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darth_stitchThis is hilarious.
Critics everywhere are bashing Transformers Revenge of the Fallen left and right and the audience is packing the theaters. Even the midnight screenings are full over in my country and there's no sign of it letting up.
Here's a testament to how popular and how good the audience word of mouth is for this movie. One - most of us want to see it again and are planning to go for it. Two - even those who've managed to nab the .... ahem.... not-exactly-legal version of this movie plan to see it on the big screen.
The really odd thing is that critics are reacting by saying any number of the following things. One - the audience members are idiots. Two - pick your favorite theory about the degeneration of audience taste and the ominous reflection that a movie like Transformers Revenge of the Fallen has on an increasingly violent society and degraded culture (oh noes!).
Personally, I prefer a simpler explanation.
Audiences are NOT idiots or mindless sheep.
The movie was a blast.
Okay, I'm not seeing that this is a perfect movie or it should rank up with Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy and win Best Picture at the Oscars (although I'll root for the Special Effects awards). It's got its flaws. However, the good stuff outweights the bad stuff 10 to 1 and that's what keeps audiences coming back and keeping the local word of mouth good.
I'm also not saying that the people who enjoyed this movie have to park their brains outside the theater for them to enjoy it. Sorry, that's not how it works. You can ask us to believe that Big Fragging Robots are real and duking it out on screen. But you can't give us too much silliness and stupidity (see: Beverly Hills Chihuahua) and you can't rip off too many action movies and give us preposterous, pretentious crap (see: the last John Cena action movie). We won't subject ourselves to that kind of torture.
We want to have fun, we want to be entertained and we want to cheer for the good guys (not to mention watching Big Fragging Robots kick serious ass).
Yes, movies should inform, educate as well as entertain. They can do one, the other or all at the same time. But art doesn't simply exist just to gratify the intellectual yearnings of your soul. Art should delight you too.
So what made me love this sequel to the 2007 Transformers movie?
In a nutshell, this was the movie I wanted to see when I was eight years old. I wanted to see Optimus Prime, Megatron, all of the Autobots and Decepticons, to step out of Cartoon Land and into the Real World. I wanted to believe that our family's big black pick-up truck could conceivably turn into a grumpy trigger-happy soldier. I wanted to see them in a grand adventure, with some seriously kick-ass battles and most importantly?
IF YOU'RE GOING TO KILL OPTIMUS PRIME, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE BRING HIM BACK. PREFERABLY AFTER HE'S GOTTEN SOME DECENT SCREEN TIME AND DONE SOME SERIOUS DECEPTICON-SLAGGING. THANKS.
And essentially, this is what the movie delivered. It's really an updated and improved version of the 1980s cartoon movie.
A rough outline of the plot has Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots working closely with the US military, with the returning characters Captain Lennox and Sergeant Epps as portrayed by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson respectively. We've got young Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) working on his relationship with Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and entering college. The All-Spark has left its mark on Sam. There's a new enemy called The Fallen, who is actually a renegade Prime. The first arc has The Fallen sending a resurrected Megatron and his Decepticons after Sam to steal the knowledge that the All-Spark has left in Sam's brain about the legendary Matrix of Leadership, a device that can be used to power yet another superweapon - one that can destroy our sun. The second arc has Sam and friends, including Bumblebee and the new Autobot characters The Twins, racing around the world to find the Matrix before the Decepticons can and use the Matrix to resurrect Optimus Prime, who has died heroically, as usual.
There are some new characters, some simply there to indicate that the Autobots AND the Decepticons have new recruits to add to their ranks and the others playing a more vital role to the plot, such as the renegade Decepticons Jetfire and Wheelie. But the main heroes, at least on the Transformers' side, are Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.
Let me tell you right now that Optimus has given so many moments in this movie that made me want to stand up and holler my lungs out. From his entrance in the movie up to his heroic last stand (at least until the climax), Optimus Prime is even more larger than life and kick-ass than he's ever been before. It was heartwarming to see that even the human soldiers have unanimously accepted him as their battlefield commander, because he's right with them in the thick of things and the same soldiers were willing to risk possible court-martial at the merest chance of bringing him back.
