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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Transformers 3 is a genuinely good alien invasion film along the lines of War of The Worlds and Battle: Los Angeles that is continually interrupted by the obscene presence of the Autobots. It's the film's running joke: that any poignancy is cut short by Optimus stepping into the frame in his trumped-up idiot uniform, or Bumblebee appearing to snatch a falling character from the air (a recurring image). Yeah, there's never a moment where the soldiers are filmed or treated with anything other than respect; they all act competently, and a group of soldiers literally takes down a decent number of giant alien invading robots.
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Oct 4, 2013 19:38
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One thing I've liked about the Transformers movies is how utterly comprehensible and mundane the mental states of these alien robots are. They get happy, angry, sad, frustrated. They show pettiness, courage, scheming, haughtiness. In so many movies the alien presence is distant and otherworldly, or at least mercurial, whereas the Transformers are literally just dudes (are there any female transformers?) that just happen to be 20 foot-tall metal robots. It goes a long way to making the almost immediate entangling of Human and Transformer interests believable.
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Oct 4, 2013 20:26
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This really should, with your permission, be formatted into a frontpage article.
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Oct 4, 2013 21:00
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I pointed it out in the last thread, but now it struck me again. While I found RotF a hard to watch blurry mess that bored me with action scenes, in this final action sequence everything is crystal clear. The visual overload comes from the amount of things happening on the periphery, rather than any obfuscation - yet shots clearly have a centre for you to focus on. On the periphery, the motions of the characters feel incredibly real and clever. You're not watching the focus of a particular scene while everything mostly stands still, you are the spectator of real combat... but framed in such a way that you can always easily focus on the thing at hand. The other combatants act consistently and they are not ignored by the movie, even if they are initially ignored by your eye. When I first watched the movie, I found it so immensely boring I couldn't get past the first 30 minutes. The previous thread made me try again, and that time I spent at least an hour on just those 15 minutes. I had to see what every character did. One of my favourite shots is at 6:17 in the linked video (relinking for the new page http://vimeo.com/75690695). I love Bumblebee's movement here. He's not just a giant robot, he's a transformer. It's also kind of like a reverse version of what happens at 20 seconds into the G1 intro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQtMVJKBFc The beginning with the soldiers also feels wrong to me. Terry pointed it out but it's very striking to me. It's not triumphant. It doesn't feel like the underdogs finally getting the upper hand over their oppressors. To me it feels like majestic creatures being hounded and mercilessly butchered after being rendered helpless and pathetic. Zeppelin Insanity fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Oct 4, 2013 |
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Oct 4, 2013 22:11
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I'm not gonna lie, I kinda want you to tackle Pain and Gain next. I wasn't as big a fan of it as most people in this thread, but there's still an insane amount of poo poo going on that would lend itself to a similar thread. Michael Bay kinda has that same perfectionist streak as Stanley Kubrick, only in Pain and Gain, he uses it to cram as many dick jokes into a scene as he can.
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Oct 5, 2013 02:57
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:The beginning with the soldiers also feels wrong to me. Terry pointed it out but it's very striking to me. It's not triumphant. It doesn't feel like the underdogs finally getting the upper hand over their oppressors. To me it feels like majestic creatures being hounded and mercilessly butchered after being rendered helpless and pathetic. Well, like I said before, it's a David and Goliath reference. In the accurate translation, David knocks the gigantic Philistine warrior down with a blow to the leg, and then decapitates him in the name of God. He subsequently leads the Israelites to victory as their king. What makes the victory here ambivalent is the fact that the god in question is not the god of Abraham, but the false god Optimus. An earlier scene shows that it was Bumblebee who handed down the knowledge of how to kill the Cybertronians. And you have the lead NEST guy doing the 'wink-wink' plausible deniability thing when Optimus leads the unauthorized attack on Iran. We know which side his bread's buttered on. Que is a deliberately-poo poo character, but I absolutely love the scene where he distributes those grenades and grappling hooks to the NEST team. He very specifically scatters them on the floor like toys, so that everyone must kneel to pick them up. (!!!) This is one of the most important scenes in the film, because it succinctly illustrates the Autobot concept of freedom: you're free to own toys. You are free to buy a sportscar. You're free to profit off the exploitation of others, or to be exploited. The command to kneel is unspoken. Even ultra-rich business guy Malkovich loves being subdued and dominated by Bumblebee. It's a hoot to play with these toys - even moreso when they play with you. Contrast this to Megatron, who stands against this false freedom and for genuine freedom in the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the end of the film, you get the cliche of the protagonist driving up in his reclaimed sportscar. It's like the end of Back To The Future and countless other films. Sam steps out and walks forward, to look up reverently at Optimus - but the shot lingers on the car as it shudders, twists and unfolds into a giant alien thing. Forget that the is Transformers for a second. It's weird for a film to end like this. Oh, and then Bumblebee scatters junk wedding rings on the ground like toys. Sam and Carly both kneel to pick them up, as Bumblebee laughs and laughs.
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Oct 5, 2013 03:53
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well, like I said before, it's a David and Goliath reference. In the accurate translation, David knocks the gigantic Philistine warrior down with a blow to the leg, Doesn't Sam hit the Decepticon liaison (his name escapes me) in the knee with a rock?
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Oct 5, 2013 08:21
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Milky Moor posted:Doesn't Sam hit the Decepticon liaison (his name escapes me) in the knee with a rock? Sam's pursuit and brief fight sequence with Dylan mirrors Prime's rampage and the rest of the action sequence in some fun ways. He adopts the fluid movement style of an autobot, ducking and weaving through the urban hellscape with ease. Sam gets his opportunity to strike when Dylan's face is covered by some windblown paper, not unlike the parachute blinding shockwave. I'll be shocked if the next film doesn't continue the trend of autobot style violence being perpetuated by humans against other humans.
