I say this without a single ounce of guilt or shame – I love blockbusters. And pertinent to this question, I occasionally enjoy “bad” blockbusters as well.
The three movies below may not find a place in the pantheon of cinematic excellence, but they are firmly placed in my personal sanctum sanctorum of blockbusters.
Transformers
Michael Bay’s Transformers felt like a movie made solely for me.
How could it not? I was 14 years old and here was a movie about giant robots that can transform into cool cars. Oh, and also Megan Fox.
I would say it’s this one.
I mean, this movie has been called plenty of things. Mysogynistic, antiwomen, dumb, stupid, badly written and I somewhat agree with all those criticisms. And nevertheless, I love it!
If you don’t know the story, is about a girl called Babydoll who accidentally kills her sister and is sent to a psycho ward where she’ll be lobotomised. For some unrelated and probably stupid reason, she retrieves to a world created by her own mind, which is an exact copy of the sanatorium but now it’s a brothel.
She devises a plan so all her friends and her can escape the brothel/sanatorium. Her master idea consists of dancing before the men that keep them trapped while her friends search for different items around. In the meantime, their captors are too hipnotised by her sensual dancing to notice anything.
And while she dances, for another contrived reason more, she gets deeper into her mind and travels into a third layer of her fantasy world in which she fights zombie nazis, demonic zamurais, orcs, robots and a dragon.
This movie’s really good for me. Barring the disturbing plot or the undeveloped characters, I just adore it!
Many people call this movie style over substance and… yeah, they’re utterly correct. The plot is too complicated, the protagonist spends one quarter of the movie’s runtime without uttering a single word and this just seems to be one of Snyder’s most pretentious works. That’s why it’s a guilty pleasure of mine, because I feel that in other circumstances, I wouldn’t have like this film.
So why do I do it?
The colour palettes are amazing!
In the real world, they’re mutted and colourless.
In the brothel layer, they’re colourful and sensual, intriguing and corrupted.
In the fantasy settings, they’re raw, war-like and militaristic.
The custume design is on point.
The acting is pretty good. Oscar Isaac nails the villain to a t.
An the fight scenes are creative and entertaining.
So yeah, Sucker Punch is my guilty pleasure film. I think with a little redos, it could have been an iconic movie. But Zack fucked up hard…
I was sold hook, line, and sinker; 14-year-old me loved everything about the movie.
And now, while I certainly see some cracks I didn’t then, I maintain Transformers is still a hugely enjoyable piece of disposable popcorn entertainment.
It’s undoubtedly the best Transformers movie that Michael Bay made.
And it would remain the outright best if it wasn’t for Travis Knight’s Bumblebee, which has the heart that Bay’s movies cannot muster.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
This is a movie where Lord Nicolas of the House Cage plays a wizard named Balthazar Blake.
Depending on where you exist on the Cage dimension, that is the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. With Cage, it’s always one or the other.
Fortunately, the movie veered closer to the former for me. Cage’s cageism is balanced out by an awkward yet earnest Jay Baruchel, tailor-made for this sort of role.
You want someone to play a gawky guy you can’t help but root for? Get Jay Baruchel.
If you’re a fan of other Jerry Bruckheimer offerings such as National Treasure, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Armageddon, then The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with its insane hijinks and sprightly pace, should be right up your alley.
2012
This is disaster porn at its finest. 2012 is the most Roland Emmerich movie that Roland has ever Emmeriched.
The patron-saint of on-screen destruction takes the Earth to task, and if you can deal with the copious amounts of silliness, there is much fun to be had here.
2012 is straight-up bonkers. Things happen for no reason, and then other things blow up; rinse and repeat.
But I tell you what, the special effects more or less hold up to this day, the movie is swinging for the fences; the cast is entirely game, and if you cut off blood flow to the part of the brain that deals in logic and reason, you might just have a fun time with 2012.
0 Comments