Lucy - Review

DIRECTOR: Luc Besson
WRITER: Luc Besson
STARRING: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Amr Waked, Choi Min-sik

Pretension is a word that gets thrown around a lot when it comes to movies. More often than not it just feels like a cheap, easy way to dismiss films that are ambitious and tackle really big ideas. Depending on their budget they may also have lots and lots of neat special effects to show the audience all the computer generated wonders of the universe. Personally I've never really been a fan of the word, mostly because pretension is usually such a vague and subjective measure. In this case, though, I can't think of a better word to describe Lucy, a movie that tries so hard to be "about" something but fails miserably at doing it, other than pretentious. Want to stop and develop our characters? *pfft* No time for that! Instead lets inter-cut some footage of animals, because get it, humans are animals. Symbolism, right? Oh no, we've run out of animal stock footage twenty minutes in, now what do we do!? Quick, lets throw some more special effects and mediocre gunfights at the audience, maybe they won't notice!

The film wastes little time getting to its story. Lucy is an American studying in Taipei who gets tricked into doing a delivery for her shady boyfriend (who she's only been with for one week). This ends up involving her with a violent gang of Taiwanese mobsters (who speak Korean for some reason) who force her to participate in a drug mule scheme for the new synthetic drug she just delivered. When her captors accidentally rupture the bag of drugs stored inside of her, instead of killing her via overdose it ends up giving her super-powers via unlocking the untapped potential of her brain. After that its a race against time to deliver the knowledge in her brain to Morgan Freeman because...reasons I guess.

Speaking of Morgan Freeman, his character (who I can't even remember the name of) seems to exist only for two reasons: to deliver exposition and to be amazed at stuff. That seems to be a running theme with Morgan Freeman's characters in recent years, like the studios are just renting his voice to spice up their exposition whether he's actually good for the role or not. Don't get me wrong, tries his darnedest to make what he says sound remotely convincing, but not even his silky smooth voice can make this movies script sound anything less than ridiculous. What he says doesn't mean anything anyways. Everything he has to say is already known by Lucy by the point she even knows he exists. Every opportunity we have to discover for ourselves what's happening to Lucy is undermined by these really awkward cutaways to Dr. Freeman's lecture to a bunch of scientist folk (or us, depending on how you view it) where he basically tells us exactly what's going on at any given time. It ruins any kind of natural suspense the movie could have had. It doesn't help that the movie basically calls out explicitly that he's pulling pretty much everything he says out of his ass.

By around the 30 minute mark, it becomes pretty clear that our protagonist is pretty much indestructible, so whatever tension there might have been goes straight out the window. You'd think Scarlett Johansson literally becoming God for an hour would be more entertaining, but after the first few tricks it's clear all she's going to do are a few tricks like flinging people around  and typing really really fast, maybe give the vfx guys an excuse to splash a few special effects at the screen. Considering all the power she supposedly has, you'd think some of the action sequences might be a bit more...creative. Instead, we mostly just get some mediocre, stake-less gun fights and car chases. The movie has such a (thankfully) short runtime that I spent most of it checking off neat moments from the trailer, and yes all the cool stuff was in the trailer. Mind you, that's not a knock on the trailer, its just that there's just so little good stuff that there really wasn't much they could advertise.

Bottom line is that because there's no threat of harm, there's very little reason for the audience to be interested in what happens. It's a similar to the problem the Matrix sequels had: how do you make a character that's far more powerful than any other character interesting when nothing can really hurt them. There are only a few ways I can think of to go about it. The story can either:

a) Make their opponent(s) powerful enough to match them - the old shonen route.

No such luck here. Our Korean speaking Taiwanese gangsters are little more than a nuisance to our heroine, though they do randomly kill people every now and again just to let you know that they're still the bad guys.

b) Have an interesting supporting cast that we can invest our interest in.

Nope.

or c) Make our heroes stakes something that isn't necessarily tied to external conflict

Now the third one here is where Lucy at least makes an attempt at deriving conflict, though to call it an attempt might be a bit generous. Because Lucy is rapidly becoming more and more powerful, and her knowledge more and more vast, she feels she is losing the parts of herself that make her human. Her out of the blue romance with a french policeman is justified in that she's looking for a reminder of her humanity or something. I guess knowing a guy for a couple hours is enough time for nigh-omnipotent beings to fall in love or something. Other than catching the other drug mules, the french policeman (whose name I didn't forget, they just didn't give him one) is a completely pointless character who, like Dr. Freeman, does nothing but cue the audience on when they should be amazed at all the neat shit Lucy does.

