This is you simply deflecting the discussion.
But you know what, in the spirit of being fair and level headed I have done what you asked and fixed up my post. I have made it more stream-lined and singular. So let's try this again, shall we?
I'm not deflecting the discussion. Breaking up posts into 10, 20, or 30 sub posts is bad form -- it breaks up the logical flow. You can go over my posting history and you'll find I write very, very few of those. I think the well-regarded hype forums poster JMC had it in his signature for a while, that if you break up his post into a million sub posts he'll just ignore you.
The shot of Rebecca Hall at the beginning of the film, which you label as problematic, is only a 3 second shot that shows only her back. You cannot compare this to anything shown in the Transformers movie by any means. Try again
Also you claimed that her one motivation in life was her rejection by Stark, yet as another poster previously pointed out (which you conveniently ignored), this is completely incorrect. She was motivated solely by Extremis. Her brief sexual interaction with Stark would maybe only be a footnote in her life, if anything. The fact that you said this makes me think you haven't seen the movie more than once, maybe twice.
Furthermore, she wasn't a major character so her death did not need to be dramatic. It didn't require any pomp or ceremony. You can say this is because of sexism, but you could point to hundreds of other examples in movies where this happens to both men and women. You are reading into this and seeing something that isn't there, simply because you want there to be.
Also, there is a deleted scene which shows Tony and Rebecca sharing a heartfelt conversation as she lay there dying. The film makers clearly meant there to be some sort of moment between the two, but then realized that the movie didn't need it because the character was relatively inconsequential to the narrative at that point.
You can say "sexism" all you want, you'll be largely ignored.
Also, you cannot compare Pepper's portrayal on any film to Bay's portrayal of women. Let's look at the scene and examine it in the context of what we are talking about here. Our discussion is not just about T&A; it's about the depiction of women in the Transformers films and IM/Marvel films. As I've said before, T&A in and of itself is not bad; what we are objecting to is the excessiveness of it, and how unnecessary/overt it is in Bay's films.
Paltrow, in her four separate appearances as Pepper Potts, has never been overtly sexualized. In the Avengers she was wearing shorts that showed her legs and her figure but there weren't any low shots hanging on her butt, watching her go up a flight of stairs in slow motion as Bay does.
As a matter of fact, when she was wearing these shorts she was helping Tony out with the newly released Stark tower; getting it online, setting up press conferences, etc. She was portrayed as useful, intelligent, and multi-faceted.
In the end of IM3, when she is wearing this sports bra, she is shown saving Tony, proving that she is strong, intelligent, and worthwhile.
Once again: this completely goes against the idea that she is being objectified. Not only has she never been an overtly sexualized character to begin with, all 3 Iron man films along with the Avengers go to great lengths to show how much Tony needs her as his companion and his confidante.
Bay's movies don't do this with their female protagonists, as he's to busy zooming in on their butts as they walk in ridiculous high heels, swinging their hips in slow motion.
He might have a throwaway line here or there to attempt to give the character some sort of depth or texture, but the majority of the screen time is used to show how hot she is.
They don't do that with Pepper. Period, end of statement.
The shot of Rebecca Hall at the beginning of the film is pretty ****ing sexy, come on. It shows her back, and her ass, lets us know that she is incredibly fit and that she's wearing red lingerie. It's a titillating shot if you're attracted to women. Whether or not it's problematic is up for debate, unlike the Pepper Shot at the end this one has a storytelling purpose, it paints the sexuality of the two characters involved and thus contributes to both of of their characterisations, it's also a good tonal conclusion to what was a fun-to-watch Switzerland prologue.
With that said, the same could have been achieved just by showing them under the sheets together, or by showing shots of both RDJ and Hall nearly naked during actual sex, or by having the camera linger on RDJ naked for the same amount of time. The reason we got that sexy shot of Rebecca Hall is because she's fun to look at, I'm sure many directors would do the same.
Similarly with Tessa Yeager's shots in Transformers 4. She's fun to look at, but I find the camera angles for her less problematic than those in TF1, TF2, and TF3 since it contributes to her characterisation, which I wrote about it in another post. I'm not going to defend all of Bay's other movies one-by-one, part of my point is specifically that we should attempt to critique each movie as an individual project, though I realise that this is hard to do. If you're looking for somebody to defend Bay's filmography as a whole you'll need to find someone else.
As for Pepper, the black sports bra does not contribute to her characterisation, it's merely a titillating shot. You don't mind it because you like the movie, that's all, but when I see the following utterly nonsensical image I know why it's in the movie and I have no delusions:
Tony Stark is Tony Stark and is smarter than everyone else. Always. Man, women, child, ancient norse God, it doesn't matter; Stark is smarter than you.
There's a quote in the first movie from a scientist that got yelled at by Obadiah Stane because he couldn't build an arc reactor used in the iron man armor: "Sorry sir, I'm not Tony Stark".
Was he portrayed as a ditz, just because he was unable to do something Stark could do in a cave with a box of scraps? What about Stane? Or Ivan Vanko? Or Guy Pearce? Or everyone else he outsmarted? You are trying to make this something it isn't just because she's a woman.
Also what you are saying flies in the face of what the movie presented. She was clearly shown to be intelligent, as she helped develop Extremis. Just because Tony was shown to be way smarter than her doesn't mean she was a ditz; as a matter of fact, all she really was, was a glorified botanist. Of course Tony could outthink her.
It doesn't matter how smart Tony Stark is, even if he has an IQ of 200+, of which there are people like that alive. Invention and discovery still takes time and effort which the first Iron Man movie didn't skip over, though IM2 and IM3 did skip over.
