DANGEROUS DAYS

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Action/Sci-Fi; USA
150 uncalled for minutes

Remakes, sequels and reboots

You are Hollywood's bitch and you're too weak to do anything about it

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Being a science-fiction fan in this day and age is a lot like being on the losing end of an abusive relationship.

Ever since Hollywood discovered that us nerds would gladly open up our wallets on nothing more than a wink and a promise of an epic spaceship battle, or a little bit of alien side-boob, they've been milking us for all we're worth. And we're so eager for the love that we just smile and take it.

They churn out disappointing rehash after disappointing rehash, recycling concepts that Asimov would have considered outdated, thinking that if they just throw in enough explosions or CGI monsters that we won't notice. And the sad thing is that most of the time, we don't.

Our abusers are consistently letting us down, falling short on their lofty promises and yet we always take them back, no matter how severely they've embarrassed us in front of our friends. Why do we do it?

Take "Transformers" as an example. Even if you were never a fan of the cartoons or the toys back in the 1980s, the basic concept of giant, shape-shifting alien robots battling for supremacy itself just sounds so damn good on paper that it's hard to imagine how it could ever go wrong. And indeed, with all the possibilities that arise out of that basic premise, it really should have been a no-brainer.
Yet somehow, Hollywood found a way to widdle all that promise down to nothing. How, you ask? By completely ignoring it to focus instead on the petty relationship problems of a teenage boy and the object of his newly pubescent lust. Don't get me wrong, Megan Fox is a hottie for sure, but given the choice to watch her run around cock-teasing in a skimpy T-shirt or witness a gang of badass robots waging all out war across America, I'd totally go for the epic robot battle.

Hot birds are a dime a dozen, but how often do you see a diesel truck transform into a huge mech and then throw another huge mech into the side of a skyscraper?

So why the hell are we watching these high school students awkwardly trying to put their genitals together when there is robot destruction to be had? High school students are the people I push out of the way to get on the train in the morning, they're the people I have to explain my Carl's Jr. order 15 times before they finally get it. They are not cooler or more interesting than Megatron.

I'm sorry, but in no version of reality would that ever be the case. So why did Shia LaBeouf get more screen time than Optimum Prime? Why was the main character in a movie called "Transformers" not, how do I put this, a Transformer?

But like the reliable punching bags we are, we all still went and saw it, and most of us will even make the same mistake a second time around when the sequel comes out. they show us a flashy trailer of all of the coolest parts of the movie in rapid succession, and we ignorantly think that they've changed, that somehow this time things will be different. And maybe, just maybe, there will be an original script, a fresh perspective, a unique vision at the end of that rainbow.

How long has it been since that happened? I honestly can't remember the last new sci-fi movie I wasn't merely settling for in some way.

Let's take another example, "Alien vs. Predator," Like "Transformers," this one should have been a no-brainer, but somehow the filmmakers made the strange choice along the way to try their hardest to not give the audience what they wanted to see. Not only was the movie rated PG-13 when neither franchise had yet turned out anything less than a hard R, but the battles between the Xenomorphs and the Predators were poorly filmed and wildly unsatisfying.

We went in wanting to see aliens take on predators, and what we got was cartoonish predo-human buddy cop shenanigans and a Tomb Raider-esque pyramid of booby traps.

Regardless of how entertaining these films may or may not have been, they both failed on a fundamental level. They just weren't about what they should have been about for no good reason. If this was a school assignment, they both would have been given F's because they wrote 10-page essays on ancient Egypt when the assignment was to solve a math problem.

The main connection between these two films is that they both rely on non-human characters to tell a story. The writers and producers in Hollywood gave been operating for a very long time under the idea that no audience will be able to enjoy a movie unless they are able to directly relate to the protagonist and thus the "useless story vessel" is born.

The main character in "Transformers" is a teenage boy not because it has anything to do with transforming robots, but because Hollywood just doesn't believe giant CGI robots can carry a movie on their own. The concept that audiences who came out in droves would somehow leave the theater severely disappointed that their Transformers movie didn't focus enough on human issues is completely ludicrous.

Nobody came to see anything but Transformers, so why would they be let down if the story was told from the Autobots perspective? They can talk, they have personalities. What's the problem?

"AvP" is a little different because neither species can communicate in English. But seriously, off the top of my head, I could think of 20 cooler setups for that movie than the one that was delivered. They even had a better concept built right into the movie that they totally slept on -- the ancient Aztecs' first encounter with the Predators. It was right there in the movie and would have been a way cooler story. But instead, they went with the more generic "scientific expedition encounters unbelievable horror" route.

Personally, I think "Apocalypto" meets "Alien" meets "Predator" would have been much more satisfying and much more original, but hey, nobody's paying me to write this crap, so what do I know? All I really know is what I like and what I don't like. I don't like movies that water down their subject matter for the sake of mass appeal.

When will Hollywood open its eyes and realize that people like sci-fi just the way it is? People love "Terminator," they love "Alien." They love Star Wars. But what they don't love is watered down sci-fi that's afraid to commit.

As the victims of constant letdown by the Hollywood system, how can we geeks take back our self respect? How can we break the cycle of abuse?

The answer is fairly simple -- don't believe the hype! Don't let The Man's smooth talking ways seduce you. If they want to get into your pants, make them work for it!

An awesome trailer does not make a good movie. In fact, the more awesome stuff you see in a trailer, the less impressed you should be because it means they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes. If you show up at the midnight screening already wearing the officially licensed T-shirt on your back before you've even seen the first five minutes of the movie, then you're playing right into their hands, and they're going to keep on shafting you time after time. They'll only try what they think they'll be able to get away with.

Support independent filmmakers. With blossoming genre scenes growing out of Korea, Japan, Spain, Mexico, Russia and many other countries, there really is no shortage of alternatives to the big Hollywood blockbusters that have become so stagnant lately. With the cost of special effects and CGI slowly becoming affordable to small production houses, the playing field is being leveled and it's no longer necessary to have a Hollywood budget to get Hollywood-level production values.

A year or two of poor box office turnout might cause the big studios to re-evaluate their game plans, and maybe try a little bit harder to make them worthwhile films.

bad boys II

misunderstood genius or totally understood hack?

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so the other night i had the rather alarming urge to watch bad boys II. don't know why, something in my head was just telling me "watch bad boys II.....oooooooo...." so me and the lady got blazed and fired up the ol' dvd player. i should say first that in general, i love the action genre, i like will smith, i like martin lawrence...i'm not always a fan of the movies they make, but in general, they're both relatively funny, genuine and likable. i was never a fan of the bad boys movies though. just not really my thing, but recently i've been having a little bit of a philosophical dilemma regarding michael bay. i just can't figure him out. part of me wants to dismiss him as a simple hack who has very little control over his own movies (resulting in them being a mish-mash of other people's opinions on what a movie should be rather than being the cohesive vision of a director with an ultimate goal), but another part of me sees something just below the surface of his movies that is very abstract, innovative and perhaps a little brilliant. i dunno.

anyway, i was watching bad boys II, i was high and spacing out, looking at the visuals, but not really paying attention to the sound and i was really blown away by what i saw. every frame of that movie is put together meticulously in terms of moving compositions, shapes, colors, etc. almost in the way that an experimental abstract art film would. it was really strange. almost every shot in the film contains movement of abstract shapes across the screen and the beginning of each shot is just as beautifully composed as the ending of each shot. i found that if i looked passed the flashiness, the product placement and the one-liners, what i saw was actually a really artsy action film. most of the film relies on implication to determine what is going on - you piece together a cohesive idea of what's taking place based on an amalgam of abstract images shown in rapid succession. if you start to really discect the action scenes, you see that very rarely are you getting a true representation of what your mind believes is taking place on screen. you'll see a tight shot of will smith and martin lawrence in a car, then a shot of a car swerving from one side of the screen to the other, then an abstract frame of various automobiles criss-crossing around the screen, then a shot of smoke and from all those rapidly sequential images you infer that a high speed car chase is taking place with cars crashing left and right, but you don't see that many shots that actually show one vehicle chasing another. when you look at things like this out of the context of how these kinds of movies are perceived in society, its really quite a brilliant achievement.

i've always given credit to michael bay for his immeasurable influence on the action movie genre, but i've also written him off as a filmmaker because i've typically seen him more as an industry guy that happened to fall into the role of director than a true artist. lately i think i may be wrong though.
the thing is, i don't really know how much of the brilliance that occasionally shines through his films is actually michael bay's brilliance as opposed to the brilliance of whoever the director of photography happens to be or art director, etc. its hard to gauge. on one hand, i understand having to dumb your films down to appeal to the widest possible demographic and i understand that hollywood filmmaking is a business first and foremost before its an artform, but like the brilliant directors of the 30s, 40s and 50s, perhaps it is how the director chooses to work within and secretly against those confines that truly defines their artistic merit. all of michael bay's movies are disasters in their own special ways, whether it be because they are over-the-top cornball, ridiculously implausible or just helplessly middle-of-the-road perspective wise, but they each have their hidden, mysteriously profound moments as well.

let me break it down like this - transformers was all in all an awful movie, but it had a very strong theme of political commentary running through it that you don't usually see in films made for that wide an audience pool (probably more than just that, but i've only seen it once in the theater, so its hard to judge just based on that). the island fell flat in a lot of respects, but it was also a very strange concept for a film...it was an action film that had absolutely no action for 50% of the running time. the first hour of the movie has more in common with THX 1138 or logan's run than it does with bad boys. it may not have been completely successful, but it was definitely a different approach conceptually. i haven't seen his other movies in a long time, so i can't really comment on those, but i plan to rewatch them with fresh eyes soon.

so, now on to the discussion. michael bay, misunderstood genius or occasionally profound hack? do you think he has an artistic vision or do you think his movies reflect purely the muddling of producers, studio execs and people who generally have no idea what the general public truly wants to see on screen? i don't think there's going to be any debate that the scripts in all his films are formulaic and most likely written by committee, so i'm talking more about the other stuff. how much of a michael bay film is actually michael bay and how much is the combined effort of people much wiser than him?