Editor’s note: Welcome to the second of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!
By Jason from Invasion of the B Movies
For my little Oscar write-up thingy, I have to talk about the nominees for Best Visual Effects, which I’m sure is every blind person’s most hated category. HA! Cause you see…visual….
Sorry, I just suffered through a Michael Bay movie. My brain is leaking. Let’s do this.
So the nominees are The Golden Compass, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and last but certainly not least Transformers. Fletch told me that I didn’t have to watch any of the movies to do this post but not knowing what else to talk about, I felt I should watch at least one. Since Compass isn’t out on DVD yet, and Pirates 3 is part of a series I haven’t seen yet, I was forced to watch Michael Bay wet his panties with explosions and people sliding all over the place. AKA: Transformers.
I’m gonna try not to spend too much time on the plot, since I’m only suppose to focus on the visual aspect of this movie. But in case you are wondering, I will give a quick run-down on what the movie is about.
Based on some toys I never played with, which turned into a cartoon I never watched (I was into He-Man. I HAVE THE POWER!) the movie deals with these alien robots crashing to Earth to look for a cube. Then we focus on the zany adventures of Shia Labauf or Buff or whatever his name is, as Sam, a teenager who wants a car. Within the first ten minutes, we’re slammed with a bunch of “remember this” moments, like Sam’s great-grandfather was some explorer and he wore glasses. Seriously, he wore glasses. We need to remember this. He wore glasses.
Anyway, Sam’s Dad goes to buy him a car and a yellow car (I’m not a car expert so I dunno what kind it was suppose to be) suddenly appears and after blowing up all the other windows nearby, Sam is stuck with this one. It turns out that this car is actually one of the GOOD alien robots named Bumblebee. Yeah, that’s a tough name. Soon, Sam and his hot as fuck girlfriend played by Megan Fox (Cause she’s a Fox! ARRROO!!! Sorry…) meet the other Good Transformers.
What about the bad ones? Well, their leader crashed to Earth and was found by Sam’s great-great grandfather and, I kid you not, some map of some sort was embedded into his glasses, which now lay in possession of Sam. So all the robots, good and bad, need these glasses.
There are literally dozens, if not millions of stupid things in this movie, but that has nothing to do with visual effects. Just know that Michael Bay needs to stop making movies. Soon.
Anyway, good robots find the glasses, bad robots show up and blow shit up, John Turtorro shows up and is a crazy asshole, there’s a big battle, the leader of the bad robots is awake but he dies, and now the good robots are stuck on Earth so Shia and Hot Chick can boff on top of them. The end.
Visually, this movie is pretty good. The effects are great and even though I’m against CGI in movies, I thought it was pretty good. I dunno if it should be nominated for an Oscar, let alone win. Cause the entire movie, when stuff was blowing up, looked just like a music video. And would you nominate a music video for Best Visual Effects?
And of course this is Michael Bay we’re talking about here. He must invest in some company that makes explosives or something cause literally anytime something touches something, it explodes. There’s no just denting a thing, or just having nothing happen. It explodes. A robot looks at another robot, they explode. So a lot is going to happen visually.
To sum up, Michael Bay is evil and we shouldn’t be awarding him for making dumb movies where stuff explodes for no damn reason. As for the other two movies nominated, well they gotta be much better then this. Amirite?
(Note: usually my reviews are much more detailed but if I wrote a detail report, this thing would be like 20 pages long, and full of things like “ARRGH” and “WHY GOD WHY?”)