quote: 2- Why was the US military operating in China with not a single member of the People's Liberation Army of People's Armed Police in sight? They could at least used Chinese helicopters and the Chinese version of the Tupolev for carrying people incase anyone spots them. A liason officer to boot would have made sense.
Because they filmed it in Bethlehem, PA. I was there to see it I know that has no real bearing on your question and is more of a shameless plug for me to say 'I was there!' I really liked the movie and I am going to see it again.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I didn't go see this one, and I'm not going to. The reason? The people who made the first movie told me not to. In an interview, one of them said that the second movie would have the "same depth of character as the first one."
That was all I needed to know.
Edit to add: The funny thing is, I think whoever said that actually intended for it to be a selling point for the second movie. Posts: 324 | Registered: Mar 2008
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Blayne Bradley
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If they could have gotten 3! Divisions of PLA soldiers to help film "Hero" they could have contacted the PRC Embassy and asked "hey, can we borrow a few soldiers for a movie?" C'mon getting Soviet equipment should have been the easy part.
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Blayne Bradley
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Love It Or Hate It: Revenge of the Fallen was slammed hard by critics who liked the first movie (currently 21% on Rotten Tomatoes), but audiences loved it better than the first movie and went back for more. It's on its way to becoming the worst-rated $400 million earner in film history.
RAVAGE! NOOOOOO! Please come back to me! *snif*
He got to talk in Beastwares I was hoping he would talk here.
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Blayne Bradley
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Also from TVTropes
"Same Story Different Names: Fallen is a lot like the first film, but bigger. It's so awesome that only the critics and people who expected an actual plot have complained."
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I didn't pay for my Saturday morning cartoons, and also I was a child. My standards were pretty low.
I've never been a fan of these superhero / nostalgic cartoon movies, but after I saw Dark Knight I realized that they could be (pretty darn) good movies. Now I expect nothing less, and the first Transformers movie was much, much less. The second seems to be even less.
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Blayne Bradley
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Then it obviously wasn't aimed at you. But at the people who wanted to see Giant robots fighting.
My little brothers walked out of it saying ZOMG 10/10. I said I gave it a 7/10 and one of them started raving about how hot Megan Fox was, so I told him Emma Watson was hotter.
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quote: 2- Why was the US military operating in China with not a single member of the People's Liberation Army of People's Armed Police in sight? They could at least used Chinese helicopters and the Chinese version of the Tupolev for carrying people incase anyone spots them. A liason officer to boot would have made sense.
Because they filmed it in Bethlehem, PA. I was there to see it I know that has no real bearing on your question and is more of a shameless plug for me to say 'I was there!' I really liked the movie and I am going to see it again.
I was there too. The helicopters were cool. Soon that whole area will be taken over by casino property.
I haven't seen the first one, and the only reason I'd have to see this one would be because of said filming in hometown, but I'm not really that motivated. Oh, that and two friends of mine ended up getting cast as extras and went and filmed in philadelphia for a week. It's been hugely popular around here with the whole local filming. Apparently the theaters have been mobbed.
I find this all amusing since I absolutely adored Transformers when I was a kid. I had dreams about it.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I wonder why everyone is looking for depth of character in either film. It's not one of those movies you walk out thinking it was profound or that it had good characterization.
I saw it last night. It's an explosion filled cgi-fest. That is all. Why would you expect any different? It was entertaining, nothing more. It wasn't bad at all.
You can't compare The Dark Knight and the Transformers movies, they're completely different categories in my mind.
Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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It does not surprise me that Blayne loved this movie. It was practically designed for him.
For what it's worth, I got to see it for free... and it was worth the price of admission. The fact that I didn't pay anything for it allowed me the luxury of just letting it wash over me, provided I beat down any brain cell that actually wanted to work during the 2.5 hours.
During the movie, it was fun and campy, and designed for an 8 year old. I was a little shocked at the language/sexuality in a movie so obviously designed for an 8 year old, though.
Sure my brain really, really hurt a half hour after it ended and I let those suppressed synapses start firing again, and I am entirely relieved that I didn't actually pay any money to see it.
It was schlock. But it was schlock with high production values... and exactly what I expected from Michael Bay.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: It does not surprise me that Blayne loved this movie. It was practically designed for him.
For what it's worth, I got to see it for free... and it was worth the price of admission. The fact that I didn't pay anything for it allowed me the luxury of just letting it wash over me, provided I beat down any brain cell that actually wanted to work during the 2.5 hours.
During the movie, it was fun and campy, and designed for an 8 year old. I was a little shocked at the language/sexuality in a movie so obviously designed for an 8 year old, though.
Sure my brain really, really hurt a half hour after it ended and I let those suppressed synapses start firing again, and I am entirely relieved that I didn't actually pay any money to see it.
It was schlock. But it was schlock with high production values... and exactly what I expected from Michael Bay.
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Blayne, I really didn't mean to offend - though reading through that, I easily see how it is offensive. My apologies for that.
It's just that you always defend movies that are all flash and little to no substance. It's like your bread and butter. It makes perfect sense that you loved it, and that you would defend it.
You're Michael Bay's target audience, after all. Someone who wants to just see action and flash, who is willing to not only disregard the need for plot/character/logic but to actively tell those who value those things that
quote:their standards so far up their ass that they are in danger of choking on it.