One of the individuals regularly rated as being among the 20 smartest in the world (has an IQ of 200+, learned calculus at age 13) was hired at a place I used to work at, he started a year after I left so I hear about him. He's extremely clever. And he's been working on a specific scientific problem for approximately a decade now, making significant progress with great effort but not solving everything -- genuinely challenging tasks take time and effort. That's the way things are, even for the smartest people in the real world, if genuine progress is to happen it takes time and effort.
To use another real-world example, the military's contractors have all the budget they need to hire a lot of brilliant people and give them the time, computers, and laboratories they need to build... and it's taken 20 years to build the F22 Raptor. The F22 Raptor is a lot simpler than the IM suits, and they are one design and not 52 designs.
Design, invention, and expertise, are not easy regardless of intelligence, unless we're talking about trivial activities like solving Rubic's cubes. However, Shane Black doesn't know this. Jon Favreau knows this, Michael Bay kind of knows this, they had a whole corporation look into Transformers technology, and they get the benefit of a head start that they only need to reverse-engineer the technology, not build it from scratch.
If this really is a problem with you, then I'm wondering how you could watch any movie like this and enjoy it.
Robot aliens that turn into cars? How do they all speak english? A superhero with a secret identity whose only disguise is his glasses? How does no one recognize him? Preposterous ideas like this are a mainstay of the genre. If you can buy into those things, then why is it so far fetched that someone who has built 7 versions of a sophisticated robotic suit could get to a level where he can build one a week?
Maybe he has a basic template already laid out that he knows by heart; maybe he has an assembly line build most of the basic parts for him, yet goes in and tweaks the paint job and the functionalities of each suit. We know he stayed up days at a time and poured all of his energy into building these suits, so why is it so far fetched and ridiculous that you could buy that he lives in a universe with an ancient norse god, a 90 year old super soldier, and a giant green hulking monster, but not that he (a super genius) could build a highly sophisticated suit in a weeks time?
Once again, these are comic book films. You're cherry picking what you can and cannot buy into.
I have no problem with people speaking English. That's not nearly as complicated as designing 52 battle suits in a year -- come on. Universal translators are probably in our future, I take it as a given that if real aliens showed up tomorrow they would likely speak to us in our human languages.
I do have a problem with things happening for free in general. Not every movie is like this... there are lot of works for the process of discovery and development and the process of expertise (not just science but for any skill) is shown to be hard, I'll give you some examples:
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles: It takes twenty years to build sky net (as in Terminator 2), it combines technology from different sectors with a lot of people working hard on the problem.
Ang Lee's The Hulk: It's implied (stated?) that the lab had been around for decades.
Europa Report: It's the whole point of the movie leading to a mesmerising climax scene.
Iron Man 1: Example already described.
Rush: It takes time to build better cars and the awareness to do so comes from multiple angles. Nicki Lauda was an expert driver in part because he was obsessed.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: It took Willow five years to become an expert witch.
Black Swan: Nathalie Portman trains her ass off for a year to nail that play, and she had been training her whole life prior to that.
Character (and plot) arcs which are
earned are a lot more enjoyable for me than successes that happen for free. Now here are some counterexamples:
Iron Man 3: Tony Stark builds 52 distinct suits built in a year with little effort shown, a long with a better AI, a cure for extremes, and a treatment for his arc reactor.
Star Trek into Darkness: Khan Noonien Singh comes out of stasis and in just one year he catches up on 300 years of physics, engineering, biology, and computer science; he designs new warships that have better hulls and weapons and are more efficient; he builds personal transporters to be able to go across the Galaxy making starships obsolete; he acquires an understanding of what is what and who is who within the Starfleet hierarchy thereby enabling him to launch a successful terrorist movement;
Superman: The Movie: Clark becomes Superman because Jor-El locks him up in an igloo for 12 years and downloads the information into his brain. The passive Hero's journey.
Characters like Khan don't really interest me at all. They're more plot-devices than characters.
Your links discussing other movies show that you've completely missed the point I'm making. Maybe I'm not writing it out properly, or maybe my message is being washed out by a lot of noise from other conversations taking place, but here goes:
I'm not in any way shape or form denying that the camera angles in TF1, TF2, and TF3 are objectionable. I have an extended posting history on this forum of strongly objecting to the way women, minorities, etc are portrayed by Hollywood as a general rule, in movies I both like and dislike. I've written at length about the racism in
Days of Future Past and
Contagion, and how the
Justice League and the
Avengers need more women and minority members.
What I'm saying is that the shots in TF4 specifically lie within the distribution of what we see in Hollywood blockbusters, and that if the same thing happened (and has happened) in an MCU film geeks would not be complaining nearly as loud. As I wrote above, I think it's problematic that we (the online geek community) focus on these issues predominantly on films we don't like, when in fact better movies frequently share this problem.
But on the bright side, that last article was well-written and worth reading, thank you for linking.
This should be more in line to what you are asking. Everything I have posted is fair, level headed, and forthright in it's presentation. I have split up your arguments and my appropriate counter arguments. If you have a problem with what I have just posted, then give me specifics. If I have used any ad hominems or non-sequitors, please specifically point them out and let me know instead of making blanket statements about my post as a whole.
This was a better-written post. It's more conducive to a conversation and less so to a flame war.
t:
if it's hard to for you to keep track of every question in a few lines I suggest you try splitting your post to address each point I present individually if that makes it easier for you to keep up and stay on point.