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Oct 5, 2013 08:42
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I think it has been mentioned in the last thread but for some reason no one brought it up when it finally happened: At 12:00 in the video, Optimus Prime just killed Megatron and Sentinel, the only two Transformers who were as big as him (Sure there were other ones that were physically bigger than him...). He looks down, weakened. We are unsure. The camera follows his motion as he straightens out his back. He is still in the game. He is fine. Then the music starts. This is not a musical cue for the good guys finally winning the day. This is the music that plays when the bad guy has no one left in his way to take ownership of Earth. No one was strong enough to stop him. The soldiers walk on past the burning rubble with looks of fear and confusion. Not even Sam knows what to make of it. No one smiles that it's over. There is no hope for humanity. Then Bumblebee's slapstick brings them back into file and order.
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Oct 5, 2013 13:10
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Well, like I said before, it's a David and Goliath reference. In the accurate translation, David knocks the gigantic Philistine warrior down with a blow to the leg, and then decapitates him in the name of God. He subsequently leads the Israelites to victory as their king. deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, the judge. He wafts his hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and fiddling all at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:04
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Conclusions, or really just ramblings With these threads, I mainly wanted to do three things: Point out some of the subtler going-ons that easily got lost in the obnoxious loudness of these films for most people, show that what’s presented doesn’t always jive cleanly with the idea of them being totally brainless, and present an overarching narrative that I feel places a more coherent light on these supposed inconsistencies. In hindsight, I feel I’ve focused a bit much on that third bit and not quite enough on the second. See, the thing is, this is, of course, only one possible reading of the films, and not necessarily a very good one. However, I do feel that it’s one of the only readings that takes the entirety of the movies into consideration. Although I skipped over parts (mainly in Revenge), that was generally because I felt they only reiterated things that had been shown before or otherwise didn’t contradict my thoughts, and people in the thread were always ready to help out and explain things to me. But whenever I try to view the films through the alternate, commonly accepted lens, there’s always quite a few things that trip me up. - The first film specifically brings up the way the Cybertronians learn our language through the internet (which is something that was invented for the film, the Transformers were always just capable of communication before and since), but then conveniently ignores this plot point when Megatron wakes up and immediately starts talking in English. Coupled with that first sentence being him clarifying what his name is, this seems to exist exclusively to show that he was conscious during his captivity – something that puts both his character and the humans’ in a totally different light. - The first film also makes a point to have Optimus show remorse over the murder of Megatron and destruction of the Allspark – putting his actions in the latter movies into a rather odd light. Compare “You left me no choice, brother” to “time to find out.” - What is with the absurd focus on Autobots smashing faces? It’s only more visceral than other bodily damage when it’s done in select cases, but by the third movie it reaches levels of self-parody – and only the heroes do it. By contrast, many if not most of the Autobots wear battle masks or otherwise cover their faces a lot. In the context of them being heroic, what is that supposed to mean? - What is it with glass items? Particularly in the third film, you have a lot of people looking at or through binoculars/telescopes, glass panes, crystal balls, recording devices... - The third film has frequent shots of security cameras, surveillance equipment, armed guards and so on. The subtle and silent establishment of a surveillance state is not something you just kind of throw into your action movie willy-nilly, is it? - why are women dogs - The absolute disregard of continuity and “realism” in movies 2 and 3. Consider scenes like Megatron’s Africa scene, where he appears to be in a totally different desert in every single shot, or Sentinel already having an alt mode and speaking English from the get-go, or every single crass break from science and reason taken in aggregate. It’s just bizarre. - This shot:  A fun thing to try would be showing this shot to someone who has never heard of the films completely out of context and ask them what they think the situation depicted is. I would bet they would identify the people in front as the protagonists and the figure in the back as attacking/threatening them, because that’s how the shot is set up. Optimus is a massive, indistinct presence slowly approaching the foreground where the humans are, framed by a scene of total destruction. His entire upper body – and with that, his face – is offscreen, so even with the upturned camera he has no defined height, making him appear endlessly tall. You can’t quite make out what he’s holding, but he seems to wield it like a gun: It feels like he could point it at the screen any second. The humans are facing away from him, as if attempting to crawl to safety, clearly distraught. Every single thing about this frame bleeds an unknowable malevolence. Of course, in context, it all seems explained and benign, but here’s the thing: The movies are full of shots like these. Optimus in particular is constantly framed in ways that make him appear malicious, and although the narrative tries its best to sweep the cinematography under the rug, some part of you can’t help but notice. Remember, Optimus is the active narrator of the films, as well. - Similarly, Megatron in movie 3: Everything about his framing suggests pity and sympathy. He is literally seen caring for newborns. The camera practically can’t get enough of his face. The movie constantly encourages sympathy for the guy, and in the end he does something that’s totally uncalled for as a movie villain. If they just wanted to have another bad guy, why bother with all this? Why not just make him attack Optimus in the end, and make the audience feel a deserved victory? - Why link Megatron to the Constructicons specifically? If you look at the G1 cartoon, there’s a very clear divide where the Autobots are working class or otherwise common vehicles, and the Decepticons are military equipment or otherwise offensive weapons. Devastator was basically nothing more than a themed lackey. The first film carries this with Starscream, Brawl and Bonecrusher, but then suddenly humanity gains a total monopoly over military vehicles and all the Decepticons are now road- or construction vehicles. Megatron himself has never had any working-class theme in the history of the franchise (though the IDW comics and Transformers Prime have recently picked up on this). Because blue-collar workers are the everyman, and therefore the hero. - Here’s something interesting