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Hewkii Inika

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  1. Hewkii Inika
    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.
     
  2. Hewkii Inika
    This article has absolutely nothing to do with the overall quality of the films. That was already discussed in my previous blog entry. Although there is ONE thing I'd like to add to it, though: people have been repeatedly telling me that it's a movie about giant robots based off a toy series, so therefore I shouldn't expect much. While that is true, that is also no excuse for the quality of a film. The Dark Knight, for instance, is about a guy in a cape and a batsuit with a clown as a nemesis. Sounds pretty much just as silly as giant robots to me, but Dark Knight was still a masterpiece. So saying I shouldn't be expecting any less from Transformers because of its corny concept is not a valid argument, and from what everyone was telling me about the Transformers movies, I pretty much expected another Dark Knight when I first saw them. Boy, was I disappointed.
     
    Anyways, that's not the main point of this article. The point I'd like to discuss is one of the most overrated aspects of the Transformers movies: the graphics. Before I saw the first movie, I kept hearing many, MANY people say how the graphics of Transformers looked so realistic it was like they actually had the robots on the set with the actors. And when there was a MAJOR ruckus after it lost the Academy Award to Golden Compass for visual effects, I was pretty much expecting the best graphics ever. All the hype about how realistic these robots looked, plus each one having about 10,000 CGI pieces each that all shape and reconfigure when they transform, just kind of built up my expectations.
     
    The result? While the graphics of Transformers aren't BAD, and in fact sometimes rather impressive, all those robots are still obviously CGI in my opinion. Their proportions are too cartoony for them to look at all realistic, and sometimes they're too colorful, thus they don't really blend in the drab, realistic environments very well. Their transformation animations were sometimes rather neat to look at, but when they were in their homonoid forms, their animations were often somewhat stiff and sometimes very jerky. The prime (pun not intended) examples of this are when Optimus Prime and the Fallen duke it out at the end of Revenge of the Fallen, especially during the moments leading up to the now classic internet meme line, "Give me your face". It looked so fake my eyes nearly bled. The forest scene in Revenge of the Fallen was also rather jarring. The real trees and grass doesn't really mix well with the bright, colorful, and very jerkily animated robots. Another example of when the graphics were too cartoony and too fake-looking to be realistic was in the first movie when Optimus Prime and Megatron fell down that giant building after Optimus caught Sam and said "Hold on to the cube!"
     
    I would be fine with this, and probably wouldn't write a rant about it, if everyone had acknowledged the graphics were, at best, about as good as every other summer blockbuster out there, and certainly not anything special. But no. Presumably the Transformers fans all went nuts saying how these robots looked SO FREAKIN' REAL, and how they would sweep away the Oscars when it came to visual effects. I kept hearing people say how they felt like they could touch those robots, how the actors were safe with all the robots, and where they got the money to build highly-realistic robots to act along with the actors. I even heard rumors about how Devestator melted an ILM computer when rendering it in the second one. Look, the rendering of a model, no matter how complex it is, doesn't melt a computer. The thing that melts a computer is overheating, and pretty much all rendering goes at the same consistent speed, no matter how complicated or intricate it is. It might take much longer to do it, but it wouldn't overheat a computer to the point where it'd melt. If it did actually melt, it's the poor quality of the computer rather than the complexity of the graphics.
     
    As for why Transformers lost to Golden Compass for the Visual Effects award, I think it's because of the way each movie presented their graphics. Both were about the same quality when it came to visual effects. But Transformers took its CGI quality and shoved it in our faces, with panoramic, in-your-face shots of them transforming in long, complex shots showing all the intricate detail. Golden Compass, you see, didn't try so hard to show off its graphics: instead, it kinda just flowed it with everything else, and SHOWED us how complex and realistic it looked rather than TELLING us by shoving it up our tails. Imagine it like this: what if you're grading a first-grade science project, and the two top students have equally good projects and good experiments. But while one of them is loud and obnoxious about how great his project was, another simply just showed us how great it was, and let it speak for itself, and kinda just went along with it. Really, which one would you pick for the winner?
     
