Old Nightmares
- Thread starter MovieBob
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That's a matter of opinion. You have yours, I have mine. A lot of people consider Emmerich just as much of a hack as Bay. So they cancel each other out in terms of public opinion.
Fine. Personally I can't really see how you can make something deep and meaningful out of something like Transformers and expect a mass audience to buy into it. Trying and make it deep and pretentious to me would be disingenuous and the audience would feel cheated. "Hey! Why are all these robots talking about the horrors of war and their political ideologies?" they'd say, "I came to see them blow stuff up!" Why do you think the two Matrix sequels failed? People came to see more kick-ass martial arts sequences and bullet-time. Instead they got Philosophy 101.
Which goes to show you completely missed the point entirely of what I was saying. So I'll spell it out for you so your nerdrage-addled brain can process it. The meaning of the quote refers to the fact that just like someone like Richard M. Nixon possessed the connections and political acumen which made him uniquely qualified to broker a deal with China, so does Michael Bay, who possesses the knack for making big huge action movies where lots of shit blows up, make a movie like Transformers; a franchise which - let's face it - is remembered by most as being about giant robots who blow shit up and not much else.
9, and your point is now rendered equally invalid. And resorting to ad-hominem attacks does not make your argument any more convincing.
I never said ROTF was a GOOD movie, but it's nowhere near as bad as say, Plan 9 or Manos. As much as you may not want to believe it, sometimes things DO happen in movies that are beyond anyone's control. Had the strike not happened and Kurtzman and Orci were able to be more involved, it might not have turned out as bad.
And if you want to make comparisons to Batman & Robin, Akiva Goldsman deserves just as much blame for that debacle (as well as Batman Forever) as Schumacher does. I don't care if he won and Oscar. Between the Batman movies, Lost in Space and Deep Blue Sea, the man should be slapped with a restraining order prohibiting him from going within 100 yards of another genre project. (Though he's working on Fringe right now w/ Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci. So maybe he's been rehabilitated.)
And you sir or ma'am are an asshole, your insane rantings that are a lame attempt at humor falls flat, and again you miss my point. I was just saying that you can make a purse out of a sow's ear and make a kickass video from a movie that was considered by its fanbase to suck. And read more carefully next time: I didn't say Halestorm themselves made the video. A fan with time on their hands did, idiot.
So... "Transformers" would've been better if someone else had made it? We agreeIan S said:
I'm aware that this will sound like splitting hairs, but the things in 9 are "human" in the sense that they are essentially cartoon-caricatures of humans, and also I imagine that people didn't relate to them more because the movie wasn't good. I'm loathe to bring up animation, because the "rules" ARE different, but since you brought it up Cars, Bugs Life, Monsters Inc, Antz, Lion King, I could keep going. Heck, movies primarily starring cats and dogs have been huge hits. Babe, anyone? Happy Feet out-earned Casino Royale and all it had were mostly-expressionless penguins.
Correct, those do not count towards him being a movie star. They count towards him being a good actor, which he is, but hardly anyone cares. A movie star is, by definition, someone who can sell tickets to a movie just by being in it. NOBODY - at least, nobody enough to make a difference, says "let's go see the new Shia LaBeouf movie."
It's not a problem with him so much as the changing business: There really AREN'T a lot of movie star actors right now, only movie star characters: Tobey Maguire and Christian Bale both headlined two of the five top-grossing movies of all time - and neither of them has ever "opened" a big movie outside of those franchises. Because they aren't movie stars: Spider-Man and Batman are. I'd be hard-pressed to name ANYONE who counts as a classical movie star working today outside of Will Smith.
He doesn't do it WELL, though. That's the problem. Aside from the god-awful script, almost everything else wrong with the Transformers movies could be forgiven if they at least worked as action films - Even the badly-designed robots... I mean, Dark Knight works just fine despite Batman's costume (and voice) being junk - but they DON'T. The man simply cannot direct coherent action, and the rapid-cutting camera moves he uses to cover that fact are tiresome after about twenty minutes.
