Bad Movie Contest: Transformers 2 vs G.I. Joe

You know those people who claim the Nazis were intellectually and culturally elite, or claim that the Holocaust was justified in any way, or claim that Nazis get a worse-than-deserved reputation in history? We call those people Nazi sympathizers. Over my internet movie-snob browsing, I have come across people who defend Transformers 2 on the grounds that it’s an action movie and shouldn’t be judged from an intellectual stand-point. I call those people Michael Bay sympathizers. I know I already wrote an unfunny blog about Trans2, but what Mr.Bay created was POOP and cannot be excused by any means. I will spend the rest of this review comparing it  to another brain-dead,’golden-topping’ popcorn munching abomination of celluloid: G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra (or Rise of My Lunch Onto the Movie Seat, as I call it). I will compare them using crude judgements that I feel reflect the non-snobbish movie watcher’s opinion.

WHICH MOVIE HAD THE BETTER CHICK: The women in these movies are absolute tools and only exist for the purpose of eye-candy aimed at the general male audience. However (SPOILER) Sienna Miller in G.I. Joe is only a tool because her brain is under remote control the whole time. Megan Fox acts like a tool on her own free will. Sienna Miller loses points for showing cleavage in (literally) every uniform she wears, even when the setting shifts to the extremely cold Antarctica she wears a top which puts her breasts on display. In the long run, Sienna does win because she wears glasses for a fair chunk of the movie, meaning she probably knows how to read. Megan Fox also had an embarrassing slo-mo running scene where her breasts bounced in every direction, thus Sienna earns one point for G.I. Joe! (Joe=1, Trans=0).

BETTER SPECIAL EFFECTS: Both of these movies had some of the biggest budgets in movie history. Transformers had $200 Million, G.I. Joe had $175 Million. I’ve seen movies with no/minimal CGI made for more than $25 Million, thus the gap in budget means nothing to me. While I wasn’t totally convinced at the transforming vehicles in T2, the battle would ultimately still go to Michael’s Bay’s crapsterpiece because G.I. Joe featured a very lame looking C.G.I. polar bear. I love polar bears so G.I. Joe can go screw itself for rendering a fake one. (Joe=1, Trans=1)

BETTER STORY: Lmao. One point deducted from each team. (Joe=0, Trans=0)

BETTER DIRECTOR : Remember when Sarah Palin managed to impress people at the presidential debate, only because she set the bar so bloody low with her infamous foreign trade interview? That’s how I feel in comparing G.I. Joe’s director Stephen Sommers with Transformer’s Michael Bay. Bay sets the bar so low that it’s impossible for Sommers to fail. Sommers is at least competent with dumb popcorn flicks, with such passable efforts like the ‘Mummy’ series and…well that’s about it actually. He’s not Nolan by any means, but he’s a much more capable force than Bay. (Joe=1, Trans=0)

BETTER ACTION : Transformers 2 had colorful cars battling each other, some pyramids being destroyed, a bunch of tanks blowing up. G.I. Joe blows up a lot of generic tanks and military equipment, but gains some steam because the friggin EIFFEL TOWER gets destroyed by chemical weaponry. I dislike that French thing a lot more than I dislike the ancient Egyptian pyramids, in-fact I rather like the pyramids! Plus G.I. had ninja stars that blow peoples heads up, so G.I. Joe the plumber wins in this category. (Joe=2, Trans=0)

BETTER CHARACTERS : G.I. Joe’s badguy was a morally ambigous Celtic dude with one of the worst acted accents in recent cinema. He’s one of those guys who sells guns to ‘either side’ and doesn’t give two hoots about the casualties of the war he is promoting, he’s just concerned with his profit. I’ve seen a billion badguys do the same thing, with equally bad accents. Transformers II had a robot with a robot beard. In spite of how little logic there is in that, it certainly qualifies as awesome when compared to the cliche weapon capitalist. (Joe=2, Trans=1)

MORE OFFENSIVE STEREOTYPE: G.I. scores big by making the badguy have an accent that’s as ambiguous as his morality. Sometimes I couldn’t even figure out the accents because they were so poorly acted, plus the American army steps in and fixes everything of course (America, fuck yeah! coming again to save the motherfuckin’ day-yeah!). Transformers II takes the cake in this category for having black gangster robots who don’t have the ability to read. Seriously, this is a race of robots from outer space who speak in thick urban dialect and proudly say “we don’t do a lot of reading around here”. (Joe=2, Trans=2)

Okay, now we’re tied (I admit I purposely did that so it would create interest ). What it all boils down to is which movie I enjoyed watching the most, don’t forget that these are just ‘popcorn’ movies. Neither movies expect or require the viewer to think too deeply about them, it’s more about creating a silly and enjoyable bigscreen experience. In this regard, I would say that G.I. Joe was the better movie, as Transformers II shat all over itself even though I decided to not pay attention to how awful the script was. The brain-dead action sequences in Joe were at least varied and fairly creative, which is more than I can say about Trans2. Don’t get me started on how awful Channing Tatertot is as an actor, but that’s beyong the point; Joe is at least quasi-entertaining. Don’t get me wrong, both movies are poo from an actual ‘film’ point of view, but Joe is slightly less poo-ish. So if you’re looking for a dumb theater experience, I suggest you watch G.I…..actually go rent Citizen Kane you dickhole.