the films don’t do: Turn Optimus into a Christ figure. This is an idea that’s as old as G1, and a trope popular in action movies in general, but even though Optimus dies and is then revived in the most biblical movie this franchise has ever seen (casting Megatron as Lucifer, no less), they made a wide swerve around any images that could link him to that archetypal story. - Another shot:  I didn’t actually notice until someone in the thread pointed it out, but look at the red car. Notice how there are two extras cowering in there. That’s the car Ironhide crushes under a baddie for no reason, evidently killing two people in the process. That car could have been empty. Those two extras were not just there to play a prank on the team – they had to be actively hired and directed to sit in the car and hide from some empty air that a robot would be CGIed into later. Why. The filmmakers expended an active effort just to make the heroes’ actions just that little bit more insane, in a situation barely anyone in the audience actually noticed! And these are just the more obvious ones. The problem I have with the suggestion that these movies have little vision or intention behind them is because inherently, you are stating that stuff like this is totally unintentional, or just kinda worked out that way, or whatever. I frequently see filmmakers accused of this sort of carelessness and not thinking things through, but I feel it’s a rather myopic thing for viewers to do. See, it’s fine for them, because they invest two hours into a movie, half-heartedly pay attention to the things exploding, then walk out of the theatre, shallowly play back a cliff-notes version of the thing back in their heads and think “yeah, there sure wasn’t much to this.” They can do that. Paramount Pictures has been working on and off on Transformers for five years. It’s difficult to imagine, as a simple person in the audience, how much thought and effort has to go into every single thing committed to film. What we see on screen is just the end result of many, many hours of consideration and debate and design, an incredible series of compromises between artistic vision, resources and the demands of the audience. Take a look at this concept art:  You might remember these things from the first movie. Actually, I’m pretty sure you don’t, because they only appear in a single scene, in no shot that lasts longer than five seconds, in total darkness. (It’s the Autobots’ atmospheric entry mode.) It’s far from their only piece of concept art. Notice how even beyond the crazy amount of surface detail (that had to be properly represented on the CGI model, as well!), they carefully and deliberately planned out the angle of their collision with the ground, the depth, the scale, and so on. All this engineering of how this thing would look and work, for like one minute of footage in a 2 and ½ hour film. And that’s from the first film, which itself shows much less care and love than the third or the better parts of the second. For five years, now four movies, the team lived and breathed and almost literally ate Transformers, as it provided the financial foundation for their lives. For every shot and re-shot and re-re-shot set-up had to be done, work organised, actors and extras directed, results evaluated... Need I remind you that the director named his dog after the film, was practically so offended at the franchise continuing on without him that he returned to it even after he announced being done with it, twice(!) and felt personally insulted when Hugo Weaving admitted his heart wasn’t really in it? Take a close look at these movies and, even without any clever subversive storytelling or whatever, and you begin to notice how deliberately and attentively crafted they are and how much respect was paid to set- and sound design and how hard they tried to get the special effects to look just right. This does not square with my idea of a cynical, low-effort cash grab. I simply have to believe that all this theatric complexity has meaning, because suggesting that the team made the antagonist more emotive and filmed him in a more sympathetic camera than the hero because they can’t even get sub-filmmaking 101 framing poo poo right feels both facile and ludicrous to me. Everything is there because the filmmakers wanted it to be – yes, even in Revenge of the Fallen. Of course, speaking of Revenge, let’s not forget that no matter the amount of earnest work put into something, sometimes it just turns out poo poo. There’s a strange perception I noticed in critical response where people seem to find it difficult to consider something both earnest or satirical and, well, not very well made. Sucker Punch can’t be an honest indictment of cinematic objectification and a somewhat poorly conceived, almost hypocritical attempt at being more clever than you should. Transformers can’t be an inversion of the traditional hero/villain narrative showcasing the effects of authoritarian propaganda and a meandering, under-focused, often poorly communicated, destructive mess. Maybe it’s a strange entertainment-version of the Just World Fallacy where lacking results must necessarily result from lacking effort, or maybe it’s modern audiences’ strange worship of subversiveness, where a work critical of old tropes must by default be better than the works it’s Beyond the inherent serious issues of dismissing genre- or even cliché films, this causes some serious tension in this case due to Transformers’ unique presentation. Although it doubtlessly presents itself as a large-scale action movie, its idea of what action movies are like doesn’t exactly seem sincere. But it’s a very strange new standard of insincerity that doesn’t gel with what we usually consider “subversive”. Where Marvel’s Avengers is like a bad anime stereotype going “b-but it’s not like I like anti-intellectualism or anything!” *blushes furiously*, Transformers is more like a strange hall of mirrors where everything seems to be a reflection of something real but is unpleasantly stretched and warped and then you take a closer look and what you thought was a reflection is actually your face painted on the wall in pig blood and unspeakable human liquids. The other day I watched Fast Five (2011) – seemingly a movie with similar sensibilities, being all fast cars and burly guys and pretty girls and cartoonish large-scale destruction, but I find it an absurd idea to even compare the two stories, much less find actual common ground. Calling TF an action film suggests that it actually holds itself to the conventions of the genre, but it’s so totally differently constructed, from the ground up, than any other action film I’ve seen, that trying to use its genre as its summation ends up making rather strange claims about the film and the genre. It’s a colourful assembly of cinematographic elements collected from a wide variety of sources, none of which is new per se, but collected and distilled in a way that creates a totally distinctive “feel” that almost seems to supersede the sources in people’s minds, and ended up having a massive influence on releases since – making Transformers, of course, the Citizen Kane of dumb action blockblusghuhghhhlllllgrrrrrrrrrrg In this case, it is only natural that people approach the films as what they claim to be, but that’s where everything breaks down. We meet them with the critical framings and language we use to reflect them against our expectations of what makes an action movie good: Do