Why 2008's Summer Ruined 2009's Summer Crop of Movies

The following article is intended to be both a counter-point to Toni Smith’s article as well as clarifying several points I’ve been trying to make in the comments section of the various Transformer articles as Stranger Danger.

I love film in all its aspects.  I’m not terribly picky about the type of movies I like.  I love seeing pretentious foreign art house flicks just as much as I enjoy watching explosion-riddled summer movies.  The movies I tend to name when asked for my favorite flicks do tend to edge towards the more cerebral (A Clockwork Orange, Memento, etc.), though I reserve a special place in my heart for the summer movie season for the completely opposite reason.

Summer movies, to me, have always been about the visceral experience – loud explosions and kickass fight scenes.  The flimsy plots designed only to get you from one set piece to the next.  The sex appeal of watching scantily clad starlets run around in barely-there outfits.  I enjoy summer movies for what they are, something of a mutual masturbation between the director and the male psyche.

I’m also a geek.  I love geek stuff.  I’ve played RPGs for most of my life, I dig video games, I watch LOST obsessively, I read comic books/graphic novels, I can rant for hours about who is faster – Superman or the Flash, I dig animated shows, and boy oh boy do I have a major man crush on Bruce Campbell.

And this is why my hatred of this year’s crop of movies has come as a surprise to many of my friends, to say nothing of myself.  And I’ve been thinking these past weeks, trying to figure out why I’ve been so bitter and disappointed with Terminator: Salvation and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Why do I seethe with rage at the mention of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the upcoming GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra.  

So far this summer has had only two highlights: Star Trek and Pixar’s Up.  And looking ahead, the future looks bleak…

Movies like the recent Terminator and Wolverine movies are especially hard to stomach for someone who has grown up with the characters.  And Toni Smith did bring up a very good point in her article (most of which I disagree with) that I want to mention.  He is absolutely correct when he states that sometimes we geeks look at our childhood favorites through rose-colored glasses. 

I remember watching He-Man and Thundercats. I dug Mighty Mouse and Captain Planet.  But my absolute favorite show as a kid was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and pretty much everyone my age felt the same.  We loved our sewer playset, created elaborate fights between Raphael and Krang, and we all became bitter when the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers kids stormed onto the scene and started dropkicking our Turtle Blimps.

But have you ever gone back and watched one of those original TMNT cartoons?  They are bad.  I mean absolutely awful.  I really don’t know why I have such fond memories of them – the adult in me is absolutely disgusted at the quality and nature of that cartoon.  But when I was a kid it was the greatest thing on the planet – and for many years after I viewed the experience through rose-colored glasses.  I convinced myself that the TMNT cartoon was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Boy, was I disillusioned.

Having said that, while I was never a fanboy of the Transformers cartoon, I did enjoy the show when I watched it and I did own several of the action figures.  I can still sing most of the theme song and kind of dug the animated movie right up until they killed Optimus Prime.  I watched it – I liked it – but my obsession never reached the heights of my TMNT fanboy-ism.

And you know what?  I actually liked the first Transformers movie for what it was, giant robot battles and explosions and Megan Fox running around in tight clothes!  It was essentially a male wet dream brought to life, complete with potty humor and sweet-ass cars.  And this year’s Transformers movie is more of the same.  So why then do I hate it so much?

The answer, quite simply, is the Summer of 2008.

Last year’s crop of movies was an embarrassment of riches for the geek crowd – one we haven’t seen since 1982 (the year I was born).  Summer of 2008 brought us Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Incredible Hulk, Wall-E, Wanted, Hancock, Hellboy 2: the Golden Army, X-Files: I Want to Believe, Pineapple Express, Star Wars: the Clone Wars, Tropic Thunder and the granddaddy of them all – The Dark Knight.

Of those films – four of them stand head and shoulders above the rest – The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Hellboy 2: the Golden Army, and Wall-E.  They spoiled me.  They showed me that summer films could be more than just mindless self-indulgence.
 
