Feb 27th, 2008, 12:56 PM
I had to register just to comment on this one.
Proto, I love ya man, but like everyone I've ever known who's ever when to film school, you have really piss-poor opinions in regards to certain films, particularly adaptations.
First off, regarding Transformers... it was a very enjoyable film! Sure for every good thing there was one stupid thing Bay added (like decepticons with predicon heads) but it was certainly action-packed with a decent enough story considering it's merely a summer blockbuster. Could it have been better? Sure, but only if I personally wrote the script myself because like yourself I have THAT strong an emotional attachment to the franchise.
Despots response to Krish-0 tickled me a bit because what he described is the pilot episode of the original series. Yup Bay totally ripped off the pilot merely adding a bit of the animated movie for good measure. The boy and his car thing was how the transformers series was supposed to go and in many ways it did, with spike, his father and others' interactions with the transformers grounding the series and giving it more depth than "robot faction a vs robot faction b". To see how crappy the transformers, would have been without humans, please see the go-bots.
Also, just to put a hammer on it, remember that the Transformers series wasn't all that god to begin with. (Gasp!) Seriously go back and watch, it's pretty lame looking back without the nostalga glasses. Even the animated movie wasn't all that great. It turned out great because of the killer soundtrack, but honestly that thing was on the verge of suckage. And remmber, I'm a UBER transformers fan, but even I can admit that the transformers were never known for their great writing.
I also agree that hotrod isn't that great of a movie. Mind you I enjoyed it, but just barely. It seems like ever since Napoleon Dynamite was released, every few years somebody tries to make a better version of that film. That's what this felt like to me, a poor-man's ND.
When were the chipmunks cool? Proto were you held up in a cave between the years 1984-1987? Hit tv show, two animated films, ect... Plus they did something that other "band" cartoons never had the balls to do, namely they did covers of real songs, real 80's songs! It doesn't get any better than three rats on helium singing old duran duran tunes! That's why the chipmunks totally own Jem, Josie and the Pussy Cats, and any other fake cartoon band you can think of. They are still quite enjoyable at adulthood as well, but I woudl reccomend certain herbal supplements.
I'm also not a fan of grindhouse. It was every film student's wet-dream of what a cinema experience should be, and that is exactly why it did so poorly. If it weren't for all the hot women I would have totally fallen asleep through death proof, it's too frikkin slow and the payoff sucks. Planet Terror was certainly good, but I could have done without the slow build-up of the women who's abused and how we just know it'll come back to haunt the good doctor. I mean I know it's supposed to have a 70's feel, but I think they had retired the telegraph even back then. ;-) But what hurt grindhouse the most was that as a whole, it was too frikkin long. People BARELY made it through lord of the rings and it had state of the art cgi, an epic tale, and killer surround sound to keep them awake. While I personally got a kick out of the grindhouse experience, I can certainly understand why people weren't willing to spend that much time in a theatre watching grainy-assed movies and crappy sound and crappy visual effects. All that would have been ok if the plots were better, but they weren't.
There is a reason they don't do the grindhouse anymore ya know... movies now are of a better quality (even the really crappy ones) than they were in that period.
I hope that puts things in a bit of perspective. I think in the case of some of these films, either you had a pre-determiend opinion of how they'd turn out and you looked really hard for points to prove it after the fact, or you are seeing what you want to see. My reason for this conclusion is that you HATE the transformers. Quite frankly I don't think the film is that impactful to have such a negative response. Either you thought it was pretty good, or you thought it kinda sucked. The film is far to middle of the road for anyone to completely hate or completely love it. That is, unless they are seeing something that isn't there.
|
Linear Mode
