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DNS posted:(I think a good and ballsy filmmaker could make Kubrickian Captain America work!) Yeah sure, but you couldn't drop a sequence like that into the existing Captain America movie and have it not be jarring, is what I mean. Any example of Bay speaking in a less watered down vocabulary will be within the industry. I'll see if any articles from the ASC or ICG are available online.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:02
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Bugblatter posted:Any example of Bay speaking in a less watered down vocabulary will be within the industry. I'll see if any articles from the ASC or ICG are available online. Chill, thanks.
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Jul 4, 2014 05:05
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DNS posted:Chill, thanks. Well, the ASC's write-ups on the most of Bay's films are print only, and my personal archive is stored back in America. The article for The Island is online, but it was an under-prepped shoot that no one was too happy with, so the article is purely technical (You won't find many directors who can speak with as much technical precision about photography as Bay does here, but I don't think anyone's questioning his technical skill). If you still want to read it, it's here: https://www.theasc.com/magazine/aug05/island/page1.html Unfortunately, his recent work with Amir Mokri isn't cataloged by The ASC or ICG since Mokri isn't a member of either, and those are the film that I had in mind. There was a conversation I listened to somewhere about creating different layers of abstracted reality in DotM where use of lines and color let the film dip into a cartoonish world for some sequences and then resurface into degrees of reality for others. The ASC's catalog is how I normally dig that stuff up though, so I can't find it. For what it's worth, he does actually speak a little about how West Side Story did the same thing in the NYT interview, although you need to either be watching the film or have a good memory of it to know what he means when he says to look how "the lines" let the film transition into "another world."
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Jul 4, 2014 06:10
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Milky Moor posted:It's so... odd that, in all four films, there's been, what, one female robot and the robots keep getting more and more human. Now I'm sort of surprised that KSI didn't have a female Transformer. It wouldn't have been a completely new thing, given the preexisting G1 animation had a character called "Nightbird": A giant female robot built by humans that ends up fighting the Autobots.
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Jul 4, 2014 08:04
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Terry's exhaustive interpretation is getting around: http://www.alcohollywood.com/fresh-pour-transformers-age-of-extinction-2014-tammy-2014/ "First, the obvious: the movie is way too drat long. Even me, someone who is going to be very generous because of the oppositional reading I tend to take toward the Transformers films, started to get absolutely bored around the two-hour mark. Bay himself has tempered his normally-chaotic action scenes with a bit more finesse, producing some very fine action work. Howevoer, it all amounts to so much sensory overload, without any real breaks (particularly in the last hour of the film) to be able to make sense of what’s going on. The plot is incredibly convoluted, creating a redundantly international chase movie that juggles a million subplots and villains of dubious connection to one another. Now, to the good stuff: the movie works as a wonderful follow-up to the original trilogy’s conceit that Optimus Prime is a hypocritical, murderous cult-leader psychopath who lies to get what he wants. His initial form in the first act of the movie is almost literally the scary rusty truck from Steven Spielberg’s Duel. There’s nary a scene in the film when he doesn’t threaten to murder someone (his first words in the film are “I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU!” – he says this to the human protagonists, mind you), and his platitudes of “fighting with honor” and all that are almost immediately followed by ripping a Transformer’s face off. Any illusions that the Autobots are the good guys, and that Bay is making a ‘bad choice’ by having the ostensible hero be such a monster is missing the point; he is a monster. The biggest thing people seem to miss about the Transformers series is its inherent nihilism – no one in the series is a good person/robot, even the ones that claim they are. His methods aside, Kelsey Grammar’s character is right to believe that the Transformers only bring death and destruction to humanity. Stanley Tucci’s sudden third-act turn to ‘good guy’ completely ignores the fact that he’s a bloodthirsty industrialist who definitely tortures living robots in his labs. Whereas Shia LaBeouf’s character Sam in the first three films related most closely to Bumblebee’s impulsiveness and immaturity, here it’s Optimus and Cade who form the closest kinship – of course, this is because both characters are overbearing, aggressive control freaks who are deathly afraid of their “children” not needing them anymore. Optimus is placed in the same position he put Megatron in by the end of the first trilogy – a hurt, angry outcast on the run from overbearing state forces that simply want to hunt them down for being different. The fact that it’s not the typical Autobots vs. Decepticon fight, and instead the Autobots fighting industry and their own obsolescence, lends the major conflict a few more interesting shades of gray. (The main Transformer villain, Lockdown, alludes to ‘creators’ who desperately want Optimus Prime back, presumably for his apparent war crimes.) Age of Extinction is also particularly self-reflexive in its status as a consumer product; Bay seems to find wonderfully tongue-in-cheek ways to remind the audience of the film’s status as something meant to sell you things, and the danger that represents. One interesting shot likens Transformers to a My Little Pony doll, which then morphs into a machine gun because of swirly Transformer magic – a toy literally becomes a weapon. On top of that, there’s an early scene in the old movie theater where an old guy complains about how it’s all “remakes and sequels” now, while looking at a poster for Howard Hawks’ El Dorado (itself a remake). The film itself takes on the attitude of blockbuster film executives, cramming in every possible product placement they can – all framed around scenes of horrific violence. A Bud Light van is toppled by an alien spacecraft, and our hero Mark Wahlberg shoves an alien gun in an innocent man’s face before drinking from one. A bus with the Victoria’s Secret logo is absolutely cored out by a Transformers fight. The entire third act takes place in Hong Kong, China, acknowledging the rising foreign market and pandering to it as well. These things and more couch the blatant consumerism of Hasbro and Paramount Pictures in a swirl of explosions and violence, explicitly likening the presence of consumerism to utter chaos and destruction. Simply put, Transformers: Age of Extinction is far from a perfect film, and all the exhausting Michael Bay overload is still present. Still, the film presents the odious facets of its world (and our own) so brazenly and confidently that I find it very difficult to write it off as ‘dumb’ or ‘lazy.’ It’s a movie that self-reflexively examines its own relationship as a consumerist product, and points out the hypocrisy of its own conservatism. For that alone, I can’t help but admire it on some level." JediTalentAgent posted:Now I'm sort of surprised that KSI didn't have a female Transformer. It wouldn't have been a completely new thing, given the preexisting G1 animation had a character called "Nightbird": A giant female robot built by humans that ends up fighting the Autobots.
