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I have to go now, but for anyone looking for PDFs of the original thread, look here. There's links to downloads of all three films up until the last thread ended (and Duel too). Really glad to see you're back, Terry. I wanna see how crazy this sucker gets when it ends.
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Sep 26, 2013 13:06
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Sprecherscrow posted:Haven't seen the other two, but I'm smacking my forehead at forgetting Armageddon. There you have Bay depicting actual tenderness between a man and a woman. The Transformers series and Pain & Gain just make the idea of romance seem so inherently crass I'd forgotten that it didn't account for every movie he's ever made. I wouldn't say that in regard to Pain & Gain. One of the final scenes of the film is a sympathetic depiction of Ed Harris' character with his wife, and the film holds him and his relationship up as a sane alternative to the lifestyles of the Sun Gym Gang, their accomplices, and their victims.
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Oct 12, 2013 00:00
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Milky Moor posted:Yeah, she's interesting because you can just see her fitting in as Lockdown's lieutenant or something or a representative of the Creators as part of the story. It's also important to note that, according to the artist, they were thinking of including her at some point - hence all the other versions of her face, I guess - and then didn't. Too many evil robots? Maybe, but it's something to think about that Hasbro has not only suddenly found out that the fans want more female-gendered Transformers and that it's odd that the cynical marketing part of the film didn't just leap on that. So, they don't include any female Transformers but, over the course of the series, the robots have gone from 'they have male voices' to exhibiting male characteristics like facial hair. Robot gender isn't remaining nebulous, it's becoming more and more pronounced. Well, thanks to Terry's analysis and my own viewing of Pain & Gain, I've started to see Michael Bay as a filmmaker who's very interested in masculinity and how it is defined and broadcasted in modern American culture. Looking at all these movies, I'm starting to see the typical Michael Bay character as a man who intensely insecure in his masculinity, often believing he has abilities that society is not recognizing. (I can't say if this is a privileged "society owes me!" thing or as example of victimization by an indifferent society.) However, to solve this problem, the man tries to solve his problem by changing his branding, by projecting an image of himself as the man he wants to be (and to be seen as) in the hope that if he changes the package, he'll change the man inside. Needless to say, this never works, and only results in pain and misery for all. Most everyone in these Transformers movies seem to follow this basic archetype, as did most everyone in Pain & Gain. However there was one exception in the latter movie: Ed Harris' detective character. He had the image of a man who "made it", but wasn't concerned with maintaining his image. He defined himself through his abilities as a detective and as man who loved his wife. In fact, it's a sign of how unnarcissistic his character was that he was willing to give up his great passion to please his wife, his other passion. I think the closest the Transformers movies come to his character are Malkovich's CEO and Megatron before his murder. So with this interpretation, you could see why female transformers would be downplayed. The transformers are being built up as personifications of the unchecked ravenous American male id, so adding female ones would change all that symbolism completely. That being said, the forces acting on men are acting just as much on women, and there's probably parallels to be found for these sorts of masculine behaviors in women. Bay did experiment a bit with this with his female characters in Pain & Gain, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would think he recognized that it would be a long time, if ever, that he could create a version of Arcee as grotesque as Optimus Prime and have the audience accept it.
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Jul 13, 2014 19:53
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