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Movies and TV / Re: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen
« on: July 01, 2009, 10:18:40 AM »
I didn't see it, and now I really have no desire to. Check out David Farland's review:
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Yesterday I created a little guide to critiquing a story. Last night I saw the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I’d like to get my revenge on the makers, so I’m going to go down the list and show you how I’d use the form in real life.
1) Originality. On a scale of 1 to 10, how original was this story? __0__________ I didn’t really see anything that gave me a sense of wonder here. This was the same old transformers. A couple of new robots were thrown in, but I have seen designs so similar in other fiction that nothing gave me a thrill.
2) Setting. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well was the setting developed? _2___________ Shang Hai’s streets looked a little too much like CG, but much of the rest looked okay. There wasn’t any problem with the viewer not knowing where you are—pictures and subtitles help. But my real problem was that the characters didn’t seem to jive with their settings at all. The characters were drawn so unrealistically that they didn’t seem to have been born anywhere. The girl with the father who was fresh out of prison? Her emotional scars never came into play. The Egyptian dwarf border guard? What planet was he supposed to be from?
3) Plot. On a scale of 1 to 10, how masterful is the plot? ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬__2_______________ Keep in mind that a middling score means that it was an average plot. This one had lots of moments where the try/fail cycles were resolved by robots fighting ninja style. I found myself yawning all through it. 4) Characterization. On a scale of 1 to 10, how well-drawn are the characters in the story?
¬¬¬¬___0____________. Oh, god, what a mess. First off, the writers and directors are so unbelievably dense as to think that anyone gives a damn whether one of their robots dies. All of the robot characters failed on a monumental level. I was disappointed by the ancient robot that farts. I found the two “Black” robot characters vied for the worst spot—stereotypical in their vulgarity and stupidity. The women here existed to either be sex objects or goofs. The director even went so far as to make jokes aimed at dwarfs and gays. But it’s not just that it was all politically incorrect, it was that it was just mindlessly bad. The mother, for example, downing a bag of marijuana brownies was inane. Any woman who lived through the seventies knows what a marijuana brownie is. The idea that she would gulp them all down defiantly while her family was shouting, “Mom, don’t!” annoyed the hell out of me. My wife might eat a brownie, but she’ll nibble on it and worry about her weight and leave it half-finished. In short, no real people appeared in this movie.
5) Emotional/intellectual payoff. _Less than 0_____________
This is the real killer. My son begged to see the movie, and then fell asleep after less than an hour. I managed to watch the whole damned thing with the help of a little caffeine. Here’s the real problem: a good movie is healthy. It performs an emotional exercise. It has a payoff. This one didn’t. In fact, it was worse than unhealthy, it was actively bad.
For a couple of decades I’ve watched a decline in movies for kids. A few years ago, if you saw a dog, the dog might fart or pee on a hydrant. Then we got to the point where the dog couldn’t just pee, it had to hump a leg, or in Adam Sandler’s case with Switch, it had to hump a stuffed animal. In this movie, we have multiple scenes of a Chihuahua humping a bulldog with tremendous zeal. To top it off, the director had to have a robot hump a girl’s leg.
Now maybe in an R-rated movie for adults this kind of thing would pass muster, but this was a movie marketed to children. After all, the whole film evolved from a cartoon strip, and it’s only purpose was to create a franchise for merchandizing more transformers toys.
I’ll forego comments on dozens of other instances of crude humor, but suffice it to say that this film wasn’t one that enriched or fed its audience. In fact, it was excrement, a steaming turd served up by idiots and creeps and fed to children.
So this film ranged from tedious to revolting.
6) Creator’s tone and style. On a scale of 1 to 10, how masterfully was the tale written on a line-by-line bases? ___2____________
Okay, so you could follow this story, but was there a single good line of dialog in the entire 2.5 hours. Ugh.
7) Presentation. On a scale of 1 to 10, how appealing was the presentation?
¬¬___7____________ The director did get decent performances from his actors. The filmography was okay. Lighting, camera angles, and cinematography were all passable. However, the special-effects often left something to be desired. A great special-effect is indistinguishable from reality. While there were lots of decent special-effect shots, the truth is that most of them were only passable. In creating a shot, SFX companies will often try to cheat by “blurring” the shot. They reason that since we can’t see things that are moving quickly, they don’t have to create crisp pictures of things that are in motion—so they can cut corners. There were lots of fight scenes between robots that were blurred so terribly that you just got an impression of robots fighting.
On the plus side, some of the explosions were actually done quite well.
All in all, Transformers got a dismal 13 out of a possible of 70 on my scale. It was, quite frankly, one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t warn you against it.
No doubt, there are people who will disagree. There was a young fellow—early twenties—sitting behind me who I’m sure loved it. Before the movie began, he was chanting the words “Douche” and “Bag” over and over, then giggling at his own masterful wit. He was playing with himself while he did it. There is a saying in Hollywood, “No one ever went broke in Hollywood by underestimating the stupidity of the American public.” No doubt, this movie will be a huge hit.
(exaggeration, obviously, and not necessarily a bad thing.) Where I most noticed it was Raoden's character in ELANTRIS; such an optimist. And he succeeds in convincing others in joining him in his optimism.
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