In one of the film's better scenes, Lucy breaks into an hospital and nonchalantly kills one of the patients (after all, she says, she knows he's going to die anyways). This is so that the doctor operating on the guy can cut her open and remove the bag of drugs from inside of her. While this is going on, she borrows someones cellphone and calls her mom seemingly out of the blue (all of this while the doctor cuts her open). Through her tears she tells her about how she can remember things from her life she shouldn't even be able to remember, and feel things she's never felt before. This goes on for a while, and eventually she ends the call by telling her mother that she's going to die and she loves her very much. Now initially I thought when she said she was dying that she literally meant that she was dying (which she was...I think) but thinking back there might be another layer to it. As she gains more and more use of her "brain's capacity" her capacity for human empathy slowly disappears. She's losing what makes her her, so in that way she does kind of die. After that scene Lucy pretty much becomes an emotionless blank slate for the rest of the film. It could have been really chilling if the reaction from her mom hadn't been so hilariously clueless.

As it is, Lucy seems content more so with just seeming smart rather than actually being smart. Moments like the hospital scene show the kind potential this concept has, but Besson seems content to squander all that on portentous tracts on "human potential" and pseudo-scientific techno-babble.  Any chance for intelligent subtext is replaced with a surface layer lecture and fake science, brokering no ambiguity and leaving the audience with little to think about once they leave the theater. In fact, I'm not even entirely convinced this isn't some sort of elaborate parody of "pretentious" movies. Its great that movies like this and Maleficent have female protagonists are doing well, but when are writers going to realize that a powerful character doesn't equal a strong character.

So what did you all think? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Begin Again - Review

DIRECTED BY: John Carney
WRITTEN BY: John Carney
STARRING: Kiera Knightly, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine, Hailee Steinfeld, James Corden

When it comes to movies about artists, I always seem to go into them with a bit of trepidation. Considering they're, you know, made by artists, they have a slight tendency to...I guess romanticize things a little bit. I mean, write what you know, sure, but financially well-off, attractive white people trying to find themselves for an hour and a half can only work for me so many times for me. This particular movie is written and directed by John Carney, whose movie Once was a big hit amongst critics and musician types alike.

The story centers on two people: down on his luck music producer Dan (Ruffalo), and recently heartbroken singer-songwriter Gretta (Knightly). Dan's been booted from the label he co-founded, partially because of his clashing with the direction the label is going, and partially because of his own self-destructive behavior following his separation from his wife. Greta, on the other hand, has had the world she's lived with for the past five years ripped from under her when her boyfriend cheats on her after he hits it big with a major record label. When Dan hears Gretta play in a bar one night, he's so inspired by her that he resolves that he HAS to produce and album for her. The rest of the movie follows their trials and misadventures as they gather their friends together to build their passion into something great despite whatever "the man" tells them.

I went into this movie not knowing anything about what it was about, and all things considered I came away pleasantly surprised. It was sweet when it needed to be, but overall felt more grounded than the initial premise might suggest. Even with a story that lends itself to the occasional cliche and contrivance (really, do we need to see the same "separated father reconnects with his estranged daughter" story again?) it manages to keep interest through really solid performances from the well rounded cast. As it is, its content to stick mostly with what's comfortable, which I guess is fine. If anything I get the feeling that the overarching story here is mostly just meant to be a vehicle for the smaller moments and loosely connected individual scene.

On a technical level its certainly a step up from Once. While Once was filmed almost like a documentary, Begin Again is filmed in a way that's far more like your standard indie film. Its New York, you've seen it a million times on film, but despite the familiar setting it uses a lot of vibrant colors in a way that makes the setting feel uniquely alive. The trade off, though, is that it does feel less raw than Once did. What's weird is that this movie does on occasion dip into "documentary style" for a few shots here and there, which was jarring but never to the point where it completely took me out of the film. There were also a few pretty blatant continuity errors, but I guess that comes with the territory of shooting a low budget film on the streets of New York.

