MY SUMMER VACATION IN THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
or
AH, FUCK IT, LET’S GET THIS OUT IN THE OPEN: I LIKED INDIANA JONES AND THE LEGEND OF THE CRYSTAL SKULLS, AND I DON’T REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT EVERYBODY IS GRIPING ABOUT
Last July this thing happened called TRANSFORMERS. It was one of the biggest movies of that summer, but I thought it was a terrible one. My main problems were the characters, the story, the comedy, the action sequences, and (this is a first for me) especially the design of the characters. The CGI characters were so overcomplicated and indistinguishable from each other that they actually made Michael Bay’s notorious camera placement and editing beside the point, because even if it was two robots in front of a stationary camera in one continuous shot you still might not have any clue which one is which, what they’re doing or which direction they’re facing. That’s actually the biggest problem of many big problems in the movie and I’m pretty sure it’s a cinematic first – using the latest technology, Michael Bay invented a completely new way for a movie to suck. So I figured it was a bad, bad movie.
The internet begged to differ. As the writer of the only harshly negative TRANSFORMERS review on The Ain’t It Cool News I got my biggest and angriest talkback ever. They told me I went in expecting Hamlet or SCHINDLER’S LIST, this isn’t supposed to win Oscars (good, because it didn’t, not even for special effects) and what do I expect, it’s a big summer popcorn movie, it’s just supposed to have some explosions in parts, only some kind of snob would go in holding it to some type of standard of quality, fuck you you cocksucking faggot bitch, etc.
This was upsetting to me because actually I’m not a snob, I think you have me confused with somebody else. I’m Vern – remember, I wrote that book about Steven Seagal movies. I’m the dude who would seriously consider busting Wesley Snipes out of the joint if promised a greenlight for BLADE 4. I’m way more interested in PREDATOR than GONE WITH THE WIND. Summer popcorn movies and explosions are important to me and I couldn’t figure out why everybody had agreed on this fake story about how summer movies are supposed to suck and you have to like them no matter what and only an asshole doesn’t. I mean couldn’t you use that same argument for BATMAN AND ROBIN or LEAGUE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN or etc.? Why aren’t you a snob for not liking those ones? Check your brain at the door, dude! Fun! Popcorn! (more…)
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Yesterday I ran my last review from the Summer of 2001 10th Anniversary retrospective series, so let’s go over our findings. I hope I didn’t ruin it by spreading some of the reviews out to the anniversaries of their releases. I actually watched them all close together in chronological order and wrote about them but I wanted to have an ongoing series throughout the summer. At the end of this post I have the links to all of them in order in case anybody ever wants to read them in one long chunk.
Man, I thought I had made peace with this thing. Today I came across 
A Preview and a Pep Talk