    That's all I've got. Again, this is all opinion, but I kinda had to let it out after seeing across the internet so many complains about how the Academy Awards snubbed Transformers. To be honest, with its incredibly poor critical reception and being EVEN MORE obnoxious about its graphics, I'd be surprised if Revenge of the Fallen even gets nominated.
  3. Hewkii Inika

    Restarting The Blog

    By Hewkii Inika,

    Okay, my old blog was garbage, so I'm completely redoing it. I've got a better idea of what I want to do now, instead of doing pointless gibberish.
     
    So, where to start? Well, I'm Hewkii Inika, and I'm a writer. Really. I finished a trilogy that, combined, is almost half a million words. That's about the same length as Harry Potter 1, 2, and 3 combined, if not a bit longer. So I'm pretty proud. For the past few months, though, I've been debating on what to write next. I have an idea about three space probes from Earth going to Mars sometime in, say, the 2020s, searching for signs of life. Not only do they find life, but they find that the surface of Mars is dominated by red rock-like creatures (so we can't see them from space, and they hide from our earlier robots we sent there), and the other type of Martians live underground, and the rock-like creatures use them as slaves to build an empire. Despite not being built to do such a grand task, the three space probes (scientists gave them a personality similar to a teenager, so they could make their own decisions) decide to help crush the rock-creature empire and set the slave Martians free. I have ideas for almost thirty Martian creatures, so I've got it pretty planned out. Sound any good?
     
    As for my game-developing life, I'm working on an RTS engine and perhaps redoing the Kolhii game, making it a much bigger game. That's pretty much it, though.
     
    So, that's my first entry to my new blog. So long, everyone.
  4. Hewkii Inika

    Remakes Rant

    By Hewkii Inika,

    Wow, a rant that people on here might actually AGREE with?! ZOMG, what is Hewkii Inika thinking?! But this is something that a lot of people, particularly general movie-goers (which BZP seems to mostly consist of), might actually not get mad at me about. That's good. Always great to play it safe with people, as I learned the hard way with my Twilight rant of yore (which, BTW, I deleted).
     
    Anyways, on with the rant. Well, it all started when I watched the recent remake of Clash of the Titans. I really liked it. I found the action to be awesome, the music to be epic, the characters to be just developed enough for me to really care about them, and the creatures to be cool-looking and imaginative. I came back from the movie and looked online to see what other people thought of it, and I was shocked to see that it was mostly complaints, mainly about how it was nothing like the original, which I heard many times called a "classic" in these posts. The reasons why people didn't like the movie ranged from the characters not being fleshed out enough to the action being weak, or the climax being really short, or the actors not having a lot of fun, and so on. None of them really agreed on why they didn't like it, but they all agreed on one thing: the original was far better and a true classic, and the remake is just another mindless unoriginal idea from Hollywood.
     
    Where to begin, where to begin...
     