must be seen to be believed: ‘Glen or Glenda?’ (1953)

If there ever existed a movie so bold, so oddly contrived, so terrible yet so awesome, it’s ‘Glen or Glenda?’. Anyone familiar with B-Movies will immediately know how infamous it is and how much of a cult following it has developed since it’s release, this is a movie so bizarre (and amazing, in some weird way) that it simply cannot be ignored. This was the first (and easily most idiosyncratic) movie directed by Edward D. Wood Jr, who is often referred to as the ‘worst film director of all time’. He put his heart and soul into this crapsterpiece, creating a movie like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Seriously, it carelessly ignores so many conventions that it almost becomes unintentionally avant-garde, but I’ll get to that later. Once you’ve read this silly blog you should go see it on youtube, just search the title and it’ll pop right up. But beware.

Where do I begin with this movie? There’s so much strangeness that I’m having trouble coordinating my thoughts into paragraphs. Why don’t I explain what it’s ‘about’…if I can. The title gives a subtle (if dumb) hint. It’s movie with the HARD FACTS (as the intro gladly tells us) about transvestism and how society has deemed it unacceptable for men to dress in ladies clothing. Remember how I said that it’s Ed Wood’s most personal movie? That is because he indeed enjoys dressing in women’s clothing and considers this film to be a deeply analytical statement on the subject. Funny, after watching this movie I don’t feel well informed about the topic. The narrator attempts to give us some deep thoughts about society and social progression, but the script is so contrived that it’s hilarious hearing the lines read in a very serious voice. That man narrating the movie even refers to a character as ‘Partick / Patricia’, which I feel somewhat defeats the purpose. The exposition is so awful that at times it borders on being a documentary, and then when it ‘documents’ it deludes further into an existential college pot smoking session. At times you may think it’s a novelty movie, but make no mistake, this is indeed a ‘serious’ movie (of sorts).

Scenes in the movie flick randomly between an investigation of a dead transvestite (the suicide note comically reads: “ley my body rest in death forever in the things I cannot wear in life ”) to stock footage of buffaloes (seriously) to scenes of Bela Lugosi narrating lines which have no relevance (“beware the big green dragon which sits on your doorstep. he eats little boys, puppy dog tails, big fat snails!” seriously, I can’t make any sense of that line) and many other things you can’t get in any other movie. The only actual ‘story’ element occurs when a man (played by Ed Wood himself!) chooses to reveal his fashionable secret to his fiancee. There’s a hysterical scene in a chapel when (I’m not distorting facts) Satan himself appears at the Ed Wood’s wedding, representing his ‘inner demon’ I suppose. It’s supposed to be dramatic but I couldn’t help but wondering how someone can get Satan to be the best man at his wedding. There really isn’t much of a coherent plot, it’s closer to a series of random images which vaguely relate to transvestism (even the out of place stock footage of buffaloes). Seriously, who puts random footage of buffaloes in their movie? Points for originality…I guess. The only despicable part is when the protagonist first experiences impulses to be a woman, then randomly starts to impuslively clean things. No Ed Wood, having a gender crisis does NOT make you randomly break out into house chores. That part of the movie was somewhat sexist, but funny as all hell.

There are so many unintentionally funny moments in this movie. Ed Wood screws up so badly as director that I kept watching the movie wondering how he’d make serious situations seem hilarious. He’s like one of those rappers who keeps impressing you with clever line after line, just Ed Wood keeps spitting out stupid scenes that spontaneously made me put my face into my palm. Mr.Wood is notorious for rarely doing second takes, and would you be willing to be it’s not because of his actors being so spot-on with their dialogue? On occasion, the acting is so bad that it almost becomes surreal, I especially like the scene where Eddie eyes up his wife’s angora sweater. This movie has got to hold some kind of record for the ‘least amount of effort put into creating a conversation’, if I saw real people talking in that uncanny tone I’d probably shit my pants. The acting schizophrenically wonders between melodramatic and montonous, sometimes even in mid sentence. It so strange and creepy seeing people speak like this, it’s like they’re possessed by Chad Michael Murray.

It may be a drunkenly-contrived piece of cinematic poop, but I’ll take it over those ‘American Pie Presents’ or ‘Transformers’ sequels. ‘Glen or Glenda?’ represents the opposite end of the bad movie spectrum, something made on a shoestring budget with the intention of being extremely profound. This is one mans dedicated attempt to tell the world about a group of people who have been shunned by society, it’s just unfortunate that he wrote in about three days, then filmed it in four. No joke. Ed Wood was genuinely convinced this movie would be his ‘Citizen Kane’, I can just imagine him in the premiere moving his mouth to the narration while waving his hand gently through the air. Still, as idiosyncratic it may be, (as I mentioned before) it’s still better than ‘Transformers 2′. All it’s flaws and pretention make it the entertaining mess-of-a-movie that it is, for that I love it. Now go watch it on youtube, and yes that really is Bela Lugosi (who played Dracula!) doing that disjointed storytelling.

