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Willing suspension of disbelief, my fuzzy butt

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Well, we have ventured forth and viewed “Transformers 2, Something or Other” and I am now prepared to give my opinion.

Anyone with a delicate constitution, those who have not yet seen the movie, and folks who had anything — at all — to do with this movie might ought to go visit someone on the sidebar while I pontificate.

Are they gone? Good.

Oh my tap-dancing Goddess, does this movie suck.

Bad. Bad, bad, bad.

First off, the plot.

Hah!

You want a plot? You can’t handle a plot!

So, anything remotely resembling a plot was replaced by a motley collection of hackneyed cliches randomly scattered throughout a series of standard Hollywood sound stages. And as near as I can tell, the most important member of the production company must have been an inebriated gibbon — whose drunken staggering from cliche to cliche obviously formed the basis for the storyline.

As bad as that was — and trust me, it was bad — as bad as that was, the blatant impossibilities were the absolute cherries on that rotten little cake.

I’m not talking about running in the front door of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum — last I checked still on the Mall in Washington, DeeCee — and running out the back door into Davis-Monthan AFB boneyard, last I checked still in Arizona.

But I can still suspend disbelief on that one.

And I’m not talking about the pyramids being near the beach, when they’re actually a couple of hundred miles inland. No, I can suspend disbelief there, too.

Nor is it all that hard to suspend disbelief at Petra, Jordan being right next to Cairo, Egypt — what’s 600 miles in a good movie?

No, ladies and gentlemen, the one impossibility that I simply could not wrap my mind around was that pair of white jeans.

There is no way on God’s little green dirtball that you are going to paint a set of white jeans onto Megan Fox, have her run through a college, several firefights, explosions, a car wreck or two, more firefights, the desert, more explosions, and finally rescued by the U.S. military — and keep those damned jeans white.

Not possible.

I know the military, I was in the military, and the fact that there wasn’t a single hand-print to be seen — not to mention no mud, blood, soot, grease or random stains — on those jeans is simply not possible.

Yack. No willing suspension of disbelief whatsoever.

LawDog

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25 thoughts on “Willing suspension of disbelief, my fuzzy butt”

  1. Now I'm even gladder I forwent seeing this movie!

    Thanks for the review.

  2. I take it the white jeans were notable, but not enough to make the movie watchable?

  4. eh…I wasn't too thrilled with it either. I speak as a fan of the Transformers. A fan since I was a wee lad and the cartoons that came out in the 80's. The plot needed SERIOUS work, some of the new characters just sucked. So many good ones that were actually IN the pantheon and they created those buffoonish hip hop speakin twins? WTF? Another one that purely pissed me off..the trio of motorcycles they called Arcee. *smacks the living crap out of the screenwriters and director* There actually WAS a character called Arcee. Was a female character and was one, count it ONE character, a hover car IIRC, not THREE motorcycles. I'd like to sit Bay and scriptwriters on short stakes.

  5. A must read review, it you want to truly understand how messed up this movie is –

    http://io9.com/5301898/michael-bay-finally-made-an-art-movie

    "Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.

    Oh, and I would warn you that there'll be spoilers in this review — except that, really, since I still have no idea what actually happened in this movie, I'm not sure how much I can spoil it."

  6. Heh. It was a flashback to the 80's, all right — the 80's cartoon, with tissue paper plots and whatnot.

    Unfortunately, Bay is laughing all the way to the bank; I hear it's broke even two or three weeks in.

    Ah well. I don't go to Michael Bay flicks for Shakespeare. I went to this one expecting to see giant robots, large explosions, and Megan Fox, and that's pretty much what I got…

  7. In defense of Michael Bay, the air and space museum used for the indoor scene was the Udvar-Hazy Center, which is in northern Virginia, about 30 miles closer to Arizona.

  8. uhhh… Wasn't the whole movie about Megan Fox and those white jeans??? Wait – are you telling me there were robots in that movie?? I guess I was a little distracted…. I'll have to go watch it again and try to pull my eyes away from those jeans…

  9. Comments concerning the white jeans excepted, I saw the trailer for "GI-Joe" and it's worse! Cliche ad nauseum.

  11. I think the whole point of the movie was Megan Fox running around. It certainly had really no other redeeming qualities.

    At least in the first one when numpty there was talking air support onto the target, it was reasonably coherent.

    Jim

  15. I give it one and a half White Spears (my new standard since 10K BC came out). Was Megan wearing jeans? I didn't notice. I was focused on her big, bobbling…eyes.

    I appreciated that the US military was good for more than just greasing the soles of the Decepticons.

  16. Actually, I did notice the white jeans thing, and yes the jeans were worth the trip!

  17. Actually, TBeck, I have to give credit where it's due:

    It's not like the U.S. military was completely mauled, even in the first movie. Sucker-punched, yes, but that's happened in real life too.

    And I /thoroughly/ enjoyed seeing Simmons call in the railgun shot on Devastator. Even if it did have the godawful 'balls' joke.

  18. Dammit. I really liked the first Transformers for the AWESOME visual effects. You're saying they don't have wicked cool robot-y goodness in the second one? *pout*

  20. It's good to know that the straw that broke the camel's back was the distinct lack of a dirty handprint on the white jeans.

    Semper Fi, as they say:)

    tweaker

  22. Only nitpick: They weren't at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on the Mall in DC. They were at the new Steven Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport. It's about 30 miles closer to Davis-Monthan. Still totally wrong, but 30 miles less wrong. Just sayin.

    BTW, if you get a chance to visit the new museum at Dulles, do it! I went shortly after it opened a few years ago and it wasn't totally finished, but it still blew the original A&S Museum out of the water. By now it should be 10 times better.

  23. Lol yeah I watched the first half last night and couldn't help thinking of this post 😛 It looks like a 7-year-old wrote the script, with add-ons from his horny 17-year-old brother 😛

    "kaboom!"
    "kapow!"
    "roar!"
    "ASS"
    "HOT CHICK"
    "EVERYTHING ASSPLODES!!!!"
    "WHEEEEE!!!"

  24. you've saved me the price of a movie, and a few precious hours of life, thank you.
    "gunner"

  25. To quote my friend Stardreamer: "I am willing to suspend my disbelief. I am not willing to hang it by the neck until dead."

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