I Know What You Did Last Summer 6/14/11

It rained today. I bought some more caulk, but I can't do anything in the rain. I decided early that I would take advantage of the weather and watch a movie I had on hand. If you're curious, it was "Transformers: Rise of the Fallen." I actually grew up with Transformers in the '80s. The cartoon is wayyyy more simplistic than these movies. One way to categorize movies is 1) the actor is the brand, 2) the special effects are the brand, 3) the "basis" is the brand, or 4) this is actually something new. When I say the "basis" is the brand, that would include anything that is "based on" something else such as a comic book or video game (or an amusement park ride at Disney World.) At some point, the brand itself becomes a brand-- such as the Batman movies. The first one was based on the comic, technically, but then they made several more movies based on that movie franchise-- in other words, they resemble each other more than anything else. At this point, the Transformer movies are a brand of their own. Compared to the cartoon, the special effects are brilliant. But, so many movies and even TV shows are doing work of that quality with CGI that the movies are not milestones for special effects. Of course, the movies probably appeal to younger kids in a profitable way that makes my opinion irrelevant. And my opinion is, this is the kind of movie that I expect to see on the Spike channel on a lazy weekend afternoon. It has plenty of mindless action, fights, explosions, and objectified women to burn a few hours without having to pay too much attention. I wanted to see it out of curiosity on what they were doing with the story. I was thinking it would be a bit like "The Empire Strikes Back"-- still a Star Wars movie, but an important part of the overall story to understand. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies did that, too. And the Matrix trilogy. It's not. It seems to be a stand alone movie.