Ooh, look, there’s a new Transformers movie out. Above is its female lead, Not Megan Fox, doing an approximation of looking deeply concerned and blister-lipped. To be fair, while the above IS absolutely a representative shot from the movie, what it represents is really two or three rungs down the ladder of things people will go to this movie to see…
…whereas this is a little more like it, although not all the way there yet. You get the idea. My not-entirely-negative review for MSN Movies tries to accentuate the positive aspects of the mega-blockbuster, but I have to admit, despite the demands of 3D compelling director Michael Bay to adopt a style that is almost classical by his lights, that I can’t get 100% behind the enterprise. I mean, they’re Transformers, for God’s sake. “Well what do you want from a summer movie?” a colleague who I bet is going to be one of the “counterintuitive” ravers asked me (and kind of tetchily, at that) before I could meekly register a reservation as we straggled out of the screening. Had I had my wits about me a little more I could have mustered a good one-word answer: “Jaws.”
In retrospect, and what with its location shooting, political cynicism and blue-collar characters, ‘Jaws’ has a legitimate claim to be part of the same ‘New Hollywood’ it ostensibly helped end.
Jaws, T2, Jurassic Park, Die Hard, The Dark Knight…anything but this garbage.
“Had I had my wits about me a little more I could have mustered a good one-word answer: ‘Jaws.’
Perfect response. I’m stealing the shit out of that.
Yeah, Jaws didn’t kill the New Hollywood, the marketing and distribution of Jaws did. Jaws, itself, is quite a humble little piece of work, relying on off-camera scares, performance, snappy dialogue…you know, film making and shit, for its everlasting power.
I’m also going to steal that line (I might have said E.T. instead, since that’s my big summer Spielberg movie memory, but…). And in addition to what the others have said above, one other great thing about JAWS is how it seldom, if ever, insulted your intelligence. I don’t understand people who think that “entertaining movies” and “movies that don’t insult your intelligence” should be mutually exclusive.
ANYTHING but The Dark Knight. I’d rather watch Transformers 5: More Stuff before slogging my way through Chris Nolan’s overwritten “masterpiece” again.
More good one-word answers:
Aliens
Incredibles (bit of a cheat, was a fall release)
Raiders… (another cheat 🙂
Robocop
Superman
Have they put Marina City across from the Wrigley Building and Trib Tower? Because that’s just unacceptable. Unfuckingacceptable.
Speaking of Superman, Jaws, and Raiders, how about a little verisimilitude, some themes and dialogue geared towards anyone over 16, and an editor who wasn’t raised on 10,000 hours of Halo and Grand Theft Auto.
The larger problem may well be any serious discussion of the ‘Summer Movie’ as though it was a season or a religious holiday. Jaws and Star Wars weren’t ‘summer movies’, just movies who established a marketing plan.
Yeah, but ‘Jaws’ sucks too. The better question is why do we (supposedly so desperately) need mindless entertainment? Summer or otherwise… is it that hard to think when the sun’s out? I mean JP Melville’s crime films are entertaining, couldn’t those be great to watch in an AC filled matinée theater during a July? What about a prime era Argento?
this isn’t my thread, but i’d dare say we’ve confused the desire to be delighted with the ravenous craving to be entertained. And if we’re not entertained then we MUST be bored.
btw, to say that Jaws sucks is an overstatement. It’s a good movie that understands both its form and the lives at play in it. It’s not Melville but it has its own qualities.
‘North by Northwest’ was a summer release, beat that.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK AT HER!!!!!
This is what movies are ALL ABOUT.
“Thousand Plateaus of the Anti-Epistemological Perplex of Optimus Prime”
As someone who just got out of academia with his mind and soul in tact, but not unscathed, this bit had me in stitches. Thanks, Glenn.
I could list a number of reasons why some people misapprehend JAWS, its effect on movie marketing and its nearly unappreciable superiority over TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON but, to steal our host’s expression, the direction of this extrapolation on his initial comparison is #fromengland
“…and an editor who wasn’t raised on 10,000 hours of Halo and Grand Theft Auto.”
I’m assuming since HALO and GTA, like almost all video games, track their in-game action in long, wide-shot takes that you’re privy to some epidemic of ten-minute master-shot blockbusters that I’m not. Otherwise, you’re using the old “this movie is edited/shot like a video game” critique against films that, no, are edited nothing like video games.