we want to see the characters succeed? Can we put ourselves in their place, and do their emotions, as portrayed, resonate with what we feel? Can we immerse ourselves in the emotional charge of the moment? Inherently the cards are stacked against the film, because we expect something out of it it was simply not designed to offer. When people cite one of the most frequent criticisms of the films as films, that the action sequences themselves are “boring”, they are not making a statement about the sequences themselves, because past the first film they, by themselves, are still some of the most excellently staged, framed and executed action sequences in modern cinema. The thing that’s lacking is the emotional investment. Action films go great lengths to make us empathise with their characters, to make us feel what they feel, because only then can we really place ourselves with them emotionally. The result is that even scenes that are clunky or loose and amateurish can still feel satisfying and impressive just because they reflect the characters’ – and our – emotional state, see the entire original Star Wars trilogy. Transformers is not just a film that doesn’t bother involving us with its primary combatants, but designs them to actively reject sympathy, portraying them as faceless and alien and vaguely malicious. The greatest director in the world couldn’t make a conventionally satisfying action scene with these ingredients. Of course, I hardly think they are without merit. They’re still consistently the best parts of the films, after all – they’re not engaging in the way seeing Luke finally confront Darth Vader is engaging, but they are more beautiful in the sense of an abstract painting or a choreographed dance, a visual spectacle that sort of justifies itself. It’s not a better or worse approach to moviemaking, but it requires a different approach – and I would argue, more good will – on the audience’s part as well. And I guess that’s one of the problems with the trilogy. It builds a very clear tone and expectation, then delivers something totally different with zero attempts to actually involve the audience or make them understand what’s happening. Well, not zero – the odd thing is that we do have such strategies employed for the robot characters (with the visual design tricks I outlined, the facial focus (or lack thereof) and so on), but plays much more sloppily with the human ones, who still do take up the vast majority of screentime. The result feels sloppy and dissonant, and although there’s some attempts to shock the audience into reconsidering what they just saw at the very end of movies 2 and 3, totally discarding 2 hours worth of emotional response and investment and reflecting on everything you’ve just seen is a lot to bloody ask for in a person who’s never been particularly trained to reflect movies critically, for a movie that itself hardly ever suggests it even deserves that level of reflection. And in spite of every single thing I said, there’s simply no denying the very real cultural damage the movies did. The fact that not just the filmmaking team, but the entire set of investors and the ratings boards all thought these films are in any way appropriate for children to watch is insane, and the gleeful enthusiasm with which they exaggerate – and necessarily perpetuate – awful ideas and portrayals of minorities is frankly embarrassing to witness. The big problem is that all three films’ insane financial successes sent some pretty unfortunate messages about what a filmmaker can get away with, and a lot of things portrayed here as crass and violent have sort of become the newer normal. I’ll admit that the ending of the aforementioned Fast Five, where the protagonists destroy an entire city using a bank vault (the money, of course, being an indiscriminate agent of pure destruction, much like a Transformer), but then get an extended sequence of them getting drunk on its contents in a poisonous display of hedonistic success sent me reeling somewhat. (But then I’ll admit I didn’t understand a lot of that film’s subtleties, and it still has the clear advantage of not seeming to consider black people hilarious.) In the end, this escalation also reflects back on the trilogy. When something crass becomes normal, it’s difficult to look back at it as anything but normal. Although the films escalate to an absurd degree, it seems pop culture is always just a step behind. I guess what it comes down to is that I really don’t blame anyone for broadly rejecting the films. I would be rather more troubled if more people didn’t, really. I simply cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to watch them... And to me, that’s sad. Partially because I see all this incredible work done by the artists and effects team dissipate in a story that cannot properly present it, but mostly because I can say without a hint of irony that I have gained more enjoyment out of Transformers 3 than any single other movie I watched, and it sucked not being able to share that enjoyment with anyone. To me, this isn’t about “proving Bay’s secret genius” or whatever. It’s about how we, as an audience, approach a film. If you come to it with a set of expectations that render the images presented by the film as confusing, awful and dissonant, don’t be surprised at the film being confusing, awful and dissonant. The reason I see the films the way I do is because I feel that creates a level of consistency and ultimately makes the films much more fun and interesting, and the more I read about and reflect on them, the more fun and interesting they become. You probably don’t even have to see them as dishonest and subversive to fulfil this requirement: I’m positive that a proper and complete reading of the movies as mostly honest can be done, and every niggle I have addressed – I just haven’t seen it done yet. And even beyond any perceived cleverness, Dark Side Moon is still gorgeous, dynamic, culturally relevant, nuanced, unique and oddly compelling. Over the past year I’ve grown from having a curious appreciation for its existence to outright loving it, horrid warts and all, because it has entertained me far beyond just its 2 ½ hour runtime. And while I can’t ask anyone to share these feelings, I do have one wish: That people look at all movies with an open mind, and try to take them on their own terms, no matter how definitive the stereotypes that have arisen around them seem. You might walk away justifiably thinking of them as garbage, but there’s always a chance that you’ll be positively surprised, far beyond what you could have possibly expected. And really, when your tagline and entire driving concept is "more than meets the eye", is it really so crazy to try looking beyond the obvious?
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Oct 6, 2013 14:23
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That's a really good conclusion post. Thank you for all the effort you've put into this project. I'm especially fond of how, in your conclusion, you emphasize that the ethical merits of the film don't necessarily obviate or forgive the ethical demerits, especially those that result from Michael Bay's unscrupulousness.
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Oct 6, 2013 18:28
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These threads have been amazing. To anyone willing to have an open mind and read, you've really brought the evidence into the light, Terry. I look forward to your future threads.
