It begins on a silent lunar morning, when an Autobot spaceship crashes down on the dark of the moon. This, we are told, generates the space race – sends rubber-faced CGI JFK scrambling to his war room to tell mankind to look to the stars – sets in motion the greatest achievement in human history, for the sole purpose of goin’ and lookin’ at the robots. It’s a retcon corroborated by no less an authority than Buzz Fucking Aldrin himself minutes later, who has been afforded a new flashback of what really went down on that day in ’69. The second man to ever walk on a celestial body not our own wanders onto the set of Transformers: Dark of the Moon and tells the children of America that Yes, We Went There Because Of The Transformers.
It continues as the Autobots are sent scurrying from the Earth, in a spaceship that is half Cybertronian, half good ol’ fashioned NASA Space Shuttle, which promptly explodes – because Space Shuttles do that, remember? You will remember, given how studiously the ILM wizards have aped the death of the Challenger to get that consuming ball of burning gas juuuuuuust right for the moment when the fleeing Autobots meet their apparent demise in the sky. You will think of Columbia, as those jewel-bright pieces of the spaceframe streak back to our planet, auguring the final death of the space age. These images are not there by accident.
And further along, we find ourselves with our human protagonists on an upper storey of an office tower, the lower levels of which have been destroyed by the enemy and are impassable, and which is shortly going to fall from the sky. We are afforded a few jarring, painfully precise moments of fear, as we realize that – shit, we’re trapped here – trapped in the decade-long nightmare – trapped, as the skyline of a major American metropolis beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows tilts and shifts as curtains of black smoke rise from below. We are seeing something that only a few, very unlucky humans have ever witnessed. It is the summer of 2011, and September is two months away.
By the time Sentinel Prime, bearing the gravel-grated voice of Leonard Fucking Nimoy, turned to the sky and rumbled the words “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” to justify a planetary genocide, I realized that I hated Transformers: Dark of the Moon more than just about anything I’ve seen in my whole life. Certainly, in the context of Everything Else, a jet-black repurposing of an old Spock line for so cruel a purpose is trivial. But it is part of the same thing. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a wholesale repatriation of a national heritage of image systems, from the most significant to the most blithely pop-cultural, for purposes so horrific that the film is scarcely discernible from a hate crime.
You get what you pay for. I paid for it too. I bought the blu-ray of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on release day. It all seemed so harmless. No, Trans2mers wasn’t properly a movie, any more than Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Hate Fuck was a movie… but in a lifetime spent seeing a hell of a lot of movies, it was a brief and welcome detour off the highway. It was Something Else. I enjoyed it, if not on its own terms, then certainly on mine, and while the rest of the critical world was running around with their moral indignation, I was waxing philosophical on the id of a 13-year-old dick.
This is what you get. This is what you get when you lock Turbo McFucknut up in a franchise and hand him a billion dollars. This is the true heart of boyhood. Steven Fucking Spielberg – Executive Producer of this Dark of the Moon – was once dismissively labeled “Hollywood’s Peter Pan,” but that’s the result of a very American ignorance of the character in question, a conflation of the sugar-berry revisionism of the Disney incarnation of Peter with the cruel, careless adolescent of Barrie’s original. If the real Peter Pan came to Hollywood and started making movies, he wouldn’t be making the kind fables of Spielberg’s yesterland. He’d be Michael Bay, making this shit.
Everyone who participates in Trans3mers is lowered. Shame, shame, shame. Shame on Steven Fucking Spielberg first of all – Steven Fucking “The Shoah Foundation” Spielberg – who has willingly, and with dollar signs in his eyes, signed his name to an act of racism, homophobia, and outright xenophobia, wrapped in some of the most extraordinary violence ever slapped with a PG-13. (His own much-reviled Temple of Doom is the fucking Goonies next to this shit.) Shame on Leonard Fucking Nimoy, too, who used to interrogate the meaning behind his science fiction roles at least a little bit, and now, it seems, no longer gives enough of a fuck to think about his legacy, or Spock’s legacy, or anything else. Shame on Buzz Fucking Aldrin, who might have been tricked or paid off, or might have thought he was furthering the cause of igniting interest in space in our next generation, or might just be a colossal fucking asshole. Shame on the entire stable of Coen Brothers actors who deigned to inculcate themselves into this mess as though it didn’t matter. Shame – and I can scarcely believe I am saying this – on Alan Fucking Tudyk, who shoulda stayed fucking dead when that Reaver pole stabbed him in the heart. Shame, shame, shame fucking shame.