Well...heh...not exactly what I was going for, but yes since you put it that way. What I was trying to say, and you elaborated on this further, was that one was animated and the other was live action, so comparing the two to me would have been like comparing apples to oranges. But you do have a valid point there.MovieBob said:So... "Transformers" would've been better if someone else had made it? We agree
I'm not trying to be a Bay apologist, really, but there were a lot worse choices for director that they could have gotten. If I were producing a Transformers movie, Bay would not have been my first choice. More like second or third. Personally the only guy who I think could have done a superior job would have been James Cameron, but since he was busy getting the ball rolling on Avatar at the time, he probably would have declined the offer. I don't know of many other directors out there who would really understand Transformers that would also be capable of delivering the flash and spectacle that audiences would be expecting. I'm just saying I was pretty satisfied with who we ended up with considering Spielberg could have done worse when hiring a director.
Just curious...whom do you think would have been a better choice for directing a Transformers movie? Because other than Cameron, I can't think of a one.
Yes, you're right. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any more "stars" in the classic sense anymore. All we have really now are big names that the studios attach to projects it seems just to add some recognition to it. I don't know if Transformers would have had as big of a draw had there not been any names we recognized, though. I'm guessing Shia was cast as the lead because 1) The producers didn't feel confident enough that the audience would be able to relate to the Transformers as characters, 2) Having come off Suburbia, they considered him an actor with the potential to carry an effects-laden multimillion dollar event movie and 3) Attract the teen girl demographic, who normally probably wouldn't have had any interest in a movie like Transformers.
True. I think you put it perfectly in your 2012 review when you compared Roland Emmerich's skill at shot composition to Bay's lack thereof. I admit that even the action scenes at the climax of ROTF were hard to follow what with the overuse of the shakycam. It's a technique that always annoyed me and I think it's used as a crutch by directors who don't know how to film an action or fight scene. Still, Bay has done some good money shots. Ironhide's dodging the missiles in slow-mo in the first movie and then somersaulting over the chick later was cool, I thought. Too bad he doesn't do more of that and give us time to appreciate the action shots.
Anyone. I know that sounds like me being a smartass, but I'm serious. Anyone would have made a better movie, up to and including Joel Schumacher (who can at least direct action) and Paul W.S. Anderson (who would have at least probably cast his unspeakably-hot wife in it.) What they OUGHT to have done is give it to some 20-something up-and-comer who knows how to squeez three dimes out of a nickel. There's a LOT of guys fresh out of film school plugging away on car commercials who probably could've hit Transformers out of the park, and probably for LESS than the 150 mil Bay blew. Peter Jackson was going to turn Halo over to Neil Blomkamp, a kid from South Africa who'd made some commercials and a short film in his hometown. Look what HE turned out to be capable of.Ian S said:
Here's another of those "things no one can prove but everyone in the biz pretty much knows" tidbits: Shia was cast because Steven Spielberg thinks he's awesome and wants to cast him in big movies. He's the "new" Richard Dreyfuss, basically.
True. Jackson though is, I think, still considered an independent filmmaker and thanks to the LOTR films, has enough clout that he can call his own shots. Unfortunately in Hollywood, big studios like Paramount and SKG Dreamworks aren't going to trust their big event movie to a fresh-out-of-film school student unless they've proven themselves. You're probably right and anyone could have made a better Transformers movie than Bay, but until that someone better comes along, for better or worse Bay is who we're stuck with at least until the third movie (he's under contract I think for one more movie and he's done). Hopefully after that Paramount/Dreamworks will boot him and they'll do what other studios have been doing and reboot the movie franchise in a few more years, and by that time we'll hopefully have someone who can do a better job. Maybe even Blomkamp, who by that time will have had a few more hits under his belt.MovieBob said: