Muzman on 28/5/2008 at 10:53

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I get the expectation thing really, but so often it just sounds like rationalisation. "It's about giant transforming robots beating each other up" You can do this with pretty much any film, as I think you pointed out, particularly with sci-fi and fantasy. Good ones It still doesn't really explain to me why the movie is an unstructured mess crammed with pointless elements "we need an Oasssee chick and a black guy who screams a lot. They tracked big in focus groups" "make the girl a car thief" "uh that's not really in the backstory" "eh cover it with dialogue, thow in some shit about her father. It'll fly. And hacking! kids love hacking. I'm going to lunch, lemme know where we are with that cube shit when I get back".
The premise isn't why it sucks. It's a committee made movie that looks like no one paid any attention to the whole thing. Armageddon and Pearl Harbour are, bizarrely, much more sensibly written. You'd almost think that in the hands of a director with more restraint you could have made a decent flick out of them. Hey, I even have some faith in Bay there; He tossed the script for Bad Boys because it sucked and let several very good comic actors play. Folks might scoff but I shudder to think how much worse it might have been. Nobody at any level showed that sort of nouse or sense of tone in Transformers. Nobody! They just kept cramming in nonsense until the thing was all out of shape. Jesus the thing makes Independance Day look like a masterpiece of dramtic plotting, character and understatement.
Back to the point; expectations being low really don't assuage my feeling that there's no reason for it to be this bad. There really isn't. The people who made this have some sort of brains. They're well paid. Some of them have probably made better movies. We used to pity movies that went this far off the rails. Now we say "Well it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be". What is that? Just as no film can live up to everyone's abstract ideal movie, hollywood has yet to plumb the depths of the public's imagination of the worst movie. Great, we have so much to look forward to.
I should acknowledge the big screen and big sound factor in all of this. I had the same problem with The Rock; people told me how great and exciting it was so I rented it and it's completely idiotic!, not to mention dull. An insomnia cure of a movie. Sure there's shouting and stuff going boom and rapid editing, but I'm largely innured to that stuff. I think it's the same to some extent with Transformers. Most people who let it off saw it at the cinema, and after a couple of hours getting tenderised by the soundtrack they're quite giddy with the whole thing. More adrenaline = fond memories, I think sometimes.
In essence I think we pretty much agree, really. I am intent on being mad at Transformers though.

Yeah, only there it wasn't lame it was awesome. It's kinda impressive how vividly Wells creates a picture of a civilisation in the midst of a catastrophy, the kind we'd all watch on TV a hundred years later. Book makes more sense too; the weapons aren't selectively able to knock over a bridge one moment then merely vaporise people, leaving the landscape intact; and the technology means that no 'magic shields' need to be concocted to prevent the martians being walking targets for present day weaponry.

(That red band trailer of Tropic Thunder was terrible. I thought the regular one made it look great. I hope we don't have to hear too much of Downey's "Australian" accent. Heard that in natural Born Killers; not good. Better than most. Still not good. What is it with yanks and the whole 'Dingo oit moy bayboi" thing anyway? Is it just Seinfeld or what? We don't make fun of your horrid injustices. Oh wait, we do. Never mind)

And for closers (http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=14866) an amusing review of 'The Core'

SubJeff on 28/5/2008 at 15:24

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Are people hating on The Island now? It wasn't great but it was ok. Not an abomination anyway. Or did people have really high expectations or something?

Angel Dust on 29/5/2008 at 02:36

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Personally I thought it was complete shit, despite the low expectations, and the free pass, I had going in. It first half might have been alright had the trailer not given away pretty much the entire plot. The latter half was just noisy, empty action.

Jetsetlemming on 29/5/2008 at 07:46

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I watched Iron Man yesterday, loved it. Great movie, IMO, especially for a cheesy comic book movie. It's better than any other comic book movie I've seen, just beating out Ghostrider for the top spot (I hate spiderman and batman and superman).

Stitch on 29/5/2008 at 18:06

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I hate spiderman and batman and superman :mad: