^ or pausing the movie to have a stupid unfunny "comedy" scene that tries to justify an "UNDERAGE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP".

Ray wrote:^ or pausing the movie to have a stupid unfunny "comedy" scene that tries to justify an "UNDERAGE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP".

Which film did that? 4?

Yup.

C'mon, now; if we're gonna roast the movie let's do it right.

Damn. Can't recall the last time Cinema Sins had to do a two-parter.

I used to like the Transformers movies (albeit mostly as a guilty pleasure), but now I can't stand to watch them. Not because I have anything against Transformers, but because it's become plain to me that Michael Bay's films reek of American supremacy, xenophobia (except against China, because $$$), and war-mongering. The fact that they do so well makes the current state of this country much more obvious.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" is a message we need now more than ever. Optimus Prime would be disappointed.

El Squibbonator wrote:I used to like the Transformers movies (albeit mostly as a guilty pleasure), but now I can't stand to watch them. Not because I have anything against Transformers, but because it's become plain to me that Michael Bay's films reek of American supremacy, xenophobia (except against China, because $$$), and war-mongering. The fact that they do so well makes the current state of this country much more obvious.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" is a message we need now more than ever. Optimus Prime would be disappointed.

The CinemaSins video linked above has a bonus round that just counts U.S. flags in AoE. There are a lot of U.S. flags in AoE.

El Squibbonator wrote:but because it's become plain to me that Michael Bay's films reek of American supremacy, xenophobia (except against China, because $$$), and war-mongering. The fact that they do so well makes the current state of this country much more obvious.

I've always felt they did well because they incorporate every bad thing about the worst Blockbusters nowadays, in addition to Michael Bay constantly having the same tone for all of them. I also think it has less to do with the current state of America (AoE WAS released a year before the election really kickstarted), and more to do with how much they appeal to it's audience.

Still, as shitty as the franchise is, I do think that hating on it has become such a cliche. You know that when the next film comes out, it's going to be the same old cycle: Michael Bay sucks; there's too much action; it's shitting on my childhood.

To paraphrase Someone I used to watch.

" it seems the only people who don't actively hate Michael Bay or his movies is the average everyday middle-of-the-road American moviegoers that turn his movies into the biggest box office hits of all time.

and I think that's where all this hate for him comes from I have no problem believing the majority of fans and critics hate Michael Bay movies. But all this vitriol isn't about Michael Bay himself it's about Michael Bay's America.

But you're not supposed to say that a Critic is never supposed to say that the audience is the problem a Critic is supposed to be on the audiences side, a Critic is supposed to say that Hollywood has underestimated them and if that it was only available we order the grass-fed filet mignon or Lobster over the Big Mac or chicken bucket. But it's simply not true. nobody has a gun to anyone's head forcing them to go see Michael Bay's stupid robot movie, they're going to see the stupid robot movie because they want to.

Michael Bay is not the problem the audience is the problem, the culture the audience Springs from is the problem. WE are the problem (and I include myself) Michael Bay is just a guy behind the counter saying "you want fries with that"?

@Squib.

There's nothing inherently wrong with making aPatriotic movie. The problem is Michael Bay is a freaking hypocrite. He says he loves America and he sells out to China. In the last Transformers movie he made the US government the bad guy after three movies where they were better at fighting the Decepticons than the titular characters themselves.

And I think Nostalgia Critic covered the basic inherent problem with PEARL HARBOR.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HyvuFEPSR-Y

It's one thing to portray America a the good guy, and glorify American ppatriotism. It's another thing entirely to fetishize America.

His films are art, you need to look deeper into them to see it. His own persona and the way he makes these films is part of the art, see the whole thing with the Churchill controversy from the film production.

Ray wrote:There's nothing inherently wrong with making aPatriotic movie. The problem is Michael Bay is a freaking hypocrite. He says he loves America and he sells out to China. In the last Transformers movie he made the US government the bad guy after three movies where they were better at fighting the Decepticons than the titular characters themselves.

Hush Ray. You don't get to have an opinion when you haven't actually bothered to watch the thing.

(to everyone else, no, he didn't sell out to China. AoE has many, many, many problems, but selling out to China isn't one of them.)

El Squibbonator wrote:but because it's become plain to me that Michael Bay's films reek of American supremacy, xenophobia (except against China, because $$$), and war-mongering.

Some of the Transformers are strong stereotypes (some bad = the gettobots, some cool = the samurai) but how are the films xenophobic?
And being pro military doesn't equal war mongering.

Ray wrote:In the last Transformers movie he made the US government the bad guy after three movies where they were better at fighting the Decepticons than the titular characters themselves.

