Guest Overthinker André Callot returns with a new perspective on Michael Bay’s Transformers.
The stories of Hinduism are fascinating, and reveal much about the nature of humanity. Unfortunately, many of us in the West were not educated in Hindu tradition, and so we feel alienated from a significant part of the collective unconscious. What should we do to get better acquainted with the nearly one billion Hindus?
We should watch Transformers.
Official Poster for Michael Bay Hate-fest 2009, aka ZOMG OPTIMUS PRIME
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has arrived in theaters, and to no one’s surprise, Michael Bay has stayed true to form and given us a loud, action-packed summer blockbuster. Also to no one’s surprise, critics have savaged his latest work: the Rotten Tomatoes aggregated review score comes in at a meager 20%. And again, to no one’s surprise, the idiot savants of the blogosphere have, as if by reflex, piled on the Bay hate and lampooned his heavy handed filmmaking techniques and lack of sophistication.
The Overthinkers are by and large of the same opinion: we see Michael Bay movies as the epitome of style over substance, cleavage over character development, and explosions over elegance. He does make a convenient whipping boy for the shortcomings of mainstream commercial cinema these days, and as such he’s been the butt of jokes on several occasions on this site.
That being said, I’d like to use this occation, the release of Bay’s latest fil…er, movie, to take a step back and examine his body of work more objectively. How bad is Michael Bay, really? And how does he compare to some of the greatest directors of our time?
As you’re probably aware, almost any effort to objectively analyze the inherently subjective nature of movie quality involves turning to the vast database of user ratings on IMDb. It’s an imperfect methodology, I know, but it’s better than nothing. This is not the time to argue the merits and meanings of the IMDb user ratings (if you’re interested in such things, you should probably check out this earlier piece of analysis on the topic). This is time to take the data we do have, fire up the Excel, and get to work.
[Note: all IMDb ratings used in this article are current as of June 29, 2009]
Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Shana Mlawski (girl!), and John Perich to overthink celebrity deaths (tastefully), celebrity deathmatches (not tastefully), Transformers and the movie critics who love to hate them, favorite Michael Bay movies, and irony (those last two are not related). They take time to mock one listener voicemail and offer a variety of thoughtful perspectives on another.
Tell us what you think! Email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend!
Download Episode 52 (MP3)
Graphic courtesy of the photoshop-savvy Mr. Lee
Michael Bay has been contracted by Hasbro to create a movie version of the Ouija board. I don’t know quite what to expect… a PG-13 horror version of Jumanji only with %100 more explosions and %100 less Robin Williams? Bad Boys II, but instead of fighting crime, Detectives Lowrey and Burnett just push a planchette around for two hours? (“It’s moving, it’s moving!” “Okay, T… H… I… S… S… H… I… T… J… U… S… T… G… O… T… R… E… A… L.” “Daaamn, Gina, we so haunted.”)
One things for sure, though: I’m expecting it to suck. Don’t get me wrong: I like Michael Bay. (Yeah, yeah, you’re revoking my overthinking license, whatever. Explosions are rad. Deal with it.) I just don’t see how this is going to be anything other than a catastrophe.
Below the jump: Five board game themed movie pitches that would be better than the Michael Bay Ouija film, plus Ouija boards as a film trope throughout history.