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Jul 4, 2014 08:28
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Cardboard Box A posted:Wasn't Nightbird just a straight up ninja robot, not a transformer? That's true enough, but her animated origins still work within the confines of "Human-made robot/corrupted by Decepticons" plot of AoE.
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Jul 4, 2014 08:49
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The Hong Kong media is finally reporting on some of the propaganda. Here's an article you can Google translate, but I'll give you guys some highlights. Note it's from the Apple Daily, which has roughly the journalistic integrity of Fox News, with a very anti-Beijing slant.Apple Daily posted:One of the Chinese co-producers of Transformers 4, Liang Longfei, bragged about the changes he made to the movie while receiving some mainland guests and how they "corrected" and "strengthened" the movie's image of China. These included the requirement that the Chinese flag be much larger than the Hong Kong flag and the dialog where the Hong Kong Police remark that they must contact the Central Government for help. And some reactions from Hong Kongers on Facebook: "This makes me want to puke. Don't bother seeing Transformers 4, spend your money on a Hong Kong-made movie instead." "If the Hong Kong release looks like this, I'm not seeing it. The point of the movie is to sell toys, not to sell the loving Communist regime" "No this is pretty much what Hong Kong is like in real life. Our government always crying to Beijing." You guys are all too busy talking about toys. There are important politics going on in this movie. Second world authoritarian government politics!
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Jul 4, 2014 09:39
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Cardboard Box A posted:Terry's exhaustive interpretation is getting around: Clint from Alcohollywood is Hewlett on SA.
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Jul 4, 2014 13:36
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I'm seeing the movie tonight for my father's birthday - Trans4mers on July 4th 2014 with a man literally born on the 4th of July.  Anyway, two quick things:1) Terry, please make a proper eBook out of your criticism. Get that poo poo on Amazon. I'd buy a copy, and I bet a lot of other folks here would too. It would be great to see you get paid for all your excellent work. 2) I remember a few years back there was a rumored recut of the Star Wars prequels that supposedly edited them all down into one relatively effective film. I have neither the technical expertise nor the knowledge of cinema to make this happen, but I would kill a man (or at least donate to a Kickstarter) in order to get a well-made cut of the first three Transformers movies re-edited to support the satirical reading discussed in this thread. Cut out Sam's parents and all that other nonsense, emphasize the face-stabbings and transexual proletarian Megatron and the robot vagina dentata from space.
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Jul 4, 2014 14:49
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Indie Rocktopus posted:1) Terry, please make a proper eBook out of your criticism. Get that poo poo on Amazon. I'd buy a copy, and I bet a lot of other folks here would too. It would be great to see you get paid for all your excellent work. It's not for sale, but here is the whole thing formatted as an eBook: http://www.scribd.com/doc/231829079/I-actually-kind-of-appreciate-the-Transformers-movies-epub-version quote:2) I remember a few years back there was a rumored recut of the Star Wars prequels that supposedly edited them all down into one relatively effective film. I have neither the technical expertise nor the knowledge of cinema to make this happen, but I would kill a man (or at least donate to a Kickstarter) in order to get a well-made cut of the first three Transformers movies re-edited to support the satirical reading discussed in this thread. Cut out Sam's parents and all that other nonsense, emphasize the face-stabbings and transexual proletarian Megatron and the robot vagina dentata from space. The ugliness and discomfort of everything in Transformers 2 especially is a case of form following function. As with Star Wars, removing the parts that tend to make audiences uncomfortable isn't the way to bring out the satire. Might as well say someone should re-edit Naked Lunch (the book) to take out all the drug use and gay sex scenes, then it could reach a wider audience. What someone could do instead would be to make and spread a short video, like that "Bayhem" one making the rounds, high-lighting just the scenes that best support Terry's argument. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 16:14
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GonSmithe posted:Clint from Alcohollywood is Hewlett on SA. Yup that's me  To be honest, it's actually kind of cool to learn that someone actually reads the Fresh Pours, so that's nice.
