Children of the ’80s ain’t a hard sell
March 6, 2010
I don’t want to come off harsh, but Hollywood has pretty much ruined everything I held sacred and full of awesomeness when I was young. It’s as if there’s a thirty-something speaking to the producers of every major movie studio and telling them: “Here’s what my generation thought was cool. Ruin it anyway you want, cause they’ll still eat it up like Fun Dip.”
Let’s view the tape, in no particular order:
1. Transformers. While the first one was alright, the second movie was in every way the suck. It’s like Michael Bay was given a dumpster full of C-4 and a script written by a racist 8-year-old and told to go out and have fun. Alas, people ate it up despite more plot holes than Space Mutiny and character development than can only be called…enough with the metaphors – there are no characters in Transformers. There is only CGI and explosions. Great for a Disney movie meant for tweens with no appreciation for good film; bad for everyone else.
2. GI Joe. I didn’t even see this film because I knew I would get more out of the four cups of coffee I could buy for the price of a ticket. What tipped me to the scent of film crap? How about the typical Marlon Wayans joke-a-thon, which is fine for, say, a Wayans brothers comedy, but not so pleasant in a film that’s supposed to revive my adolescent love of “fighting for freedom”. How about show a little action without peppering it with low-brow jokes every ten seconds. Sure, humor covers the scent of crap, but only ’til it hits DVD and sells a dozen copies.
3. A-Team. I don’t care who’s starring as who: it’s gonna suck. Why? Because it has a captive audience – us ’80s kids wanting the adventure with Hannibal and the boys to continue. It’ll suck because it can. Because it doesn’t have to not suck. I foresee another long line of jokes and explosions with so little substance that you don’t know what to tell your fellow 30-something when they ask: “Was it awesome?” You don’t want to say “No, it sucked” because then you’re saying the A-Team sucked, which is blasphemy.
So, let me end this rant by saying that if you, too, are an ’80s brat and want fewer movies surrounding our childhood to suck, then do us all a favor and don’t pay for a ticket to a trash movie. It’s the age of DVD everything. Go and buy the A-Team series on disk, or find old GI Joe episodes and make something cool and clever with them, like the mashups of old GI Joe PSAs. Give the original writers and artists behind Thundercats and Wheeled Warriors some cred.
Just don’t come runnin’ to Hollywood looking for an extension on your lease on the ’80s, cause all they’re selling is a perversion of our memories.
Transformers with balls….Jesus!
“I foresee another long line of jokes and explosions with so little substance that you don’t know what to tell your fellow 30-something when they ask: “Was it awesome?””
To be fair, the original A-Team television show pretty much followed that same formula, albeit not to the same extent as your average Hollywood film, but still . . .