The only person who comes away from Transformers: Dark of the Moon undarkened is the person who isn’t even in it: Megan Everlovin’ Fox. Fox may or may not have a square to spare, but no matter how Bay characterizes the schism in the popular media (Bay, ever the coward, insists Spielberg Did It), the girl got one over on old Mikey: she developed an opinion of him, and told others, and let her career self-immolate as a result, and moved beyond his scope of control. Bay cannot stand the lack of control, any more than he can stand a woman who does anything other than acquiesce to his churning vortex of misogyny. If he can’t have them, he must refute them, which he does, witlessly, gracelessly, in Dark of the Moon, by having his robo-shlomos catcall his absent actress, not unlike a playground bully throwing rocks at the back of a kid’s head.
And then there’s the New Girl, who is introduced ass-first – and in 3-D, mind – shortly before we leap into a flashback of her first encounter with Sam Witwicky, where she is ushered onscreen by Mommy Witwicky barking “Oh, what a lovely box!”. Yes, Michael. I’m sure she is a lovely box – not even has a lovely box, and certainly not has a personality or a mind or a soul to go with that 10-year-old boy bum. Much has been made of Michael Bay’s visual connection to pornography, and further to that end I’ll say only this: the man certainly knows when not to show a being’s head, for fear of taking the erotic charge out of the room by fiddling around with, y’know, identities n’ shit.
“Oh, but it’s just a bit of fun,” you’ll say, or “you’re taking it too seriously.” Nope: I don’t buy that. I think I’m finally taking it just seriously enough. This is a movie based on a toy line that is marketed overwhelmingly to children, in which a human female possessing a body that no other human female will ever possess picks her way over the rubble of Chicago to the half-fallen Megatron (who is, by this point in the trilogy, literally wearing Arab robes), and taunts him by calling him a bitch. Megatron – a machine the size of a schoolhouse, who could flick Rosie Whitfield-McBurnamthorpe into the Chicago River without even moving his arm, is brought low by five human letters that, in the Michael Bay Universe, are the actual worst thing a male of any stripe, human or otherwise, can be called. In the Michael Bayverse, there is nothing more humiliating than being – well, Megan Fox, actually. Fox was a bitch, and the robots tell us so. And so’s anyone else who isn’t an alpha male (Army Guy, Black Army Guy, Optimus Motherfuckin’ Prime, or gun-bearing Sam Witwicky) or a blow-job-offering female (oh – and yes she is, and yes she does).
Had I not been stranded in the middle of a very long and very enthusiastic row of IMAX viewers for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I would have walked out. I would have walked out right around the time that the 9/11 skyscraper scene was making me sick to my stomach, because it was shortly thereafter that I realized I no longer had any idea what was going on, or why, and that I was being jackhammered mercilessly by noise, and that it was all in the service of unbridled, glistening hate. It made me sad. It made me sick. There is so much hate in this film, it is actually frightening. Transformers 3 is violent, venal, and vile. It is in service of the worst things in not just American culture, but all human culture. This is an affront upon our civilization’s soul. We should not have come here.
While this review is much better written than mine, getting this worked up over a Transformers movie (particularly after liking the shit that was part 2) is absurd.
I should point out that there have been other Space Shuttle explosions other than the Challenger. Also, in the movie, it doesn’t just explode randomly. It’s destroyed by the Decepticons. And if we’re going to now just equate every single building being destroyed in a film to 9/11, then I guess there goes my weekend with Independence Day – to say nothing about rewatching Cloverfield eventually.
I can understand wanting to walk out of this movie. I really can. But when it’s out of sheer anger over something this inane… you’re over thinking it and giving Bay a little too much attention.