But that seemed to develop naturally from the events that transpired over the course of the films, by the start of 3 the government itself was tired of the Formers good or bad and after the Chicago invasion them going full anti-former makes perfect sense.

^ I can't believe you're trying to apply logic and plot to a Michael Bay Transformers movie, each movie is a retcon the previous film's plot.

Part of me wishes this one would fail so someone other than Michael Bay could take a swing and try and do something else with the franchise.

Hopefully given the last Ninja Turtles movie underperformed people are starting to wake up to how genuinely terrible his movies and production company actually are.

I mean as much as people crap on Zack Snyder at least Zack is trying to do something bigger with his DC movies than Michael Bay is with the Transformers.

Ray wrote:as much as people crap on Zack Snyder at least Zack is trying to do something bigger with his DC movies than Michael Bay is with the Transformers.

Snyder comes across as Michael Bay trying to be like a low-rate Christopher Nolan. Bay's movies may have some of the worst writing ever done for a big-budget movie; Snyder constantly tries to put new edgy to products that just stretch out Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy formula that DC has been trying to milk, all without the talent that went into that trilogy. Awful as those two directors may be, they're both insulting in different ways that can't be ignored.

Director Black wrote:Snyder comes across as Michael Bay trying to be like a low-rate Christopher Nolan.

Virtually every major thing Bay does wrong Snyder does right.
-- Except maybe for Sucker Punch which I have not seen and the miscasting of Silk Spectre, Snyder's female characters have depth, have stuff to do and aren't just no talent eye candy. He gave us one of the best most restrained Lois Lane's ever, the female lead in his Dawn of the Dead was also strong.
-- His action scenes are perfectly coherent and followable.
-- With Mos and Bvs he waited until late in to the film to get into the action so we had time to get to know and care about the characters.
-- He gave us the destruction from the POV of humans on the ground to get across the gravity and horror of it.
-- Minus the "tinkle", "kinda hot" lines and the piss jar, Snyder hasn't put any crude, childish or bathroom humor into his Dc films. Certainly nothing as cringy and time consuming as the god damn toilet paper scene in Transformers 2.
-- No racist stereotypes in Snyder's films that I can think of.
-- In his adaptions the characters almost all look recognizably like the original characters for the most part, the Bayformers do not at all except maybe Optimius.
-- Snyder can learn to a extent from his mistakes such as strongly toning down on the slow mo and in Bvs he had Superman remove Doomsday from a populated area almost immediately.
-- Even in Mos his use of the Military isn't as glaring or over the top as Bays is. And he had his characters not be pro military hence his giving us a Superman who flat out says the military will never control him to their face.
Just saying...

Nearly every single thing you listed as something Zack Snyder does right is so shallow & missing the things he gets wrong it's amazing. But, I've spent too much of my time in life in conversation or on message boards talking about how Zack Snyder is a pretty piss poor filmmaker & I've reached my limit. Snyder is an imposter. He basically grabs whatever is in vogue at the moment & shamelessly copies that while adding nothing of his own. Even his two best comic book films - 300 & Watchmen - are almost entirely devoid of anything unique because he so slavishly recreates the images other artists put to the page. His only justifiably good film is his Dawn of the Dead remake & the only film of his that actually has a personal stamp on it is Sucker Punch.... which is two hours of "female empowerment" where the empowerment is the gils embodying two-dimensional porn stereotypes - we got the Baby Doll, the Tough Girl, the bubbly Asian, etc - then pretending their strippers, get raped (repeatedly) & pretend they're video games characters who lack agency & can only take commands from a grizzly old white guy. Sucker Punch is awful. It's also the only thematically interesting film Snyder has done... for all the wrong reasons.


As for Michael Bay, for all his faults - his work is thematically empty & ridiculously racist - when he's not making a Transformers movie he's 10 times the filmmaker Snyder is. If Bay could just stop making Transformers movies - projects he clearly cares little about & is doing purely for the financial gain - & hire a producer to tell him "This movie should have a running time not exceeding 100 minutes!" he'd be a far more interesting filmmaker.

Fascinating thing about Transformers vs. Snyders DC movies is at least Transformers is honest. Bay hates the universe but it gives him a chance to go bigger than big so he keeps doing them. He doesn't apologize for what they are & he pretty much has made the same movie five times. Snyder's DC Universe is garbage & each film so far does it's best to be an apology for the last one. Now Justice League looks like it's trying to go full quippy Marvel to apologize for the "darkness" of Batman V. Superman which was itself an apology for Man Of Steel. Whatever Synder does after Justice League I'm sure that will be an apology for JL.

