The Angry Rant

As previously mentioned, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a terrible excuse for a movie, and it’s as good a reason as any to convince us that Michael Bay has developmental problems. Really, he has a hard-on for special effects (or bright, shiny objects), and coherent, linear thoughts seem to escape him.

Notwithstanding, this man was handed the GNP of a small country and basically told to “go and blow some stuff up and don’t worry about the details.” As such, he’s unleashed the greatest threat to the world since the Ark of the Covenant grabbed humanity by the balls in 1981. And we’re not talking about a gentle reacharound, either. I mean an angry, you-slept-with-my-best-friend-and-also-gave-me-herpes nut grab.

All that aside, this steaming pile of celluloid still managed to gross over a billion dollars while producing thousands of nerd-boners before the credits rolled on the first midnight showing. Of course, the movie was a failure among critics, and even prompted Roger Ebert to write “This movie made me feel so dirty that I literally had to sodomize myself with a splintery mop handle just to feel clean again.”*

*Not really. That would have been cool, though.

However, there is a contingent of die-hards who refuse to disparage the good name of the Transformers franchise, much less their savior, Michael Bay. Their rallying cry is “It’s a brainless, over-the-top action movie about toys, so why does it need to make sense! I’m entertained, plot holes be damned!” Except with much worse grammar and much more uses of the word “cock.” As in, “u dindt like it? suck a cock! you sucks! and your mom! lol.”

Those people, my friends, are the subject of this edition of Jerk O’ The Week!

Okay. Here’s the deal. I understand that Transformers 2 is a summer popcorn movie that is light on story and heavy on the special effects. I get that. But that doesn’t mean that the little plot that does exist can’t make sense, or at the very least, give the audience the impression that it wasn’t written in one afternoon in the middle of a Red Bull binge.

But special effects and a cast of characters made up of alien robots and robot actors notwithstanding, that’s no excuse to mail in the screenplay. It starts out promising enough, but ends up just as repetitive and cliched as you’d expect it to.

But of course, the people who defend it are insistent that a movie of this ilk shouldn’t be judged on its merits, but rather on whether or not it was entertaining. And those guys are just a-holes.

The writing, directing and acting are secondary to their own enjoyment. And to that end, I agree. It’s ultimately up to the viewer as to whether or not they enjoyed the movie, but that doesn’t mean it is a good movie. However, the staunch supporters of Transformers will tell you that it didn’t make a difference that the plot made no sense, that it was well over two hours long, that the acting was horrible, that it was completely devoid of anything resembling good storytelling or film making, and that it only mattered that they were entertained.

But isn’t that just an awful way to measure success? Yes, Transformers 2 may have entertained you, but that doesn’t mean it was a good movie. In fact, I’ll readily admit that I’m often times more entertained by bad movies by virtue of them being terrible movies. Take Road House, for instance. For all intents and purposes, Road House is an awful movie. But whenever it’s on television, I watch it. Why? Because I’m entertained by it. I’m entertained by the fact that Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is a great fighter, despite weighing about 150 and having nicer hair than the female lead. I’m entertained because Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott) is supposed to be the best cooler in the business. But yet, he gets his ass kicked in almost every fight in the movie. And also, a character says “Does a hobby horse have a wooden dick?” That’s pretty entertaining, too.

You see, I’d much rather watch Road House than Titanic, even though Titanic is clearly a better movie. Yet, I am not entertained by Titanic. But I’m not saying that Road House is a good movie, nor am I arguing that “it entertains me, so therefore it doesn’t have to make sense!”

For instance, let’s say you are traveling from New York City to Las Vegas via airplane. During the flight, your seat breaks, the in-flight movie is Juno, it smells like farts and gasoline, and the plane crashes on the runway and bursts into flames. However, you and the rest of the passengers are unhurt, and you managed to land a full four minutes before your ETA. Technically, you arrived at your destination on time and without injury. It was an awful experience, but according to this retard logic, it would have been considered a success because “it got the job done.”

Do you see how stupid that sounds? Transformers 2 was nothing more than a cross-country flight that smelled like farts that nearly ended up killing everyone on board. But yet, you were entertained, so mission accomplished, right? In reality, the only thing that it succeeded in was taking away two hours of my life. I could have done coke for that amount of time and been more productive.

The sad thing is that this is the attitude that we now have. As long as something “does the job,” that’s all that really matters. Gone are the days when something not only had to do the job, but had to do the job well. It’s more and more evident that this is happening. Ask anyone who knows anything about cars, and they will tell you that Pontiac should have been out of business two decades ago. Why? Because they aren’t quality products. But yet, people still want to pay money for this movie, completely setting aside how awful it is, simply at the expense of their own entertainment.

And if you are going to use the defense that it’s a summer blockbuster that doesn’t need to be well made, then I’ll point you to The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean. All three of those movies were awesome, and two of them earned Oscar nominations for two actors, with one of them (Heath Ledger) winning.

The moral of the story is that Transformers 2 is a disgrace of a movie, and there is no excuse for donating more money to Michael Bay’s campaign to turn us all into drooling invalids.

So, to make up for your nightmare-inducing memories of this movie, here is a picture of Megan Fox.

You’re welcome.

Tags:   Jerk O' The Week · Megan Fox · Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen1 Comment