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Oct 6, 2013 21:16
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Terry van Feleday posted:I simply have to believe that all this theatric complexity has meaning, because suggesting that the team made the antagonist more emotive and filmed him in a more sympathetic camera than the hero because they can’t even get sub-filmmaking 101 framing poo poo right feels both facile and ludicrous to me. It's funny, because people I know think exactly this. I actually had a very long argument with a friend of mine (we'll call him C) over this thread, and his viewpoint was basically this: No, there is no great, secret depth to these three films. All the issues Terry brought up, mainly based on how Optimus and the Autobots 'are really the villains', C basically derided as Michael Bay being a complete hack. C's argument, in the end, ultimately boiled down to "Transformers G1 was a half hour commercial for toys". The cartoon was simplistic, filled with animation errors, and as a result had about as stark a black and white morality as could be. Hell, it's even in the opening: the Decepticons are evil. While it's true that later works, like Beast Wars, and apparently the current IDW comics, were able to take those basic concepts and actually get more out of them than 'sell more toys', at its core the Transformers is a commercialistic cash grab. Trying to 'force' it to be more than that requires a deft hand and a LOT of luck, and perhaps most importantly, no table of Hasbro executives breathing down your neck to try and sell more toys. Sometimes it succeeds, most of the time it doesn't, and it definitely won't with Bay in the director's seat. The man cannot do subtle: when he tries, you get something like Pearl Harbor, which was so tone deaf on what a war film or romance film should be that it ended up as a punchline in Team America: World Police. The man may not exactly be lacking in intelligence, but he knows what he likes, and what he's good at, and when he tries to go outside that box, well... Let's assume that all this subtext about Optimus and Megatron are purposely in the films, that it was what Bay was really trying to convey. Why? This isn't the Shattered Glass Transformers universe, where the moralities are flipped. As said, the G1 Transformers are supposed be as black and white as possible. Autobots good, Decepticons bad. Simple morality in films is not inherently a bad thing: it's all in the execution. All this stuff, like the Autobots with their facial destruction, and Optimus' 'Give me your face' and 'Time to find out', reads to my friend C as less like 'More than meets the eye' and more like Bay trying to insert shades of grey into the conflict and failings so bad that it ends up with a reading of the film where Optimus is the real villain, which is likely not what Bay meant or wanted at all. The whole point of the Autobot/human interactions, which has almost always been the case, is that the Autobots are protective of humans. They see humans as smaller, more frail, and far more vulnerable than them to death by physical trauma and death by age. Yet humans side with them and put themselves at risk fighting forces that, on paper, are completely their superior (Sam, as someone pointed out, only managed to kill Starscream because he magically acquired plot armor that kept him from being smashed to a pulp or having his arm torn out of his socket from all the bouncing, swinging, and flailing around he did). As a result, when Decepticons overtly threaten humans, basically attempting to kill them en masse for basically 'being there', the Autobots, and especially Optimus, get angry. The hero flipping out and abruptly gaining strength, and more important, savagery, is a well-worn road in fiction (Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, anyone?), and it shows in stuff like Optimus ripping apart Grindor, brutalizing the Fallen, and responding to Megatron's peace offering with a decapitation. It's not supposed to be 'Optimus is really the bad guy', it's supposed to be 'Optimus can get pissed off like the rest of us, and when a war leader for millions of years loses his temper, be his rage hot or cold, look out'. He got mad that Megatron and his cronies were threatening Sam (and Megatron's whole thing of 'Isn't one death worth it?'), he got mad that the Decepticons were about to wipe out Earth for fuel, and he got especially mad at the fact that the Decepticons IMMEDIATELY started attacking humans the second it looked like they were gone in DOTM: the whole last act is basically Optimus stomping around in a guilt-fueled rage paying back his enemies for their terrible crime. In the hands of a credible filmmaker, C argues, this would be more apparent. In Bay's hands, we get Terry's long analysis, which basically concludes that the human race was hoodwinked by the evil Autobots. It's less 'There's really a lot of depth in these films' as 'Michael Bay sucks so bad at doing anything beyond explosions that when he tries to not do explosions, well...' I will note that C agreed that Pain and Gain worked pretty well, but he argues that was mostly the fact that Pain and Gain was based on a true story that might be even more absurd that the film itself. Basically, Bay succeeded there because the source material was just so out there to begin with. With stuff like 'a movie based on a commercial for toys' and stuff like Pearl Harbor, not so much. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 00:47
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Oct 7, 2013 00:50
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I'm one of those people who naturally gravitates to villains anyway, but it was almost difficult in Transformers 3 because it felt too easy. Anyway, this was a hell of a thing. Really exceptional, thanks for your hard work!
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Oct 7, 2013 00:53
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A note on the bridge imagery: At the end of the film, Optimus chases down the fleeing Sentinel and slaughters him on a bridge. It's soon revealed, if you pay attention to the geography, that Sentinel was deliberately heading towards the control beacon - AKA the 'space bridge' that literally leads up to the Cybertronian elysium/paradise. Two other characters are also crossing the bridge to paradise: Megatron and Carly (who followed him from the same direction). Heading in the opposite direction? Sam, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime - and this latter group doesn't just head in the opposite direction but stops the former. Optimus does so with the obvious brutal violence, while Sam and Bumblebee fix Carly in place with the prospect of marriage(!). (Again, this is the scene where Bumblebee makes them kneel.) This shows the opinion of 'C' for the folly it is. Not only is the bridge an obvious symbol, it means the same things in the basic plot of the film: it is literally the road that leads to Cybertron, and Cybertron is literally a futuristic utopia (brought down by a 'war in heaven', as seen in the prologue). There's a lot of biblical/luciferian imagery in the series - but isn't the Lucifer character Optimus, who rebels against heaven's strictures in the name of individualistic hedonism? So you can extrapolate outwards from there: Bumblebee destroys the bridge to heaven, destroying heaven itself. Megatron persists in moving forward, creating a new heaven on Earth. Optimus stands fixed on a bridge to nowhere, promising eternal war, etc. This isn't a one-off thing, since Kurtzman and Orci employed similar, fairly obvious, biblical imagery in Star Trek 2009, and Bay used obvious Adam and Eve imagery in his The Island. Not only that, but Joss Whedon copies and 'subverts' this imagery along biblical lines in Marvel's inferior, procultural quasi-ripoff The Avengers. The 'space bridge' there is created by pagan 'puny god' Loki and his armies of mummy-men in vaguely Egyptian headdresses, while the supermen stand for a superficial monotheism. They pretty much just swapped the names, down to the scene where Nick Fury hacks into the cellphone cameras - but Whedon presents his 'Decepticons' as a mere horde of thoughtless killers threatening the almighty status quo. The parallels are informative because, when Black Widow destroys the space bridge in her film, you can now pinpoint Whedon's trademark kung-fu waif-victim as his unironic personal Bumblebee. She's the car!
