It comes this week - the latest Transformers film. You know it's going to suck. I know it's going to suck, and yet I can't shake the feeling that in a moment of weakness, even the most cynical viewer is going to rationalize, "Well, if I'm going to see it, I might as well see it on a big screen. And they're really pushing the 3D hard on this, claiming it's nothing like we've ever seen before. I mean, James Cameron is hyping this and that guy's ego is so huge he almost never hypes a project he isn't directly connected to.'
"And hey, AMC has half-price showings before noon. What could it hurt?"
I beg you, don't listen to that voice. I hear it too. There's a part of me that keeps thinking, "Well, I'm probably going to tear this thing a new one, so it would only be responsible journalism to be informed about it. But I'd better see it in 3D just so I'm coming from an informed place if I put the lie to Bay's hype."
And then I remember the $6 (half-price screening, remember) I spent on the previous Transformers film and how halfway through the film, I couldn't remember a less pleasant experience in the theater since a forced viewing of WR's Mysteries of the Organism in film school. And THAT film featured a nearly-ten minute sequence of an artist making a plaster cast of a well-endowed man's erect member. At one point, the scene cuts from an excruciatingly long medium shot of the process to an extreme close-up with an angle that could have only been taken from between the prone subject's knees. The gentleman's urologist likely has never gone in as close for an inspection as this camera did.
And even then, the experience of enduring that sequence was only slightly less uncomfortable than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. At least it was over in ten minutes or so. (Though other parts of this film were still excruciating to get through.)
So as you're tempted to catch a few hours of air conditioning this week, do yourself a favor and remember just how bad the previous Transformers movies were. If you keep going to the theatre, it'll only encourage them to make more.
If you're so motivated, post in the comments your reasons for attending or skipping Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