Snyder would be a great DP or cinematographer working under an actually talented director. He doesn't bring any original vision to his work and just relies on whatever he's adapting, and when he does something somewhat original (Sucker Punch) it's just a mash of visuals and motifs cribbed from other material and confusingly hammered together. He's 100% flair, no substance, no originality.

Michael Bay on the other hand is getting pissed on too much. 90% of the hate for him is because he "trashed" an 80's cartoon. Before that he was fucking beloved. His action movies are well regarded and The Rock was selected for the Criterion Collection for a reason, it's a goddamn masterpiece.

People are mad at him because the Transformers movies have racist stereotypes, nonsensical plots, etc, but if that's your problem with them you need to watch the fucking cartoon..

You know, the cartoon where Megatron has five different origins (one of which involves being built by other robots that he later built himself), the cartoon that Casey Kasem quit because the producers refused to change a two second sight gag implying Arabs set off car bombs and fuck camels rather than retain their voice talent, the cartoon where all the main characters were brutally murdered in graphic fashion in five minutes to roll out a new toy line.

Transformers was never serious. It was never an epic. It never had gravity. It never had the gravitas your childhood imagination gave it. It was a nonsensical, incoherent mass of gibberish that was only there to sell toys, written by a writer's room that was so baked out of their minds they couldn't remember how their own made up shit worked, writing episode after episode to see how stupid they could make it and how outrageously gay they could make Megatron and Starscream before someone complained.

I say that as someone with a deep and abiding love for the franchise. It should be enjoyed and celebrated for what it is, not what it isn't.

Bay's movies are rich with commentary and visual flair and you can see him evolving as an artist over the course of the films. You can literally watching him start to "get" Transformers by watching the movies in sequence.

Hey, I resent that! I've hated all of Bay's movies apart from Bad Boys, and I never let up on that hatred for one single minute. I've been very consistent in that regard.

Also, the Transformers cartoon was a mish-mash of stuff originally animated in Japan for the various Dioclone and Microman toylines. Well, the G1 stuff was, anyway; I lost track of it after that.

But anyway, it's true that Bay didn't piss all over our childhood with the Transformers films. It was already mired in shit, and he just stirred it around a little.

Beast Wars is actually a good show.

I'd call it the first gasp of modern television- arc storytelling over disconnected episodic plots, real consequences and lasting character deaths, and a beginning, middle, and end.

Unfortunately the CGI animation is so terrible it's borderline unwatchable now.

I think a lot of the nostalgic fondness people have for G1 actually comes from the way Beast Wars treated it.

What did you guys think of Pain & Gain? I haven't seen it but many I heard claim it was a return to almost (Bad Boys 1/The Rock) level of quality for Bay.
Also Gendo's Papa you said you only liked Bad Boys 1, What issues do you have with the Rock? Just curious.

Gendo'sPapa wrote:1 - Nearly every single thing you listed as something Zack Snyder does right is so shallow
2 - Fascinating thing about Transformers vs. Snyders DC movies is at least Transformers is honest. Bay hates the universe
3 - & each film so far does it's best to be an apology for the last one. Now Justice League looks like it's trying to go full quippy Marvel to apologize for the "darkness" of Batman V. Superman which was itself an apology for Man Of Steel. Whatever Synder does after Justice League I'm sure that will be an apology for JL.

1 - How is Lois Lane being portrayed, written and acted in a dignified intelligent restrained manner shallow?
How is him more fully embracing in a character trait of Superman (removing the fight out of civilian's way) shallow?

2 - There is no evidence whatsoever that Snyder hates the Dc universe, not wanting to repeat the bright cheeriness of previous versions does not equal hating the universe or the characters. That is a personal preference in tone not a act of malice or disdain for the entire subject matter. And if Snyder hated Superman why would he have made his goodness the crux of Batman's redemption and the inspiring point for the JL?
Even if he hated it, at least he isn't a lazy spiteful prick like Bay as I can see 100 times more effort and craftsmanship in almost any given scene in Watchmen/Mos/Bvs then I can the entirety of any given Transformer film.

3 - JLA going lighter is a studio decision not Snyders I am fairly sure and regardless it makes perfect sense as Superman's sacrifice is meant to inspire a new age of heroes to action and how the hell was BVS a apology for MOS when it doubled down on virtually everything except destruction?

Chuckman wrote:Beast Wars is actually a good show.
I'd call it the first gasp of modern television- arc storytelling over disconnected episodic plots, real consequences and lasting character deaths, and a beginning, middle, and end.
Unfortunately the CGI animation is so terrible it's borderline unwatchable now.

From what I remember of it, Agreed.