I’m finding some of the responses to my article “Transformers: Age of Extinction.
I can understand, if you’re a paid film critic, going and seeing the latest Transformers film even if you didn’t want to and hate everything Bay is and stands for as a filmmaker, but why are those that so clearly don’t like Bay paying to go see the fourth film in a franchise that has been receiving worse and worse reviews with each new installment. Is it out of a self hatred or what exactly is it and in this case I can’t accept the argument “I wanted to see if it was as bad as people said.” To judge by the reaction to the three previous films history tells you the film is as bad as people say, or, at least, as bad as people think they’re supposed to say.
Reading through comments and reviews I’m not seeing anything from any of the detractors that seems remotely unique in terms of criticism. Were you looking for depth of character or something narratively profound?
Don’t get me wrong, I understand these complaints when a film is clearly trying to be something it’s not…
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…The first Transformers was trying to be funny more than it was trying to be anything else and it wasn’t, at least not to me. The second one was a bit of a mess in a lot of respects, which I expected and my review reflected as much. The third I felt was an actual improvement on the first two and the fourth maintained the insanity of the first three, cut the Witwickys, put the humor in the hands of the actors (T.J. Miller and Stanley Tucci) rather than the screenwriter and told a coherent story. To say it’s the same as the previous three is dismissive and displays a bit of a critical blind spot… my opinion of course, don’t get mad.
Times change, we change and I think we owe it to ourselves, if we’re going to actually spend 165 minutes of our lives watching a movie about transforming alien robots, to try our best to separate ourselves from our biases. I’m just as guilty of it as everyone else and was wracking my brain all Saturday morning while writing that article, trying to figure out why I accepted Age of Extinction, but can’t stand Pacific Rim… it wasn’t easy, but I hope these moments of inner turmoil allow me to continue to look at a variety of films differently and not instantly dismiss them all immediately and out of hand. Lord knows I’m already cringing at the thought of a Pacific Rim 2.
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