Speaking of the academy, it looks like Lex has boned up on his Laura Mulvey.
Tom, i’m sorry i didn’t bring rigor to my video game comment. I guess I’m not as caught up on them as you. But your assessment rings of BS. “like almost all video games, track their in-game action in long, wide-shot takes that you’re privy to some epidemic of ten-minute master-shot”. Really? By your account Halo and “GTA” should feel like Bela Tarr films, but they don’t. Do they? Use a better argument or show some generosity.
Today I watched ‘Spetters’, (Kitano’s) ‘Outrage’ and ‘Brand upon the brain!’. Laptop, fan (it is fucking hot) and cigars. That’s a summer movie evening for me.
Reno: You said that editors seem like they’re brought up on 10,000 hours of video games– the implication I read, and perhaps I’m misreading you, is that video games are responsible for the replacement of sense-of-space and mise-en-scene with rapid-fire close-ups. If that’s not the argument you’re making, than I apologize.
video games are *all about* sense of space. Halo is a first-person shooter, with each level presented in one long, contiguous take. There are no cuts, and certainly no cut-cut-cut-cut-cut. No disorienting close-ups. They are, indeed, “shot”, and presented, and thus “edited” in super-long takes.
I’m sorry if I was ungenerous, but whether or not they “feel” like Bela Tarr films is irrelevant. My argument is to the formal aspects of video games, not to their “feel”. Saying that today’s crop of disorienting cut-cut-cut editors and directors are raised on, and thus taking their cues from, video games (and, again, if that’s not what you were saying, I apologize) is an argument that makes no sense, because video games are *nothing* like that. At all.
Anorexic narcissists aren’t attractive, Lex.
The funny thing is, I don’t even like Halo or Grand Theft Auto.
Oh, yeah, and speaking of Mulvey’s male gaze, who was that other guy who said that movies all come down to “a gun and a pretty girl”?
That’s right, Jean-Luc Godard. Take that line as a statement that the MASTER of the French New Wave not only would give Monsieur Bay a rousing, awed thumbs-up, but basically there would BE no Michael Bay without Godard. Except Bay is better.
YEP YEP. Also: LOOK. AT. HER. Do you not go to movies to see chicks you want to bang? I know I do. Only thing would make it better is if THE FOX was in it too and they had a LITTLE CATFIGHT then made up and scissors each other while wearing heels.
GOOD IDEA.
You know who I miss? Rachael Taylor, the OTHER girl from the first Transformers movie. She was a lot more alluring than either The Fox or the Not Fox.
Nice review, Glenn. I chuckled mightily at the “It blinds! It deafens!” remark.
Yes, we all know Bay is a worthy disciple of Jean-Luc. Only a certain corageous NY film critic dared to say it aloud for us.
Still, Lex… LOOK. AT. HER. In that particular photo, not elsewhere where she appears to be, well, attractive, and not weirdly distorted and bloated. Tell me those bags below her eyes aren’t going to explode the next second. Tell me those cheekbones, as lighted there, aren’t going to collapse due to the strain required to form that moronic expression of awe. Tell me they didn’t have a less disturbing photo of her to unleash on the world.
Tell me, please.
Glenn – When you wrote “counterintuitive raver” is this EXACTLY the type of review you were anticipating?
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/transformers/index.html?story=/ent/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/06/28/transformers_dotm
@ Sal C: As oppossed to the “post-graduate academic realm”, which I guess refers to those reviews of Lady Gaga videos at Slant, or that counter-thing on ‘Sucker punch’, or the entire ‘Music’ section.
Still, kudos for the ‘Film’ section. Keep it up.
@ Sal C: Actually, that’s kind of funny because…well, I sat next to Andrew at the screening last night and we were both a little giddy before, during and after (we had to rush down to the Regal from Lincoln Square after “Larry Crowne”). So I may have influenced his notice a little bit. I’m pretty sure that “crank it up to 11” line re Bay’s instructions to projectionists was one of mine…but as you’ll note, we both use pretty much the exact same kicked in our reviews. What are you going to do.
@ Tom: Thank you, thank you, thank you! Video games are the last pop-culture holdout of the long take, and it’s endlessly maddening to see them blamed for what is quite obviously a music-video and cell-phone influence. As you rightly say, GRAND THEFT AUTO is all about continuous space; I would love to see a movie where the world was as detailed and defined as, say, Los Santos.
