Jack of Harts

I saw the new Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean movies in the last two weeks, and in many cases they are the same movie. In other ways, they are completely different. They are both a kind of origin story, adding history and gravitas to the more simplistic movies that predated them. Transformers has more story in this one movie than in all of the other Bayformers movies combined. That is not a good thing.

Transformers was in dire need of an editor willing to cull sacred cows and stuff genies (or wizards) back into the bottles they came from. I didn’t dislike the movie. I also don’t really LIKE the movie. It’s a meh movie. It is full of the some of the best filmed or cg created scenes in the entire franchise. From fan service scenes where Bumblebee actually shows up as a Volkswagen, to them showing us how the Witwickys fit in the world of Transformers. And the fight scenes throughout are almost perfect. You can see the action in crystal clarity as if Bayformers lost the shaky cam. The problem is that the story that brings all those awesome scenes together is…too busy. Too chaotic. Too complicated. We move from cool scene to cool scene in a blinding flash of story bits that serve more to confuse than to inform. What Transformers needed was to cut out a third to half of the movie, and then embellish on what was left. It would have made a great movie that way. As is, it is a meh movie. It’s taken me a week and watching another movie to figure out how to say what I feel. If that doesn’t say anything about Transformers, I don’t know what will.

Pirates on the other hand, was a fun movie to watch. It also has much more story, and was a very complicated movie if you delve into the story. But the story is shown more and told less. And that is the key. Pirates never seems to TELL us anything. It shows it all to us, from Jack Sparrow’s origin to what could be his utter end, in dribs and drabs that leave us wanting more. Pirates was a fun movie to watch, and I find myself wanting to watch it again. And if that doesn’t say anything about Pirates, I don’t know what will.

🙂