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Jul 4, 2014 16:29
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Lord Krangdar posted:What someone could do instead would be to make and spread a short video, like that "Bayhem" one making the rounds, high-lighting just the scenes that best support Terry's argument. I might actually do this for Smugfilm. Any scenes you'd want to see done in particular?
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Jul 4, 2014 19:00
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Lord Krangdar posted:The ugliness and discomfort of everything in Transformers 2 especially is a case of form following function. As with Star Wars, removing the parts that tend to make audiences uncomfortable isn't the way to bring out the satire. Might as well say someone should re-edit Naked Lunch (the book) to take out all the drug use and gay sex scenes, then it could reach a wider audience. I was talking about removing the stuff Terry described as genuinely pointless (Sam's parents getting high, etc.) (although if someone wanted to make an argument for the inclusion of that in the original films, I'd be interested in hearing it). I'd assume the misogyny and racial caricatures and everything would stay. A faithful edit would probably be much longer than a regular film, maybe four or five hours - hell, the sheer punishment of sitting through something that long might even make it more effective. I've seen people mention the Star Wars prequels as similar to Transformers a few times in this thread... is there any particularly enlightening criticism of those films out there? Speaking as someone who's only watched the prequels as a kid expecting superficial entertainment (and hated them), I'd be very interested in an alternate reading. Also, I love the fact that 1. you're comparing the Transformers films to Naked Lunch and 2. I get what you're saying and agree with you. (I first read Naked Lunch in 10th grade, on my own, expecting a straightforward cyberpunkish sci-fi novel. Needless to say, I imagine teenage me would have been a lot happier with your version, even if it was ultimately less rewarding.) Hbomberguy posted:I might actually do this for Smugfilm. Any scenes you'd want to see done in particular? That'd be great. Definitely post here if you wind up doing it. A montage of Optimus Prime attacking faces would be pretty convincing, either on its own or as an interlude during a longer video. I'm not sure if it really relates to the themes of the series, and I have only basic knowledge of shot composition and such - but I always thought the sequence at 116:55 in the first film (Ironhide backflips through a barrage of missiles while a random hot woman screams in the foreground) was pretty striking.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:07
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Indie Rocktopus posted:I was talking about removing the stuff Terry described as genuinely pointless (Sam's parents getting high, etc.) (although if someone wanted to make an argument for the inclusion of that in the original films, I'd be interested in hearing it). I'd assume the misogyny and racial caricatures and everything would stay. A faithful edit would probably be much longer than a regular film, maybe four or five hours - hell, the sheer punishment of sitting through something that long might even make it more effective. That stuff was skipped over more because Terry didn't want to get into it than because it's genuinely pointless. The first two films are the most loaded, but also the most unpleasant to watch. Like, if you go back to when the first film came out, people were really pissed about the scene where the Autobots trash the back yard. Y'know "we paid for blood! What's this comedy scene doing here?" But it is important: the lawn stands for Sam's relationship with his dad, how Ron tries to be authoritative and maintain order. (Other character traits: he's head of the Neighborhood Watch, and a coward.) If Optimus is the ultimate father figure to many kids, you have to set him up against the inadequate - human - father. The real punchline to the lawn scene is that there is no zany punchline. Ron honestly doesn't care that much that the lawn was destroyed by an 'earthquake'. It was purely a way of teaching Sam respect. It's key characterization for the Autobots as well, given that they don't comprehend why destroying the lawn is a bad thing. 'Course you don't totally sympathize with these suburban buffoons trying to protect their lawn, but Optimus isn't much of an alternative. Note that he's not like "forget the lawn! People are in danger!" it's all "Sorry. Oops, sorry." He's the same dumb dad - but with greater, unrestrained, use of force. (Optimus being a dumb dad obviously carries over into this latest film.) Same with the masturbation jokes. Sam's mom constantly insisting that it's TOTALLY NATURAL is no less a method of policing her son. It's a textbook example of the superego injection to enjoy. By demanding that Sam do whatever he wants, but still making him feel guilt of he does the wrong thing (both parents are visibly relieved when they see he's with a girl), that guilt is intensified. Same with the pot joke: "pot doesn't work like that! How could they be so stupid arghh!" Obviously it doesn't work like that in reality. But given what we know about her character, she is somewhat deliberately trying to embarrass Sam and thus keep him off the drugs. On top of that, the sudden transition from hedonism to violence recurs constantly in the series - most recently, with both Beats By Dre and My Little Pony transformed into guns, and casually waved around. Cade uses his skill with football to kill a man. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 22:41
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Indie Rocktopus posted:A montage of Optimus Prime attacking faces would be pretty convincing, either on its own or as an interlude during a longer video. Set to "That Face" from The Producers.
