Speaking of Transformers, the Transformer movie series is widely held as a touchstone for brainless crap lowest-common-denominator explosions entertainment.
It’s really, really long, and it kind of hooks you once you start, so don’t click unless you can afford to spend several hours reading about Michael Bay.
I tend to agree that almost none of what the reviewer pointed out was put into the movies with the intent she suggests, but that begs the equally interesting question—how did all that stuff get in there? Did the filmmakers do certain this subconsciously? Is it really all in Terry’s imagination?
Anyway, I’m much less quick to write things off as merely “bad,” especially if I notice that my brain keeps returning to them later without any immediately obvious reason.
Well, I don’t think she’s completely wrong about everything, but I think the movies probably have a lot of uncritical borrowing from a wide variety source material. Some of what is uncritically borrowed may be better stuff, and may actually have had some of the subtle intentions she attributes to Bay and crew. And other uncritically borrowed elements are so bad that she can’t imagine someone would borrow them uncritically, and so she assumes too charitably that the badness must be intentional for some subversive purpose. It may not help that she’s not American, so she may not realize that some attitudes which seem extreme to her are common among Americans. I also think she’s too quick to assume that inconsistencies between what Optimus Prime says at various points indicate dishonesty rather than simply sloppy continuity, especially as she herself admits and notes that the continuity is pretty sloppy. Widespread inconsistency certainly helps greatly when someone wants to read their own agenda into something; you can interpret the bits that support your interpretation straight, and then since the bits which don’t support your interpretation can’t be interpreted straight without inconsistency, you can argue that those inconsistent bits must involve some deception.
Anyway, I’m much less quick to write things off as merely “bad,” especially if I notice that my brain keeps returning to them later without any immediately obvious reason.
On this note, I found the film Get Over It reasonably enjoyable but nothing special. But deliberately or not, the plot has some wonderful strange loops, including one which I’ve come to think of as a “strange moebius loop”, and thinking about it after the fact has seriously increased the entertainmet factor.
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That reminded me of the theory that the Highlander movie is an allegory of gay culture, can’t find the source right now so from memory:
The plot is based on a dark secret shared by a secretive group of people that existed forever, all of them men. The secret makes them meet in dark alleys and wave huge phallic symbols at each other. The soundtrack is by Queen.
...except the posts you linked to are much longer and less funny :-(
Speaking of Transformers, the Transformer movie series is widely held as a touchstone for brainless crap lowest-common-denominator explosions entertainment.
This incredibly long series of posts will make you look at not just Transformers but possibly at movies in a new way.
It’s really, really long, and it kind of hooks you once you start, so don’t click unless you can afford to spend several hours reading about Michael Bay.
OK, I read the posts, and then rewatched one of the movies. I’m unconvinced. A heroic effort, though, and quite interesting!
I tend to agree that almost none of what the reviewer pointed out was put into the movies with the intent she suggests, but that begs the equally interesting question—how did all that stuff get in there? Did the filmmakers do certain this subconsciously? Is it really all in Terry’s imagination?
Anyway, I’m much less quick to write things off as merely “bad,” especially if I notice that my brain keeps returning to them later without any immediately obvious reason.
Well, I don’t think she’s completely wrong about everything, but I think the movies probably have a lot of uncritical borrowing from a wide variety source material. Some of what is uncritically borrowed may be better stuff, and may actually have had some of the subtle intentions she attributes to Bay and crew. And other uncritically borrowed elements are so bad that she can’t imagine someone would borrow them uncritically, and so she assumes too charitably that the badness must be intentional for some subversive purpose. It may not help that she’s not American, so she may not realize that some attitudes which seem extreme to her are common among Americans. I also think she’s too quick to assume that inconsistencies between what Optimus Prime says at various points indicate dishonesty rather than simply sloppy continuity, especially as she herself admits and notes that the continuity is pretty sloppy. Widespread inconsistency certainly helps greatly when someone wants to read their own agenda into something; you can interpret the bits that support your interpretation straight, and then since the bits which don’t support your interpretation can’t be interpreted straight without inconsistency, you can argue that those inconsistent bits must involve some deception.
On this note, I found the film Get Over It reasonably enjoyable but nothing special. But deliberately or not, the plot has some wonderful strange loops, including one which I’ve come to think of as a “strange moebius loop”, and thinking about it after the fact has seriously increased the entertainmet factor.
::clicks link::
It’s paygated. :(
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwcKvxyHHsZ9V18ySTVEblRZSXc/edit?usp=sharing
That reminded me of the theory that the Highlander movie is an allegory of gay culture, can’t find the source right now so from memory:
...except the posts you linked to are much longer and less funny :-(
Now that the series of posts has been continued and completed in a different thread, you might want to update your link to point here.