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It makes it sound like that I am incapable of appreciating movies that are story telling works of art, which I will state is categorically untrue. The way I see it I go to a Transformers movie expecting a Transformers movie, lots of action, lots of Humongous Mecha, and as of the first movie and carried through to the second a crowning moment of awesome for the US military.
If I go to a movie expecting strong characters, a charming artistic direction, and a overarching plot that is what I will expect. As I'm not a regular movie goer I can't give specific examples.
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I thought Transformers 2 was actually a pretty good 2 hour movie, wrapped in about 40 minutes of garbage. Like Blayne says, it's a popcorn flick with explosions which is perfectly fine to appreciate for it's own sake. I think if you removed all the dirty/racist jokes (which were pretty uniformly not-funny) and cut back some unnecessarily long action scenes, you'd have had a fun, decent movie. (I actually think it'd be a pretty easy movie to edit into something good, even with home video editing software)
My only real issue with the "good" parts of the movie is that the robot fights are often filmed so that it's impossible to tell who's fighting who and why.
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Blayne Bradley
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I dunno about dirty but there was nothing racist about that movie, the twins were supposed to be parodies of wiggers not of the black ebonics subculture. One of the comedians who voice the twins IS BLACK and suggested that style.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: It makes it sound like that I am incapable of appreciating movies that are story telling works of art, which I will state is categorically untrue.
Yeah you browse hatrack, so...
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Blayne Bradley
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*blink* what are you suggesting.
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I was just saying that it's obvious you value "substance" if you like OSC enough to post on his website.
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Whether or not the Twins were racist, they were stupid and not funny and the movie would have been better served with some random autobot in their place who was an actual character instead of a stereotype.
That said, how do you get "wigger" parody? Nearly everything about them (facial features, gold tooth, can't read, gangsta trash talk, names) suggests ethnic stereotype. I think there are some other directors out there who might have presented them in a way that convinced me they were actually MAKING FUN of ethnic stereotypes, but I'm hard pressed to give Bay that much credit.
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Blayne Bradley
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Word of God for one, secondly they couldn't read Ancient Cybertronian! So of course they couldn't read it!
the Gold tooth is like bling that wiggers wear all the time I don't see actual black people wearing it.
I think you give Bay too little and you need to read the Tv Tropes article for the movie you learn things.
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Most of their traits COULD be interpreted either way, but the facial features make it pretty hard to ignore, and I don't see any compelling evidence to the contrary.
"I give Bay too little credit"? What exactly has he done to convince you otherwise?
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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I've seen stuff by Bay that I thought was decent (heck, there's a lot I like about Transformers), but I don't see a lot of evidence that the Twins are carefully constructed subversions of stereotypes as opposed to a ridiculous mistake. I don't think they were explicitly intended to BE racist (most racist things in media aren't) but I think they were approached with the same ignorance that bumbling ethnic stereotypes have traditionally been. ("It's not sending a negative message, it's just funny!")
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I can't help but think about a bit in the extras on The Island where Bay said something like (paraphrasing here) "When there's an action scene, I tell the writers not to put anything in the script, just write, 'ACTION!'" and thinking to myself, "and I bet your screenwriters hate your ever-loving guts..."
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quote:Originally posted by Nick: I wonder why everyone is looking for depth of character in either film. It's not one of those movies you walk out thinking it was profound or that it had good characterization.
I think I said this on here after watching the first one...it's not that I was expecting a lot of depth...but I was expecting characters. I think that's a reasonable hope for any movie. And when I got half-way through the movie and realized that I didn't care one whit what happened to ANY of the "characters"...from that point, the movie was simply tedious and boring, no matter how much action there was in it.
I watched the last half of the movie simply because I'd paid money for it. Posts: 324 | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote:I can't help but think about a bit in the extras on The Island where Bay said something like (paraphrasing here) "When there's an action scene, I tell the writers not to put anything in the script, just write, 'ACTION!'" and thinking to myself, "and I bet your screenwriters hate your ever-loving guts...
Transformers 2 Script:
ACTION
The End.
(Total Run Time: 2.5 Hours)
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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I enjoyed it, as did my wife. Then again, we weren't expecting movie history when we walked in.
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quote:...one of them started raving about how hot Megan Fox was, so I told him Emma Watson was hotter.
I'm going to have to say no on that for the sole reason that I still have a hard time realizing that Emma Watson is even "legal".
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Love It Or Hate It: Revenge of the Fallen was slammed hard by critics who liked the first movie (currently 21% on Rotten Tomatoes), but audiences loved it better than the first movie and went back for more. It's on its way to becoming the worst-rated $400 million earner in film history.
TF2 opened much higher than TF1, thanks to the excellent word of mouth of the first movie, and that's why it's getting a bigger overall gross - It's also helped by two years of inflation.
But it's displaying considerably worse legs than TF1, directly hinting at worse WOM, and it also has worse grades in pretty much every site, where filmgoers submit their own grades to movies.
This is not to say that TF2 would be having bad WOM. It's having a good reception from mainstream audiences - Just not as good as TF1 did.
This isn't any different from for example how Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 outgrossed POTC1. The first film in the series had tremendous WOM, the sequel used that WOM to open to massive numbers, and grossed more overall. But the majority of audiences clearly preferred the first movie over the second one.
Same thing is true of Matrix 1 & 2. Does anyone really think the sequel was better liked, despite grossing much more?
There are countless of examples of this. Box Office and WOM don't go directly hand-in-hand, as there are also many other factors that affect the B.O.
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