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Jul 4, 2014 22:47
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Indie Rocktopus posted:1) Terry, please make a proper eBook out of your criticism. Get that poo poo on Amazon. I'd buy a copy, and I bet a lot of other folks here would too. It would be great to see you get paid for all your excellent work. Honestly, I would pay into a kickstarter to get it properly formatted and in print form. I also should try and get back to properly formatting the pdf so it does not look like poop. \/\/ Yeah, I completely forgot about that. That could be an issue for anything that costs money. Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 23:16
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Do you need to ask for permission to use screen-grabs from the movies?
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Jul 4, 2014 23:17
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Paramount might be swayed to allow it if it's complimentary of the movies.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:57
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Do you need to ask for permission to use screen-grabs from the movies? Fair use, given that it's all pretty deep into educational and/or parody territory. That said, fair use doesn't actually stop frivolous lawsuits, it's just an affirmative defense against them. I would imagine the easiest way to avoid legal issues while keeping the images would be to license use of them from Paramount (which they may well be amenable to since it's a lot of material that argues that the movies are deep enough to be worth of academic analysis), and/or to work with a university publisher that's used to already handling that kind of thing with critical works. Fat Lou posted:Honestly, I would pay into a kickstarter to get it properly formatted and in print form. Me too. Fat Lou posted:I also should try and get back to properly formatting the pdf so it does not look like poop. For a while I've been pondering making a one-page HTML version with movie scene timeline bars or something else ~interactive~ but at least halfway useful (presuming Terry van Feleday would be OK with it). Would anybody potentially be interested in that happening? I'm still trying to think of other stuff that would be useful to include, beyond maybe links to the Transformers wiki or something for background information on the space robots. Roadie fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 02:51
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I'm not American, but I was under the impression that in America at least works of criticism have more leeway for referencing copyrighted material?Indie Rocktopus posted:I was talking about removing the stuff Terry described as genuinely pointless (Sam's parents getting high, etc.) (although if someone wanted to make an argument for the inclusion of that in the original films, I'd be interested in hearing it). I'd assume the misogyny and racial caricatures and everything would stay. A faithful edit would probably be much longer than a regular film, maybe four or five hours - hell, the sheer punishment of sitting through something that long might even make it more effective. SMG already pointed out some good details, most of which I hadn't really considered. For me those scenes are important simply because what the film focuses on tells us what to focus on. So first of all those scenes establish that Sam Witwicky is the protagonist rather than any of the robots. They're also the first clues that, unlike Bay's reputation says, the films are not just an endless stream of crowd-pleasing money-shots. There's something more and different going on there; the films are as much about ugly, uncomfortable, and mundane subjects as they are about showing us awesome robot battles and explosions. quote:I've seen people mention the Star Wars prequels as similar to Transformers a few times in this thread... is there any particularly enlightening criticism of those films out there? Speaking as someone who's only watched the prequels as a kid expecting superficial entertainment (and hated them), I'd be very interested in an alternate reading. In the current Star Wars thread there has been a lot of discussion of re-appraising those movies in the same basic way as Terry did for Transformers, but unfortunately its broken up by other discussions and not really comprehensive or collected. At the risk of over-simplifying, my own take starts here: a) The films are mainly about the corruption of the Jedi council and the Republic, rather than the fall of Anakin as you might expect (though all three parallel each other). Though watching the original movies may have led us to believe in a rosy, idealistic picture of both institutions the Prequels are about showing us the ugly and unsatisfying truth instead. Its worth noting that the Republic isn't really conquered by the Empire, it actually is the Empire. Just like the Storm Troopers were actually the Jedi's own army- the imagery of Yoda ordering around armies of Storm Troopers says a lot. In this view the Jedi coming across as kinda lame and unheroic is not a mistake, but actually the whole point. b) Edit- I think I said this part better in that thread, so I'll just quote it here: Lord Krangdar posted:I had always been disappointed at the believability and rushed feeling of Anakin's turn to the darkside, like one minute he just seems like an angsty young man and the next he's slaughtering children. But this time I realized there is no point of turning, really. He was raised and mentored by powerful people, the Jedi and Palpatine, who used political power, the Force, and violence to protect their own interests. That was all he knew all along, and his whole reason for going along with the Jedi's training program even though they were constantly belittling him (in his mind). So why not jump ship to the most powerful (politically and with the Force) and more violent side? Who wants to be on the losing team? The key scene for me that made me re-think my assumptions about the Jedi as heroes was the part in the third movie where they vote to forcibly remove Palpatine from power, taking it themselves, specifically before finding out that he had been a Sith pulling the strings of the war all along. Hbomberguy posted:I might actually do this for Smugfilm. Any scenes you'd want to see done in particular? The one that interests me most is the one Terry pointed out in her conclusion where one of the Autobots just crushes a couple of civilian extras in a car, notable because its such a small detail yet it still had to be put there deliberately. I never actually saw that scene in the film, though, so it would be nice to have a clip of it. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 03:01
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Bugblatter posted:Well, the ASC's write-ups on the most of Bay's films are print only, and my personal archive is stored back in America. The article for The Island is online, but it was an under-prepped shoot that no one was too happy with, so the article is purely technical (You won't find many directors who can speak with as much technical precision about photography as Bay does here, but I don't think anyone's questioning his technical skill). If you still want to read it, it's here: https://www.theasc.com/magazine/aug05/island/page1.html Interesting link, thanks for digging that up.
