Friday, July 17, 2009

Help me understand

Currently showing is "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen", a film I will not see until it reaches the dark nether of local channels in a few years' time, a film that has received such negative reviews that to walk into a cineplex where it's screening is to curse oneself.

If the film has been received with such clear disdain, why is it making so much money, and why are the people who see it and like it so desperate to defend it when one points out that the movie is bad? I don't know, but from the online shouting matches I've seen I'd say that the Trannies ("Transformers" fanboys) are at least as uncritically passionate about the Megan Fox Monument as the Twilighters are about their bloodless and lifeless sucker movie.

Maybe it is because the target market for "Transformers", which consists out of mainly young males, is not open to critical discussion of visual texts. They do not engage with film critics ("OMG, no way I'd do that, LOL!"). They are not interested in reading reviews by those who know better - and really, those who know better, know better. An opinion is meaningless and pointless unless you can back it up with some solid argumentation, and that's something the top critics, the Eberts, Rosenbaums, Emersons and Sarrises, to name a few, can do very well.

These critics have seen near everything emerging from underground Korean markets to African family dramas. They have braved all of Michael Bay's films, and understand how they work. They have, unlike Trannies, also engaged with world cinema for over 50 years. No Trannie can argue against that; it's time to acknowledge that opinion gets you to the door but only reasoned critical thinking will get you the seat inside. Michael Bay and the Trannies have barely started down the road.

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