...but it is.
I was taking my rubbish down to the bins outside my flat, and happened to bump into one of the Managing Agents - the one who visited my flat a few months back to check on my damp patches (that is, the ones on my ceilings, you dirty, dirty people) - standing in the stairwell with a dictating machine. She was surveying the entrance way for the redecoration they're intending to do at some point, inwardly (and soon outwardly) bemoaning the textured paint that had been used on virtually every surface. We got chatting about the state of the roof (apparently they'd had a visit from Health & Safety, who'd done a spot-check on the kebab place downstairs, and found too many signs of leakage), first impressions of the building ("like a prison"... but then, her first visit was during winter, when it was cold and dark), and the usefulness of insurance. Then the weird thing happened.
Although I really don't know why I think it's weird.
She recognised my t-shirt - the 'evil fluffy bitey thing', from Genki Gear.
I guess, partly, it's because I have a fairly large collection of weird and wonderful t-shirts, 'EFBT' being but one of many from Genki alone, and yet no-one in the past has said "Oh, I recognise that t-shirt... it's from Genki!" Once, and only once, a colleague recognised a Penny Arcade t-shirt (although not worn by me that day) and, other than that, my t-shirts drew very few comments (to my face, at least), and generally not much more than a bemused look or a brief chuckle.
So when a grey-suited Managing Agent recognised one of my cool t-shirts from a very cool English company, it felt like I'd stepped into an alternate dimension where perhaps, just perhaps, I wasn't quite such an outsider...
Many moons ago, I blogged a letter to Hasbro UK in which I wondered why their release schedule and level of publicity for TransFormers movie toys were such unmitigated shite. It's interesting to see that, four years and two movies later, nothing much has changed (except that the toys are smaller and they have even more ridiculous gimmicks). I popped over the Friern Barnet Smyths at the end of last week, and was disappointed to find that their shelves were basically still stocked with Wave 1 items. Plenty of Voyager Megatron, Optimus and Ironhide, loads of Deluxes that were released 2 months ago, and very little else. They did have the all-new Leader Class Ironhide, which I gratefully snatched up, but with the movie still doing so well in cinemas worldwide (latest figures put it at making just over a billion dollars, and it still hasn't been released in Japan!), I can't understand why the toys are taking so long to hit the shelves.
The USA is up to Wave 4, at least, but it looks as though they may be stuck there for a while, as all the new stuff on show at the San Diego Comic Con was labelled as being due to hit the streets between October and December, with one or two slated for 2012 release. If Hasbro UK is looking for a more balanced release schedule, one can only applaud their logic... yet with so much to come, I can't understand why any of it is being delayed. Are they hoping to ensure that their next quarter's results will be as good as this one?
In other news, I decided to watch The Lovely Bones last night... Strange film. I'm not entirely happy with an ending that lets a murderer escape justice, even if he does end up dead in a ditch himself, and I'm almost tempted to pick up the novel, to see how such rich visuals could be expressed in words. There have been a couple of other movies I watched recently, but I'm damned if I can remember what they were at the moment...
Oh well. Plenty of other things to be getting on with, besides blogging here...
Monday 25 July 2011
Thursday 21 July 2011
That Was The Other Thing...
Yesterday morning, I had a very strange, very brief power cut. It was accompanied by an alarm going off down the street and - possibly by sheer coincidence - a lot of people running around outside. It was about the time of day when people might be running to their offices to minimise their lateness, or they may all have been running to pick up the bus that was approaching... Who knows?
After only a couple of minutes, the alarm stopped, and power returned... If I'd phoned my electricity supplier to report the interruption, power would probably have been restored before I finished giving them my details.
Weird.
I mean, I can only assume that the alarm and the interruption were somehow connected... but it's not as if anyone was digging up the road/pavement nearby...
Weirder still, when I checked on my boiler to ensure it was back up and running, it's clock was something like an hour out... So it seems there have been other power cuts while I've been asleep or out of the flat.
After only a couple of minutes, the alarm stopped, and power returned... If I'd phoned my electricity supplier to report the interruption, power would probably have been restored before I finished giving them my details.
Weird.
I mean, I can only assume that the alarm and the interruption were somehow connected... but it's not as if anyone was digging up the road/pavement nearby...
Weirder still, when I checked on my boiler to ensure it was back up and running, it's clock was something like an hour out... So it seems there have been other power cuts while I've been asleep or out of the flat.
The Wisdom That Comes With Age
And other such trite nonsense.
Absolutely not applicable to any discussion about Noel Clarke's Adulthood, the followup to Kidulthood. While I had reservations about the first - too much crammed into one night and, while it didn't glorify the lifestyle it portrayed, it certainly seemed to be making excuses for it - I found the second utterly, breathtakingly brilliant.