    I hate, hate, HATE it when people watch a remake of a movie and say how the original was far better, and that it was more character-driven and better-written, and better done all around, then go around and bash the remake endlessly. Why do I hate this, you might ask? Well, let's talk more about Clash of the Titans. The original came out in 1981. For those too lazy to do the math, that's twenty-nine years ago. Therefore, the people who like it so much have had twenty-nine years to appreciate the film, and in fact, most of the people grew up with it. How long ago did the remake come out? On the day I'm writing this, it hasn't even been a week yet. For those again too lazy to do the math, that means the original has been out around 1479 times longer than the remake. The general public hasn't had the time to let the remake movie even sink in! My point is, it's all nostalgia. I actually never saw the original until a few days ago, when someone from my college told me to see it, that it was (of course) far better than the remake. So I went in with a completely non-biased viewpoint of it. Seeing the original and the remake for the first time within days of each other. THAT is the way to review a movie and a remake. Anyways, I watched the original, thinking "c'mon, you timeless classic, show me what you've got!" And while it wasn't AWFUL, it was EXTREMELY cheesy. I'm aware in 1981 the special effects weren't nearly as good as they are now, so I'll ignore that part of it (and besides, the special effects sometimes were pretty impressive, considering it was all stop-motion). However, it felt too campy, and too goofy for its premise. It also really didn't have much explanation on why Perseus wants to save Andromeda so much, other than the fact that she's a hot girl and he's a young male. I'm glad they cut out that subplot in the remake. Anyways, I preferred the remake. Yes, I said it. I preferred the remake. They took all the good stuff in the original and amped it up to eleven, all the cheesy stuff and made it epic, and all the stop-motion effects and make them awesome CGI beauty. My point is, I absolutely failed to see how the original was more emotional and character-driven, and even how it's a better film. The people who praise it as a timeless classic with great characters and great emotion obviously fail to realize that it was really about Harryhausen's effects, just as the remake is (almost) all about modern CGI. It's all nostalgia. It's the same for all remakes, really. People who say that the old 1933 King Kong was far more emotional, far more beautiful, and far more epic than the 2005 remake (I'll ignore the awful 1976 version), obviously need to see some sort of help. The 1933 King Kong had three things in it: corny writing, an Ann who never does anything but scream, and dinosaurs. Peter Jackson's remake has problems of its own, such as pacing and filler, but overall it's just a much better movie. And let's take the 1978 movie The Poseidon Adventure, and its 2006 remake Poseidon. I don't really care for either of them, but the remake, in my opinion, is just a TAD better mainly because I'm a huge Klaus Badelt fan, and his score for Poseidon was mind-numbingly EPIC. My point is, I look at things from a non-biased point of view. I don't see one as a remake and one as an original: I see them both as movies. I think that's the way all people should view them.
     
    Okay, that paragraph was immense. Snaps for those who made it all the way through it. Anyways, I've seen many people complaining that Hollywood is all remakes and sequels, and they don't have one original idea in their heads. Ummm, no. Last year we had several big movies that were original ideas, among them Up, G-Force, Zombieland, the Hangover, 2012, and, oh, what's that one I'm forgetting, oh, it's on the tip of my tongue, oh that's right, the HIGHEST GROSSING FREAKIN' MOVIE OF ALL FREAKIN' TIME, AVATAR?!?! None of them were based on a book, an older movie, a video game, or whatever. They were original ideas. You wanna know the big reason why Hollywood doesn't make as many original ideas? Because, like every business, it's all about money. People won't be as willing to go to a movie with no source material behind it than to a movie based on something they're familar with. It's all about moolah, and it's just safer to get that moolah doing something that's worked before than something that hasn't been tested yet. THAT'S why there are so many remakes. It's not rocket science.
     
    You know, let's extend it and say that people just hate new movies and think old movies are always better. Again, it's all nostalgia. Of course you think older movies are better. And plus, there's a reason why you think all the movies of the past were better: you've forgotten the countless bad ones. Yes, a lot of crud came out last year, like 17 Again, Old Dogs, New Moon, and so on. But a lot of crud came out in the years that Godfather and Citizen Kane came out as well. You just don't remember it. Why? Because it was crud. It's the same now. People in the 2030s will say how everything in the 2000s was so much better than the crud that comes in out 2030. By then, they too will have forgotten about movies like 17 Again and Old Dogs, and instead focus on things like Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Dark Knight, and so on. And the whole process repeats itself again. However, what really ticks me off is when PROFFESSIONAL MOVIE CRITICS, who claim to be the best at their job, say the same thing. I recently looked at an AFI list of best movie quotes of all time. None of the movies in the top 50 came out after 1990. The top one came out in the late 1930s. Yes, the late 1930s (it was the infamous Gone with the Wind quote, in case you were wondering). Dude, it's all nostalgia! Can't people realize that? It drives me NUTS.
     
    I apologize if you all think that I do nothing but fret about silly things. I just love writing rants. It makes me feel better. Anyways, I hope you enjoy my latest entry, and I'm hoping the mods don't get too angry about this one....
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