I’m being lazy here but I have just endured two of the worst movies I have ever seen and one of them is the biggest blockbuster of the summer. I hated Transformers (the other was the dreadful excrement Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer). But I couldn’t put into words just how much I thought this movie was bad for our collective moviegoing soul.
Fortunately, Bemis at http://cinevistaramascope.blogspot.com could and did and I have to put his closing paragraph here because it is dead on.
“It’s hateful, materialistic crap, keeping the sales-pitch cynicism of the original cartoon minus the endearing kitsch. True, the writers try to bracket everything in wink-wink sarcasm, making this crap that knows it is crap. The effects are flawless but pointless, as Transformers is never remotely fun . Try to defend it as meant for kids and I’ll ask you to recall the indefensible dreck we liked as kids; try to defend it as shut-your-brain-off fodder and I’ll ask why I should shut my brain off; defend it at all and I’ll remind you of the scene where a robot pisses on Barton Fink. The Number 23 and Vacancy are bad, but Transformers is actually dangerous, its massive success paving the way for another decade of Bay’s Teutonic brand of anti-art. The biggest question, then, is who Michael Bay hates more – us or himself.”
Truly. A robot pissing on Turturro. How much fucking money are they paying these guys these days?
Never before have I so angrily stormed across the room to smack a movie out of the DVD player.
I am a huge Transformers fan, Generation One that is and for one reason or the other I never got around to seeing it in the cinema. I managed to watch about quarter of the film but it was when Prime said ‘my bad’ I angrily turned it off and have refused to go back into it.
Instead I got the original cartoon series boxset and was able to begin breathing again.
I was too old for Transformers, thankfully – I was more the forgotten Micronauts generation – but I imagine this is how I’ll feel if they ever make the damn Land of the Lost movie.
On the other hand, I loved the Thunderbirds and Lost in Space movies, unlike everyone else in the known universe, so who know?
Lost in Space wasn’t awful. It didn’t hate it’s audience.
The worst part is that I knew (a lot of) people who said that Transformers wasn’t all that bad, actually. So, when I saw it, I had no expectations. Strike that. I expected to be entertained.
I haven’t been this angry at a movie in a long time. People who know me now that I have very eclectic tastes. But, I rarely endorse a film that flat out sucks.
Bloodsucking Freaks? It’s ridiculous and anti-woman, but unabashedly so. Forbidden Zone makes no apologies for being what it is, the movie recreation of the Oingo Boingo stage show.
I even enjoyed Hostel from a total cheese, creepy horror aspect. Because it IS it’s audience, unlike Saw which is contemptable.
Sitting in a poker game with someone ten years younger than me who said he was “programmed” to have to go see Transformers I realized that they know that they have a built in audience. There was no reason the filmmakers couldn’t take more care. No reason at all.
Transformers assumes that it’s audience are a bunch of lummoxes and the people who thought this was good cinema have no credinility.
When Bemis speaks of “shut off your mind fodder” this brought up an issue amongst me an Beth.
I don;t think you ever turn your brain off. Especially when you “lose yourself” in a movie. Quite the contrary. Losing ones self means that your brain IS activated. That you are engaged in the storytelling process. If your brain was “off” then you wouldn’t be engaged at all and would want to run screaming from the theater. Suspension of disbelief is not the same thing as “turning your brain off” although they have become accepted synonym metaphors.
Transformers is a hateful piece of shit.
I agree so much I want to scream. That movie is the worst piece of crap ever. I mean, the effects were beyond gorgeous but for me even that was sullied by the end downtown sequence, when I actually for the first time ever in a film felt overstimulated and had to sort of shut down. Don’t even get me started on all the misogyny in it, too. I just agree with everything said here.