I thought Transformers was awesome. As much as I loved the film, it was far from perfect – very very far from perfect. The movie was riddled with problems, and you don’t have to look very hard on the internet to find comprehensive lists of all the plot holes and inconsistencies in the movie. Some reviewers would suggest in fact that the movie doesn’t really even have a plot.
My problem is that is has too much of a plot. What I don’t understand is why they even bothered going into all the convolutions that made up the shambolic mess of a plot that we end up with. If you stop and think about the movie’s plot too much you go cross eyed. It makes so little sense, it contradicts itself, it’s convoluted, and it’s just plain stupid.
It’s also completely unnecessary. When you boil down the movie to it’s key components it’s really just about 3 things; explosions, babes and fighting robots. The plot is merely a convention that we understand as a framework that a movie must sit within. So my question is, why setup all the crap about the Fallen? About the Matrix of Leadership (if you haven’t seen the movie, yep, don’t ask…)? It gets confusing, it gets ridiculous, and the movie just doesn’t need it.
Basically all you need is an excuse to setup a series of fights (featuring lots of explosions), each one bigger than the one before and leading up to one super large fight scene in the end. Pretty much like how the movie is currently setup, but do it without the guff.
People pick at the plot for it’s stupidity, and some of the problems are pretty major, but the movie would’ve been just as good with a simple plot, like say; Megatron is brought back to life, he tries to get revenge, and in a big final battle the Autobots triumphs.
Keep it simple and focus on your strengths. Michael Bay is the king of explosions, but he can’t tell a story to save his life.
Insane, bloated, shambolic, exciting, awesome. This film lurches from ridiculous to sublime in a way only Michael Bay could make possible. You could write a long list of things that are wrong with this film, or spend the same amount of time writing a list of all the things that are awesome about this film.
When you consider the context with which this film is supposed to be taken, it would seem most of the criticism I have heard about this movie is largely irrelevant. It is a beautiful spectacle, I saw it in IMAX and it was a thing of beauty. Explosions, babes, and fighting robots – how can you possibly go wrong?
The film did seem unnecessarily long, and the premise of the movie was unnecessarily complex – which isn’t to say it was actually complex, but rather a far simpler premise would’ve more than sufficed. The action is relentless and the visual effects are seamless.
This is a Michael Bay film people, Michael Bay. Just remember that, and you’ll have a great time.
To be honest, I’m really just not a big fan of modern military themed games. I’ll say this much, I’d readily believe Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the best there is for what it is – it’s just not for me.
A quality shooter, with visceral action. I can see why people play this game for hours, and good luck to them.
I’m really not sure about this one. The trailers make it look like a combination of action awesomeness and super-lame arse campiness and I can’t help but wonder if the lameness is going to come out on top.
I know a lot of people have already dismissed this movie as being garbage, and I can understand why – however I’m a Stephen Sommers believer and I think he can handle cheesy action films well. He was sorely missed on Mummy 3 – here’s hoping he hasn’t done a Bryan Singer and contributed to two junk films being made by leaving the third movie of a franchise and focusing on something else, rather than making that third film great.
I was never into G.I. Joe as a kid, so I don’t know any of the characters, and I don’t suppose I really care.
A good concept with rich potential for comedy. A group of guys go to Las Vegas for a Bucks Party and wake up the next morning with no recollection of the previous night and have to piece together what happened in order find their missing friend. The trailers looked great, and the movie doesn’t disappoint. It’s a funny movie that ticks along nicely.
I must admit that because of the buzz I might have been expecting a bit more, but it would be unfair to say anything negative about this film, it’s good and it’s funny.
While being a good game, I found Prince of Persia to be incredibly repetitive. The objectives are straight forward, take your character to a certain point and as per the story “heal” the cursed land (by pressing a button). In order to get to the certain point you have to run, jump, slide and just generally parkour your way acrobatically across a beautiful art style landscape, with a boss fight when you reach the destination.
And then you do it again, and again, for a total of 20 times.
I kid you not. Thankfully the game is interesting – it is fun to use to Prince’s acrobatic moves, at least for a while, but when it’s really just the same thing over and over and over again, it really starts to feel a bit uninspired. The game has a lot going for it in terms of the basics, the aesthetics are good, the dialog between the character in the game is interesting, and the gameplay is fun, but the repetition is a major let down. Despite being so repetitive it didn’t get too bad I suppose because the game itself is pretty short. I earned an achievement for completing the game in under 12 hours so that gives you some indication.
This isn’t a spoiler; one of the plot lines of the movie has SkyNet targetting Kyle Reese for termination because as we all know he goes on to become John Connor’s father. The thing is, we all know that because we’ve seen the first movie – but how could SkyNet possibly know? It’s not as though his name would be listed on John’s birth certificate.
Putting that aside for one moment – my biggest problem with the whole damn movie; IF for some reason SkyNet somehow knows about the importance of Kyle Reese, then the solution is obvious. It’s not special Terminators, or even naked Arnie’s…
JUST DON’T TRAVEL BACK IN TIME. EVER.
Problem solved.
So, now that the solution is published out on the internet, our demise is now confirmed. I have doomed us all.
I’m now in no doubt, the Terminator series ended, and ended well at Terminator 2. Man, that was a good film. I was unsure about whether or not Terminator 3 was necessary, but after watching Terminator Salvation, I’m now sure that everything since T2 was redundant.
Like Live Free or Die Hard, this fourth film in the series has none of the qualities that made the previous movies so good. It lacks everything that makes Terminator the brilliant films they were. In fact aside from having the checklist of items that have previously featured in a Terminator film, it didn’t feel like a Terminator film at all – instead just some mediocre sci-fi action film, with a lame plot and some nice effects.
Note to McG: firstly, you have a stupid name, secondly just having the lines “Come with me if you want to live” and “I’ll be back” doesn’t make it a Terminator film.
Such a disappointment, don’t waste your time. Two stars.
Conceptually this movie seemed like it had intriguing potential. Unfortunately, it ended up just being absurd. That would suggest I hated it but I didn’t. It was bad because of it’s unsatisfying resolution, but some of the disaster scenes are pretty awesome so that makes up for it in parts. I wouldn’t recommend anyone bother with it, but it entertained me.
Nicolas Cage is such a hammy actor, if you’re able to just accept that as the status quo you’ll be okay. If not, this movie will annoy the hell out of you and the ending will only infuriate you more. It was better than Ghost Rider at least…
I burned through Gears of War 2 in a short space of time, and was left wondering if the game was too short, or actually just right and all other games were too long.
When you consider that video games can cost over $100 I suppose you really want to be able to get your money’s worth. The problem I have is that often games feel like they’re being padded with repetitive gameplay in order to eek out a few extra hours from you.
Gears of War 2 is lean, you get through the campaign quickly and it feels satisfying without ever being close to tedious. The added advantage is that it has a rich multi-player element which means that once you’ve finished with the campaign (which was at best 8-10 hours) there’s still plenty more to play for.
Gears 2 is pretty much an upgrade of the original – it has all the things that made the first game great and has tried to build upon it. Larger scale battles, sharper graphics, and a few extra combat features. Haven’t touched the multiplayer yet, but the new Horde mode looks promising.
It seems there’s a solid focus on the multi-player aspect, which explains the short single player campaign, and in turn accounts for the majority of the achievements, which meant that after finishing the game I had barely made a dent in the available achievement points – oh well, I’ll just have to jump on Xbox Live and endure getting pWned by some obnoxious 10 year old kids from Nebraska.