My favorite Optimus moments? There was his first scene, where he came in against Demolisher. There was that seriously kick-ass battle that he had in the forest, fighting alone against Megatron, Starscream and one other new Decepticon, trying to protect Sam. And of course, the final battle against the Fallen.
Bumblebee, as usual, was endearingly funny - even if he still doesn't talk much. Favorite moments were when he ended up blowing half of Sam's house away, trying to save the Witwicky family from robots inadvertently created from the All-Spark shard Sam found in his old clothes from Mission City. Whoops. There was the hilarious scene when Sam regretfully told him that freshmen weren't allowed to bring cars on campus. And of course, 'Bee got to kick serious ass yet again fighting against Ravage and Rampage.
There were a lot of shout-outs to the original animated series in the entire film which I had fun with, from the design of Optimus' gun; the scene where all of the Autobots were in vehicle form - rolling out, so to speak, on the road; Starscream being the clever "coward;" and Megatron being the Galvatron to The Fallen's Unicron.
Jetfire, the only new character other than the "Twins," Soundwave and Wheelie to get more screentime to develop, was this hilarious aged robot version of Captain Jack Sparrow with a touch of the grouchies. For the first time, I didn't want to scrap a Transformers character named Wheelie - whose personality, now that I think about it, was a bit like G1's Rumble, if a bit of a lech.
Soundwave was seriously ominous and creepy, even if he spent most of the movie hanging on to an American military satellite and doing seriously sick things to it that I'd rather not think too much about. Heh. Finally, another G1 alumnus makes onto the voice actor list - I recognized Frank Welker right off the bat and cheered.
Megatron and Starscream are just right on the money together, especially during the last battle where Megs finally got his aft handed to him by Prime. As for the newer Decepticons such as Devastator and Demolisher - they were suitably awe-inspiring and were generally there to give us all some seriously kick-ass battle sequences.
There wasn't a lot of stuff to dislike about this movie, at least for me. I wish there was some character development and additional scenes for Ratchet and Ironhide. I'd LOVE to see a cranky wrench-wielding medic and Ironhide finally getting his kick-ass battle moment in the next movie. As for the newer Autobots, I wish that we actually had the Lamborghini twins (if not as Lamborghinis, then as some other cool car) around - I just KNOW that the fan fiction to reunite Sideswipe with his brother Sunstreaker is going to come out in droves. Most of the new Autobots are ciphers - Jolt, Arcee and Sideswipe pretty much came out to be cool-looking and that was all. I mean, I understand that the Decepticons are bad guys and you really just need to focus on Meggy and Screamer and maybe Soundwave if you want character development but what about the Autobots.
And then, there were the Spongebob Squarepants Twins Mudflap and Skids. A lot of bandwidth's been wasted on them, especially on the racism issue. Personally, THAT part of it, if it WAS there, just went WAY over my head. I didn't look at them and see a negative racial stereotype - for heaven's sake, they're ROBOTS, no different from white or Asian people trying to adapt accents and attitudes not native to them.
(What really made me want to bang my head on the table was the allegation that they were illiterate. I listened to that dialogue. They said something along the lines of "We don't do the reading thing" and I understood that to mean that THEY. DON'T. LIKE. TO. READ. For God's sake, they're robots, OF COURSE THEY CAN READ! They're just not the intellectual type and lord knows we've got humans like that. We don't call them illiterate, now do we? The allegation of illiteracy gets even sillier when the film later reveals that the language that they were trying to read was the language of the Primes. I don't know about you but those Twins were NOT related to Optimus Prime by any stretch of the imagination. It's like asking me to read Chinese. Jeebus save us.)
For me, they were silly and annoying but not cringingly so. They were just goofballs but not high on my list of fave characters. They weren't the movie-destroyers on the scale of Jar Jar Binks that the critics said they were. In fact, the audience burst out laughing when Bumblebee finally had enough of their antics and knocked their heads together.
Seriously, this movie was a blast and a hell of a fun ride from beginning to end. I want to see it again. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel. So, cheers to ya, Michael Bay.