Following the continued existence of Sam (for it cannot truly be called a life) the day he's released from prison, we learn that people want him dead immediately, if not sooner. To ascertain who, he tries to track down old acquaintances who, no surprise, are reluctant to have any contact with him. He has to break into his own home because his mother changed the locks. He feels the need to reconnect, to do something to show that he's changed, that he realises his mistakes and that, while he can never make up for what he did, he at least wants to move on...
...But no-one wants to listen.
Meanwhile, people still want him dead... Money is changing hands, weapons are being sought, and Sam's enemies are closing in.
The climax of the film - without wishing to spoil it for anyone - reminded me somewhat of Gran Torino, in that Sam goes out to end the cycle of violence that he started more than six years before, knowing full-well that it's likely to be the end of him, one way or another. And, just like Gran Torino, the film left me blubbing.
I still think that Kidulthood should have been made as a mini-series, spread over several weeks (both in terms of the story and in terms of broadcast, just to give the viewers time to recover from one set of bruises before receiving the next), but Adulthood was perfectly judged, and fit more easily into the single-day timeframe.
It ends on a positive note, for which I'm glad... But it's a sad truth, spoken by Sam, that being in "big man prison" didn't teach him anything, least of all what to do when he came out.
In other news, I heard today from an agency I signed up with last year (technically). It'd be nice if it was in response to an email I sent almost two months ago, but it really wasn't. They spoke to my former boss about a vacancy that needed filling, she sent them my way. Amusingly, the email I got from the agency was formatted as a reply to my 2-month-old email, with a brief apology for the 'delay'.
Ahem.
This summarises my objection to Agencies. They make money by putting other people to work, and yet those same people have to basically beg for the privilege? Call in regularly to ask "Any work going this week?"?
Not I, gentle reader, not I.
They know what I can do, they know how to contact me. If I wanted to beg for work, I'd be claiming income support and visiting the job centre every fortnight.
Absolutely not applicable to any discussion about Noel Clarke's Adulthood, the followup to Kidulthood. While I had reservations about the first - too much crammed into one night and, while it didn't glorify the lifestyle it portrayed, it certainly seemed to be making excuses for it - I found the second utterly, breathtakingly brilliant.
Following the continued existence of Sam (for it cannot truly be called a life) the day he's released from prison, we learn that people want him dead immediately, if not sooner. To ascertain who, he tries to track down old acquaintances who, no surprise, are reluctant to have any contact with him. He has to break into his own home because his mother changed the locks. He feels the need to reconnect, to do something to show that he's changed, that he realises his mistakes and that, while he can never make up for what he did, he at least wants to move on...
...But no-one wants to listen.
Meanwhile, people still want him dead... Money is changing hands, weapons are being sought, and Sam's enemies are closing in.
The climax of the film - without wishing to spoil it for anyone - reminded me somewhat of Gran Torino, in that Sam goes out to end the cycle of violence that he started more than six years before, knowing full-well that it's likely to be the end of him, one way or another. And, just like Gran Torino, the film left me blubbing.
I still think that Kidulthood should have been made as a mini-series, spread over several weeks (both in terms of the story and in terms of broadcast, just to give the viewers time to recover from one set of bruises before receiving the next), but Adulthood was perfectly judged, and fit more easily into the single-day timeframe.
It ends on a positive note, for which I'm glad... But it's a sad truth, spoken by Sam, that being in "big man prison" didn't teach him anything, least of all what to do when he came out.
In other news, I heard today from an agency I signed up with last year (technically). It'd be nice if it was in response to an email I sent almost two months ago, but it really wasn't. They spoke to my former boss about a vacancy that needed filling, she sent them my way. Amusingly, the email I got from the agency was formatted as a reply to my 2-month-old email, with a brief apology for the 'delay'.
Ahem.
This summarises my objection to Agencies. They make money by putting other people to work, and yet those same people have to basically beg for the privilege? Call in regularly to ask "Any work going this week?"?
Not I, gentle reader, not I.
They know what I can do, they know how to contact me. If I wanted to beg for work, I'd be claiming income support and visiting the job centre every fortnight.
Monday 18 July 2011
Let's Play...
Oh, the perils of watching someone else play through a videogame on YouTube.
There's something to be said for playing a game yourself, and certainly the experience is going to be very different... but the Let's Play phenomenon allows you to sit back and see the game in its distilled form - what is the experience really like underneath the flash presentation?
