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theantisocialcritic · 4 years

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Archive Project - June 27, 2014 - I Love the Transformers Trilogy

I've been making a genuine effort of late to judge people less for the types of movies they like. If people get genuine enjoyment out of Twilight or cheaply made Christian movies, i'm in no position to judge them even if I don't think they are good movies. Life is short and finding enjoyment in little things like movies is part of our day-to-day lives that can provide us escapism from the stresses of the real world. With that in mind i'd like to make a confession and I hope you can have the same forgiveness for me I am offering to you kind, wonderful, beautiful people… Father, I have sinned… I youst to Love the Michael Bay Transformer movies… *Dramatic music* In my simpler, happier pre-film criticism days I was a much easier person to please. I was a teenage boy that wanted to see violence and mildly nerdy things. For better context, this was around the time that I still thought the Star Wars Prequels were awesome movies.. I caught a screening of Transformers 1 in my sophomore year of High School while sitting in on a Broadcasting class. And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever… a couple months later for Christmas I got copies of Transformers and Revenge of the Fallen! And as I tend to do, I watched them both dozens of times. Less than a year later Dark of the Moon came out and I saw it! By then my violence craving teenage fanboy passion had worn off and I didn't really touch Dark of the Moon again for a long time. Since then i've gone full time into Film Criticism and i've learned to understand what differentiates a good movie from a bad movie. Its hard to exactly put into words because there are millions of ways to make great movies and they don't all come in the same form. Generally among film criticism though the Transformers movies are violently hated. There are plenty of reasons why: Disrespect for the source material, sloppy filmmaking, poor writing, etc. But I still don't have the hate for the movies that a lot of critics do. Rewatching them last sunday reminded me of that simple time growing up in High School, when Linkin Park and Breaking Benjamen were the coolest bands ever, when i'd stay up for hours watching Red vs Blue and Arby n the Chief online, when it didn't matter that nobody else liked the movies I liked because they were mine. It feels weird to be writing out how nostalgic I am for these movies based on how now as an adult I can thoroughly look back on them and say without much difficulty that they are bad movies. I've since gotten to see much better action movies like The Avengers and Pacific Rim. These movies carry filmmaking chops that Michael Bay could only dream of. Interestingly enough though, as I look back on the movies, I think it is safe to say that the first one was actually all that bad! Its tonally inconsistent and full of poorly conceived and acted characters but the action in the movie is really intense, the pacing/build-up is pretty good and overall i'd say it manages to be a passable popcorn movie! It in a lot of ways suffers from the same problems that the Star Trek reboots have. Star Trek (09) is a good action movie but it too tends to suffer from poor writing/acting. Further parallels can be drawn with their respective sequels: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek into Darkness. Both attempt to ramp up the stakes with a darker, more complex storyline while ignoring the fact that their predecessors did work as films because they were simpler and more constrained. Both collapse to their knees with convoluted stories. Though I will say that Star Trek into Darkness is overall a better movie than Revenge of the Fallen. It doesn't quite feel like as much of a mess as Transformers 2 does and i'd say it holds up better as a movie. In regards to Dark of the Moon, i'd say that its a slight improvement from Revenge of the Fallen. The story ends up being slightly more compelling and grand than Fallen's take on a sequel. That being said, it has the worst pacing of any of these movies. This one drags harder than either of the first two movies and it hearts the movie BAD. Though the final battle of Chicago is compelling (if not terrifying…) it like Fallen suffers from the presumption that a more complex story is necessary when, in regards to this portrayal of this material, simpler is better. I'm wondering how Transformers: Age of Extinction is going to turn out. Its really hard to tell at this point because as far as I can tell, the concept for this movie has the most nuance of any of the sequels so far. It seems to be actually pushing the story ahead, using the Battle of Chicago as a catalyst for a story in which the Autobots are being hunted down by the government for letting thousands get killed. Also Robot Dinosaurs show up!! If you were going to make a good sequel out of these movies, this is probably as close as you are ever going to get to being profound! We'll see though! Stay tuned for review of Transformers 4! Thank you for reading! Live long and Prosper!

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