FALLEN VISUAL QUALITY

Having almost wrapped a project of my own, and needing a bit of a break, I decided to get out for a while. We went to SM Molino, where we usually shop at the Hypermarket. I needed to replenish some things anyway. While Dylan and his wife ate at a calamari street stand I'm not quite brave enough to try, I decided to go into the mall and eat at Wendy's, since other places were overcrowded. Even though the Classic Triple was staring me in the face, I decided to have fried chicken and rice (which every fast food joint has, not just KFC) as usual. I can at least say I've tried the fried chicken at McDonalds, Burger King, Jollibee and now Wendy's.

While starting on my frosty, I got a text from Dylan saying his wife wanted to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in ten minutes. I stared my frosty and thought, being lactose intolerant, if I finish this, I may not make it through the movie. I also considered, like with Terminator: Salvation, if I don't see it while I'm here, I'm not going to see it. I didn't want to miss this one on the big screen.

Now, of course, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was one of the most awesome spectacles I have ever seen on the big screen, blew away all my expectations and delivered beyond my wildest dreams. This is not to say I don't have a couple of complaints though. The first problem I had with the movie was something I knew they were going to do! I could even tell from the trailers. Now that the franchise is established and they have already proven themselves, no effort whatsoever went into making things look completely real like the first movie.

Now maybe they simply bit off more than they could chew. I mean, the movie started shooting just over a year ago. That's FAST by anyone's calender. Also, I don't mean to say that it didn't contain some of the best CG work ever to be seen on the screen, but it looked like CG work. In the first movie, there were many times you simply couldn't tell until a car transformed or did something otherwise impossible to shoot. In this one, such scenes were few and far between. Some scenes were almost on the level of Mortal Kombat or some older, cheaper film.

It should also be noted that this film was so big that many FX houses were needed to pull it off. That could also explain the inconsistency. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the explanation is that movies know they can "get away with it" and don't have to make things look totally real, because audiences expect and maybe even like CG.

My other complaint is something of a trend I am seeing in too many modern action movies. I really noticed this in the Bourne films and in the recent Vin Diesel flick Babylon A.D. I even read this in a lot of internet comments, so I know I am not alone in seeing this. The action is shot in such a hectic way, you can't even tell what's going on half the time. This is part of that MTV culture, music video mentality where they think movies for young people must cater to this attention span.

When you have all this awesome spectacle, why not show it?! Why obfuscate it with shaky, hand held, home video style camera work? I remember one of the great movie scenes killed by this was in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the second movie. When she fought the Nemesis character, the camera was all over the place and I just assumed they were hiding horrible fight choreography. Then on the DVD, you see them behind the scenes, training for the fight in the gym, with a simple locked off video camera pointed at them. The fight choreography was awesome and very complex! You saw none of it in the movie because it was shot so badly. There was too much of this in Transformers as in so man other movies today. Some of these modern movies are so hectic, it almost makes me long for Mission to Mars!