Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of The Onion

Michael Bay and Optimus Prime, from SuperNews!' Transformers spoof.
Here's the best one-paragraph summary of Michael Bay's Transformers I've ever come across (while reading the A.V. Club):
Everyone complaining that Michael Bay's 2007 blockbuster Transformers had inappropriate sexual contact with their childhoods is forgetting one thing: The original '80s cartoon had an awful lot of problems too, starting with wildly inconsistent animation and some pretty basic '80s cartoon plots, in which the bad guys engaged in generally harebrained schemes unworthy of titanic alien-robot forces of destruction. That said, Bay's movie should have been a slam-dunk in the "scary robots" department, simply by virtue of introducing giant, homicidal, heavily armed metal men to Earth. Instead, much like Lucas in Phantom Menace, Bay went for goofy designs and goofier behavior. His Autobots and Decepticons look like unassembled, building-sized Erector sets, and their use of already-dated human slang and contemporary references, plus the generally insipid, adolescent tone of the movie, robbed them of all majesty and menace. And hey, more of them are on the way this summer.
It's as if the A.V. Club read my mind. The '80s Transformers cartoon's animation was choppier than whatever the ShamWow guy does to his nuts.

No comments:

Post a Comment