Another Summer

The last 2 films I watched happened to be adaptations of 80s(?) cartoons. It thus feels natural to compare them.
(Spoiler warning if you haven't seen these films.)

The first film is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (I'm sure everyone noticed that the acronym of the title sounds like Transformers: Rolling on the Floor, possibly laughing). I did not expect coherent story; I was quite ready to overlook stupidities and just enjoy the visual.

I did enjoy the visual.

• The opening part was cool. They managed to capture the different fighting styles between the Arcee team (smaller in size so they rely on speed and coordination) and Optimus (more bulky, but delivers decisive blows).
• The puma-like Decepticon is cool. I love the shot in which it ran out of the sea and onto a beach.
• I love the fight scene between Optimus and the Decepticons (I remember Megatron, Starscream, and some other disposable robot to be owned by Optimus).
• I looked forward to the combining robots, which turned out to be Devastator (or was it?). I enjoyed that scene too.

Somehow, despite all the nice visuals and my attempt to overlook the stupidities, the film still left some bitterness in my mind. All my disappointments with the film can perhaps be traced to the fact that the film did not spend any time to tell us more about the robot characters.

• Who is Optimus Prime? Why is he so keen on hunting down the Decepticons (other than because "Decepticons are evil")?
• Who are the Autobots? Are they really good robots? Why are they willing to come to earth? What are their stories? What do they do on when they are not fighting Decepticons?
• Similarly, what do the Decepticons do off-screen?
• I also find myself asking why The Fallen made it to the title of the film. Even though he is supposed to be the big bad, he does not feel like on at all (and he ultimately got trashed in few seconds).
• The robots are tweaked to be stronger/weaker so much that the outcome of fight scenes feel random. For example, Megatron feels much weaker in this film (he was much more menacing in the first film) while Optimus and Bumblebee are much stronger. It is ironic that Megatron still said "You are so weak!" to Optimus.
• The supposedly climactic battle felt overdrawn (and boring) for me. Had it been edited more tightly, I think the film could have been around 2 hours long.

In short, the film does not feel like a Transformers film to me. It felt like a generic good-robots-fighting-evil-robots film. Compare this with how well Spider-man films adapted Spider-man comics.

The second film is G.I. Joe. I did not plan to watch it; I decided to watch it because a friend invited me to. So, I probably had no expectation and no idea what I can expect from the film (though I thought the accelerator suits were potentially cool when watching the trailers). My friend and I did agree that probably the visual would be inferior compared to Transformers; we hoped that the film had some other means to compensate.

I found the film entertaining even though there are many joke attempts and scenes that I found lame. (Strong spoiler warning.)

• Scarlett reading a book while running on treadmill is simply ridiculous.
• Duke is supposed to be the main character, I think. But I found myself tolerating him instead of rooting for him. (Why couldn't he face Baroness after her brother was killed? To me, that does not feel like "a real American hero" at all.)
• I didn't really understand why Snake Eyes took his vow of silence. And why did the master favor him over Storm Shadow?
• How Baroness ended up at the end of the film is weird and disappointing. I was hoping that there would be an irreversible twist between her and Duke, but nothing happened. It was simply a good ending for her :\
• How the 2 big bads (are they Cobra Commander & Destro?) ended up is also lame. They finally announced their real identity as the big bads in a dramatic manner; then they were captured.

There are other things I don't like, but I guess they are nit-picking.

On the good side, the visual is good enough not to distract from the film. More importantly, I feel that the film is more faithful to the original material than Transformers.

• I liked how the film sneaked in references, like "knowing is half the battle" and "he is a real American hero". I also like the line "when all fail, we don't" (because it is easy to sneak in real life conversations).
• Accelerator suit scenes are good. (I remembered thinking, "They should have something like this in Starship Troopers film.")
• Baroness is hot :3 (probably the greatest redeeming value in this film?)
  
• Snake Eyes is cool. The film did a good job on this one because I thought it's quite easy to slip and make his character pretentious or "trying too hard to be cool".

Probably I won't remember this film for long, but it was entertaining.

After these films, I'm somewhat numb with action-oriented summer films. But summer has not ended yet. I'm planning to watch Up! next week. I hope it will be good.