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Oct 7, 2013 04:34
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Terry van Feleday posted:making Transformers, of course, the Citizen Kane of dumb action blockblusghuhghhhlllllgrrrrrrrrrrg Terry van Feleday posted:I guess what it comes down to is that I really don’t blame anyone for broadly rejecting the films. I would be rather more troubled if more people didn’t, really. I simply cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to watch them... And to me, that’s sad. Partially because I see all this incredible work done by the artists and effects team dissipate in a story that cannot properly present it, but mostly because I can say without a hint of irony that I have gained more enjoyment out of Transformers 3 than any single other movie I watched, and it sucked not being able to share that enjoyment with anyone. Go ahead and recommend to other people to watch the films, at least people willing to put up with otherwise objectionable material in trying to gain a greater understanding. Not to go all  but Triumph of the Will is a must watch for anyone interested in the history of Cinema, and it's literally Nazi propaganda, there are similar arguments for Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer, and for all it's faults, Transformers is no where near as objectionable as any of those movies were, even when they were new.
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Oct 7, 2013 05:25
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Also, when you were talking about the escalation of crassness, I was reminded of criticism in that vein regarding Pain and Gain with some of it being borderline malicious, apparently. Good job finishing this. Last year I was inspired and was so so tempted to go through the Matrix trilogy in a similar way but ran out of time/steam. The themes of belief and realities are the inverse of what you'd think, and the climax of Revolutions is super-loving-meta. 
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Oct 7, 2013 13:02
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Szmitten posted:
Do it anyway. I haven't watched those films in years and plenty of people here will be willing to fill in the gaps.
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Oct 7, 2013 13:28
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Hey, Fat Lou, are you still working on those cleaned up compilation .pdfs? May I ask how far along you are right now? Now more than ever I'd like to have the whole thing bundled in an easily accessable state, and since I don't have real access to all my old stuff right now (at least not without the horrible swear filter)... Also, on an unrelated note: Is there a good place to find smart words written about Bad Boys, The Rock and The Island? The lattermost movie in particular I'm still not entirely sure how to feel about. I'm going to get Archives as soon as I get my hands on a credit card, so old SA posts are fine as well.
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Oct 9, 2013 13:09
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Terry van Feleday posted:Also, on an unrelated note: Is there a good place to find smart words written about Bad Boys, The Rock and The Island? The lattermost movie in particular I'm still not entirely sure how to feel about. I'm going to get Archives as soon as I get my hands on a credit card, so old SA posts are fine as well. No you're not, because I'm going to take care of that. It's the least I can do in return for such a fantastic thread. edit: ...I just need your email address!
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Oct 9, 2013 13:30
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Thanks man, you're the best  My e-Mail is terrydelorean [at] googlemail [dot] com.
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Oct 9, 2013 14:06
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Terry van Feleday posted:Thanks man, you're the best And done!
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Oct 9, 2013 14:13
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Terry van Feleday posted:I guess what it comes down to is that I really don’t blame anyone for broadly rejecting the films. I would be rather more troubled if more people didn’t, really. I simply cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to watch them... And to me, that’s sad. Partially because I see all this incredible work done by the artists and effects team dissipate in a story that cannot properly present it, but mostly because I can say without a hint of irony that I have gained more enjoyment out of Transformers 3 than any single other movie I watched, and it sucked not being able to share that enjoyment with anyone. To me, this isn’t about “proving Bay’s secret genius” or whatever. It’s about how we, as an audience, approach a film. For my money, the series gets progressively better as it goes along - and it's actually a pretty stark improvement, because Transformers 1 is wholly skippable. Revenge of the Fallen is solid fun, and Dark Of The Moon is essential viewing. There are a few interesting things in Part 1: -The fact that Optimus can project hyperrealistic virtual reality propaganda out of his eyes. -That the cube doesn't just give life but reveals a latent violence in everyday objects. -The paralleled tortures of Bumblebee and Megatron. -How multiple scenes are conspicuously shot through windows. -The fact that its sister-film is the explicitly-about-class-warfare (and frankly superior) Friday the 13th remake. ...but honestly, I don't think it goes far enough to be fully conducive to a satirical reading. It really is just a Spielbergian kids' movie with the 'problematic' socio-political implications writ large. The parts that seem truly sincere are few and far between. When Mikaela Baines (girl Michael Bay) creates a makeshift tank out of a wounded bumblebee and a hotwired tow truck (company name: Mike's Towing!), it seems like a statement of purpose. This mad max poo poo is what bay really believes in, though it's impossible not to read it as another example of the hackers selling out. Plus, there's simply not enough Megatron. The movie is basically about Frenzy, who unleashes some abstract explodey creatures - and Frenzy is lame. Revenge of the Fallen skips straight to the good stuff, horrific from the opening frames. But by Part 3, Bay will have stripped back and streamlined the whole thing. Gone are the 'Transforming' subtitles for Decepticon Speech, and the unconvincing Decepticon HUD POV shots that distance us from them. It's the first to really express what Cybertronian society is like.
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Oct 9, 2013 17:14
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:For my money, the series gets progressively better as it goes along - and it's actually a pretty stark improvement, because Transformers 1 is wholly skippable. Revenge of the Fallen is solid fun, and Dark Of The Moon is essential viewing. I think the Autobots creating personalities whole cloth out of digital media upon their first arrival to Earth belongs on this list. It's pretty key to their characterization in the later movies (Iron Hide's clumsy and out of place one-liners only make sense when you realize that it's because of his own context-less absorption of media) and certainly thematically interesting in the way the Transformers relate to our culture. Also, 'fun' is a weird term for Revenge because while it is an artistic accomplishment it's also grotesque and horrifying and kind of hard to watch at times.