Transformers Rock!!
Critics everywhere are bashing Transformers Revenge of the Fallen left and right and the audience is packing the theaters. Even the midnight screenings are full over in my country and there's no sign of it letting up.
Here's a testament to how popular and how good the audience word of mouth is for this movie. One - most of us want to see it again and are planning to go for it. Two - even those who've managed to nab the .... ahem.... not-exactly-legal version of this movie plan to see it on the big screen.
The really odd thing is that critics are reacting by saying any number of the following things. One - the audience members are idiots. Two - pick your favorite theory about the degeneration of audience taste and the ominous reflection that a movie like Transformers Revenge of the Fallen has on an increasingly violent society and degraded culture (oh noes!).
Personally, I prefer a simpler explanation.
Audiences are NOT idiots or mindless sheep.
The movie was a blast.
Okay, I'm not seeing that this is a perfect movie or it should rank up with Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy and win Best Picture at the Oscars (although I'll root for the Special Effects awards). It's got its flaws. However, the good stuff outweights the bad stuff 10 to 1 and that's what keeps audiences coming back and keeping the local word of mouth good.
I'm also not saying that the people who enjoyed this movie have to park their brains outside the theater for them to enjoy it. Sorry, that's not how it works. You can ask us to believe that Big Fragging Robots are real and duking it out on screen. But you can't give us too much silliness and stupidity (see: Beverly Hills Chihuahua) and you can't rip off too many action movies and give us preposterous, pretentious crap (see: the last John Cena action movie). We won't subject ourselves to that kind of torture.
We want to have fun, we want to be entertained and we want to cheer for the good guys (not to mention watching Big Fragging Robots kick serious ass).
Yes, movies should inform, educate as well as entertain. They can do one, the other or all at the same time. But art doesn't simply exist just to gratify the intellectual yearnings of your soul. Art should delight you too.
So what made me love this sequel to the 2007 Transformers movie?
In a nutshell, this was the movie I wanted to see when I was eight years old. I wanted to see Optimus Prime, Megatron, all of the Autobots and Decepticons, to step out of Cartoon Land and into the Real World. I wanted to believe that our family's big black pick-up truck could conceivably turn into a grumpy trigger-happy soldier. I wanted to see them in a grand adventure, with some seriously kick-ass battles and most importantly?
IF YOU'RE GOING TO KILL OPTIMUS PRIME, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE BRING HIM BACK. PREFERABLY AFTER HE'S GOTTEN SOME DECENT SCREEN TIME AND DONE SOME SERIOUS DECEPTICON-SLAGGING. THANKS.
And essentially, this is what the movie delivered. It's really an updated and improved version of the 1980s cartoon movie.
A rough outline of the plot has Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots working closely with the US military, with the returning characters Captain Lennox and Sergeant Epps as portrayed by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson respectively. We've got young Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) working on his relationship with Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and entering college. The All-Spark has left its mark on Sam. There's a new enemy called The Fallen, who is actually a renegade Prime. The first arc has The Fallen sending a resurrected Megatron and his Decepticons after Sam to steal the knowledge that the All-Spark has left in Sam's brain about the legendary Matrix of Leadership, a device that can be used to power yet another superweapon - one that can destroy our sun. The second arc has Sam and friends, including Bumblebee and the new Autobot characters The Twins, racing around the world to find the Matrix before the Decepticons can and use the Matrix to resurrect Optimus Prime, who has died heroically, as usual.
There are some new characters, some simply there to indicate that the Autobots AND the Decepticons have new recruits to add to their ranks and the others playing a more vital role to the plot, such as the renegade Decepticons Jetfire and Wheelie. But the main heroes, at least on the Transformers' side, are Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.
Let me tell you right now that Optimus has given so many moments in this movie that made me want to stand up and holler my lungs out. From his entrance in the movie up to his heroic last stand (at least until the climax), Optimus Prime is even more larger than life and kick-ass than he's ever been before. It was heartwarming to see that even the human soldiers have unanimously accepted him as their battlefield commander, because he's right with them in the thick of things and the same soldiers were willing to risk possible court-martial at the merest chance of bringing him back.