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Jul 5, 2014 04:37
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Bloodnose posted:And some reactions from Hong Kongers on Facebook: Yeah the PRC pandering was hilarious such as Hong Kong desperately phoning the central government for help or the chinese dream waifu beating up the burly white soldiers.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:02
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SMG, Krangdar, thanks for your take on Sam's (terrible) parents and for the Star Wars stuff. Lord Krangdar posted:I'm not American, but I was under the impression that in America at least works of criticism have more leeway for referencing copyrighted material? My understanding is that, under fair use, you're allowed to directly quote up to 10% of a text in a work of criticism or parody. A sequence of still images from the films being analyzed is, in theory, okay. Again, none of this is protection against frivolous lawsuits.  Generally, though, the entertainment industry seems less likely to prosecute eBook/small press/Kickstarter projects and the like. In the age of the internet, if they went after every single piece of fanart or etsy project, they'd be in a never-ending cycle of time-consuming and unprofitable lawsuits. Realistically, worst-case is you get a C&D letter.Leospeare posted:Set to "That Face" from The Producers. "The urge to merge can rob us of our senses/ The need to breed can make a man a drone" That or "Face to Face"!  You could probably write a whole undergrad media studies thesis comparing and contrasting Bay and Daft Punk's use of images of machines, dehumanization, masks, etc.Alright, incoming  . Age of Extinction was sold out last night but I got a chance to watch ROTF for the first time. A couple of thoughts...- Terry mentioned Lynch in her comments, and during the scene with Simmons and the dwarf border guard I couldn't help but be reminded of Twin Peaks. ROTF certainly reaches that level of incoherent nightmare imagery during its climax. - I'm aware of the recent nerd fetishization of  but hear me out: I just read L. Sprague De Camp's biography of Lovecraft and I've been rereading some of his stories, and I can't help but feel the series quotes him in a couple of places. Specifically the Dreads in the third film, the incomprehensible Transformers language, Megatron who lies in the Laurentian Abyss dreaming (and covered in octopi), and most importantly Alice. The film seems to be engaging with the racism and gynophobia that permeate Lovecraft's work, as well as striving for his cosmic horror in the face of uncaring elder gods, though Bay achieves this not through atmosphere and inference but through his signature, exhausting assault on the senses.- A quick anecdote, though I promise this has a point: I was visiting home and walking my family's dog a few weeks back, when he unexpectedly dove into the bushes and devoured something. He does this all the time, and it's usually a leaf or a berry, so I didn't notice anything unusual at first. But he seemed to being having particular trouble swallowing the whatever-it-was. I was worried he'd gotten something stuck in his throat, so I stopped him and then pried his mouth open to see if I could get it out. There was a face inside. My dog had eaten a baby bird, which was still squirming and trying to escape. I tried to save it but it was already halfway down his throat and there wasn't anything I could do. That was some serious Alien poo poo, but it wasn't just horrifying because it was disgusting; it was specifically horrifying because it was my family's dog, this figure I associate with home and innocence and family and safety, thoughtlessly murdering a baby. That's what I felt watching ROTF. I was a Beast Wars kid, but I absorbed enough G1 nonsense over the years to know Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, and the movie had the same effect on me as seeing the dog eat that bird. Your favorite toy has come to life and he's murdering children. The use of the Transformers brand and franchise isn't only important in these films as a way of mocking the manchild audience; it also evokes for the manchild audience a special kind of horror. It's not just some robots and explosions and the wanton destruction of Middle Eastern homes and landmarks in a satire of American imperialism - it's specifically your pals that you loved as a kid playing and murdering in a giant sandbox. Again, there's a nightmarish quality. "Michael Bay killed my childhood" indeed. - I bet someone's already commented on this, but the shots from the perspective of the Predator Drone pilots are indistinguishable from the shots taken from the perspective of the Transformers. Same distortion, statistics running across the screen, etc. Subtle, guys.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:08
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Indie Rocktopus, I like your notes on ROTF there. That nightmarish quality pervading the second film is exactly why you can't take out all the meandering or cringe-worthy parts and still achieve the same effect. I already made the Burroughs comparison, but since you now mentioned Lynch there's the same kind of meandering nightmare atmosphere in his film Inland Empire (just at a much slower pace), and I think periodically withholding clear plot-progression from the audience is a big part of creating that feeling in all three works.
Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 19:24
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Indie Rocktopus posted:- I'm aware of the recent nerd fetishization of Cybertronians are more or less metal shoggoths.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:42
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Maarak posted:Cybertronians are more or less metal shoggoths. The Quintessons, with their radial symmetry and tentacles, are Elder Things. Unicron is Azathoth the "Nuclear Chaos", while Primus is Shub-Niggurath who spawned millions of offspring.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:22
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I just There's a scene when they're in the spaceship prison, and there's a vagina alien in one of the cages, and Hound antagonizes it for no reason so it sneezes/spits/ejaculates in his face, and he says "you're too ugly to live, bitch" and murders it. I can't even. This loving movie.
