Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
One thing you need to know about Ebert: he's not a movie snob who only likes serious arthouse films. The point of the article is that he was examining how Transformers 2 compares unfavourably to other films in the summer blockbuster genre. He specifically compares it to its peers in The Dark Knight, Spiderman 2, Iron Man, and Wall-E (all of which Ebert rated very highly). Unlike Transformers 2, those other films had compelling characters and a strong story to go along with their action sequences and CGI effects shots.
|
Of course, aside from Wall-E (which I'd argue doesn't fit with the more teen-adult themed movies), those top movies have very notable stars who have done a lot of more "conventional" movies.
Christian Bale, Robert Downey Jr, Tobey Maguire, Heath Ledger, Jeff Bridges, Alfred Molina, etc. are well known actors with top end drama credits. But of course, they are playing iconic roles. Transformers, aside from Jon Voight in the first one, is really made up of relative unknowns, b-listers, and few with anything resembling an impressive resume anywhere close to the principal casts in Dark Knight, Spiderman 2 or Iron Man. The stars of Transformers are Optimus Prime and Megatron, and their comrades. The humans are secondary. Those stars happen to be CGI robots mixed with human supporting cast, which due to their complexity, is jarring. I actually wonder if this movie would have had better reviews if they swapped out the human actors for something a little more A-List even with the paper thin plot.
This differs it both from Wall-E (completely CGI cast), and the top superhero movies (completely human cast).
Ebert isn't a full-on arthouse movie snob, but he definitely is one. If he doesn't feel the plot and acting are top notch, the movie can have little redeeming quality.