Outing myself as a Transformers nerd, I would like to point out that crowbaring American history into the mythology like Kruger and Bay have done here was never a part of any TF stuff until now. I don’t why I feel the need to say that, but I do. I’m just as offended and disgusted by it as Glenn is.
What’s mindblowing about the collection of scenes Kruger called a plot is that you have to pretend the last movies didn’t happen in order for it to work. How the hell did Simmons and Sector 7 NOT know about what was on the moon?
Tom and the Fuzzy Bastard,
There is no parallel to the video game ‘continuous space’ and the cinematic continuous/long take. They are experienced completely differently … and how we experience the space is what is of importance. The space may be continuous in the video game world but the attention required is rapid and intermittent. The cinematic long take is attentive to time. the video game continuous space is an escape from time.
Intermittent? Dude, have you played a video game since the quarter-munching days? A few years ago, I used to edit game trailers for a living, and one of the constant challenges was making the fixed camera, long attention-span approach of games (esp. sandbox games like GTA) look like fast-cut blockbusters. Because they look nothing alike! Most sandbox style games (and RPGs, for that matter) involve a fixed angle on a world that changes only through following your avatar’s realtime motion, with the player paying constant attention to what enters or exits frame. It’s really a long-take form. The closest cinema has gotten do it was the long first-person take in the Doom movie, which wasn’t good, but was hardly cut-cut-cut. In fact, given that in video games, establishing and maintaining point of view is absolutely paramount, it’s hard to imagine how a game could employ the disorienting tactics used by current blockbusters.
>Really? By your account Halo and “GTA” should feel like Bela Tarr films, but they don’t. Do they? Use a better argument or show some generosity.
No BS at all – videogames don’t contain a lot of cuts, if any, in the gameplay segments. They don’t feel like Bela Tarr, but sometimes they feel a little like those bravura steadicam setups Brian De Palma likes to do. And sometimes (e.g. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion) they feel like nothing so much as a long pleasant stroll across an idyllic countryside. The trailers for games do tend to be very cutty, but whether they are imitating movies or the other way around is one of those chicken-and-egg things.
Obviously your comment wasn’t intended to be scrutinized to within an inch of its life. But as a lifelong videogamer who also can’t stand Michael Bay, I find the differences in the respective aesthetics – versus the shorthand version that gets bandied about in pop culture discourse – to be sort of interesting.
“There’s really no point giving this a bad review…” Really, Glenn? Why not? Because the 13-year old target audience of the “Transformers” movies only reads what their friends posted on Facebook? Because “Entertainment Weekly” (surely the epitome of serious film journalism) started a discussion about how “critics love to hate Michael Bay”?
I think you’re wrong to assume that critics pan the “Transformers” films because “the heroes are a race of intergalactic robots that disguise themselves as human-designed cars and trucks.” It’s not the dumb premise of these (or any other Bay) films that insults critics – what about the jingoism, the sexism (Howard Hawks took a model and turned her into Lauren Bacall, Bay takes a model and turns her into another robot), the homophobia (Alan Tudyk’s fey assistant in Bay’s latest “oeuvre” is not really a step up from that hairdresser in “The Rock”), the way he turns real-life tragedy (both the Challenger disaster and the tumbling towers of 9/11) into supposedly “awesome” special effects orgies, the lame comedy, the ultra-violence carefully kept “bloodless” so that the film can still get a “PG-13” rating? And I’m not even talking about the ideology behind any of Bay’s films.
But maybe you’re right – maybe we should all just give in. What’s the point in even trying to fight what is insufferable? Forget that in spite of what fanboys on the internet say, professional reviewing is still both a worthy and necessary occupation if movies are not to succumb to the mediocrity and crass commercialism that characterize so much of the film industry’s output.
Let’s all kneel in awe because Bay’s films earn hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide and because (as he himself tirelessly points out) he has the biggest dick in Hollywood and so by patriarchal right is the king of the jungle – even though that still doesn’t make him a filmmaker, only the biggest ape.
BAY RULES.
