My Transformers Arguments
Entry posted by Hewkii Inika
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Well, after many arguments with persistant fans, I've decided to not clog up their topics and instead post the way I feel about Transformers in this blog entry. So here you go.
The 2007 Transformers movie and its 2009 sequel are just further proof that the quality level of modern cinema has lowered drastically. They're nothing more than special effects showcases (I don't even think the CGI is that good, but that's another story) that rely on explosions and hot girls to attract teenage boys. They're incredibly corny, they take themselves far too seriously, and they masquerade themselves with powerful music, slow-mo shots and overly long running times as something far more epic than they should be. They have weak main plots, so they have to rely on pointless subplots and excessive build-up to make themselves 150 minutes long, because apparently 90 minutes (which is a more appropriate length for movies like this) just isn't epic enough. They also apparently forgot they're adaptations of children's cartoons and toys, because they also have random and completely unnecessary sexual humor and language (Revenge of the Fallen had six, count 'em, SIX implied uses of a certain curse word that has no place in any movie, let alone a movie like this).
I'll explain all these points in turn, and back up my points with truthful evidence so people don't just think I'm a troll. This is gonna be a LONG blog post.
I said at the beginning of the second paragraph that these movies are proof of the decaying quality of cinema. Remember back in the 70s, 80s, heck, even the early 90s, where directors didn't have CGI to do everything for them and had to rely on other methods that required brains? I remember watching a documentry devoted entirely to how Steven Spielberg did the famous melting faces scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He said that modern directors (such as Michael Bay) are lucky, and had CGI to do this kind of stuff for them, while older directors had to figure out other ways to do effects like that. They put a LOT of work in a five-second shot of their heads either shrinking, melting, or exploding, and it was chilling. When I first watched Raiders of the Lost Ark (I was about 13, I saw it late), no one ever told me about that scene, so I had NO warning. Obviously I could barely sleep that night. It was that well-done. Movies like Transformers rely ENTIRELY on CGI and nothing else, and since CGI is so easy and so easily marketable, they don't have to have a good story or well-developed characters. One could say that there have always been movies like this, that rely on special effects and nothing more. But you know what? They're not the ones that are remembered. There was an old Disney live-action movie called the Black Hole, which had very sophiscated special effects for its time, and was very intense (in fact, it was the first PG-rated Disney movie ever). But it had a pretty weak plot, so of course, no one remembers it now. I'm sure you've never heard of it before you read this. Now, there are exceptions, such as Close Encounters of a Third Kind, which rely on special effects and have weak plots. But there's one reason that movie's remembered: Steven Spielberg, perhaps the best director of all cinema history, was at the helm. It didn't have a good plot, yes, but the rest of it was so well done you forget about that. Transformers isn't the same way. Michael Bay can do two things pretty well: special effects and camera shots. This was evident in his earlier movie, Pearl Harbor. It had a weak plot and weak characters, and was overall not that great of a movie, but DANG, it had some good special effects, and some of its cinematography of the WWII planes coming down was so good that even George Lucas admitted watching it for inspiration of the opening space battle in Episode III. Transformers does those two things pretty well as well, but the rest of the movie, including the plot, is so poorly done that I guarantee you twenty or thirty years from now people will forget these films ever existed. The characters, especially the Autobots, are all alike, and I nearly turned off the first movie the first time I watched it during the climax, because quite frankly, I didn't care one bit about what was happening and who would win. The Revenge of the Fallen climax is much the same way, only about twice the length and twice as repetitive.
Explosions and hot girls was my second point. That's another thing that Transformers relies on to market to teenage boys. Revenge of the Fallen actually set a record for the most explosions with the actors on set. You can tell with its climax. It was like they tried to hide the fact that there was absolutely no plot behind countless huge explosions. Call me crazy, after all I am a teenage boy myself, but I do like more than explosions and hot girls. I'd like a plot behind those explosions and giant robots beating the crud out of each other. And Megan Fox may be cute, but they used her as a freakin' marketing tool. That's just sexist. I lost count how many times the camera panned around her, ogling her looks, in Revenge of the Fallen. Sort of like how the camera pans around the giant robots when they transform. That reminds me, I read a hilarious review of Revenge of the Fallen where they said there was a whole cast of robots in the movie, like Optimus Prime, Megatron, Jetfire, Megan Fox, etc. I laughed out loud, because it's true. The gal cannot act. Another point about this is something that just baffles me. You'd think the explosions, giant robots, and the hot girls would just appeal to teenage boys, right? I saw the lines of people waiting to see Revenge of the Fallen in theaters, and it was EVERYBODY. Boys, girls, kids, adults, you name it. I don't get it. I guess people just want explosions and giant robots and no plot, even girls. That completely destroys the ideas I had of what girls like in movies. Might have to remember that when I go on a date...
Now, them being corny, taking themselves far too seriously, and masquerading (I love that word) themselves as something more epic, all these points go hand and hand. To show my point better, I'll start this argument by saying I have no problems with the Transformers franchise as a whole. It's just the new movies I don't care for. The reason why is that the old cartoons knew exactly what they were: things for kids. That's how Transformers started: Hasbro wanted something that would appeal to children. I'm sure that in the early 80s when Transformers started, they had no intentions of turning them into "epic" PG-13 summer blockbusters. And thus, they built on it being appealing to children, with giant robots turning into various vehicles, corny plots, names like Allspark, Megatron, Autobots, and so on. None of that stuff really works for anyone older than eight or ten. Then sometime in 2005 or whenever production of the new movie started, someone decided that it would work for people older than ten. It doesn't. I watch these movies, and I laugh at times that are supposed to be serious, simply because I just can't take these things seriously. A bunch of robots that turn into cars and trucks? A villian named Megatron? A cube that turns machines into more giant robots? An alien robot who wants to destroy the sun? Call me crazy for thinking that doesn't work for a PG-13 movie. The filmmakers obviously think it does, and they obviously think slow-mo shows with the sun blaring in the camera and epic music work for something like Transformers. For someone with maturity higher than a ten year old, it doesn't. The climax of Revenge of the Fallen particularly comes to mind. They tried so freakin' hard for it to be cool, but it simply drowned itself with its repetitivity. There's only so much you can do with giant robots and explosions, so it's just forty minutes of the same type of action, over and over again. I was ready for the climax to be over when it was less than halfway through.
And that brings up the next point: the movies' lengths. This is something even fans of the movie have sometimes complained about. 150 minutes is just too darn long for a movie about giant robots and explosions. But apparently they need it to be that long (I guess 90 minutes or something more appropriate just isn't epic enough), so they added tons of pointless subplots, such as the Scorponok plot in the first one and that whole Alice/Pretender junk in the second. This makes me ask a simple question: Why, Mata Nui, WHY?! Long movies are long because they have to be, otherwise they drown in their length and become boring. The Lord of the Rings movies had to be long because they had so much plot to cover, and if they had stayed even more true to the books, they'd be far longer. Pirates of the Caribbean (at least the first and the second one, the third one's a different story) had a lot to cover, and most of the plotlines were necessary and added more to the story. But movies that are really long and don't have enough plot to be that length just slow way down and make the viewer feel like most of the movie could've been cut out and it wouldn't have mattered the slightest. King Kong is a non-Transformers example. It had a different problem than Transformers, in that it didn't add pointless subplots, but it did drag out everything to make itself three hours. That made the beginning and the ending rather slow and boring, although the middle part is really good and fast-paced, so that almost makes up for it. Transformers, the entire movies feel long and dragged out, and filled with pointless subplots, presumably because they didn't have enough plot to work with. Yet they somehow felt the need to make the movies at least 150 minutes long. WHY?!?! There ARE good movies out there that around 100 minutes long or less. Most of the Pixar movies, which are generally regarded as masterpieces, are around that length (with the exceptions of Cars and Ratatouille). And not just kids' movies. 10,000 BC, the first Spider-Man, the Mummy movies, Poseidon, and other PG-13 action movies are each less than 2 hours long if you don't count the credits. And with the exception of Poseidon, they all did pretty well (or amazing the case of Spider-Man) at the box office. So you CAN make good movies without making them super-long. But Trasnformers is still 150 minutes long, and what a long 150 minutes it is. But I guess we can expect that from Michael Bay, whose earlier movie, Pearl Harbor, was 183 minutes of long, drawn out scenes and weak subplots.
And my final point is the fact it’s forgotten what it originally was: a franchise for people 10 and younger. Now, I’ve seen two types of fans of the new Transformers movies. The first type I call the Epic-ers, who say that the new movies are so gosh-darn epic and so gosh-darn amazing, and deserve to be with movies like the Dark Knight, the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and even the Godfather in terms of greatness. And the other type I call the Cheesers, who say that the new movies are cheesy and dumb, but that’s the beauty of it, and believe they’re not supposed to be great or epic, just two and half hours of mindless fun. However, the Epic-ers and the Cheesers are both wrong. The Epic-ers are wrong because, well, just look at the concept: giant robots named Megatron, Bumblebee, and other dumb names, and lots of explosions. Doesn't sound epic to me, it sounds like a mindless action flick. And the Cheesers are wrong because they seem to think the movie was MEANT to be silly and mindless. If you look at all the evidence, I really don't think that's the case. They have Michael Bay as a director, who's directed attempting-to-be-ultra-serious stuff like Pearl Harbor and the Island, and two screenwriters who've written things like Alias, an early draft of Watchman, and even the new Star Trek movie. Heck, the second movie brought in an additional screenwriter, who’s written things like the Ring, Blood and Chocolate, Brothers Grimm, and Scream. We're any of those attempting to be mindless and silly? No, they were trying to be ultra-serious. And that's what they were trying to do with the Transformers movies: make them ultra-serious and epic. That's the biggest flaw of the Cheesers: they can't see what the movie was trying to be. But you see, it isn't silly NOR is it epic, mainly because it tries to be both. The new Transformers movies have severe cases of mood whiplash. At one point, there’s an “epic” battle going on between the army and a race of robot aliens, and at another point, it’s some geeky guy dealing with hundreds upon hundreds of bad sexual jokes and language. Did the filmmakers really think it was necessary for that panther-like Decepticon to do that thing to Megan Fox's leg, and what's more, do it TWICE?! Did they really think it was necessary to put six unfinished F-words and a bunch of finished swear words in a movie based off a bunch of kids’ toys? Honestly. Now, mood whiplash is a problem in itself, but both of the things it whips between are definitely NOT for kids. And c’mon, people, it’s Transformers. Every incarnation of the franchise has been for kids beforehand. Every one. And suddenly they decide to make it for an older crowd. Now, I don’t usually have a problem with this if it’s done right, such as in the Dark Knight, which took the Batman story, which was previously really cheesy and corny, and made it ultra-serious. But it worked, mainly because they did it right, and also because Batman didn’t start out as something for kids, but for mainly teenagers in the comic books. Heck, I’d probably take a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle PG-13 movie more seriously than Transformers, because the turtles actually started out in very adult comic books where they swore, drank, and killed rather brutally. If you don’t believe me, look it up. Transformers didn’t do it right, because of the mood whiplash, and because it NEVER wasn’t for kids beforehand, so it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Bottom line, the new movies suck, and are completely overrated pieces of garbage, for all the reasons that I explained, and more. If you’re willing to argue with me about any of this, shoot me a PM. I’m always welcome for a debate.
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