Why I Hated Transformers 2

Why do the people who hate Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen love to be so vocal about it? The reason is because this movie so perfectly encapsulates the trends and inclinations some of us have been hating about modern film making in recent years. There has a been a string of movies that have had some of the bad elements from this movie (Wanted and Wolverine Origins come pretty close).. But this movie concentrates all of those elements for almost 3 hours. If I taught at a film school this would be the movie I would use in describing all of the modern film making techniques NOT to use.. including but not limited to...

Choppy "Mtv editing"

Overly kinetic and disorienting camera movements

Over use of/dependency on CGI

No character development

Bad Acting

Style for the sake of style with no rhyme or reason

Awkward and poorly composed plot

Absurdly inappropriate/unfunny "humor" ( inappropriate in the sense of not-fitting-in with the overall tone of the movie)

Subtle racism, sexism, and homophobia (used in a way that is supposed to be all in “good fun”)

And that’s only a few of the factors that come to mind right now. There are plenty more. Believe me.

However, I won't lie when I say this movie is a bit fun to hate. In fact, that might be the movies only saving grace. Some of it's detractors, like myself, tend to stir sh*t up with people because honestly it’s so easy. There's so much to go on.

In my observations I can see that there are two types of "Bad Movies".. The Ed Wood type of bad movie.. Meaning, the people behind the camera are simply inept. The film is under-budget for what its trying to achieve and the filmmakers have no artistic capability and/or no grasp of aesthetics. Simply they should not be making movies. Most people can recognize this type of bad film-making. Examples would be your straight to DVD b-horror flicks, Uwe Boll joints, or the movies you see made for the Sci-Fi channel... But honestly this type does not bother me as much as the latter because they stay out of the pop-culture radar for the most part and therefore can't cause any damage upon the film making world by having no realm of influence, and they are generally made with a certain sense of naivety that I can’t get too upset with.

Then there is the THIS type of bad movie. They get the full Hollywood treatment, have more budget than they need/deserve, compromise any artistic merit for the sake of appeasing a mass audience, and are annoyingly advertised and marketed to death. Only a few seem to be able to recognize how over-hyped these movies really are. This would include movies like Transformers 2, Alien vs Predator, the last few Star Wars movies released, and most of these remakes that has been pumped out of the Hollywood system for the last decade. It's like an annoying splinter in my eye that people are so easily swayed by "good graphics" and name actors and can't realize that just because a movie is slick and expensive, does not make it any good.