Lately, I've been watching a playthrough of LA Noire, the big, new, open-world experience being peddled under the Rockstar Games brand. As someone who was alive when games first made the transition from 3.5" floppy disc to CD, giving rise to the much-maligned (though often not without reason) 'interactive movie', there are many superficial similarities. Whereas the old IM format might try to include some form of point-and-click 'adventure' interface for getting from scene to scene, LA Noire lets you walk, run or drive (not even necessarily a police car - commandeering a civilian vehicle 'unlocks' it for future use) in fully-explorable 3D.
Now, sure, watching someone else play, you only get to explore the areas they choose to explore, and if they follow the case from A to B, you're not going to see much of Team Bondi's recreation of 1947 Los Angeles - just the billboards and cars and fashions that the player is passing by (and frequently not even noticing - so often I get frustrated by the background details that are ignored in LPs, even though I don't notice everything myself when I play. The experience is diminished, in short, because you can only truly appreciate the effort that has gone into making this living, breathing city by playing the game yourself...
...But, then, surely this begs the question of how important this 'living, breathing' background really is to the experience, considering how many players are likely to miss most of it - be it through ignorance or disinterest - while playing the game? So much more so if the core game is just a case of searching for clues, asking the right questions, and treating NPCs with the appropriate level of suspicion.
In all honesty, entertained as I am by the various LA Noire Let's Plays, it feels like I'm watching a jazzed up version of Phoenix Wright, rather than a new, immersive, movie-like experience. The faces are more expressive than the anime-stylings of Capcom's courtroom drama, but I can't help thinking the could have saved themselves an awful lot of money (and possibly time and effort) by making LA Noire a more old-school interactive movie. Cut out the cost of mo-cap, facial mapping, and sorting out that massive 3D city, and invest instead in a few period costumes, pre-rendered backdrops and greenscreening. Then, let the actors act, rather than creating these 'uncanny valley' digital avatars that are brilliant in many ways, and yet still not quite right-looking. The faces are amazing to view - though it does seem occasionally that the features (eyes, nose, mouth) have been enlarged within the facial area, leading to a slightly alien look where the mouth is too near the chin, and the eyes are too near the sides of the face - but the arms and hands are still like those of a puppet. Mo-cap reads from the outside of the model/actor, and those readings are treated as being the internal, skeletal joints, rather than being transferred directly to the outer areas, so the movements aren't as natural as they should be.
Storywise, it's pretty good - broken down into (fairly simple) cases where, if you have the right evidence and adopt the right attitude to your suspects, it's all pretty cut-and-dried, but there are some interesting throwaway bits of background detail, such as the protagonist's WWII flashback, where he asks his team to ponder "what would we do if another country denied us the gas to run our cars?" Political statement? In a videogame? Surely not!
And then, something like Metal Gear Solid 4 appears all to frequently to be about 3 minutes of gameplay between movies of 10 minutes or more. Nowhere near as engaging as the old MSX/Gameboy Color overhead-view originals. They may look more convincing, and Snake may have a few more impressive moves in his repertoire, but it's like the game experience is being slowly eroded by the 'movie-like' experience. I will always prefer the former to the latter.
On a related note, Penny Arcade recently linked to this video of Jane McGonigal, on the merits of gamers... an interesting dissertation, to be sure, but I can't help thinking that too many gamers are too strongly rooted to their couches to actually put the theory into practice... though it's a similar concept to that which is explored in the anime series/movies Eden of the East: Create a system by which the problem-solvers have a forum in which they can offer and discuss solutions to problems, and problems will be solved.
Which leads me, strangely, to a movie I saw on TV last week, Noel Clarke's epic Kidulthood. It was a brilliant film, but very uncomfortable viewing, considering the characters were all supposed to be in the region of 15 years of age. I'd imagine the intention was to show the folly of the lifestyles explored, but I can imagine a lot of viewers, living similar lifestyles, might be very dismissive of this message. "It only went like that for them because they're all pussies... that'd never happen to me", sort of thing. It was very strange to see such an honest expression of the idea that some of these kids don't really have a problem with authority as much as they believe it's expected that they should... so they play the part, and eventually that character becomes them, to the detriment of their potential as individuals.
None of them are sympathetic characters - most of them are irredeemable morons - but even for the two characters who realise the error of their ways, there's no happy ending. Much as it undermines whatever message the movie might have had, it's a terribly real finale. Considering Clarke followed it up with Adulthood, following the later fortunes of one of the characters from the first movie, I wonder if both films would have been better off as TV miniseries... Sure, there would have been a bit more padding, but Kidulthood would have been rather more believable if it had been presented as the events of a week or so, rather than one day. Adulthood is on sometime this week, and I'm seriously considering watching it, even though I don't expect to enjoy it, in the traditional sense.