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Jul 6, 2014 00:28
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Indie Rocktopus posted:I just Best creepy moment was trying to spin a 20 year old guy being with 17 year old girl as something cute and romantic.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:01
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etalian posted:Best creepy moment was trying to spin a 20 year old guy being with 17 year old girl as something cute and romantic. That's not really creepy but it does make him a loser.
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Jul 6, 2014 02:00
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DeimosRising posted:That's not really creepy but it does make him a loser. They were right in that loser-y sweet spot. A sophomore and senior, not usually that big of a deal. Two twenty-somethings with a 2-3 year age gap, that's pretty normal. But a teenager and an adult? Hard to spin that as romantic. The creepy part was that he had the relevant laws memorized and had a printout in his pocket at all times. Definitely one of those situations where if all you have is "But it's technically legal!", you've already lost the moral argument.
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Jul 6, 2014 03:56
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Leospeare posted:The creepy part was that he had the relevant laws memorized and had a printout in his pocket at all times. Definitely one of those situations where if all you have is "But it's technically legal!", you've already lost the moral argument. That wasn't all he had, though. He showed that he genuinely cared about her.
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Jul 6, 2014 04:11
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Is it ever addressed whatever happened to former Nest workers and Autobot allies (Eps, Sam etc) or are we lead to believe they just don't know the new head is gunning down their friends and allies.
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Jul 6, 2014 05:20
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SirDrone posted:Is it ever addressed whatever happened to former Nest workers and Autobot allies (Eps, Sam etc) or are we lead to believe they just don't know the new head is gunning down their friends and allies. Really, who gives a poo poo?
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Jul 6, 2014 07:15
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Wasn't NEST basically destroyed during Dark of the Moon, hence why they had to go around and scrounge up anyone they could?
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Jul 6, 2014 07:41
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Milky Moor posted:Wasn't NEST basically destroyed during Dark of the Moon, hence why they had to go around and scrounge up anyone they could? They were intact up until Sentinel Prime betrayed them, I don't remember how much damage he did. The main NEST characters were certainly still around at the end of the movie. They should have drawn a connection between NEST and Frasier's Howling Commandos, to explain Optimus's turnaround on humans. "My allies stabbed me in the back"* seems more compelling than "My friends and I are being hunted so we just decided to split up and hide and do nothing else and I blame all humans everywhere". * "My allies realized I was using them, and decided to quit playing my game" Leospeare fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 08:02
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Dr. Fraiser Crane's deathsquads did repeat a line that NEST(or at least NEST-led troops) said during the Battle of Chicago in the third film, "Burning steel!" when they attack their alien targets.
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Jul 6, 2014 09:07
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Maarak posted:Dr. Fraiser Crane's deathsquads did repeat a line that NEST(or at least NEST-led troops) said during the Battle of Chicago in the third film, "Burning steel!" when they attack their alien targets. That whole scene is pretty much a mirror of the initial scene from Revenge of the Fallen. In ROTF, at night, the Autobots and their NEST troops track down a pair of hiding Decepticons through alien heat vision, sneak up on them and engage them at close range with handheld weapons and helicopter support. The Decepticons make a run for it whereupon they are finally brought down and executed by Optimus Prime and/or Sideswipe. In TF4, at night, Cemetery Wind tracks down a hiding Autobot through alien heat vision, sneaks up on him and engages him at close range with handheld weapons and helicopter support. The Autobot makes a run for it where he is promptly disabled by human forces and then executed by Lockdown. The Autobot in question has this line like: "Stupid humans, what's wrong with you? Can't you see I've been injured?" Which is kind of funny considering that, y'know, injuries have never stopped Autobots from hurting Decepticons before and it's been pretty clear throughout the series that anything but a killshot isn't a mortal wound when it comes to Transformers. It's a really, really good scene that one.
