Having just seen Pixar's "Cars"...
Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:51 am...I am willing to forgive everyone who was involved in the production of the Bayformers movies for almost everything that they did wrong.
I've come to realize that bad stories come in two fundamental varieties: there are the ones that annoy me the same amount each time I see one, and there are the ones that annoy me more and more each time, because they recycle the SAME DAMN CLICHES OVER AND OVER, and every time I see one, I experience the combined annoyance that I felt from every single time I was annoyed by this type of story before.
The Bayformers movies are stupid, but they're stupid in completely original ways. I have never, in all my years of movie-watching, seen a movie in which a human dies and goes to Robot Heaven, and all of the giant angel robots bring him back to life because he earned the key to a sun-destroying machine through his courage or whatever. It's stupid, but it's an awesome kind of stupid that I've never seen before.
Cars is the other kind of stupid. I won't even go into the fact that these guys obviously stole their idea from the Chevron commercials that started back in 1996. Let's start with the main character, something something Lightning, who has absolutely no personality beyond what is required to fit into the spoiled-celebrity-who-needs-to-get-out-more archetype that Disney hadn't touched for almost six whole years. While on the road, he becomes separated from his traveling companion, who sounds suspiciously like the pig from Toy Story and whom he tries to follow only to find out that he's been following the wrong guy. He gets stuck in Craphole-with-a-pleasant-name, Nevada, with a population of 8 people, all of whom play up some kind of Southern or Midwestern stereotype that would make this guy look subtle. From there, we move on to the hit-on-the-hot-chick-before-finding-out-she's-your-opponent scene, which doesn't really work too well when the characters are CARS but which nonetheless tells us exactly how these two characters' attitudes toward each other will change over the next 90 minutes, and then to the you're-old-so-you-can't-teach-me-anything scene that tells us exactly how THOSE two characters' attitudes toward each other will change over the next 90 minutes. This goes on until the end, at which point our protagonist gets to the big game, starts losing much more severely than he should, pulls ahead because of the power of friendship, and finally has the chance to do what he set out to do from the very beginning of the movie, but decides against it for really, mind-numbingly stupid reasons.
You can say what you want about the relative uselessness of Mikaela and Carly, or the talents of the actresses women who played them, but did either of them have a "they meet, she hates him right away, so you know they'll be an item by the end of the movie" moment? No. Was Megatron defeated because Optimus gave the Autobots a cheesy lecture about the importance of teamwork? Nope. Was Sam the kind of cut-out stereotype that you'd find in The Breakfast Club or Degrassi: The Next Generation? Nonono! Given the choice between these two kinds of bad - given the choice between "that's as interesting as my last acid trip and makes about as much sense" ideas and "let's just blatantly rip off every other movie ever made and not bother coming up with anything original" ideas - I'll take Deep Wang and the enemy scrotum every time.
Also, I would pay anything to see Cars vs. Tremors. Just add a crazy survivalist car named Burt Hummer and you're all set!
I've come to realize that bad stories come in two fundamental varieties: there are the ones that annoy me the same amount each time I see one, and there are the ones that annoy me more and more each time, because they recycle the SAME DAMN CLICHES OVER AND OVER, and every time I see one, I experience the combined annoyance that I felt from every single time I was annoyed by this type of story before.
The Bayformers movies are stupid, but they're stupid in completely original ways. I have never, in all my years of movie-watching, seen a movie in which a human dies and goes to Robot Heaven, and all of the giant angel robots bring him back to life because he earned the key to a sun-destroying machine through his courage or whatever. It's stupid, but it's an awesome kind of stupid that I've never seen before.
Cars is the other kind of stupid. I won't even go into the fact that these guys obviously stole their idea from the Chevron commercials that started back in 1996. Let's start with the main character, something something Lightning, who has absolutely no personality beyond what is required to fit into the spoiled-celebrity-who-needs-to-get-out-more archetype that Disney hadn't touched for almost six whole years. While on the road, he becomes separated from his traveling companion, who sounds suspiciously like the pig from Toy Story and whom he tries to follow only to find out that he's been following the wrong guy. He gets stuck in Craphole-with-a-pleasant-name, Nevada, with a population of 8 people, all of whom play up some kind of Southern or Midwestern stereotype that would make this guy look subtle. From there, we move on to the hit-on-the-hot-chick-before-finding-out-she's-your-opponent scene, which doesn't really work too well when the characters are CARS but which nonetheless tells us exactly how these two characters' attitudes toward each other will change over the next 90 minutes, and then to the you're-old-so-you-can't-teach-me-anything scene that tells us exactly how THOSE two characters' attitudes toward each other will change over the next 90 minutes. This goes on until the end, at which point our protagonist gets to the big game, starts losing much more severely than he should, pulls ahead because of the power of friendship, and finally has the chance to do what he set out to do from the very beginning of the movie, but decides against it for really, mind-numbingly stupid reasons.
You can say what you want about the relative uselessness of Mikaela and Carly, or the talents of the actresses women who played them, but did either of them have a "they meet, she hates him right away, so you know they'll be an item by the end of the movie" moment? No. Was Megatron defeated because Optimus gave the Autobots a cheesy lecture about the importance of teamwork? Nope. Was Sam the kind of cut-out stereotype that you'd find in The Breakfast Club or Degrassi: The Next Generation? Nonono! Given the choice between these two kinds of bad - given the choice between "that's as interesting as my last acid trip and makes about as much sense" ideas and "let's just blatantly rip off every other movie ever made and not bother coming up with anything original" ideas - I'll take Deep Wang and the enemy scrotum every time.
Also, I would pay anything to see Cars vs. Tremors. Just add a crazy survivalist car named Burt Hummer and you're all set!