Its refreshing that, unlike a lot of other movies about struggling artists, this one spends its time focused more on the actual creation of art rather than just the superficial aspects of the lifestyle. Instead of romanticizing the appealing idealism of individual artistic achievement, it instead focuses more on the collaboration, people getting together to create rather than it all being about the lead artist. Dave-as-musician only features briefly, with his role as a producer being not just respected, but outright lauded. I also really liked how the movie highlighted how consumer technology and the internet has really lowered the barrier for artists to get their voices heard, which to me was a refreshing outlook. In other words, it's just as much about the process as it is about the result. It's clear that none of these characters would be able to do what they do without the friends and family that help them. They may each be talented in their own right, but its when they pool their talents and hard work together that they make something really worth sharing.

Someone asked me whether or not this was a romance movie. Its not...kind of. Don't get me wrong, there is love and romance and stuff, but it's not front and center what its all about. The relationship between Dave and Gretta is fairly platonic, despite hints at their having feelings for each other. I was waiting the whole time for the plot to take the requisite needless detour into her strained relationship with her now-famous-ex-boyfriend (Levine). The movie would then spend its precious run time on how that ruins all the good she'd been doing pursuing her own passions until she realizes what she really wanted all along. Nope! Not here! Instead the characters actually talk to each other like (*gasp*) adults. We're not pulled into a needlessly contrived will-they-or-won't-they subplot that would have screwed with the brisk narrative pace. I won't spoil how it resolves, but I was taken by just how non-intrusive it was and how much the resolution made with so little time spent on it. There's an undertone that the diverging relationship of Knightly and Levine's characters is illustrates the diverging interests of artists making art for themselves and making it for an audience. It's clear what side the film is on, but it doesn't rely on making people caricatures in order to get its point across (mostly). Once the credits rolled I heard people in the theater calling out "that was it", like maybe they were expecting something more dramatic or something. I personally found it refreshingly low key, completely in line with the tone of the rest of the film.

On the whole, though, I think what I liked most about this movie is that it does feel very...I don't know if I'd say relevant, but timely in a way. After all it's a movie about people facing hard times, I don't think those ever really go out of style. As a college aged person facing the inherent insecurity of going into an artistic field as a career I guess I'm drawn to stories like this regardless of how plausible or not they are. I think I need to keep perspective that that sort of uncertainty never really goes away, that you've gotta make the best of it with your friends and not give up on that. Corny, I know, but what the hell, its good to get a little corniness every once in a while.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Review

DIRECTED BY - Matt Reeves
WRITTEN BY - Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
STARRING - Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russel, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee

*Some minor spoilers ahead, ye have been warned!*

Before I begin, lets just appreciate the sheer unlikelihood of this movie even existing. It's the sequel to a reboot of a prequel to a movie that was remade, but is a different remake than this one, based on a book. By all accounts this should not be as good as it was, and yet here it is. Maybe that's just a testament to how flexible the core concept is. The whole idea of an intelligent society of apes interacting with humans is an easy shorthand for such a wide variety of topics. The apes are essentially "different" than humans, but they share enough characteristics with us that we're still able to empathize with them on a fundamental level. The fact that they are "other" allows the audience observe the flaws of their society detached from the baggage of strict societal allegory, while still allowing us to detect the aspects that are familiar.

I've never understood how people are able to segregate sci-fi as something "lesser" than other forms of fiction. Among other things, science fiction has always had this ability to contextualize relevant modern day issues in a way that allows us to explore them without being inhibited by the limiting bounds of the modern day. If I sometimes have a problem with genre, it's when the story is more about the message than about...well...the story. The science fiction stories that work best for me are the ones that are able to blend high-concept ideas with good narrative and characters. The Planet of the Apes series is no stranger to exploring ideas, and not averse to being "about" something, but sometimes that lends itself to being focused on the world and themes rather than pushing for greater depth in its characters. Don't get me wrong, I love the original 1968 film, but its safe to say that the later entries haven't always lived up to that film's lofty standard.

In this entry, though, there's a much greater sense of clarity as to what it's "about" that sets it apart from the rest of the series' broader social commentary. What qualities make a good leader. Whether compromising your own morals is sometimes necessary in order to prevent greater loss of life. How people cling to the lives they once had or try to recreate them instead rather than move forward. How even when we try to move forward our past can still define who we are and how we react to others and the world around us. It shows how misunderstandings between different peoples can breed distrust, and distrust hostility. How that hostility can turn into all out war with just the slightest push. How even with the best intentions the desire for self-preservation can ultimately lead to one's own undoing.

In other words, it's a story about peace and the things that people do to f*ck it up.