Um, Olaf, while I don’t articulate my objections exactly as you did, I believe that when I say things such as “vulgar, prolix, and crass” and “during the times when I wasn’t feeling whatever intelligence the movie was pummeling out of me being actively insulted,” I’m being pretty clear about what the movie’s on about. But from my position one does tend to approach the situation with a certain resignation. It’s bad enough that ordinary citizens, who I by and large try not to disdain, let this stuff wash over them and revel in it (you should have heard the row behind me) but that certain of my colleagues have gone beyond the relax-it’s-just-a-big-dumb-movie phase and will argue passionately that this stuff is GOOD. One is hard pressed now to make the case against “Transformers” that goes beyond rote Bay-bashing (not that he oughtn’t be bashed at every opportunity) or without looking like some kind of elitist snob. It’s a vexed situation. AND some of the set pieces are/were very, erm, impressive.
@ Gordon: Having been in the biz: The game trailers are imitating movies. But I do love your comparison to DePalma (certainly sections of VANQUISH have that kind of constant awareness of frame that one associates with him).
In fact, I actually *would* compare a game like Oblivion to a Bela Tarr film! One of the most striking aspects of Tarr’s sense of time is that when someone starts to walk down a road, the viewer is going to follow that guy for the whole walk, every step. In movies, that’s unusual, but in most video games, that’s exactly how things are—large chunks of my time in GTA are spent driving around watching street life like I was in a Monte Hellman film. Now it’s true that it doesn’t exactly *feel* like an Eastern European art film, I think because interactivity prevents the kind of sitting back and being hypnotized that occurs in a more passive medium like film. But it’s not all that different, and it’s most certainly nothing like a Michael Bay joint, whose effect depends on constant disorientation of the sort that video games NEVER do.
Fuzzy Bastard (et. al.),
I find your experience and insight with video games fascinating and i’d love to talk about this for a few hours, but let me retort in blogese. I think this is where your’re in so deep into the video game world that you can’t see the trees for the forest.
“Now it’s true that it doesn’t exactly *feel* like an Eastern European art film, I think because interactivity prevents the kind of sitting back and being hypnotized that occurs in a more passive medium like film. But it’s not all that different”
You’re assumptions feel like an apologist who is glossing over this detail to make your point. The experience of the space is everything. If those games really were like a Bela Tarr film a zillion teenage kids, and you, wouldn’t be consuming them like porn.
THERE IS A QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE. Helllooo!
The only way to get the kind of tension, drama and rush from being able to crash, hack and eviscerate in a video game is through frenetic attention deficit cutting. There isn’t a one to one relationship. The goal of the experience is what is in question as far as i’m concerned.
You’re assumption that cinema is a “passive medium” is also peculiar. As though Tarkovsky would want a couch potato watching his films. These are crafted to be interactive experiences with time and space.
Anyways. interesting all around. You’ve got me thinking. Thank you.
That futuristic action movie “Gamer” from a couple years ago also used that frenetic, quick-cutty style which seemed really inappropriate for its using-a-real-person-as-a-game-avatar storyline.
Beyond all its various other aesthetic and artistic crimes, that line in Transformers 2 about how “President Obama has been moved to an undisclosed location” really got under my skin, and I’m only a partial Obot.
Reno, I see what you’re saying w/r/t the “feel” of a game, and the “tension, drama and rush”– though many games have long periods of time that are all about exploration, atmosphere, and thinking one’s way through a puzzle.
My argument, though, is that editors/directors who indulge in “frenetic attention deficit cutting” aren’t influenced by video games, but by actual moving-picture works that have employed said cutting since at least the mid-eighties. Commercials, music videos, etc.
Now, I don’t want to pick a fight– especially after you’ve made such a thoughtful response– but I will say that the “trees for the forest/so deep in the video game world” bit does rub me the wrong way, and at the very least, strikes me as odd. Video games (not to belabor the obvious) are an art form. Like cinema, music, the written word, comic books, they’re worthy of consumption and consideration. Sometimes they fall short of artistry and timelessness– but that’s also true for movies, as the new Transformers film ably demonstrates. If all of cinema were to be judged by the worst films, or even the majority of films– well, it would likely be dismissed as badly as video games often are. But we judge the value of the cinematic art form by its heights, by its best. Video games should be considered in the same way.
If you are interested in gaming as an art form, and its potential, and how it also sometimes falls short of that, I’d suggest you read Tom Bissell’s book EXTRA LIVES.
But Reno, you’re singling out the one aspect of games that *is* like a Bela Tarr film—the experience of continuous space! What’s unlike Tarr films is the large amount of action, and focus on empowerment. But continuous space is characteristic of most games, and pretty much defines the sandbox genre (like GTA). In a great many games, knowing how long it will take to get from one place to another (since space is, I repeat, continuous) is a defining strategic element.
