The FAT Website est. 1999
Here is how I imagine the conversation between Michael Bay and the studio-executive who greenlighted the ‘eagerly awaited’ sequel to the transformers movie went:
Studio Exec: Michael, Transformers was a financial collosus, congratulations.. What other projects do you have in the pipeline?
Bay: Well I have been thinking long and hard about this, what if we make another transformers movie?
SE: Another one?
Bay: Thats right, but this time it wont be in the US.. but in Egypt!
SE: woah woah hold your horses there Mike, you’re talking crazy!
Bay: The story can centre around the Decepticons coming back to earth to find a life source that can help them destroy the universe.
SE: um.. i dont know Mike, wasn’t that the same storyline as the first one?
Bay: …. NO! This time its a completely different life source..
SE: But what are the chances that there are two lifeforces in the entire universe, and they are both situated on Earth?
Bay: Well you see Mr. executive the underlying meaning of the film is that everyone has a destiny and it is the god-given destiny of that ‘le beef’ kid to save the universe from eternal destruction, whilst at the same time trying to score with a girl that is way to hot for him, thus making him the hero of everyman..
SE: hmmm.. barely seems plausable.
Bay: Did i mention that we wont have to pay the actors much because there are only about 10 characters in the movie (including robots), for which most of the movie is running against a bluescreen without any meaningful dialog?
SE: hmmm *sounds interested* tell me more
Bay: If i’m gonna be honest with you Mr. jew-money man, people are so desensitised by computer graphics and explosions these days that we can probably film the movie in about 2 months, on a dangerously similar storyline to the first one, located it in a more sandier location to appease the people who have HD blueray, throw in some shots of Megan’s ass for people who will never get laid, blow loads of stuff up and write some macho-esque bullshit lines like ‘Transform this!’, or ‘it seems that humans are more than meets the eye’, and still gross around $700 million box office with hardly any thought.
SE: *wipes a tear from his eye* .. thats the american dream
Bay: God bless us.. everyone.
And you thought Megatron was a badass
out.
I was almost going to post a blog about this film and the reception it has been getting with some of the most hostile critical reviews I can remember in some time. Maybe this is the multi-million dollar straw that broke the back of people who are sick of shitty summer blockbusters?
I hear the film is is too long and completely mindless which I guess is to be expected. I think it was addition of racist, misogynistic and xenophobic content that tipped a lot of people over the edge. Matt’s post pretty much sums up the rather depressing motives that were behind the production of this film too.
One of many reviews:
“TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)
ZERO STARS (out of four)
The worst summer in recent memory continues as Michael Bay brings his slow push-ins and Lazy Susan dolly shots back to the cineplex with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (hereafter Transformers 2), the ugliest, most hateful, most simple-minded and incomprehensible assault on art and decency since the last Michael Bay movie. It’s bad (that goes without saying), and it’s possible that even its fans will have the brute sense to recognize that it’s bad–but it’s bad in such a way that defies easy description. It’s so bad, it’s exasperating.
The action, as you’d expect, is impossible to follow, with long stretches cascading in on one another without the slightest notion of who’s winning, where, and to what end. But that’s not why it’s bad. It suggests that the evil robots have perfected Terminator technology in the manufacture of a gorgeous slut-bot (Isabel Lucas), who, before trying to kill the returning Sam (Shia LaBeouf) with her go-go-gadget tongue, is humiliated by having heroic Autobot Bumblebee money-shot robot semen all over her face. But that’s not why it’s bad, either.
Ridiculously poor filmmaking and Bay’s wearying misogyny aren’t “bad,” per se, so much as they’re the tools of his auteur canon, of his absolute gold-standard grasp of what it is that prepubescent boys are into and his desire to, as fast as he can, create undercover hardcore porn to gratify those desires. What else to make of the weird girl issues–the entire co-ed Michael Bay U campus populated with hot bimbo chattel, Bay’s camera leering obligingly? It’s tough to make someone feel sorry for Megan Fox, yet the extent to which she’s objectified in this flick has you looking for track marks, smeared mascara, and other evidence of bus-stop porn-star exploitation.
Neither is it bad because of an appalling racism that sees white actor Tom Kenny doing the voices of Mudflap and Skids, Amos & (gold-toothed) Andy robots who declare themselves to be illiterate after a film-long minstrel show.
It’s ignorant, boorish, loud, and proud of it. It takes a moment to imply that Obama is a pussy for appointing some suit to run super-secret, massively-destructive human/Autobot strikeforce NEST, then expels said suit out the back of a cargo plane carrying a bunch of grunts who need to be told that a desert full of Egyptians are “friendlies.” Unless we’ve been at war with Egypt, of course they’re fucking friendlies–exactly whom is Bay educating? He’s educating the audience assembled to watch Transformers 2, naturally, because said audience is packed to bursting with idiots on the one hand and people hoping against hope to recapture something of their lost youth on the other.
The problem with Bay is that he hates you. He thinks you’re a moron and then you go about proving him right by making his movies obscenely popular. He also hates the Transformers as a cultural relic, having them fart and piss and shit and, in a fairly embarrassing moment in an embarrassing film, sport a pair of giant testicles.
Transformers 2 is a dossier on Bay’s shortcomings as a human being. It’s a primer on how we learn to make war by falling in love with the weapons of war without assimilating the real message of Bay’s films that all that firepower is the vehicle of male sexual frustration, insecurity, and inadequacy. This is without stopping to consider Bay’s trademark collateral toll: hundreds in Shanghai, thousands as all hands go down with an American aircraft carrier, dozens and their camels in the Egyptian village, and the dignity of everyone involved.”
so basically you guys are recommending i see this, right?
Twice!
The Harry Potter movies are brilliant and this one is no exception – both my kids and my parents love them, they truly span the ages.