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Oct 9, 2013 17:32
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Sprecherscrow posted:I think the Autobots creating personalities whole cloth out of digital media upon their first arrival to Earth belongs on this list. It's pretty key to their characterization in the later movies (Iron Hide's clumsy and out of place one-liners only make sense when you realize that it's because of his own context-less absorption of media) and certainly thematically interesting in the way the Transformers relate to our culture. Also, 'fun' is a weird term for Revenge because while it is an artistic accomplishment it's also grotesque and horrifying and kind of hard to watch at times. Like a lot of things in Part 1, that stuff comes back more succinctly and more interestingly in Part 2. Bumblebee in Part 1 spoke with clips from Star Trek and African-American preaching, implying that he really is a good guy at heart (and that the Autobots are like Starfleet - accurate in the Into Darkness sense, not so much in the original sense). In Part 2, Bumbleebee settles into using Tom Hanks' voice - specifically his Apollo 13 and Forrest Gump characters. That's a loaded combination, no? This tells us more about Bumblebee's character than anything else. Reedman is the superior Frenzy, with less screentime and no dialogue. The scene where the allspark reanimates Sam's entire kitchen is better than the whole ending of Transformers 1... Revenge of the Fallen is fun because it's grotesque and horrifying. I'm not watching Transformers for its relative tastefulness - but relative tastefulness is exactly what you get in the first film. I love that the robots casually fart and poo poo in Revenge. Transformers 1 made a big deal of Bumblebee pissing, but that brings up the old observation about the Harry Potter films: in the bad ones, the magical insanity is treated as astonishing spectacle. In the good ones, the insanity is treated as mundane.
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Oct 9, 2013 18:10
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Excellent thread, glad you returned to finish it! The original cartoon movie/third series of the G1 cartoon had some interesting parallels to what we see in these later movies. In the 1984 movie, which is set in the far-flung space-year of 2005, we're introduced to two new mechanical races. The first are the Quintessons, who are basically, evil capitalist aliens. They have plotlines revolving around being arms dealers and taking advantage of weaker civilisations to make spacemunny. They rely on drones to do their bidding, happily causing civilian casualties, and are great fans of extraordinary renditions, followed by putting on show trials both for their own entertainment and to torture and punish their enemies for any perceived slight. They probably invented waterboarding! There was a couple of episodes that revolved around a journal that gave away all of their dirty secrets (e.g. industrialising customer planets and then taking all their wealth to solve the pollution). This saw them interact with the second of the new mechanical races, the Junkions. The Junkions were mostly nameless, but lived on a trash/slum planetoid, where seemingly all they did was mindlessly consume media. drat Junkie poors! But beneath that they were actually resourceful, hard workers and ready to commit their warriors to a good cause. The Junkions got ahold of the Quintesson journal then managed to broadcast the Quintessons' shady goings-on to the galaxy. The cartoons were made in a different age though, despite being 22 minute commericals. The USSR was still around when they were made, and it was quite amusing to see the Soviets still existing in the writers' take on 2006. Yet in those episodes it's the imperial capitalists that get made out to be the bad guys (overtly!), rather than the commie Junkions. Of course, the big difference between the past future episodes of Transformers and the new movies is that if these guys had made it into the new movies, then the roles would probably have been reversed. The space capitalist Quintessons' role would be taken by the good guys, valiantly increasing the tech of backwards planets, while the Junkions would be sitting around getting high watching their massive tellies (paid for by their benefits/welfare from the taxpayer!) most of the time, and probably teaming up with Wikileaks. Marmaduke! fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Oct 9, 2013 |
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Oct 9, 2013 18:34
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Terry van Feleday posted:Hey, Fat Lou, are you still working on those cleaned up compilation .pdfs? May I ask how far along you are right now? Now more than ever I'd like to have the whole thing bundled in an easily accessable state, and since I don't have real access to all my old stuff right now (at least not without the horrible swear filter)... Sorry, I got caught up with things in real life. I will try to get the rough draft completely done today or tomorrow (goddamn you wrote a lot about Dark of the Moon). I will post it in order for people to criticize it and I will modify it accordingly.
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Oct 9, 2013 18:56
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The closest I will ever get to a Final Fantasy IV movie with a Dr. Lugae design.
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Oct 9, 2013 19:19
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I do have one task for people who have the movies on hand. I would like to record the timestamp and duration of the movie clips that are referenced in Terry van Feleday's prior posts. I would rather have something permanent as a backup just in case those ever go away. So, if one of you guys could grab that info I would love you forever. If not, I will try to get around to it when I can get ahold of them. These are the clips I am looking for info on... http://vimeo.com/user13926003/videos Thank you for any help I can get guys.
