The Franchise That Should Not Be: A Call To Arms.

OK, so I’m aware that my last post, Terminate all Thought, sort of descended into a rant about Transformers and Michael Bay, which was not the intention.  With this post however, it absolutely is.  I may as well tell you now. 

Terrifyingly close is the release of the third film in The Franchise That Really Shouldn’t Find An Audience Due To The Fact That Those Old Enough To Have A Fondness For The Toys Are All Now Knocking On Thirty Yet The Target Audience Is Clearly 12 Year Old Boys (as I feel the series should be  known, though Total Film may have to clear some space on the cover), and once again I fear the inevitable:  Intelligent, reasonable people with otherwise respectable taste in film sitting alongside dribbling little punks in now forever tainted cinema seats.

OK, I watched the first one, dubious but hopeful, and as you know, it was a piece of shit.  It’s not worth dissecting, it’s not worth criticising.  Some dismissed it as summer popcorn fare, others as a glorified toy advert.  While these are fair conclusions, they are missing the point:  It’s a piece of shit.  ‘But Kev, what about the top-notch CGI-‘  no, it’s just a piece of shit.  ‘Didn’t Megan Fox look-‘  it doesn’t matter.  Piece of shit.

 Now, OK, despite this, I was fooled into thinking the second one might just be insane enough to warrant a watch.  I know, I know, and I’ve reprimanded myself fittingly.  But you know what?  At least I didn’t pay money to see them.  In fact, being a projectionist means I actually got paid to watch them.  But even then, I’d rather have spent my morning cleaning grease out of the gears of the projector.

And so, consider this a call to arms.  I am here to urge you, even to beg you, not to pay money to see Transformers 3.  In fact, if you do, then fuck you, you are an enemy of cinema.  You are contributing to the dumbing down of cinema, and increasing the likelihood of Hollywood putting out more of this worthless, moronic, meaningless shite.  Even if you watch the films on TV, you are boosting ratings and helping to ensure enduring interest and repeated showings.  I’ve been doing my bit, small though it may be, by inserting the trailer into as few films as possible, hoping to make even a few impressionable kids unaware of the film’s release.  And you can do your bit too.  Do not watch this slag heap of a film.  It is time to halt the ongoing march of The Franchise That Really Shouldn’t Find An Audience Due To The Fact That Those Old Enough To Have A Fondness For The Toys Are All Now Knocking On Thirty Yet The Target Audience Is Clearly 12 Year Old Boys.  Michael Bay should not have a career, Shia LaBeouf should be serving burgers and fries and Megan Fox, well, OK fair play to her for getting out when she did.

Please, ignore the inevitable four stars those spineless types at Empire magazine will bless the film with, and go watch something else.  There’s some good shit coming out this summer.

Terminate All Thought.

“Leave your brain at the door”, people are fond of telling me.  “You have to switch your brain off, and you’ll enjoy it”.  These are things I hear so often, generally as needless justification for one’s guilty cinematic pleasures, or to excuse a lack of confidence in one’s own opinions.  Even film critics use these tired clichés when they feel they are overstepping the boundary of what they, as critics, are permitted to like.  It means they can slap another star on the rating for that Jason Statham film without embarrassment. 

Firstly, all art is of course subjective, and therefore nobody need be ashamed of their likes or dislikes.  Secondly, when did the world become a place where people want to stop thinking?  The last thing I want to do is put a freeze on my thoughts.  Escapism?  Fine.  Dumb action?  Lovely.  It’s just something I’ll never understand, this whole not wanting to think.  It is our constant thought processes which make us human, no?

It really niggles my nadgers when people tell me that I would have enjoyed a lousy piece of cinematic excrement like Transformers had I had the foresight to just “switch my brain off”.  Because guess what, bitches?  I DON’T WANT TO.  My mind was whirring like the sprockets on the projector while watching Transformers, thinking up new, novel ways to express such bottomless abhorrence, and wondering how viewers can be insulted and belittled for over two hours and still go home happy.  Is society to blame?  And this is not, as someone on every imdb message board would suggest (by way of defending their tastes), snobbery.  I enjoy a dumb modern action flick as much as anyone, so long as it delivers (see Die Hard 4, Con Air), it’s just that even the action scenes in Transformers were weak, juvenile and unexciting.  And the big joke is that Mr. Bay actually does consider his films to have some meaning and importance, while even his defenders wouldn’t claim such a thing.  I remember reading an interview with him around the time The Island came out, and he was wittering on about how he is now less interested in blowing stuff up, and his new money shot is to look into an actor’s eyes, into their soul!  Ha Haaaaa Michael Bay!  I laughed and laughed.

And so I implore you readers, watch what you want, and enjoy films on whatever level you wish, but always keep your brain switched on.  There is as much to consider while watching some swill by Roland Emmerich as there is watching Apocalypse Now.  Maybe give Transformers 3 a miss though.