In real-life news, my sister and niece came to town over the weekend, though their appointment at Great Ormond Street was cancelled at the last minute. Kate is more delightful every time I see her - gradually learning to form something approaching a full sentence, even if I am having trouble understanding some of her words. My ears currently struggle to discern a difference between the word "granddad" and "doughnut", but perhaps that's just my subconscious letting me know I want some doughnuts.
Most amusingly, she calls my grandmother - her great grandmother - "big grandma", despite the fact that she's only about the same height as Kate's mother, significantly shorter than her grandmother. Maybe it's just a case of using 'big' as a synonym of 'great'.
Many years ago, I had a meal with an old schoolfriend and her young son (she was in the market for a new boyfriend/father to her child, and I suspect she felt that I might be in the running even though I very definitely did not), and she remarked at one point that there is nothing in the world as magical as the sound of a child's laughter, and I was reminded of this statement while visiting Kate. Listening to her giggle away as I pulled funny faces was quite therapeutic. And it's always nice to hear someone acknowledge that I'm funny (not so much if it's not intentional, though...) even if they have only just turned 2.
After lunch, she wanted "up, cuddle" and her uncle dutifully complied, carrying her back into the lounge as her mother began preparations for driving home. I'd like to say I kept her out of mischief, but feel that I would be remiss in my duties as Uncle were I to do so.
And, after the utterly grim trip to Swindon for her birthday last weekend, it was nice to be reminded that I am a memorable figure in her life - she knows me by name, and can even recognise me in pictures from several years ago, where my hair is different (read: less grey) and I have a goatee.
On the subject of last weekend... It served as another reminder of how strange a match my sister has made. When she and I were growing up, we didn't tend to have big family get-togethers for birthdays, including not just grandparents but uncles and cousins. Partly this is because our family just isn't as large, and wasn't necessarily always on such good terms... but I can understand why Kate gets 'present fatigue' when faced with her maternal grandparents and uncle, her paternal grandparents and uncle, their brothers, sisters, miscellaneous offspring, old university friends and random people who (supposedly) I met at my sister's wedding.
The worst part was that the older kids had nothing to do. There was an inflatable paddling pool, filled with plastic balls, and a small slide set up in the garden for Kate and any other kids her size, but at least two of the boys were too large and too old - though that didn't stop them trying - and other entertainments should have been made available for them. My brother in law has several computers and a Wii which could have been loaded up with games to keep them quietly(ish) occupied... but no thought was given to that and, I hear, Mark barely makes use of his Wii. Next time, I think I shall bring along some games and get something organised for that angle.
In other news, my BotCon 2011 set arrived, and it is awesome... QC seems much improved on previous years, particularly considering the TF: Animated line had pretty diabolical QC at the best of time. This year's comic is excellent, too... better story than some, though it still felt a little underdeveloped. The end is brilliant, though, and hopefully sets the scene for revisiting this continuity in future.
There's something to be said for playing a game yourself, and certainly the experience is going to be very different... but the Let's Play phenomenon allows you to sit back and see the game in its distilled form - what is the experience really like underneath the flash presentation?
Lately, I've been watching a playthrough of LA Noire, the big, new, open-world experience being peddled under the Rockstar Games brand. As someone who was alive when games first made the transition from 3.5" floppy disc to CD, giving rise to the much-maligned (though often not without reason) 'interactive movie', there are many superficial similarities. Whereas the old IM format might try to include some form of point-and-click 'adventure' interface for getting from scene to scene, LA Noire lets you walk, run or drive (not even necessarily a police car - commandeering a civilian vehicle 'unlocks' it for future use) in fully-explorable 3D.
Now, sure, watching someone else play, you only get to explore the areas they choose to explore, and if they follow the case from A to B, you're not going to see much of Team Bondi's recreation of 1947 Los Angeles - just the billboards and cars and fashions that the player is passing by (and frequently not even noticing - so often I get frustrated by the background details that are ignored in LPs, even though I don't notice everything myself when I play. The experience is diminished, in short, because you can only truly appreciate the effort that has gone into making this living, breathing city by playing the game yourself...
...But, then, surely this begs the question of how important this 'living, breathing' background really is to the experience, considering how many players are likely to miss most of it - be it through ignorance or disinterest - while playing the game? So much more so if the core game is just a case of searching for clues, asking the right questions, and treating NPCs with the appropriate level of suspicion.