My favorite Optimus moments? There was his first scene, where he came in against Demolisher. There was that seriously kick-ass battle that he had in the forest, fighting alone against Megatron, Starscream and one other new Decepticon, trying to protect Sam. And of course, the final battle against the Fallen.
Bumblebee, as usual, was endearingly funny - even if he still doesn't talk much. Favorite moments were when he ended up blowing half of Sam's house away, trying to save the Witwicky family from robots inadvertently created from the All-Spark shard Sam found in his old clothes from Mission City. Whoops. There was the hilarious scene when Sam regretfully told him that freshmen weren't allowed to bring cars on campus. And of course, 'Bee got to kick serious ass yet again fighting against Ravage and Rampage.
There were a lot of shout-outs to the original animated series in the entire film which I had fun with, from the design of Optimus' gun; the scene where all of the Autobots were in vehicle form - rolling out, so to speak, on the road; Starscream being the clever "coward;" and Megatron being the Galvatron to The Fallen's Unicron.
Jetfire, the only new character other than the "Twins," Soundwave and Wheelie to get more screentime to develop, was this hilarious aged robot version of Captain Jack Sparrow with a touch of the grouchies. For the first time, I didn't want to scrap a Transformers character named Wheelie - whose personality, now that I think about it, was a bit like G1's Rumble, if a bit of a lech.
Soundwave was seriously ominous and creepy, even if he spent most of the movie hanging on to an American military satellite and doing seriously sick things to it that I'd rather not think too much about. Heh. Finally, another G1 alumnus makes onto the voice actor list - I recognized Frank Welker right off the bat and cheered.
Megatron and Starscream are just right on the money together, especially during the last battle where Megs finally got his aft handed to him by Prime. As for the newer Decepticons such as Devastator and Demolisher - they were suitably awe-inspiring and were generally there to give us all some seriously kick-ass battle sequences.
There wasn't a lot of stuff to dislike about this movie, at least for me. I wish there was some character development and additional scenes for Ratchet and Ironhide. I'd LOVE to see a cranky wrench-wielding medic and Ironhide finally getting his kick-ass battle moment in the next movie. As for the newer Autobots, I wish that we actually had the Lamborghini twins (if not as Lamborghinis, then as some other cool car) around - I just KNOW that the fan fiction to reunite Sideswipe with his brother Sunstreaker is going to come out in droves. Most of the new Autobots are ciphers - Jolt, Arcee and Sideswipe pretty much came out to be cool-looking and that was all. I mean, I understand that the Decepticons are bad guys and you really just need to focus on Meggy and Screamer and maybe Soundwave if you want character development but what about the Autobots.
And then, there were the Spongebob Squarepants Twins Mudflap and Skids. A lot of bandwidth's been wasted on them, especially on the racism issue. Personally, THAT part of it, if it WAS there, just went WAY over my head. I didn't look at them and see a negative racial stereotype - for heaven's sake, they're ROBOTS, no different from white or Asian people trying to adapt accents and attitudes not native to them.
(What really made me want to bang my head on the table was the allegation that they were illiterate. I listened to that dialogue. They said something along the lines of "We don't do the reading thing" and I understood that to mean that THEY. DON'T. LIKE. TO. READ. For God's sake, they're robots, OF COURSE THEY CAN READ! They're just not the intellectual type and lord knows we've got humans like that. We don't call them illiterate, now do we? The allegation of illiteracy gets even sillier when the film later reveals that the language that they were trying to read was the language of the Primes. I don't know about you but those Twins were NOT related to Optimus Prime by any stretch of the imagination. It's like asking me to read Chinese. Jeebus save us.)
For me, they were silly and annoying but not cringingly so. They were just goofballs but not high on my list of fave characters. They weren't the movie-destroyers on the scale of Jar Jar Binks that the critics said they were. In fact, the audience burst out laughing when Bumblebee finally had enough of their antics and knocked their heads together.
Seriously, this movie was a blast and a hell of a fun ride from beginning to end. I want to see it again. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel. So, cheers to ya, Michael Bay.
Transformers Rock!!