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Jul 6, 2014 09:15
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So I saw this last night and I had a few thoughts that might help us puzzle this fourth film out. I really feel it should've been subtitled 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dad', instead of Age of Extinction, but I doubt the Hasbro marketing executives would've gone for that. A lot of hollywood films do 'short version of the story before the long version of the story,' and I don't think this one is any exception. Cade is out Optimus at the start of the film. He's fundamentally an irresponsible criminal with an obsession with the past and little to no moral values for himself, but imposes his idea of what morals should be on his daughter, oppressing her and denying her rights that he abused himself as a teenager. 'Cause she's a girl. When his acts catch up with him, in the form of someone calling him on his horseshit and trying to sell the house he hasn't paid for out from under him, his response is ultimately machismo, he brings out his baseball bat/penis and uses it to threaten and chase away the people who sought to punish him for the things... that he had every right to be punished for. I think the main thing to remember when analyzing this film that makes thing really click for me though is Galvatron isn't Megatron. He's Tessa. Sort of. He's Optimus' bastard child. Although I'm not sure we should call him a he, as he's got a giant vagina in his chest which the machismo CEO who is also Cade is quick to degrade. I go back and forth on whether he's the progeny of Optimus and Megatron or the progeny of Optimus and humanity. I tend to think the latter is the case. Remember that Megatron is Optimus' brother in this continuity. Galvatron resembles Megatron, but not because of the whole infection thing, but because he and Prime have the same genetic code: Megatron's infection was that of ideas, that's what he passed on to Galvatron, a desire to protect the oppressed, not a physical genetic code. Alternatively, he could be the progeny of Megatron and Optimus, since he is Tessa, who has one dead parent and one living one. In this case humanity is only the incubating womb of this unfortunate birth. I tend to like this version because it casts further doubt on Cade. How her mother died is never answered, and he's pretty much presented as an amoral rear end in a top hat with a short temper who is ready and willing to impose his dysfunctional ideas of what's right onto his family. Wonder if he smashed her head in with his baseball bat after she proposed a truce in a family fight. Ultimately, the whole thing comes down to the fundamental unfairness of Cade and Tessa's relationship. Cade is allowed to party and have sex with girls as a high school athlete until it catches up with him, and despite his many protests that his girl is the best thing that ever happened to him, he clearly bars her from enjoying any of the privileges at that age he himself enjoyed. 'Cause she's a girl. Meanwhile, Galvatron goes and rebels against his creators, and attempts to punish them for their acts of oppression against him and his brothers. He promptly gets slapped down by Optimus, the megadad. In the end, Optimus goes off to space to rebel against his creators and wreak probably equally devastating levels of death and misery on them... except he's right because he's got a sword/baseball bat/penis instead of a gaping hole in his chest where his soul should be/vagina. Tessa ultimately Stops Worrying and Loves the Dad despite the fact that her dad was constantly wrong and it was often by the acts of her and the man she chose that they're even alive. Hell, it was her act of rebellion from her dads orders that ultimately saves his life. Lockdown/Fraiser were real men who faced the consequences of their actions and the actions of others, unlike Cade and Optimus who dodge any responsibility and lie and self-decieve themselves into believing they are the good guys when they're really just macho thugs. While amoral they still had the best interests of the galaxy/nation in mind. They are not punished for their selfishness, though they did have some: they're punished for their selflessness, which is a womanly trait in the eyes of machismo.
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Jul 6, 2014 12:55
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Saw this myself last night, too. Jesus gently caress. I think my mind has reassembled itself to the point that I can post something semi-coherent (and, like Age of Extinction itself, much longer than is healthy or reasonable). Thanks! This thread has provided a whole lot of entertainment, glad I could contribute something. Who cares if Bay's trying to satirize or just mindlessly entertain? Watching the films this way is a hell of a lot more fun. The MSJ posted:The Quintessons, with their radial symmetry and tentacles, are Elder Things. Unicron is Azathoth the "Nuclear Chaos", while Primus is Shub-Niggurath who spawned millions of offspring. And if Megatron is Cthulhu, then the Fallen is Nyarlathotep, coming out of Egypt and turning his followers into insane cultists. Also, in the second film we had Sam driven mad by the eldritch knowledge of the Allspark/Necronomicon. Seriously though, I have no idea if Bay's deliberately homaging Lovecraft - but he is unquestionably leaning on the "cosmic horror" themes that Lovecraft introduced into popular culture. And in each case, the inconceivable and invincible monsters from beyond space and time are definitively crushed by Optimus Prime, champion of American capitalism. It doesn't matter if there are evil gods out there, Bay is saying - we've created something stronger, and scarier. DeimosRising posted:That's not really creepy but it does make him a loser. I immediately thought of this Onion article. And I literally laughed out loud, because the supposed robot explosionfest paused for two minutes to lecture the audience about Texas age of consent laws - information that's shorthand for "creepy manchild". Okay, I had some quick unrelated thoughts like Ember did, and then I'll finish up with something a little more in-depth: - Stinger seemed like a callback to Lazerbeak's pink Bumblebee form in the last film. - The film keeps coming back to intellectual property law. We have Wahlberg's "I own you" speech in the beginning, and his desire to patent the swordgun, and everything with Not Steve Jobs building up to Bumblebee's "I hate cheap knockoffs" line when he kills Stinger. Perhaps the film is suggesting that corporate ownership of narratives and ideas (especially narratives that have the devotion and loyalty of countless fans, many of whom are children) is not a good thing. - I have no doubt the film was acknowledging the existence of Bronys when it showed the overweight, neckbearded scientist smiling gleefully while turning the My Little Pony into a semiautomatic