In all honesty, entertained as I am by the various LA Noire Let's Plays, it feels like I'm watching a jazzed up version of Phoenix Wright, rather than a new, immersive, movie-like experience. The faces are more expressive than the anime-stylings of Capcom's courtroom drama, but I can't help thinking the could have saved themselves an awful lot of money (and possibly time and effort) by making LA Noire a more old-school interactive movie. Cut out the cost of mo-cap, facial mapping, and sorting out that massive 3D city, and invest instead in a few period costumes, pre-rendered backdrops and greenscreening. Then, let the actors act, rather than creating these 'uncanny valley' digital avatars that are brilliant in many ways, and yet still not quite right-looking. The faces are amazing to view - though it does seem occasionally that the features (eyes, nose, mouth) have been enlarged within the facial area, leading to a slightly alien look where the mouth is too near the chin, and the eyes are too near the sides of the face - but the arms and hands are still like those of a puppet. Mo-cap reads from the outside of the model/actor, and those readings are treated as being the internal, skeletal joints, rather than being transferred directly to the outer areas, so the movements aren't as natural as they should be.
Storywise, it's pretty good - broken down into (fairly simple) cases where, if you have the right evidence and adopt the right attitude to your suspects, it's all pretty cut-and-dried, but there are some interesting throwaway bits of background detail, such as the protagonist's WWII flashback, where he asks his team to ponder "what would we do if another country denied us the gas to run our cars?" Political statement? In a videogame? Surely not!
And then, something like Metal Gear Solid 4 appears all to frequently to be about 3 minutes of gameplay between movies of 10 minutes or more. Nowhere near as engaging as the old MSX/Gameboy Color overhead-view originals. They may look more convincing, and Snake may have a few more impressive moves in his repertoire, but it's like the game experience is being slowly eroded by the 'movie-like' experience. I will always prefer the former to the latter.
On a related note, Penny Arcade recently linked to this video of Jane McGonigal, on the merits of gamers... an interesting dissertation, to be sure, but I can't help thinking that too many gamers are too strongly rooted to their couches to actually put the theory into practice... though it's a similar concept to that which is explored in the anime series/movies Eden of the East: Create a system by which the problem-solvers have a forum in which they can offer and discuss solutions to problems, and problems will be solved.
Which leads me, strangely, to a movie I saw on TV last week, Noel Clarke's epic Kidulthood. It was a brilliant film, but very uncomfortable viewing, considering the characters were all supposed to be in the region of 15 years of age. I'd imagine the intention was to show the folly of the lifestyles explored, but I can imagine a lot of viewers, living similar lifestyles, might be very dismissive of this message. "It only went like that for them because they're all pussies... that'd never happen to me", sort of thing. It was very strange to see such an honest expression of the idea that some of these kids don't really have a problem with authority as much as they believe it's expected that they should... so they play the part, and eventually that character becomes them, to the detriment of their potential as individuals.
None of them are sympathetic characters - most of them are irredeemable morons - but even for the two characters who realise the error of their ways, there's no happy ending. Much as it undermines whatever message the movie might have had, it's a terribly real finale. Considering Clarke followed it up with Adulthood, following the later fortunes of one of the characters from the first movie, I wonder if both films would have been better off as TV miniseries... Sure, there would have been a bit more padding, but Kidulthood would have been rather more believable if it had been presented as the events of a week or so, rather than one day. Adulthood is on sometime this week, and I'm seriously considering watching it, even though I don't expect to enjoy it, in the traditional sense.
In real-life news, my sister and niece came to town over the weekend, though their appointment at Great Ormond Street was cancelled at the last minute. Kate is more delightful every time I see her - gradually learning to form something approaching a full sentence, even if I am having trouble understanding some of her words. My ears currently struggle to discern a difference between the word "granddad" and "doughnut", but perhaps that's just my subconscious letting me know I want some doughnuts.
Most amusingly, she calls my grandmother - her great grandmother - "big grandma", despite the fact that she's only about the same height as Kate's mother, significantly shorter than her grandmother. Maybe it's just a case of using 'big' as a synonym of 'great'.
Many years ago, I had a meal with an old schoolfriend and her young son (she was in the market for a new boyfriend/father to her child, and I suspect she felt that I might be in the running even though I very definitely did not), and she remarked at one point that there is nothing in the world as magical as the sound of a child's laughter, and I was reminded of this statement while visiting Kate. Listening to her giggle away as I pulled funny faces was quite therapeutic. And it's always nice to hear someone acknowledge that I'm funny (not so much if it's not intentional, though...) even if they have only just turned 2.
After lunch, she wanted "up, cuddle" and her uncle dutifully complied, carrying her back into the lounge as her mother began preparations for driving home. I'd like to say I kept her out of mischief, but feel that I would be remiss in my duties as Uncle were I to do so.
