Robots in Disguise

I loved the first Transformers, but the new sequel is unbearable. The single most telling sentence written about the film so far comes from Choire Sicha at The Awl, who wrote: “The plot behind the endlessly-long series of explosions that Megan Fox’s rack is forced to endure is impossible to relate or understand.” You should read his entire post. Charlie Jane Anders’s review at io9, which begins, “Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers’ worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot,” is also fairly amusing.

The movie’s release has also been cause for some rather enjoyable Michael Bay humor, which is always a good thing. Like Jon Last, I miss the Michael Bay blog. Fake Michael Bay’s Twitter feed is amusing, but it’s no substitute. And though it’s not strictly Michael Bay related, this is probably as good a time as any to link back to my old McSweeney’s piece, “Guide to Determine if You Are In a Jerry Bruckheimer Movie.” (Which I wrote while I was in college! Geeze I’m old!) A CNN reporter once showed Bruckheimer the piece in order to elicit a reaction from him for an interview; I’m probably a lot more pleased by this fact than I should be.