That said, another nice use of a word I had to look up. Inculcate.
My mission in life: teaching new words.
I no longer think getting this worked up about a Transformers movie is absurd, though I did at one time. This movie made me realize that given its scope and its market and its message, movies like this are exactly what one needs to get worked up about.
(Also, besides Challenger and Columbia, both of which I mention, which Shuttles have exploded?)
I didn’t notice you mention Columbia in the review. So I guess none. But plenty of failed rockets, probes, satellites, etc. have exploded. And they all look remarkably similar.
I just think it’s a strange thing to get mad at a movie maker for wanting to make an explosion look realistic and then succeeding. As though it is some sort of mockery to Christa McCaullife (sp?) or something.
Sent from phone.
I think you’re just mad because Bill O’Reilly has a cameo.
I think when you’re intentionally duplicating framing, composition, etc., it goes beyond an effort to look realistic and becomes an intention to evoke, but hey, that’s just me. I think filmmakers make deliberate choices.
Loved O’Reilly. Like Bay’s offscreen treatment of Obama last time around, it was nice to at least see his cards lying face-up on the table!
Top-notch piece, Matt, and bravo for speaking your mind and highlighting the juvenile and irresponsible qualities that make Bay what he is. I’ve only seen the first Transformers film, but I so thoroughly disliked what I saw that I never ventured into Part Deux (nor will I see Part III) simply because I have had more than enough of my fill of that particular world – never mind that the films seem, based on what I’ve read, to have grown progressively worse and utterly tasteless as they’ve been churned out.
Sure, there are some instances of “harmless fun” that I’ll enjoy, and that justify themselves in various ways. But when one such film abandons any grain of sincerity, intelligence or compassion with such utter recklessness as you’ve described, then I definitely agree that more people should take a stand against it.
Thanks Marc, appreciate it.
I also wanted to commend Matt Brown for his speaking (eloquently) of his mind on this. It’s this sort of ‘taken for granted’ large scare entertainments which do indeed inculcate/indoctrinate/generally-misinform casual viewers and things just become ‘fact’ – Now, I stopped watching these films after the hate-on I had for the first one, but it looks like things have gone a lot further than simple ‘military-porn’ visuals and bad platitudes on the screenplay. Glad to see someone tellin’ it like it is.
I don’t agree on ALL the points (the automatic equation of the destruction of a building to 9/11 is a pretty absurd trend in film criticism these days), but well done on a fantastically written review, and for not hiding away from your hatred and indignation. The film is terrible, misogynistic, irresponsible and incredibly un-entertaining. That said, it might also represent the point where the views of critics and general audiences completely divulge – every casual moviegoer I have spoken to thought it was “awesome”.
Tom, I share your thoughts about the trend of 9/11 comparison in film criticism and I resist going in that direction wherever possible. In this case, a visceral connection to the WTC disaster really was my precise response to that sequence while watching the film, so I wanted to document that – though I admit the imagery is far less on the nose than it could have been.
Have you seen the video comparing two scenes from Transformers 3 with scenes from Bay’s own “The Island”? Where he reuses snippets of footage from 6 years ago in his current chase scenes? I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that (he’s “sampling” himself), but I can’t help but think it’s a sign of a lack of originality if you can just drop those scenes in.
My son wants to see it (he’s seen the two previous). I’ve been debating whether I should take him or not (and Matt your review certainly makes a case not to do it), but I also am considering using it as a possible discussion starter. I expect he’ll get around to seeing it with friends at some point anyway, so being able to talk with him about it afterwards and add context where needed might be interesting and helpful.
I’ve thus far sheltered the sensitive eyes and brains of my children from Michael Bay and Don Simpson (although a few Bruckheimer’s have slipped thru). Albeit I’ve no issue with some Kubrick or Spielberg flicks (Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Amblin stuff) getting to them. Toying with Tree of Life, but still waffling on that one….
We’ll stick with the 1986 transformers cartoon (also w/ Leonard Nimoy) for now.
Sam Witwicky in Transformers 3 is the whiniest most entitled most despicable and unwatchable protagonist in cinema history. Bay’s biggest crime is letting this vile piece of shit survive the film.