And, after the utterly grim trip to Swindon for her birthday last weekend, it was nice to be reminded that I am a memorable figure in her life - she knows me by name, and can even recognise me in pictures from several years ago, where my hair is different (read: less grey) and I have a goatee.
On the subject of last weekend... It served as another reminder of how strange a match my sister has made. When she and I were growing up, we didn't tend to have big family get-togethers for birthdays, including not just grandparents but uncles and cousins. Partly this is because our family just isn't as large, and wasn't necessarily always on such good terms... but I can understand why Kate gets 'present fatigue' when faced with her maternal grandparents and uncle, her paternal grandparents and uncle, their brothers, sisters, miscellaneous offspring, old university friends and random people who (supposedly) I met at my sister's wedding.
The worst part was that the older kids had nothing to do. There was an inflatable paddling pool, filled with plastic balls, and a small slide set up in the garden for Kate and any other kids her size, but at least two of the boys were too large and too old - though that didn't stop them trying - and other entertainments should have been made available for them. My brother in law has several computers and a Wii which could have been loaded up with games to keep them quietly(ish) occupied... but no thought was given to that and, I hear, Mark barely makes use of his Wii. Next time, I think I shall bring along some games and get something organised for that angle.
In other news, my BotCon 2011 set arrived, and it is awesome... QC seems much improved on previous years, particularly considering the TF: Animated line had pretty diabolical QC at the best of time. This year's comic is excellent, too... better story than some, though it still felt a little underdeveloped. The end is brilliant, though, and hopefully sets the scene for revisiting this continuity in future.
Saturday 9 July 2011
Trilogies, and 'That' Movie
It will probably come as no surprise that I've seen Dark of the Moon twice now, with a different friend each time, but both at the local 'mini-IMAX' screen, in 3D.
On the technical side, despite most of it being filmed in native 3D, there were huge long sequences where I barely perceived the effect, and very few scenes where it was truly beneficial to the movie. I can see why the movie studios are keen to push 3D (increased revenue, harder to pirate) but, frankly, it's a gimmick that has already run its course and become passé. It works well in computer animated movies but, for live action, it is almost entirely without merit.
But what of the movie?
I've read a lot of negative comments about Dark of the Moon, which I find almost unfathomable because, to me, it's everything the first movie should have been. It has a stronger plot (ripped off from the 80s cartoons, to be sure, but well-developed for a Summer Blockbuster), the two sides of the story - human and robot - are better balanced and intersect in a more believable fashion. The story takes quite a dark turn and, for the most part, the stakes feel much higher in this one than in either of the first two (Decepticons planning to use Earth's technology against it, and The Fallen planning to destroy our sun and convert the released energy into Energon to save Cybertron, respectively, so they should have felt high stakes, but really didn't!). In fact, it almost makes the original, and possibly even Revenge of the Fallen, seem retrospectively better simply because this is the concluding chapter in the trilogy.
I'd even say the acting was better, with Shia LaBeouf showing a greater range than in any of his previous films, even beyond the TF franchise.
But it's a Summer Blockbuster based on a toyline, not an adaptation of a great work of literature, so there are plotholes, inconsistencies and unnecessarily lingering shots of various parts of Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley (who, whatever you may hear or read to the contrary, is a far better actor than Megan Fox). That said, having read a few reviews now, I do feel that some folks in the audience were simply put off because the plot and characters weren't spoon fed to them. There were points where you just had to infer background events while the action followed something else - most notably when a group of Autobots somehow got captured while the humans were running amok and trying to save the day all by themselves. The action didn't always follow the most plot-important events (it has been observed that, given a choice between character advancement and spectacle, Michael Bay will always opt for spectacle), but anyone who expected otherwise must have missed the 'Summer Blockbuster' part.
It lacked the toe-curling 'humor' of the first two, and even those scenes involving Sam's embarrassing parents were better played and more relevant to the story, if only by straying into schmaltzy romantic clichés. Patrick Dempsey also put in a notable performance, cast against type, as one of the bad guys, and I particularly liked the way he briefly became panicked with the Decepticons' true intentions became apparent, only to slip back into believing his safety was assured as long as he kept working for them. Classic 'lackey' behaviour. John Malkovich must have had some fun with his 'Middle Manager' role but, even now, I can't see why he was even pursued for such a daft part.
