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Jul. 5th, 2007 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikIn other news, saw the Transformers movie yesterday. Generally entertained. Could spend a lot of time picking it apart (well, and did) though in this case it's actually more interesting and challenging to figure out what would make it a better movie, rather than cataloging the ways in which it wasn't a good one. There is, of course, overlap...
A short list...
Pick a time period and stay there. Anyone else get tweaked by the "I was a 97 pound weakling..." feel to the first whole section? The high school tropes were bad enough, but did they have to be circa 1950's highschool tropes? Or am I really that out of things (likely) and actually highschoolers have reverted in this fashion? Meanwhile, the writers haven't gotten the memo that one no longer is likely to recruit the best hackers out of highschool. (This might be a basic failing of our educational system... or it might not.) I guess it makes a certain amount of sense to have a retro eighties vibe, all things considered...
More robots, less people. Hello, I at least went to this movie expecting a weak plot and really pretty CGI animation. Not only was there too much high school angst (not to mention the gratuitous militarism and several plotlines that went nowhere) but there were a lot of stretches with no robots at all. And then when they showed up, there was very little chance to get a feel for the Autobot characters. (And hey, they weren't likely to be any more shallow than the rest of the characters.)
Can the soliliquies. Now, once upon a time, I really like Optimus Prime. Maybe this was just the youth (likely) but I thought that for a stupid cartoon, he was reasonably well established as a character. Having mostly failed to introduce the robots (again, the reason I came to watch the movie) replacing the establishment of personalities and motivations with stupid canned soliliques is really lame. Especially in the middle of a fight. (Also, having the bloody mecha referring to humans as primitive and voilent just doesn't make any sense. Primitive, maybe. But who is calling whom violent? O RLY?)
Do something about the gender dynamics. Okay, points for trying, but making the major (aka teenage) female characters uncannily competant yet strangely ineffectual is not fixing the problem. First you have to admit that you have a problem... Okay, look, I thought Michaela was a kick, and her bad girl / OMG why do I keep spending time with these possessive losers bit kind of worked. But... there are exceptions, I'm sure, but if you want a believable geek girl, hair color should be either natural, or not found in nature. I'd aim for no makeup (or the Hollywood pretense of no makeup) but quirky or gothy could probably be made to serve. She shouldn't be a Barbie doll. And she should have something to do. Preferably not ranting about quantum computing (alright, really, that could work if you have a writer who understood what quantum computing was and what kind of problems it could solve and for that matter knew anything about security) and bio computers like a lunatic. (Again, not against the bio computers if y'all have a clue. But.)
Also, gratuitious reference to studying frozen robot having spurred the development of the internal combustion engine (WTF?) the microchip and indeed our whole modern age is just insulting.
A short list...
Pick a time period and stay there. Anyone else get tweaked by the "I was a 97 pound weakling..." feel to the first whole section? The high school tropes were bad enough, but did they have to be circa 1950's highschool tropes? Or am I really that out of things (likely) and actually highschoolers have reverted in this fashion? Meanwhile, the writers haven't gotten the memo that one no longer is likely to recruit the best hackers out of highschool. (This might be a basic failing of our educational system... or it might not.) I guess it makes a certain amount of sense to have a retro eighties vibe, all things considered...
More robots, less people. Hello, I at least went to this movie expecting a weak plot and really pretty CGI animation. Not only was there too much high school angst (not to mention the gratuitous militarism and several plotlines that went nowhere) but there were a lot of stretches with no robots at all. And then when they showed up, there was very little chance to get a feel for the Autobot characters. (And hey, they weren't likely to be any more shallow than the rest of the characters.)
Can the soliliquies. Now, once upon a time, I really like Optimus Prime. Maybe this was just the youth (likely) but I thought that for a stupid cartoon, he was reasonably well established as a character. Having mostly failed to introduce the robots (again, the reason I came to watch the movie) replacing the establishment of personalities and motivations with stupid canned soliliques is really lame. Especially in the middle of a fight. (Also, having the bloody mecha referring to humans as primitive and voilent just doesn't make any sense. Primitive, maybe. But who is calling whom violent? O RLY?)
Do something about the gender dynamics. Okay, points for trying, but making the major (aka teenage) female characters uncannily competant yet strangely ineffectual is not fixing the problem. First you have to admit that you have a problem... Okay, look, I thought Michaela was a kick, and her bad girl / OMG why do I keep spending time with these possessive losers bit kind of worked. But... there are exceptions, I'm sure, but if you want a believable geek girl, hair color should be either natural, or not found in nature. I'd aim for no makeup (or the Hollywood pretense of no makeup) but quirky or gothy could probably be made to serve. She shouldn't be a Barbie doll. And she should have something to do. Preferably not ranting about quantum computing (alright, really, that could work if you have a writer who understood what quantum computing was and what kind of problems it could solve and for that matter knew anything about security) and bio computers like a lunatic. (Again, not against the bio computers if y'all have a clue. But.)
Also, gratuitious reference to studying frozen robot having spurred the development of the internal combustion engine (WTF?) the microchip and indeed our whole modern age is just insulting.