Now this isn't exactly a new concept, especially for science fiction. As they say, though, it's not so much what it's about as it is how you go about it, and "Dawn" goes about it with style to spare. Through fantastic production design, cinematography, and direction, we have an apocalypse that's very different the usually wastelands we so often get. This film differs visually from "Rise" in that it has a far more stylized choice of color palette, using mellow blues and greens and dark oranges to evoke a greater sense of mood and atmosphere than its predecessor. Though we get the usual urban overgrowth setting, there's just something about it that feels more...alive, like it hasn't gone so far that there's no chance of going back. Ten years really isn't that long a time after all. Any glimpse we do get into the old world feels almost alien, which is weird because the old world is our world. In a literal sense, it's that feeling after a long power outage when the lights flicker suddenly back on, and while it's familiar you've gotten so used to the darkness that it still kind of feels foreign to you. It's a different visual approach that's woven into the story the film is trying to tell, and sets it apart from its bleaker cousins.

Another unorthodox visual choice for a summer blockbuster was the film's choice of the narrower 1:85:1 aspect ratio as opposed to the usual 2:35:1. Every other Apes film has gone with the latter, so that makes me wonder where the decision for this change may have come from. I'm not complaining, actually the opposite. I'm so sick of blockbusters using 2:35:1 and similar ratios to artificially make their movies seem more "epic" when really, they don't need all that extra space. The fact that this movie chose to go such a non-traditional route shows that the filmmakers were confident in their ability to create something visually enticing with less horizontal space. It shows that they valued intimacy and character over spectacle, because even with the stunning special effects it's clear that the real heart of this film comes from its characters

At the center of all of this is Caesar, who, no exaggeration, is one of the most fully formed, well conceived characters in any science fiction film. There's been some debate as to how much of the performance is Andy Serkis's motion capture and how much is the animators. Whatever it is, I'm sure it wouldn't have been possible without either, and the fact that special effects have gotten to the point where we can create computer generated characters with this kind of nuance, this level of expressiveness is just astounding. Our antagonist, too, is compelling even in his own right. It isn't Gary Oldman, as the trailers would have us believe, but Koba, Caesar's power hungry second in command. He elevates himself from his archetype by having a motivation that's both. His motivation is spelled out in one of the movies standout scenes, which I won't spoil, but it involves the repeated use of the phrase "human work".

If there's a weakness its that the human characters aren't nearly as compelling as the ape characters are. Malcolm, the movie's other protagonist, acts as a human counterpoint to Caesar. He's not as strong or inspiring as Caesar, but his desire for peace and a bright future forges a connection between the two that illustrates the surprising amount of optimism in a film with such a forgone conclusion. Ultimately, though, his character lacks the sense of inner conflict and moral shades of grey that would make him interesting in his own right.

Gary Oldman, underused as he is, is probably the most interesting of the human cast. He eschews the usual paranoid war-monger type character we're used to by framing all of his actions in a way that makes is reasoning seem completely rational from his own point of view. That's the thing about this movie, it frames all the conflicts in the movie as the product of rational decision-making from a certain point of view. It shows that looking past prejudice and your own strict sense of self-preservation that makes the possibility of peace even remotely tangible. Caesar knows this, Malcolm knows this, but the problem comes with convincing everyone else. It's particularly potent in this day and age where our greater interconnectedness brings cultural boundaries closer and closer together, forcing us to consider whether we all really can "just get along".

Like The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight, this is a movie that does what any good sequel should do: act as an extension of the original rather than just a retread, push the themes and characters further instead of stagnating in repetition. It forgoes obvious references to the original 1968 film, which even "Rise" couldn't seem resist the temptation of doing, and forages its own narrative path. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes shows that sci-fi cinema doesn't have to sacrifice intelligence for the sake of emotion and thrills. It can stand on its own two feet (so to speak) and be its own thing while still honoring the legacy of the films that came before it. We've still got a few more big ones left to go, but at this point I'm willing to call it and say that this is definitely my pick for best blockbuster this summer. Guardians of the Galaxy's got a lot to prove now to top this.