My personal complaints would be that, yet again, Megatron was barely in it. He was reintroduced fairly early on, then disappeared till very near the end. Meanwhile Shockwave, so prominent in the trailers, spoke only one word in English (or not, since the only understandable word he spoke was "Optimus") and, like Brawl in the first movie, is despatched all too quickly by a focused attack by human soldiers. The vast majority of the Decepticons are never named - only in toy form, it seems - and, when the invasion begins, they cease to be individual characters for the most part. They are merely 'the invading force'. Also, I felt the Wreckers were all but wasted, appearing only briefly in robot mode, although they did get more dialogue that some of the otherwise more prominent Autobots.
Also, yet again, it all relied on some strange, high-tech McGuffin which, according to Sentinel Prime, "defies your laws of physics" (suggesting that there must surely be some non-verbal, data-transfer communication between the 'bots, or at least that they have superfast internet access, because he says that not long after being revived! Having been in hibernation, as a visitor to our solar system, how would he know about 'our' laws of physics?). It was a nice nod to the cartoons, but I'd rather no explanation than something like that.
Furthermore, it has been noted that, with another 'doomsday device' at the centre of the story, it seems like the Decepticons had an awful lot of backup plans which, somehow, coincidentally, all end up focussed on Earth. Unlikely as it may seem, it is still perfectly plausible, assuming there's a sensible timeline for The Allspark, The Fallen and Sentinel Prime's flight from Cybertron.
I liked that some throwaway lines of dialogue were actually subtly referencing plot points, or nods to the cartoon, but others were clearly in there just to sell toys (Prime complaining that Driller had taken his trailer, adds "I need that flight tech!" - I'm half expecting the next series to be based around Armada, so Prime can say something like "We must liberate all the Mini-Cons!"). In so many ways, this movie served as a better introduction to the TransFormers, their world and their politics, than the first movie... and, were it not for a few lines of dialogue peppered throughout the first half of the movie, one could almost pretend that Revenge of the Fallen hadn't happened. The way the story of the TransFormers was interwoven with the Space Race of the 1960s, and even the Chernobyl disaster, was quite well played, though perhaps a little underexplored.
One thing that really surprised me was how graphic some of the deaths were. The first movie had Jazz ripped in half by Megatron, and it was barely acknowledged. The second seems to have killed off the 'wheelsnakes' without any comment. This one... takes one of the main characters from the first two films and has him rusting away in front of your eyes. Many humans are reduced to ash by one blast from the invading forces. One Autobot is graphically executed, and another almost suffers the same fate. It's still not discussed in any way, meaningful or otherwise, but it's also far more graphic because the camera lingers on these scenes. More than that, though, one of Laserbeak's assassinations is quite unnerving, because of the way he sneaks into the house. I was left feeling certain that he didn't just kill his target, but the whole family as well, even though that's the one occasion that no bodies are shown.
All in all, I wish the writer of this movie had been involved from the start... Orci and Kurtzman have written some good scripts, but TransFormers was not one of them, and everyone now acknowledges that Revenge of the Fallen was an unfinished script because of the Writers' Guild strike. Dark of the Moon is far superior to both of them in every significant way, and I almost wish Bay would reconsider his wish to leave the franchise. If one considers TransFormers, Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon to be a trilogy, rather than the first three chapters in an ongoing franchise, they must surely represent the first time since Star Wars that each film stands on its own, rather than simply acting as a bridge to the next movie.
I, personally, find that quite refreshing.
On the technical side, despite most of it being filmed in native 3D, there were huge long sequences where I barely perceived the effect, and very few scenes where it was truly beneficial to the movie. I can see why the movie studios are keen to push 3D (increased revenue, harder to pirate) but, frankly, it's a gimmick that has already run its course and become passé. It works well in computer animated movies but, for live action, it is almost entirely without merit.
But what of the movie?
I've read a lot of negative comments about Dark of the Moon, which I find almost unfathomable because, to me, it's everything the first movie should have been. It has a stronger plot (ripped off from the 80s cartoons, to be sure, but well-developed for a Summer Blockbuster), the two sides of the story - human and robot - are better balanced and intersect in a more believable fashion. The story takes quite a dark turn and, for the most part, the stakes feel much higher in this one than in either of the first two (Decepticons planning to use Earth's technology against it, and The Fallen planning to destroy our sun and convert the released energy into Energon to save Cybertron, respectively, so they should have felt high stakes, but really didn't!). In fact, it almost makes the original, and possibly even Revenge of the Fallen, seem retrospectively better simply because this is the concluding chapter in the trilogy.
I'd even say the acting was better, with Shia LaBeouf showing a greater range than in any of his previous films, even beyond the TF franchise.