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Oct 9, 2013 20:14
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What makes the films watchable at all is that, for example, Bernie Mac's character makes sense. Like, Bobby Bolivia could just be a Black Huckster, but you see that his family business is struggling badly, and he's trying to earn the respect of his abusive mother, who he also resents. That this isn't funny at all is the point. It's not funny. It's all flop-sweat and desperation. Mumbling under his breath that he wants to kill his bitch mother isn't a punchline. It's shocking and uncomfortable. What's important is that everything he tells Sam about the mystical bond between car and man is bullshit that literally comes true - but only for Sam. Not only does it literally come true, but Bumblebee actually attacks Bolivia and degrades him to make it happen. This totally justifies Mikaela's observation that Sam has "never sacrificed anything in [his] perfect little life." Remember that Bumblebee isn't just a car, but an embodiment of all the values you buy into when purchasing a car. That Bee casually attacks a black man over a sum of a thousand dollars is important. It's what makes Transformers 'about race' rather than an example of racism. Bolivia has absolutely nothing in common with Jazz. Another important detail is that Blackout, the first-ever transformer we see, is a ghost. It's literally the after-image of some dead American troops in Afghanistan. Although audiences might assume that Blackout blew up the chopper after stealing its identity, you might notice that Transformers of all varieties don't bother to do this in any of the films. It's more likely that the chopper was coincidentally brought down by human insurgents - so Blackout is more a vengeful spirit of the war dead, as in Joe Dante's Homecoming! After all, isn't the point of the film that our enemy is not the Russians, or the Chinese or whoever? It's coming from inside. There's also the weird implication, then, that the robot Scorpion that Blackhawk poops out is a mirror to the individual soldiers, with their goggles and weaponry... There's actually a ton of Dante influence in the films. The aliens who learn Earth culture from its media are from Explorers, and there's a Gremlins/Small Soldiers anarchy to the primitive allspark 'bots and the various toy-sized Decepticons running around. that's how these films need to be read. They're about that same ambivalence towards junk culture and consumerism.
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Oct 9, 2013 21:15
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Terry, This has been one of my favorite projects on SA and I'm so happy you finished it. You have helped change the way I look at media. Thank you for a very excellent read!
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Oct 9, 2013 22:49
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Alright, so at this point I have everything in a PDF. I think I took care of most of the spelling errors. Next, I need to press enter and tab a whole lot to space the paragraphs a bit better. Also, there are a number of other things I need to work on. I did not originally realize we would end up with 442 pages of Transformers. When all the proper spacing is done it might even break 450 pages. Anyways, here is the current PDF in all of it's glory just in case I die or something. Yet again, this is not the final version. At the rate I am working you can assume I will be done with this in about two weeks. I think I just did copy, paste, resize pictures, add text boxes, adjust spacing, and spellcheck for about 5 hours today. I am going to be working at a slower pace after today. Edit: Please let me know of any changes you would like and I will see what I can do. Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Oct 10, 2013 |
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Oct 10, 2013 03:17
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Man, that's fantastic, massive thanks. The only deficiency is that I guess .pdfs don't support strikethrough, but I only used that like twice anyway so As for your previous question, if I understood it correctly, here's all the time stamps for the video content, at least on the copy I have on hand: TF2007: Autobots arrive, 0:58:45 (shot of comets heading towards earth after concept Bumblebee drives off) trough 1:02:54 (Optimus ducking down to talk to Sam) ROTF: Forest battle, 0:59:12 (Optimus driving on the forest road toward the camera) though 1:02:45 (Optimus' body slumps down on the ground) Devastator, 1:53:02 (the red dump truck driving close past the camera) through 1:54:12 (Devastator lifts his head and roars), 1:57:07 (Zoom past the pyramids toward Devastator) through 1:59:33 (Shot of the bottom of his neck), 2:05:19 (starting to climb up the pyramid) through 2:06:56 ("contact destroyer") and 2:10:35 (Simmons follows up the pyramid) through 2:11:28 ("Yeah! Yeah!!") Final fight, 2:16:11 (Optimus opens his eyes) through 2:21:09 (Optimus standing beside the sphinx) DOTM: Megatron transforms, 0:33:46 (scene shift to Africa) through 0:34:27 ("All hail Megatron") This is the one where the video got deleted, I'll see if I can reupload it over the weekend. Attack on Chicago, 1:33:23 (right after Dylan says "he's such a dick") through 1:36:18 (wide shot of the city in flames as Linkin Park stops singing) Toppling building, 1:53:06 (team runs around inside one of the offices) through 2:00:26 ("Wreckers!" "We're coming!") The end, 2:11:29 (shot of American flag right after spaceship crashes) through 2:25:58 (Right before credits song starts)
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Oct 10, 2013 13:33
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:-The fact that its sister-film is the explicitly-about-class-warfare (and frankly superior) Friday the 13th remake. Okay, I'm curious. Explain, please?
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Oct 10, 2013 15:22
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Cornwind Evil posted:Okay, I'm curious. Explain, please? New Thread time, I think.
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Oct 10, 2013 15:41
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Great thread, Terry. I've got to admit that I was someone who didn't care much for the Transformers movies and by extension Michael Bay. I didn't look deep at them and all I saw was the merchandising and the effect it had on movies that came after it. I think what makes this threads and threads like it work so well is that instead of kicking around someone everyone dislikes (like the Slevin thread) its something that makes a compelling case FOR a movie people decided not to like. When I saw the first 2 Transformers I didn't really like them but mainly because of how uncomfortable they made me feel. The brutality stood out right away as until these movies the transformers fought in some kind of bizarrely deathless war where people shot at each other but rarely got hurt (with the exception of the animated Transformers movie). That violence was seperated by what felt like extended periods where Bay was holding up his middle finger firmly in the audiences face. This thread helped it all make more sense and from now on I won't just blindly poo poo on the movies. I really want to see more threads like this because try as I might I have a really hard time reading movies.
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Oct 10, 2013 19:25
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Cornwind Evil posted:Okay, I'm curious. Explain, please? Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th is literally a sequel to Transformers 1. Trent, the rich Jock who insults Sam at the lakeside party re-appears in F13 as a major character. A large chunk of the film takes place in his father's extremely expensive lakeside cottage, and he is basically presented as the anti-Jason. Trent is the rich, domineering rear end in a top hat to Jason's abjected insurgent figure (they literally control territories on opposite ends of the lake), and so it's basically a Sam vs. Megatron situation.
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Oct 10, 2013 19:42
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 16:43 |
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Awesome, I will add them in soon along with the extra formatting. I would love it to no end if we could somehow get Michael Bay to read it and respond to it somehow. I know that is really unlikely, but still...
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Oct 10, 2013 21:55
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