So what did you all think? Did you like it? Love it? Hate it? Are you somewhere in between? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

The Myth of "Turning Your Brain Off"

Last weekend saw the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction, and to absolutely nobody's surprise it was outright panned by most critics. Also not surprising is that general audiences completely ignored them and went to go see it anyways. If its box office count is any indication, Age of Extinction might end up being the highest grossing movie of the year in a few short weeks time, completely in line with industry expectations. I'm not entirely sure why there's such a vast gulf between critic and audience reception of this movie. I think there's this widespread, rarely spoken assumption that film critics look down on popular films. I don't know if anyone really knows where this attitude comes from, maybe some people think it's out of a misplaced elitism or something.

That's not to say I think people are wrong, at least not entirely. Professional critics probably are at least somewhat disconnected from the tastes of general audiences. Heck, that's been true for as long as critics have been...well...critics. After all, they're individuals with their own tastes just like anyone else, and those tastes have been altered and refined by years of watching film after film after film. To them, what's another loud, noisy blockbuster, right? They've seen hundreds after all, and they probably don't have the attachment to the franchise other people might.

That's something I think has a lot to do with it too. People say to me that they already knew the movie was going to be bad, but justified it because "hey, it's Transformers. Gotta go see it for Optimus Prime, right?" It's almost like whatever care they might have about the quality of the actual film was superseded by a kind of religious fan loyalty. "Church sucks, but hey, it's something I gotta do anyways!" It's like when a lot the people who despised Star Wars: Episode I end up going to see the other two anyways. Their going is more because they feel they have to out of a sense of loyalty to the brand even when they know it won't reach their expectations. It's a good thing the people who grew up on Transformers are in their twenties and thirties. Now they have families they can bring along. After all more people equals more tickets sold.

I'll be upfront in saying that I didn't grow up with Transformers.I didn't play with the toys, watch the TV show or buy the lunchboxes or whatever. Nostalgia's a funny thing, it can seem so right when you're on the inside, but to the outsider your love of something seems strange and out of place. Whenever I bring up that I don't like the Transformers movies to someone, they'll go out of their way to let me know that my dislike of the movie is misguided, that I'm viewing the movie the wrong way and that I need to shift my perspective. They'll say I'm being to hard on it and that maybe I just need to lower my expectations. This is hardly a universal thing, but it's widespread enough that it feels like I hear it all the time whenever mediocre/crap franchise movies come out. Why do people seem so defensive about a movie they don't even like all that much? More often than not, in relation to the Transformers franchise, what people tell me tends to just boil down to just one particular statement:

That I just need to turn off my brain and enjoy it.

Right off the bat, I feel like when a person says this to me they're seeing me as the sort of person that thinks they're somehow "better than", or "above" certain genres of movies, that I always need to watch "smart" movies or movies that are challenging in order to enjoy them. Without even knowing me or my taste in movies they've pegged the type of person I am simply because I don't like this one particular action movie their really into. There are so many action franchise movies I love, yet disliking this particular movie or that particular movie somehow means I haven't come down off my lofty intellectual perch to mingle with the commoners. Yes I'm overreacting, I get way to sensitive about things like that? I'm sick and tired of people trying to separate my taste in movies from theirs along lines as arbitrary as "being able to turn the brain on and off".

I mean is too much to ask for at least some capacity to allow for audience investment? I'm not saying a movie needs to have hours of set-up and character development in order to make for a gratifying action payoff (though there have been films that have used this to great effect) but I should at least get a sense of what's being fought over besides just "We're good, their bad, let's fight!" For the action to have an impact beyond just being nice to look at, I need to know why I should care particularly about these particular characters rather than say anyone else.

The Raid, for example, is brutally efficient at establishing exactly who our main character is and why we should care about him. Before any of the action even begins, we see him stroke his wife's pregnant stomach, telling her softly of his intention to rescue his brother from sinking lower in his criminal behavior. Even though we've established his skills as a fighter just a moments before, that briefest of exchanges tells us that he's also sensitive and cares about his family. We aren't just told that through dialogue, it's shown to us. I know "show don't tell" is kind of a cliche, but in a medium as visually oriented as film, sometimes a simple touch can be more effective than 10 minutes of exposition could ever be. All of this is covered neatly within the first five minutes of the movie, and beautifully primes the audience for the non-stop action that follows.

It doesn't even have to be chiefly emotional stakes, I'd settle for thematic stakes too. In the final fight against Agent Smith in The Matrix, our heroes aren't exactly fleshed out three-dimensional characters, but there's a symbolic significance to the two fighters that sums up a lot of the film's major thematic thrust: the conflict between freedom and control. Can you name one overarching theme in the Transformers movies beyond just "we need to save people".

