Multiplex - a comic strip about life at the movies
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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Bay’

 

Multiplex Movie Review: Transformers (2007)

multiplex-tf1

These comic strip reviews are so short that it’s often hard for me to get into much detail. This first Transformers is one of Bay’s better movies (that I’ve seen), really; the basic outline of the plot is solid although the exact way it’s played out raises some nagging — if not really very important — questions (why Qatar? why Air Force One? why a pair of glasses?).

The tone is as balanced as any of the Bay films I’ve seen: the juvenile “comedy” isn’t quite as terrible as the worst moments in either Bad Boys movie — nor is it ever particularly funny, either. But the staging of so many moments betrays a lack of intelligence at some point in the creative pipeline. One particular good example of what I mean by this is a scene where Optimus Prime and Bumblebee have just saved Sam and Mikaela, and Bumblebee gets harpooned by two choppers.

Rather than save Bumblebee, Optimus just completely vanishes from the movie for three minutes, only to reappear after Bumblebee (and Sam and Mikaela) have gotten re-captured and explain that they couldn’t save Bumblebee “without hurting the humans.”

An hour later, though, Prime whips out a giant fucking sword from his arm while fighting… the tank Decepticon, I think? Who the fuck knows. And those of us with attention spans immediately think: “Where the fuck was that when Optimus Prime was ten feet away from Bumblebee getting roped by those humans?”

It could also have come from dodgy editing or a bit of post-production rejiggering of the scene; I wouldn’t know. But the end result is just one of far too many incredibly contrived, stupid moments that could very easily have worked.

Anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow with another regular update — the last of Jason and Kurt’s conversation here.

Multiplex Movie Review: Bad Boys II

Bad Boys II

See you TOMORROW! It will be a regular update (so: #1045).

Multiplex Movie Review: Bad Boys

We met BOTH milestone goals (last night and today), which also means Multiplex: The Revenge has passed its funding goal! There’s still a little time (before 9PM Central on Friday) to add your pledge, if you want to get in on the action, but I’ll be using BackerKit so that Kickstarter backers can upgrade or add onto their pledges and non-backers can pre-order the book or other items that are available as rewards. More on that in the next few days, though.

By hitting the goal, we have plenty of funds for Book Three’s print run, so any additional funding will go toward Book FOUR… which, again, I’ll tell you more about later.

For now, just read this Bad Boys review comic:

Multiplex Movie Review: The Rock

I announced a set of Milestone Goals yesterday, for new Multiplex Movie Review comics with Jason taking on a selection of Michael Bay’s greatest hits. We met the first one, and so here it is!

The next Milestone Goal is for reaching $22,000 before MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (Wednesday, July 29) — and right now, we’re a mere $359 324 309 away from that! It is for two review strips: one for Bad Boys and another for Bad Boys II. I didn’t realize you can’t rent/stream Bad Boys II anywhere, so I’ll have to figure out where to see that later — assuming we make the goal — but if we do, I’ll post the review comic for Bad Boys tomorrow!

(I’m not sure there would be enough hours in the day to do both of them and Friday’s comic, anyway.)