Sunday, July 12, 2009

Transformers 2 (ROTF-Liam)

This is going to be short, unlike the movie.

It wasn’t as good as the first Transformers. The jokes got dumber and the explosions got louder.

I didn’t like that all of the cool, giant robot fights were all in non-descript locations like forests and deserts and warehouses. In the first one they fought on city streets and highways. Seeing a Decepiticon crush an SUV gives the robots a kind of grand scale that just doesn’t come with knocking over a christmas tree. Setting the climactic battle in what was essentially a set left over from a minor fight scene in the first film was, to quote Optimus Prime in the first movie, a “big mistake.”

My biggest issue, though, was the lack of character development. And no, not the human characters. I mean, who cares about them?. I mean the robots. They added a lot of robot cannon fodder but that just means less screen time for the real robots. I wanted to see the Autobots get upset over Prime’s death. I wanted to see Ratchet and Ironhide strategizing. I didn’t need to see robot scrote and dozens of Decepticon “red-shirts.” Actually, the robot scrote was pretty awesome.

But, I still loved it nonetheless. [SPOILER ALERT] There’s this tinkerbell-ish scene near the end where Optimus Prime comes back to life and gets some upgrades and flies off to kick some ass. When I went to see this movie for the second time there was a kid that was about 7 years old or so that started screaming with glee and jumping on his seat when this happened. THAT is why I love this movie.

On a side note, I think it’s funny that they’ve “updated” one of Optimus Primes’ tag lines. In the cartoon he usually said “Autobots, transform & roll out!” But seeing as how Optimus is all “post-9/11” these days he now just says “let’s roll!” Even when he, in fact, flies.

In response to Brodie's "the portrayal of all women as always wanting sex was... um, offensive. " I mean, there's only two women in the movie: Mom and Fox. And fox, while undeniably just there for eye candy, doesn't actually act all that lusty in the movie. The mom does, I guess, but it's more of an empty nest kind of gag. I guess you really mean the sluticon? That's not even a woman! That's like the people who get upset at futurama because bender drinks and smokes. THEY'RE ROBOTS!

1 comment:

  1. Actually, there are many females on campus. Walking through the dorm halls wearing nothing but towels but giving "come get me" looks, then in his class all the girls are sucking on their pencils dreamily thinking of their professor... There were other women in the movie. They just might as well have been Maxim posters on the wall--oh wait, there were some of those too. And being that we first see Fox working as a mechanic bending over a motorcycle in booty shorts and a crop top, you may want to leave her out of this--she's not helping your argument.

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