Iron Man is the closest on that list to a pure action movie – explosions, men in robot suits, hot women, and spot-on humor.  It was the perfect way to kick off the Summer movie season.

Hellboy 2 showed us how crazy imaginative a summer movie can be.  I still remember the big grin on my face as I watched Hellboy and friends make their way through the Troll Market.

Wall-E brought us a protagonist that didn’t speak and yet we fell in love with that plucky little robot and his quest for true love.

And the Dark Knight showed us that summer movies can be more than just pretty on the surface – they can be densely layered underneath too.

The Summer of 2008 spoiled me – if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen had come out before last year, there is no doubt I would have gone absolutely wild for it.  But the Summer of 2008 helped me realize that we can and we should expect more from our summer films.  

It showed us that you don’t have to be 100% faithful to the source material (in the comics Two-Face was scarred by Maroni not by the Joker).  It showed us that you don’t have to resort to potty humor to be funny (Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is brilliantly top-notch), it showed us that visuals can be breathtaking without being confusing (the aforementioned Troll Market sequence in Hellboy 2: the Golden Army), and it showed us that yes, you can empathize with an character that isn’t even human (Wall-E).

This year’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is pretty much going to be the yardstick to which the rest of the geek films of 2009 will be compared to.  And it comes up woefully short.

A commenter asks, “You want more coherent plot on a movie about giant robots from space that can turn into cars and fight each other?  More so that the movie is based on a fucking children’s cartoon?  Are you serious?”

Yes, yes I do.
 
If I can have a movie about a guy who puts on a bat suit to fight crime make sense, then Transformers should too.  If I can have a movie about a billionaire weapons industrialist who flies around in metal armor and shoots laser beams from his palms make sense, then Transformers should too.  And if I can have a movie about the last robot on earth falling in love with a different robot and getting hurled along through space make sense, then Transformers should too.  And if a movie about a teenaged demon with a giant stone hand fighting Cthulhu demons and golden clockwork robots make sense, then Transformers should too.  Furthermore, one of those movies was a cartoon, and the other three were based on cartoon (read: comic book) characters.

Toni Smith’s article mentions in his defense of Michael Bay that “movies are made to make money, not please a handful of people; and as many Trans-fans are out there, you need to sell tickets to more than just us to turn a profit and continue to make more Transformers movies.”

Iron Man, Hellboy 2, Wall-E, and The Dark Knight were among the biggest movies of last summer.  And none of them sacrificed the integrity of the film or mined the characters for cheap laughs just for the sake of more money.  And they all pleased the vast majority of their fanbases.

A friend of mine who saw the film told me that Michael Bay had to spend time away from the Autobots and focus on the human characters because the general movie going public would not empathize with Optimus Prime and co.  That people wouldn’t be able to invest themselves in the lives of the Autobots as much as they could with Shia and Megan’s characters.  But Wall-E proves that idea wrong.  And Wall-E can’t even talk.

And finally, another commenter asks: “What did you want?  Megatron turning into a gun?  Sam having a robot suit?  Cassette decks?  I’m confused what the "die hard" Tranny fans want.”

Well, my friends, you can blame the Summer of 2008 for this.  But all I wanted from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the rest of its movie brethren was this: a good movie.

That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

Summer of 2008 spoiled me.  It taught me to expect more from my big budget films.  And now I can’t settle for anything less.  Who knows?  Maybe the GI Joe movie won’t suck.  Maybe some little film will come out of nowhere and sate my craving for action films and geek movies (I’m looking at you District 9).

I’m hopeful that the movies yet to be released will save the year. 9, Whiteout, Harry Potter, Blood: the Last Vampire, Gamer, Inglourious Basterds, and District 9 are yet to come.  But, honestly, I really don’t see any of those films (except maybe 9) coming close to matching the quality of the films released in Summer of 2008.  I hope they do.  But I don’t see it happening.

I’m hopeful but not optimistic.  And if Transformers is the movie that the Summer of 2009 is remembered for, it’s going to be a very long wait until next year.