The Guard
Avenger
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2002
- Messages
- 34,040
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Well I know it is still OT, but I have to say the reason a large number of people (including myself), albeit the minority, thought TF was mediocre is because it is just a studio fluff piece. There is no depth and it is nothing but a commercial proposition for studio-tie-ins to product placement and merchandise.
Congratulations. You've just described TRANSFORMERS as a concept. It was never that deep.
The characters are vapid and cliche archetypes that steal from Spider-Man to E.T. but lack the depth of all those films and boils down to a few charming and good actors (minus Fox who is just eye candy) providing humor to make up for a lack of plot in a commercial for--more commercials.
I'm curious, what kind of depth did you expect this movie to have?
Still, didn´t need to be nearly as condescending and silly as it was to appeal to that audience, as has proven by a number of other movies.
How was TRANSFORMERS specifically condescending to the audience? And realize...there is a difference between not being brilliantly written, and being condescending. TRANSFORMERS, as I recall, didn't feel the need to beat the audience over the head with what was happening, like, oh, say...BATMAN BEGINS?
Didn't need, didn't need, didn't need...Welcome to Hollywood in 2007/2008. This is our culture. There are people who RESPOND to those kinds of stimuli, as evidenced by the braindead songs that are most popular, and the braindead shows that are popular. It's the same reason Batman has to crack jokes in BATMAN BEGINS, or we get nonsense like "I have got to get me one of those" or "DAYUMMM! NICE CAR!". You think TRANSFORMERS is the only place it shows up? Think again. There are also people who act like the characters found in TRANSFORMERS do, and yes, some of it was absurd, but what world do you all live in that you've never met someone like those characters at some point?
The Pixar movies, for instance, manage to make the comedic moments be mostly an actual integral part of the story, and still when they get serious, they get serious for real, and you can clearly see how they research in-depth every universe they deal with, whether it´s fishes, toys, etc., that make their jokes feel specific and unique to it, while TF is loaded with generic humor that could have been stolen from any lame blockbuster, teen comedy and stuff, such as "I don´t mind girls working my engine", or "it´s you and me", "no, only me".
Gosh. I wish I cared enough to argue PIXAR VS TRANSFORMERS. I don't. The people at PIXAR tend to do something very right, seemingly in a vaccum. Good for them.
Yeah, after Jazz had maybe two lines and a minute of screentime in
the movie
Look! Hyperbole!
and then Optimus and Ratchet push some melodrama to pretend there was anything compelling about his character in the movie and the way he was quickly dispatched without having had anything to do that would actually make an audience care.
I don't know what to tell you. This "sudden melodrama" is how movies work, and it's not new. I don't tend to give a fiddle when characters die. TRANSFORMERS never advertised it as a truly major event, you just seem to want it to have been. This isn't the Death of Optimus Prime we're talking about here.
What do you want, something that makes you tear up because a robot died? A robot funeral?
You want Jazz to say something witty like "Prime...don't be afraid" before he dies?
When you keep throwing humor all the time, you kill the danger, it´s hard to believe people are truly scared or in danger when they keep joking all the time and the scenes that are supposed to have danger are still played for laughs all the time.
Good god...go study humanity. People use humor when they are afraid. Constantly. And humor has almost always been used to lighten an otherwise serious scene in action/adventure movies. You ***** about its use here, and you may as well go down the list of adventure films, because trust me, you'll find it there, too. It's a film convention, not something unique to Michael Bay and TRANSFORMERS.