Speaking of The Matrix, you could argue that the fact that Neo's basically an audience surrogate aids in our investment in his situation. To be fair, the Transformers movies do often have what could be called an audience surrogate in the form of Sam Witwiki from the first three, and Cade Yeager from this one. The thing I don't think Transformers gets though is that, on their own, though, audience surrogates tend to be pretty boring. Oftentimes they're more so defined by their interactions with the more interesting supporting cast than by who they themselves are (because they're supposed to be you!). In Age of Extinction, outside of Stanley Tucci's wacko turn as a Steve Jobs-esque inventor, there really isn't much of a compelling supporting cast to speak of.

That doesn't mean a movie can't be enjoyed from a purely from a visual standpoint though, right?  I'll often hear people say "well...the story's pretty bad, but hey, that action, right?" Thing is I'm not entirely sure what the difference is. I think most people have this idea in their heads that "story" is mostly just dialogue and plot, but I think in the case of action movies it can mean so much more. When you really think about it, action has the wonderful capacity to tell stories through the character's movement. We grow to know who those characters are through the way they move and react to what goes on around them. Conflict can be expressed directly through actual, real, physical conflict. Don't get me wrong, there is certainly a lot of it going on in Transformers, there's no denying that. With that said, can you think of a single action sequence in that franchise that stands out in your mind as truly memorable? I can't.

I recently stumbled on an pretty interesting video that goes into some detail about Michael Bay's aesthetic:

Michael Bay is known for his incredibly kinetic camera movements and quick cuts. The video above cites his frequent use of telephoto lenses to compress the image so that the parallax of the background movies even faster. Every single shot is crammed from edge to edge with stuff, but we never stick with that stuff for more than a few seconds. While all of this can help give each shot greater sense of immediacy and urgency, in the grand scheme of the visual narrative of an action sequence it rarely adds anything, while at the same time robbing a sequence of greater coherence and audience orientation.  Every shot acts as a moment of instant gratification, which might make it appealing to some but not adding up to anything more than the sum of its parts. Action sequences should almost be like mini-movies in and of themselves. We need a set-up, rising action, climax, and resolution, In this movie, there is no arc. It's a string of climaxes tightly stitched together to hide from the audiences that it really isn't much more than the cinematic equivalent of shaking keys in front of a baby and making noises, and frankly I find it boring and don't understand what people find "fun" about it.

I'm not going to spend the rest of this post picking apart the action in Transformers piece by piece. There are plenty of articles across the web that go into enough detail on the mechanics of cinematic action. This article by Film Crit Hulk, for example, is far more comprehensive than I could ever hope to be on the subject of what makes good action. Definitely be sure and give that a read.

My point, though, is that Transformers has very few of the qualities of what I feel makes for compelling action outside of the fact that it superficially "looks cool" (which is debatable). When it really comes down to it, though, what constitutes good action is a largely subjective measure. My idea of what makes good action could be totally different than yours. Hell, I love the live action Speed Racer movie and nearly everyone hates that. If you find the action in Transformer's engaging, more power to you. Maybe it just means you found something in the movie I couldn't.

The thing is, with Transformers in particular, there's more wrong with it than just bad action and story. It's no secret that the film's humor and tone is...sophomoric, but these films throw a lot of really reprehensible attitudes like racism, misogyny, and homophobia around like they were nothing at all. To ignore them is like saying they're acceptable as long as the film's texture is appealing.

It's the same with movies like 300 and Sin City, I can enjoy them for their atmosphere and stylistic flair, but there's always just this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the undertones in those films can be kind of...disgusting. Movies engage our minds whether we're "thinking" about them or not. Maybe they don't do so on an intellectual level, but whether we're aware of it or not movies can passively affect the way we see the world around us, especially when we're younger. Movies can ask for us, the audience, to sympathize with certain characters more than others. These characters might do awful things, but our inclination as the audience to their story is to empathize with the aspects of these characters we have in common. If the movie makes the conflict of its narrative explicitly black and white, it communicates to the audience that our heroes are justified and every action they take is for the side of good, and all opposition is then, by its very nature, evil.