Why ‘Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen’ is a giant piece of poo and can never be enjoyed by anyone

Shame on me for paying money to see this movie in theaters. I’m attempting to justify seeing it in theaters by telling myself “well it was with your friends and they wanted to see it”, but that logic is completely flawed. I could have been a good Samaritan and prevented my friends from seeing this movie, but I remained apathetic and let us waltz right into the cinema (like cows getting on the truck thinking they’re going to Disneyland).

Just so you know, I lowered my expectations to approximately hell-point before the movie started. It would have been pretty stupid of me to expect a compelling story, character development, a subtext about our culture, decent acting, or ANYTHING that would typically make a movie good. All I wanted to see was giant robots beating the living shit out of each other projected onto a big screen for my viewing pleasure. Gotta judge things objectively, this isn’t a ‘serious’ movie after all. Seemed simple enough, I thought, I’m pretty sure they can’t muck that up too bad. Soon I would learn that (any) positive expectation would torment me with the utmost suicide-inducing pleasure.

After some unmemorable noisy battle scene, we find that Shia TheBeef is going away to college. I assume he made it on a special-ed scholarship or something. Apparently he doesn’t want to take his transforming robot car with him out of some misguided attempt at ‘independence’. This perplexes me. What kind of fucking loser would NOT want a transforming robot combat car to take to college? He’s an idiot, end of story. Actually I wish that was the end of the story.

His girlfriend Megan Fox (who works in the least practical place for a teenage girl) is going to some other college far away…but alas, she remains in the movie, to my extreme displeasure. Many guys in the theater couldn’t take their eyes off the candy, but I tell you, I couldn’t wait for her to go off screen. Her acting is so painful and lifeless that it quite honestly made me want to shoot myself, at least that would be slightly faster than exiting the movie theater. Am I the only heterosexual male who genuinely isn’t attracted to Megan Fox? I mean, she’s pretty and all, but no more so than any other clueless Hollywood bimbo and their dog. I don’t understand her screen appeal.

I won’t bother describing the rest of the random events known as the story. As Truman Capote once said: ‘This isn’t writing. It’s typing.’ The story was unique in the fact that it was COMPLETE drivel, as opposed to being ‘somewhat drivel’ or ‘mostly drivel’. Oh well, at least it met my expectations. The attempts at humor were painful and every line came across as either forced or just plain lazy.

Well, I could forgive all of those flaws if the movie granted me one thing: excitement. As I mentioned before, all I really wanted to see was giants robots destroying each other and creating a ridiculous but entertaining movie. Unfortunately, Transformers 2 didn’t even grant me that. The cinematography was so awful that even the visuals lacked any appeal, not to mention that most of the robots looked like pukey masses of CGI bolts and such. The action was just dull and lacked any creativity, which is in my opinion the most important part of action scenes. Nothing elaborate, nothing thoughtful: just robots fighting. Sometimes they take it to exotic locations, but that never brings it out of it’s comatose state.

It’s not like I’m an indie snob who’s allergic to big-budget action movies, as there are plenty of such movies that I adore. The one thing that divides the bad movies of that type (Transformers 2) from the good ones (Dark Knight) is an artistic visionary director who creates a distinct and admirable ’style’ to their movie. The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan, a more than capable artistic mind who doesn’t get ruined by a massive budget. Despite it being a movie about Batman, he seems to be artistically ‘at one’ with the movie and ultimately created some entertaining, massive and just plain fucking awesome. On the other hand, Transformers 2 was directed by Michael Bay. This is a man who has put absolutely no art consistency or creative effort into his movie, so the final product comes across as if it’s been designed by a committee who all failed high school art.

Ok, there were some good aspects. The special effects were really bloody awesome and (even though I didn’t like the look of the Deceptacons) I do admit that some of the Autobots looked cool in the big theater. The generic Egypt locations and transforming cars were a treat for the eyes, so I felt at least somewhat fulfilled in a hedonistic sense. Don’t get me wrong, it was a waste of $11.50, but for two and a half hours it at least wasn’t dreadfully boring. In some alternative movie realm, it may actually qualify as a ‘fun but moronic thing to watch with friends’. I saw it with friends who all felt the same way, at best the movie qualifies as dumb fun. But it was still a piece of doodoo that I don’t intend on ever seeing again. I haven’t even the seen the 2007 Transformers movie and you can probably guess if this movie sparked my interest or not. What’s also kind of funny is that I spent $13 on nachos and a giant soda pop drink while seeing ‘Inglorious Basterds’ yesterday and I honestly feel that was a more appropriate use of cash. No joke. Now piss off and see ‘Inglorious Basterds’, which I recommend with borderline psychotic enthusiasm.