rifle. Sadly, at no point did Michael Bay burst into the theater and scream PUT DOWN YOUR loving TOYS to the audience, but the film comes pretty close. - Ember, I thought the same thing about Galvatron as the bastard lovechild of Optimus and Megatron. - The Marky Mark exploding Bud Light truck moment was funny. I'm sick of films making jokes about product placement while still, you know, getting paid for it, but Bay in typical style he went so far over the top with it that it worked. - Wahlberg's character keeps calling the daughter "the best thing I ever made." Subtle. - I also liked Crosshairs' line about wanting to die for Optimus Prime: "That's either great leadership, or brainwashing." Also subtle. - ...and Fraiser beautifully expressing the Fear Of The Other demonstrated in one way or another by almost every character in the series: "There are no good aliens or bad aliens, there's only us and them." If there's a more succinct explanation of xenophobia, I haven't heard it. - ...and Lockdown's comment about "collecting" all the knights. - Alright, now for the big one: I'm ashamed to admit I kind of... liked the Autobots this goaround (shudder). At least for the first half. They're still complete psychopaths, but there's something endearing about how blatantly the three new guys embody action movie stereotypes. These guys learned about earth language and culture through the internet, so it came across as an incompetent attempt to adopt human identities. I know it's another blatant "robots in disguise" deception trick to garner human sympathy, but I'm ashamed to admit I fell for it. But much more importantly, for the first two acts of the film the Autobots are actually in a sympathetic position. They're hiding, they're alone, and they're being identified to the American people as Decepticons to ensure the public is complicit their incarceration, torture and execution. The illegal immigrant parallels are obvious, and I believe specifically made by the film at a few points. Even Optimus Prime... I know he wakes up and his first impulse is to loving murder everything, but for a bit he seemed more like a senile, shellshocked grandpa instead of a military dictator. He had a bullet in his brain. He deliberately calls back to Jetfire in the second film, and Megatron as a beaten-up truck in the third. That only lasts for so long, though. The key line for me was Crosshairs saying "I'm sick of being the underdog. Underdogs suck." And then Optimus calls upon the Dinobots, who he acknowledges as "legendary warriors" and therefor sentient beings like himself... but when sucking up to them doesn't work and they refuse to enter into his servitude, he beats the poo poo out of Grimlock and turns them all into pack animals, and rides Grimlock like a pony while smacking his rear end with a sword. And he goes back and kills all the evil robots because now he has the biggest, coolest toys (who are actually enslaved intelligent beings) we're back where we started. That was a key theme of the film for me: characters almost making choices that lead them to change and grow as people, but then regressing back to their previous, immature selves. Marky Mark is an unemployed toy collector, who almost lets his daughter escape their weird codependent quasi-incestuous situation and become an adult... and he does, but only once he knows he can hand her off to another man like himself. Lucky Charms and Angelic Blonde 4.0 actually have a committed long-distance relationship going, and unlike Sam and Mikaela it's not because they've shared trauma but because they actually like and care about each other... and then by the end of the film, Wahlberg's convinced Lucky Charms to treat Blonde 4 like a daughter/possession, and (as Ember pointed out) she gratefully accepts both of these unhealthy paternal relationships. There were exactly three moments that stood out to me as genuine character progression, and all of them came late in the film, and strangely enough from Optimus. First, he actually lets the Dinobots go. Then there's his command to the Autobots: "Defend". No speechifying, no platitudes about protecting humanity's freedom so he can set up a surveillance state and commit genocide. Just very specifically defend these three specific people, who I have previously referred to as family, because they stuck with us and we'll stick with them. "Defend." It's still paternal, and still refusing responsibility for the destruction he and his soldiers cause, but I'm almost convinced there's a sliver (dare I say a spark?) of humanity there. And then, finally... well, Optimus has his own "ghost ship" moment like Simmons in the second film. He understands: I am the toy of my creators, I am the intellectual property of powerful beings, I am a character designed to sell products to children. And he's loving had it. And he gets the hell out of there, away from the humans he keeps getting killed, to use his uncontrollable rage and capacity for destruction... well, not productively, but at least against someone who deserves it. The universe of the Transformers films is hell, it's a Boschian fever dream of murder and consumer iconography and dehumanization, and Optimus is leaving to find God and tell him how he feels about that. It's still nihilistic, but now it's nihilistic in a comprehensible, anti-authoritarian way. Of course, if Optimus rips God's face in half and then becomes God (and maybe that's how we get Primus?) then we're back to square one. ...and that's all I got, ladies and gentlemen. I suddenly have tremendous sympathy for that computer that melted when trying to render Devastator. I think I'm burned out on posting for a few days now, but I'm very much looking forward to reading everyone's continued discussion.
Indie Rocktopus fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 18:35
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| # ? May 9, 2024 23:49 |
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Hmmm I hadn't considered that at the end Optimus is rocketing off to confront Hasbro.Indie Rocktopus posted:I'm ashamed to admit I kind of... liked the Autobots this goaround (shudder). At least for the first half. They're still complete psychopaths, but there's something endearing about how blatantly the three new guys embody action movie stereotypes. These guys learned about earth language and culture through the internet, so it came across as an incompetent attempt to adopt human identities. I know it's another blatant "robots in disguise" deception trick to garner human sympathy, but I'm ashamed to admit I fell for it. In this one it seemed less like they had these human media tropes as disguises to be accepted by the humans, and more like they needed them because they were so lost and directionless. The whole film felt oddly sad and sincere to me, which was a surprise.
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Jul 6, 2014 18:56
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