But it's a Summer Blockbuster based on a toyline, not an adaptation of a great work of literature, so there are plotholes, inconsistencies and unnecessarily lingering shots of various parts of Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley (who, whatever you may hear or read to the contrary, is a far better actor than Megan Fox). That said, having read a few reviews now, I do feel that some folks in the audience were simply put off because the plot and characters weren't spoon fed to them. There were points where you just had to infer background events while the action followed something else - most notably when a group of Autobots somehow got captured while the humans were running amok and trying to save the day all by themselves. The action didn't always follow the most plot-important events (it has been observed that, given a choice between character advancement and spectacle, Michael Bay will always opt for spectacle), but anyone who expected otherwise must have missed the 'Summer Blockbuster' part.
It lacked the toe-curling 'humor' of the first two, and even those scenes involving Sam's embarrassing parents were better played and more relevant to the story, if only by straying into schmaltzy romantic clichés. Patrick Dempsey also put in a notable performance, cast against type, as one of the bad guys, and I particularly liked the way he briefly became panicked with the Decepticons' true intentions became apparent, only to slip back into believing his safety was assured as long as he kept working for them. Classic 'lackey' behaviour. John Malkovich must have had some fun with his 'Middle Manager' role but, even now, I can't see why he was even pursued for such a daft part.
My personal complaints would be that, yet again, Megatron was barely in it. He was reintroduced fairly early on, then disappeared till very near the end. Meanwhile Shockwave, so prominent in the trailers, spoke only one word in English (or not, since the only understandable word he spoke was "Optimus") and, like Brawl in the first movie, is despatched all too quickly by a focused attack by human soldiers. The vast majority of the Decepticons are never named - only in toy form, it seems - and, when the invasion begins, they cease to be individual characters for the most part. They are merely 'the invading force'. Also, I felt the Wreckers were all but wasted, appearing only briefly in robot mode, although they did get more dialogue that some of the otherwise more prominent Autobots.
Also, yet again, it all relied on some strange, high-tech McGuffin which, according to Sentinel Prime, "defies your laws of physics" (suggesting that there must surely be some non-verbal, data-transfer communication between the 'bots, or at least that they have superfast internet access, because he says that not long after being revived! Having been in hibernation, as a visitor to our solar system, how would he know about 'our' laws of physics?). It was a nice nod to the cartoons, but I'd rather no explanation than something like that.
Furthermore, it has been noted that, with another 'doomsday device' at the centre of the story, it seems like the Decepticons had an awful lot of backup plans which, somehow, coincidentally, all end up focussed on Earth. Unlikely as it may seem, it is still perfectly plausible, assuming there's a sensible timeline for The Allspark, The Fallen and Sentinel Prime's flight from Cybertron.
I liked that some throwaway lines of dialogue were actually subtly referencing plot points, or nods to the cartoon, but others were clearly in there just to sell toys (Prime complaining that Driller had taken his trailer, adds "I need that flight tech!" - I'm half expecting the next series to be based around Armada, so Prime can say something like "We must liberate all the Mini-Cons!"). In so many ways, this movie served as a better introduction to the TransFormers, their world and their politics, than the first movie... and, were it not for a few lines of dialogue peppered throughout the first half of the movie, one could almost pretend that Revenge of the Fallen hadn't happened. The way the story of the TransFormers was interwoven with the Space Race of the 1960s, and even the Chernobyl disaster, was quite well played, though perhaps a little underexplored.
One thing that really surprised me was how graphic some of the deaths were. The first movie had Jazz ripped in half by Megatron, and it was barely acknowledged. The second seems to have killed off the 'wheelsnakes' without any comment. This one... takes one of the main characters from the first two films and has him rusting away in front of your eyes. Many humans are reduced to ash by one blast from the invading forces. One Autobot is graphically executed, and another almost suffers the same fate. It's still not discussed in any way, meaningful or otherwise, but it's also far more graphic because the camera lingers on these scenes. More than that, though, one of Laserbeak's assassinations is quite unnerving, because of the way he sneaks into the house. I was left feeling certain that he didn't just kill his target, but the whole family as well, even though that's the one occasion that no bodies are shown.
All in all, I wish the writer of this movie had been involved from the start... Orci and Kurtzman have written some good scripts, but TransFormers was not one of them, and everyone now acknowledges that Revenge of the Fallen was an unfinished script because of the Writers' Guild strike. Dark of the Moon is far superior to both of them in every significant way, and I almost wish Bay would reconsider his wish to leave the franchise. If one considers TransFormers, Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon to be a trilogy, rather than the first three chapters in an ongoing franchise, they must surely represent the first time since Star Wars that each film stands on its own, rather than simply acting as a bridge to the next movie.
I, personally, find that quite refreshing.
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