening (gardening today?) and that helped make the many desert scenes real for me.
2. Made good sense out of the basic setup... Yeah, I can see how the robot planet was destroyed, and why the robots coming here would take the forms of vehicles. And the robots actually acknowledged that their power struggles weren't much good for us poor saps living on the random planet they hit, which was an unusually refreshing bit of good-guy self-knowledge.
Eh. Every time I was getting interested again, the movie would do something so stupid I slumped back again. Basically? Competent characters? Cool. Drama from competent characters making ridiculous moves to create drama? Whatever.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-08 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-08 05:39 pm (UTC)I did notice something that struck me as a subtle bit of political commentary, however: IIRC, the only times we saw the President were when he asked for a Ding-Dong and then made a speech on a TV screen in the background. Just about all of the decisions were made by the military officers while the Commander In Chief was lugged around behind the scenes like a valuable but inconvenient racehorse. Not exactly a rousing endorsement of the current officeholder, eh?
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it more. :( Maybe you should go see if you can rent a copy of the original animated movie. If nothing else, it's got (I think) a kickass soundtrack and some really big names doing the vocals...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-08 06:53 pm (UTC)They did make fun of the president, but they also made the SecDef into a noble and intelligent character... No obvious bias, I guess.
It was a boring flick, but I'm not really grieved that I saw it.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-08 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-08 06:49 pm (UTC)