In this movie, nothing our heroes do is being presented with the slightest bit of ambiguity. Everything they do is right, even when it contradicts things they may have said earlier. One scene Optimus Prime gallantly expresses the necessity for peace for all species, but then he swears up and down about how he's going to kill every last human that has wronged him. He and the other Autobots seem to constantly get off on the notion of wanton violence, kill creatures just because they annoy them, and bullying people just because they think they're ugly. Even while they mourn the senseless deaths of their brethren, They cause the deaths of countless thousands of people (completely validating the concerns of the eeeeevil corporate and government types we're told to hate). Even while Prime pounds into our heads the importance of independence and liberty, our heroes violently subjugate the Dinobots to help in their cause. Hell, even Cade's underage daughter has no agency of her own, she's just a sexualized object to be fought over by her dad and her boyfriend (and I could go on and on about how creepy implications of that are).

I mean considering the movie's marketed chiefly towards kids are these really the values we want to be teaching them? People tend to dismiss these kinds of concerns because, well, it's "just a movie" right? People don't seem to realize just how our consumption of media can subtly effect the way we think and how we perceive the world around us. We're not taught growing up to perceive media as anything more than a way to be lectured to and not a way to spark dialogue and feedback.

Hell, if you look at the movie Inception, you could make a case that the whole movie could be read as a metaphor for the ways films influence people. It's been said that movies are dreams brought to life, and they're constructed meticulously by the people involved to make us feel and experience their ideas in certain ways. When people complain about culture encouraging boys to worship notions of machismo, violence, and objectification, these movies of things that encourage it. What's worse about it is that it's not just taught, it's SOLD to us. The attitudes of this movie are already there, and people are paying money to have those notions passively re-enforced because of our need for explosive computer vomit.

And you know what, the worst thing about it is that its all our fault. If you paid to see this movie, you are part of the problem.

Sure, maybe you noticed the racism, misogyny etc. in the other ones and thought it was a bit much, but hey, you can always enjoy a bad movie ironically, right? The thing is that distinction doesn't exist for the studio. When someone asked Michael Bay what he thought of people who hated his movies he said he didn't care, "they're still going to see the movie" and he's right! Money is money, and whether you liked it or not something brought you to the theater to spend your money specifically on that movie.

I find it hard to believe that Michael Bay doesn't already know this, he's made too much money off his films to not have at least some notion of what he's doing. I mean I can certainly respect him for the level of work he puts into organizing and coordinating the technical aspects of these movies, but he is one of the most nakedly commercial filmmakers in Hollywood, and that's not necessarily a condemnation. He makes no secret of the fact that he makes movies for a mass audience, there's no pretense of him doing anything more than trying to cater to as many people as can pay to see them. His movies ooze with a contempt for his audience even as he fills every last frame to pander to their every single indulgent whim. A lot of critics couldn't even decide whether Pain and Gain was outright satire or not. It feels like a joke, one where all of us are the punchline.

So to sum up, no, I won't turn my brain off. Doing that would mean I concede that I think it's alright for movies like this to exist. It says that I think a franchise, whose continued vitality hinges on the rose tinted goggles of 20/30 somethings trying to relive their childhood, is worth keeping alive. Oh, I won't deny that I have goggles of my own, but they're not so tightly affixed to my head that I can't see when something has been co-opted to push a irresponsible messages justified by its mass consumption. It's not even junk food anymore, at least junk food can fill you. This movie is nihilism incarnate on celluloid (er...silicon). It wears its cynical purpose nakedly on its sleeve, yet people STILL keep buying it.

Look, not every movie needs to be some sort of an awards-worthy masterpiece in order to be great, they really don't. Movies like Die Hard, Terminator 1 & 2, Pacific Rim, and The Raid aren't what you would call paragons of intellectual stimulation, but as action movies they're really well mounted and engaging on levels far beyond just superficial "coolness". Is it really too much to ask for a movie to be engaging, even just a little bit. I want the movies I watch to give me a reason to give them a few hours of my time. No matter how much I malign Transformers and Michael Bay, I try my best to go into those movies with as open a mind as possible, but it's just the same old thing over and over again.

Already this year we have a lot of good franchise movies that don't suck: The Lego Movie, Captain America 2, X-Men. These are movies that don't have to completely pander to their audience to make money, and they don't have to objectify their female characters to draw men either. I just wish studios didn't have to rely so much on franchises in order to get money, but hey, that's the name of the game I guess. Those movies are proof enough, though, that I shouldn't have to accept shit and hold it to a different set of standards just to set myself apart from supposed "film snobs". A bad movie is a bad movie, so why should I cater myself to bad movies when I'm the one paying my time and money to see it?