As for other points; By “consuming like porn” you mean looking at with great interest for about fifteen minutes, then losing all interest in? ‘Cause that’s definitely not how most people consume games. Rather, they focus on them intently for 1–4 hours, much more like narrative film. By “qualitative difference”, well, I’d certainly agree that “Werckmeister Harmonies” is better than Halo, but I’m not so sure “Jaws” is better than “Ico” (the latter is certainly more visually creative and thematically interesting).
And finally, as for passive vs. interactive; Horse puckey. Yes, a Tarkovsky movie encourages thought and analysis. But in order to experience a Tarkovsky movie, you sit still, fold your hands, close your mouth, and watch. A person watching a movie, whether it’s Transformers or Last Year At Marienbad, is passive, as is obvious from looking at them not doing anything. Games are interactive—you move your hands, you move your eyes, you strategize and anticipate and react. An interactive experience with time and space would be walking around a sculpture, or exploring a virtual environment. That’s not what movies are—movies are being strapped into a wheelchair and having a director roll you from spot to spot. That’s not a bad thing—though the word has been corrupted by sloppy usage like yours, I think people could use a little more passivity in the sense of sitting down, shutting up, and listening—but it’s worth getting your terms right.
If you want to argue that a particular movie is better than a particular game, you’re going to need to know more about games than you seemingly do. If you’re going to argue that the cut-cut-cut style of current blockbustersis a way of generating the kind of constant excitement that games produce, well, you’re still going to need to know more about games (most of my time in Grand Theft Auto is spent driving around watching the scenery like I was in a Monte Hellman flick). I’m glad you’ve found the discussion interesting, but it’s worth being aware of just how much you don’t know about the form you’re discussing, and how that lack of knowledge is making you wrongly attribute a style that, as Tom rightly notes, derives entirely from moving pictures of the 80s.
@ Betterncourt: Yeah, and it’s worth noting how mocked “Gamer” was among, well, gamers, for being more like a Hollywood exec’s vague idea of what games are like than the slow, methodical progress of an actual game.
Guess who wrote another review of the thing? And, guess if it is going to be insightful or retarded?
http://www.villagevoice.com/2011–06-29/film/destroying-chicago-and-our-brain-cells-transformers-is-back/
Carry on.
Before that link to Dan Kois’s perfectly fine review sets off another round of unrestrained Hathois, let me pre-empt things by saying that his line about the Lincoln Continental not turning into Megatron made me laugh very loudly. It’s right up there with Glenn’s blinds/deafens reference.
Agreed, Bilge, Kois’s review is fine, particularly if you like that sort of thing,but I still couldn’t resist tweeting “So @dankois was bored by SOLARIS, and calls DARK OF THE MOON an ‘ordeal.’ I’m starting to think the guy just doesn’t like science-fiction.”
“…for all Bay’s blowhard douchebagginess, he’s a masterful maker of images.”
Really?
This is what it’s come to?
I agree. Whether he is a blowhard douchebag or not, that form of character assassination as criticism is really, really crass in my opinion.
In that image, she looks like an extra in a 1970’s disaster movie.
Hey, everything is related. Connected. In his review,
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110628/REVIEWS/110629981
… Roger Ebert complains about seeing the movie in the wrong aspect ratio. We need a scan of Bay’s letter to the projectionists, pronto!
Actually, Ryan, to call Michael Bay a “blowhard douchebag” isn’t character assassination. It’s just, you know, an ad hominem attack, like if I was to imply that Dan Kois was “fat,” or something. “Character assassination” would be more along the lines of saying, “Michael Bay depicts women as he does because his longest and most fulfilling relationships have been ‘girlfriend experiences’ with escorts,” or something along those lines. Just wanted to clear that up.
Summer movies from the studio that brought you “Transformers”: “Psycho”, “Nashville”, and “Chinatown”.
I thought Tudyk might be playing a few Alpha profiles from “Dollhouse,” sort of in the same way Humphrey Bogart (well, a reasonable facsimile) guest stars in SLICK HARE.
A distinction worth noting. It’s weak, at any rate.
http://www.theonion.com/video/today-now-interviews-the-5yearold-screenwriter-of,20188/
Looks like The Onion has uncovered the guy who’s been writing a lot of recent blockbusters …