I guess what this review has taught me, is that any time I think about blowing up a building, collapsing a building, or smashing a building with any kind of flying device, I’m automatically recalling 9/11?
What also surprises me is how many people who didn’t like the first two films feel compelled to offer their opinions on something they obviously have no intention of watching, or had no business watching in the first place…. I hate Adam Fucking Sandler films, but you don’t see me on the Adam Fucking Sandler forum dropping shit on those who enjoy his stuff. And I try and avoid films with Adam Sandler in them, where possible. That way I don’t have to come onto a comments section and vent my hatred at something I was never going to like in the first place.
“I hate Adam Fucking Sandler films, but you don’t see me on the Adam Fucking Sandler forum dropping shit on those who enjoy his stuff.”
And because this site is a Transformers forum, you’re… right? And… we’re assholes?
This site has a few people who liked the first movie, like yourself disliked the second, and went into this one hoping for something better. At least one person on this site had a very good time watching TF3. This site is a mishmash of tastes including some people who simply would go to this thing because like it or not Bay is kind of an auteur director and we want to see what he’s doing now.
And Matt here liked the first two movies quite a bit, so he certainly doesn’t fit this description.
“I guess what this review has taught me, is that any time I think about blowing up a building, collapsing a building, or smashing a building with any kind of flying device, I’m automatically recalling 9/11? ”
Because of Michael Bay’s personality I would have no idea if it was recalled on purpose. He could be that ignorant or just not care or intentionally want to throttle and horrify. But yes, on purpose or not this kind of scene will recall 9/11 for a long time.
Put in context with JFK, the moon landing and other iconography repurposed for the film, I don’t think Rodney’s reaction to Matt’s writing is all that well thought out. Read the whole review again, and Rodney. Your (possible) fanboy (maybe not, but it comes across like that) reaction to the review may be clouding your judgement.
And Goon is right, we look at all forms of film here, foreign, indie, documentary, genre, and yes, big summer blockbusters. We are hardly as specialized as a ‘Adam Sandler Forum.’
Please tell me that is Rodney Brazeau?
:D:D:D
I wanna see this film, but it’s so expensive to go to 3d
Will probably have to wait for cheaper solutions, no 3d for me.
I didn’t like the first Transformers, so I’m not going to watch the other two as it doesn’t seem like they have improved. That said I do like the Transformers franchise and I’m happy that Michael Bay is leaving and hope we might get a decent Transformers film.
Kurt: “We’ll stick with the 1986 transformers cartoon (also w/ Leonard Nimoy) for now.” Also with Orson Welles, in his last movie! (It’s rumoured that after he died that they re-wrote some of his lines and there’s a few bits here and there which are actually Leonard Nimoy doing an Orson Welles impression).
Matthew: NICE.
For those who haven’t seen this yet: Every Michael Bay movie in under a minute
I never said this was an Adam Sandler forum. Going onto a forum, any forum, regarding something you don’t really appreciate, and slagging off those who DO like whatever it is you’re talking about, is tedius and boring. Having read numerous reviews on DOTM, most of which are highly critical of Bay’s film and perhaps rightfully so (each opinion is valid, after all, and indeed, Matt makes some solid points in his article here!), I get annoyed with random commentors who slide into the comments little factiods about “while I haven’t seen the film, and never will… etc etc” before unleashing their hatred on all things Bay – it strikes me that if you hate something or someone so much, why would you subject yourself to it once more if there’s a high chance you’re not gonna like it?
I agree entirely with Andrew James (Comment 1), who articulated his thoughts a lot more coherently than I did – I came off sounding like a Bay fanboy (which, I admit, I am) seeking to argue against the wind. It’s fair enough that I’m called out for that.
There’s two points I’d like to cover. First, the constant anti-9/11 sentiment getting about whenever a filmmaker decides to use building demolition in a film. It’s an unfortunate fact that, while 9/11 was indeed one of the most horrifying events to occur in the public eye in the last, what, 20 years or so, asking people not to make action films where stuff blows up, falls over or otherwise is destroyed is a little over the top, lest it remind them of something so dreadful. I think the same thoughts were mentioned in several reviews of Cloverfield, regarding the destruction of several buildings with an eerie similarity to the 9/11 events. I saw that film in the cinema, and not once did I think of 9/11. Spielberg even has his ass raked over the coals in some circles because he used the post-WTC collapse “people covered in ash” visuals in War Of The Worlds, something some folks weren’t happy with. It’s a matter of opinion, but I don’t think every building collapsing or person disintegrating into a cloud of pulversied ash is neccessarily trying to evoke memories of 9/11. To say that about every film to feature similar iconocgraphy is, in my opinion, overly cynical. Of course, the will be those more cynical than I am who disagree. That’s okay, that’s what the internet is good for.
The second thing I want to mention, is just how many people I’ve spoken to who thought the film was awesome… As my good mate Tom Clift mentioned above (he also gave the film a quite scathing review, although I admit, I think the points he raised are equally valid as Matts above), critics seem quite quick to leap onto this film as the nadir of Hollywood filmmaking, while the masses (who, let’s face it, are dumb sheep, right? Right?) seems to be willing to inflict it on themselves in droves. I went with a few friends to see this on opening weekend, and to a man they all admitted that while the story and the characters were pretty crappy, they still enjoyed the hell out of it. As a critic myself, I face a dilemma – do I follow my heart or myhead when reviewing a film like this? My heart thoroughly loved it, while my head, like many, could spot the narrative plot holes and poorly developed characters a mile away, facets of the film which didn’t diminish my appreciation, or enjoyment, of it. At what point, as critics who analyse and give our opinion of films, do we decide internally to go more with our heads than our hearts? Quite often I’ve thoroughly loved a film that other folks, writers and bloggers whose opinions are well researched and well written, have torn apart. It makes me question the validity of my own argument, to a degree. If everybody hates Dark Of The Moon, should I as well? Should I go with the masses, conform to the (apparently) building negativity amongst the internet for the Baytastrophe DOTM seems to be, or do I stand aside and let fly with my own thoughts – thoughts which fly in the face of everyone else?
I’m trying so hard not to be a Michael Bay apologist, I really am. I enjoy the majority of his films (Bad Boys II and Pearl Harbor notwithstanding) and actually look forward to his brainless, juvenile penchant for vacuous explosions and action. That’s not to say I can’t see them in a critical light for the cinematic travesties they may be, but I tend to review films more with my heart than I do with my head. Others, rightly or wrongly, more often go with their head, and while I disagree with a lot of what Matt has written in his review of this film, I can’t argue that he didn’t like it – his reasoning is sound, and his logic seems on point. I just think that as critics, we go into a film prepared to dislike what we see based on preconceptions – a friend of mine refuses to see any film starring Tom Cruise, even thought a lot of Cruise’s latest stuff is actually pretty good, Scientology be dammed. Going into a Michael Bay film, especially one as massivly hyped as DOTM, would it be fair to say that some critics went into it looking for something to hate? Is this fair on the filmmaker? On any filmmaker?
Thanks for your time!
Rodney, nicely put. I don’t really “like” any of Bay’s films. I’ve seen each of them once (except Armageddon – I’ve seen that thing in bits and chunks probably close to ten times) and once is all I need. That said, I had a lot of fun with some of them and a lot of the stuff going on in DOTM. I get a little bit deeper about the things I liked and didn’t like in the Cinecast if you care to listen (including a bit of Bay defense as well).
But yeah, the 9/11 criticism is bonkers in my opinion. When A GIANT METAL “SNAKE” IS CRUSHING A BUILDING INTO SEVERAL BITS AND RACE CARS AND LASERS ARE BATTLING ALL OVER THE PLACE, 9/11 didn’t even come close to entering into my mind. There are also some giant robots sitting at the top of another building sending up probe rockets (or whatever they were) to bring an entire planet into the Earth’s gravitational field through another dimension. Didn’t remind me one bit of airplanes full of real people crashing into the twin towers in NYC.
I can understand maybe why someone would see a building (any building) being destroyed (by whatever means) and possibly recalling 9/11 for a minute. But do you really think that was Bay’s intent? And even if it was, is it really that bad of a thing anyway?
“it strikes me that if you hate something or someone so much, why would you subject yourself to it once more if there’s a high chance you’re not gonna like it?”
I dont know. Why did I watch the Rebecca Black “Friday” video like, a dozen fucking times? Why do people watch the Jersey Shore? There’s dozens of reasons to watch bad art that goes beyond a simple “I like to watch idiots” line. I think the attraction to bad art is more complex than that, everything from natural curiosity to an actual belief that seeing stuff you don’t like or that might challenge you about what you like, is healthy. And in this same weekend, this included for me, both Transformers 3, and the Tree of Life, both of which annoyed me for entirely different reasons, and had elements I liked with entirely different intentions. I have plenty to rip on and laugh about both but I’m also glad I saw both of them.
It’s worth seeing stuff I may not like alone just for the sake of being part of the conversation. And I dont mean “the right to make fun of it”, I mean that I actually get something of value out of the conversation around it.
I know I hate the Toronto Sun newspaper and its Fox News-esque op-eds and right wing cheerleading. I do end up reading one of those editorials once in a while. it might be a link from someone else, it might be just a matter of staying informed on other opinions, it might be just because I’m at a bus stop and a copy in the bus shelter.
The point is I think it’s kind of lame to confront people hating on something with a blanketed “then dont watch it or shut up” response. Granted, there are times I’ve been annoyed on this and other sites when movie X is written off out of hand, but so what? Are you saying you’ve never been in a movie theater, seen a bad trailer and remarked to your friend “well that looks like shit. i’d never see that”. If someone tapped you on your shoulder and said “Ahem, you havent seen the film. Why would you waste your time discussing it if you have no intention of seeing it?”
I’d probably tell that guy off, and I guess I’m telling you off.
“I don’t think every building collapsing or person disintegrating into a cloud of pulversied ash is neccessarily trying to evoke memories of 9/11.”
Does Matt do this? I think not. It’s a subjective response to this particular instance, and considering its Bay, there is reasonable suspicion because he pumps his films full of rah rah USA bullshit all the time, has a military fetish, etc.. Also, I get the feeling Matt was so out of the film at that point that he was at that stage all of us get where all you have left to do to get you through the movie is nitpick. When a movie has lost you, that is what happens.
“The second thing I want to mention, is just how many people I’ve spoken to who thought the film was awesome… ”
…and every person I’ve spoken to in person thinks it’s shit, including a friend of mine who illustrates for the Transformers comics and has liked everything Transformers but this and ROTF. So what? Are we supposed to buy a line that critics aren’t being honest because your friends like it?
“some critics went into it looking for something to hate?”
you don’t need to look hard. Bay’s style inherently generates a visceral reaction one way or the other. So does Haneke, von Trier and art film directors. It comes with the territory for provocateurs. I mean the first scene of the female protagonist is a close-up of her ass as she pops into a bed to straddle Sam Witwicky. That alone is a punch to the gut for a lot of viewers.
lol Goon. See, I just look at scenes like that and audibly laugh. Nudging my friend with a smirk and a roll of the eyes, “oh that silly Michael Bay; up to his old tricks again…!” Pretty much everyone in the theater I was in had the same reaction. At this point it’s not exploitative of women or at best even sexy. It’s just ridiculous; and the audience knows (or should know) this by now.
“I don’t think every building collapsing or person disintegrating into a cloud of pulversied ash is neccessarily trying to evoke memories of 9/11.” Does Matt do this?”
Goon, dude, I never said he did. He did, however, mention the 9/11 link in his article. My inference is that whenever critics see a collapsing building, they often (not always, but OFTEN) make some follow-up remark about it “invoking memories of 9/11″ or some other similar phrase, as if to draw the bleakest comparison to ensure the filmmaker is seen to be making some unseen subtextual statement about US politics.. God, why do some people see subtext when there quite simply isn’t any?
“…and every person I’ve spoken to in person thinks it’s shit, including a friend of mine who illustrates for the Transformers comics and has liked everything Transformers but this and ROTF. So what? Are we supposed to buy a line that critics aren’t being honest because your friends like it?”
No, you’re supposed to buy the line that normal, reasonably intelligent people can actually enjoy a film like this, without succumbing to the bile and hatred others might fling at it. Just because we write about it on the internet, doesn’t always make us the highest authority on the matter. And yes, I believe some critics find things wrong with a film because they don’t like the director/producer/star at any given stage. Bias is an unfortunate side effect of being human.
And now I need another question answered: why DID you watch Rebecca Black’s “Friday” so many times?
For me I just react to the cheese of it, i can laugh but for every one of those theres something else that is “oh god…” that is painful. I am in more pain sitting through the tedious military planning scenes and relationship drama than i am with Bay’s racist robots. That said there are plenty of scenarios where someone ends up at the 3rd Transformers film having no idea what they’re gonna see. Kids just reaching filmgoing age… girls being taken on dates to see whatever was playing…
“At this point it’s not exploitative of women”
How is it not exploitative of women? It’s absolutely 100% exploitative of women! It’s just a matter of whether you’re numb to it or offended.
“No, you’re supposed to buy the line that normal, reasonably intelligent people can actually enjoy a film like this, without succumbing to the bile and hatred others might fling at it.”
I agree. It seemed though like you were using the fact that a smart person like it as evidence that the movie is good. That’s fallacious reasoning.
‘why DID you watch Rebecca Black’s “Friday” so many times?”
Its uniquely terrible, its like The Room of music videos. It’s so iconically and uniquely terrible it could and should be studied. It’s like a self-parody of a certain genre style and something i can derive entertainment from almost as much as say, Chris Lilley as a Soulja Boy-ish character on “Angry Boys”
“Just because we write about it on the internet, doesn’t always make us the highest authority on the matter”
Yes it does. I know so because I wrote it on the internet.
“Yes it does. I know so because I wrote it on the internet.”
I stand corrected.
The Kings of Podcasting are back. The Hollywood Saloon returns in all their glory (sweet post production and all) to discuss Dark of the Moon for 3 hours & 28 minutes. This is why I love podcasts. I bow. Check it
http://www.phpbber.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2884&mforum=hollywoodsaloon
I take it back. Don’t listen to the new Saloon show. Was expecting a good old fashion Saloon spanking of T3, not another misguided rant of the downfall of cinema. Move along, nothing to see here.
Thanks Tum Tum. I d/loaded it and started listening, and gave up after about fifteen minutes…. I didn’t wanna say anything in case I was wrong, but yeah, it’s pretty pointless.
Heh, that’s not even the bad part. You didn’t get to the moment where they say Transformers 3 will be used, in the future, to teach people about filmmaking. That’s how negative & batshit their outlook is on the current state of cinema, totally disregarding all the great films that come out these days. They used to be so good/entertaining. WTF happened?
Rodney, I think before you start taking a writer to task for what they said (I’m getting back to the 9/11 stuff in Matt’s review) you should contextualize how that writer writes, and where they are coming from. Listen to Matt on the Mamo! podcast, read his other reviews before you blanket go off about things. The best reviews (and I believe the above is one of them) are ones that come from a very personal reaction (emotional or otherwise) to watching a film. Brown is in a unique position because he was a big fan of the construction and execution of Transformers2, so his reaction to TF3 is even more interesting to me.
But lets leave the ‘getting to know your writer’ bit aside, and just focus on a review (I know, I just told you not to do that but bear with me…) The review itself mentions that there are several appropriations of iconic American-historical moments, the Moon Landing, the Columbia disaster, etc. etc. that the 9/11 stuff follows logically when you are considering that TF3 is building itself as an alternate history (see also: Watchmen) of sorts. It makes your reactions come off as, well, ill considered and reactionary when you are taking the high-road of calm intelligence. Come back in 10-15 years when you’ve had a bit more of a chance to branch out in terms of what films are available and we will both have a beer and a chuckle at the misguided enthusiasm (and wordcount) of this Michael Bay article.
That is all.
Having just recently seen the film I agree with Matt’s review. Although I will say I did not get a 9/11 vibe from the building tilting … it seemed more like a cheap rip-off of Inception’s tumbling-set scene to me.
I did not see #2 in the series because I was so annoyed by #1. What pissed me off was Bay’s complete refusal to make characters out of any of the transformers. Optimus and Megatron are cardboard cut-outs of good and bad guys and they refuse to give Bumble Bee a real voice in fear that they might have to actually write dialog for him. The rest were just shiny, unrecognizable cannon fodder.
So I hear people are enjoying #3 and I make a last-minute decision to run out and see it. Take all the flaws of #1 and magnify by 10x. The humour has devolved into mindless camp, the action is just as incoherent and the characters have somehow become more shallow. In contrast to Matt’s review, I found Leonard Nimoy’s Sentinel Prime to be the only slightly brighter spot in this film … at least he was a character with some dialog. The “needs of the many” line actually made me laugh out loud (not sure if that was the intention).
“Bay cannot stand the lack of control, any more than he can stand a woman who does anything other than acquiesce to his churning vortex of misogyny” – this isn’t exactly news to anyone is it? This is part of Bay’s ongoing diatribe of shit. And I agree – good on Fox for moving on and speaking loudly about it.
Good on you Matt for sharing what pissed you off but chances are the people who should be reading this review won’t or will dismiss it as the ramblings of film snob (though as per your review you clearly aren’t).
The Bay machine is, sadly, unstoppable, not when he’s basically printing money. I went because hubby wanted to see it. It was a pretty expensive nap considering I slept though a good 40 minutes of the destruction of Boston or whatever city they were tearing into pieces. It was well worth it though: hubby finally conceded that Spielberg had lost his marbles and that Bay can’t direct his way out of a paper bag.
It’s too bad the movie is such a pile of tripe because for once, the action sequences were actually easy to follow and the 3D was, for me, the best I’ve seen since CORALINE. I’d still be hardpressed to recommend it to anyone.
@ Kurt – I don’t drink beer. I don’t drink. So we’ll just have to chuckle.
Dude, I first came to this site based on the link to the Transformers 3 review, and wrote my comment based solely on that – I didn’t go back and spend a day figuring out if Matt was a decent person, father of three, or a raving lunatic, I just read what he wrote and went from there. I agree with many of his points in his article, and found it to be well written and argued. What I will say annoyed me most is your assumption that I have a limited film knowledge….. “branch out in terms of what’s available..” indeed. Man, I’ve been watching films “properly” for nearly 20 years. And not all of them are Michael Bay films, I’m here to tell you.
@ Dave M – I too laughed at the “needs of the many” line, and many in the audience audibly groaned as well…. I don’t think it was intended as a laugh-out-loud moment, but it came off that way.
@Rodney, what does “watching films properly” mean?
Watching them with intent to critique. I’ve been a passionate film fan since the early 90′s.
Kurt doesn’t watch films properly, he just ‘sits down’ with them.
@Henrik – touché!
@Rodney, you don’t have to watch something with the intent to critique, this can often hinder things, but I guess we all judge while we watch…
“Jeez – I’m out of it for a little while and everyone gets delusions of grandeur!”
I really appreciate all the conversation here, folks. There’s depth and insight to many, if not all, of the arguments on this page. Thanks all.
Great review. Saw the first one and hated it. Didn’t see the second one and not watching the third one. I expect Optimus Prime to save the world and beat the decepticons in transformers not the US military.
I listened to the Hollywood Saloon podcast anyways. How obnoxious. That one guys like 95% of the talking, and is a total Rush Limbaughesque blowhard, and everything is the end of the world and end of cinema as we know it.
I laughed at the Spock line too because I couldn’t believe how effectively it was inverted to facilitate the moral (aesthetic, political, industrial, etc.) logic of today’s ’1%’ class war (ie. OWS+).
So many good comments and insights here… at least finding this review was one reason I’m glad I finally broke down and watched this insulting piece of eye candy.