So, two years ago, my
cohort and I had a bet of which movie would make more money in its opening weekend...STAR TREK or TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. Now, if you've been following us over the past few months, you will know that Javi is the
die-hard Transformers fan. So, naturally that's what he predicted would make more money. I, however, put my faith in the Star Trek fandom that would be thrilled for a J.J. Abrams reboot of the series, which was the first movie in about seven years, and wouldn't let me down. But as we all know, ROTF beat the weekend gross of STAR TREK within 24 hours. (STAR TREK made $70 million opening weekend, which is pretty awesome for a May beginning of summer release, and ROFT made $90 million the FIRST DAY....) Needless to say, I went down in a Baysplosion of fire. So, I owed Javi two movie tickets.
This summer however, we are rehashing our bet. Within two weeks of each other, both TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON and HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 will be released. So, he, once again, is betting on Transformers, while I am putting all my faith and love into Harry Potter. Surprisingly, I haven't written much about Harry Potter here, but let me assure you of my devotion to it. I could spew Dickens-type jargon about my nerdy obsession with the series; however, since I don't have time to write a book, I wrote my condensed thoughts when the full trailer premiered not too long ago
here.
So, from awesome and
somewhat completely biased my perspective, PART 2 will be
the movie of the summer.
 |
| I mean...he's so fierce! |
Why? Well, first off, it's a billion dollar, international success. When the first movie was released ten years ago, there was much speculation about whether the series would be successful, or if they might have to go straight to DVD with the later movies. The fans showed their loyalty, and the movies bred new fans, and the franchise is now almost untouchable. Also, not only do you have fans of the books who also care about the movies, there's another whole set of people who just go and see the movies. The movies began ten years ago, so there's a whole generation that grew up with them, and there's a whole new generation that are falling in love with the franchise with its repetition on ABC Family.
This is also the final chance for all the fans to say good-bye to the characters that some of grown up with and come to love. When the final book came out, it was definitely a chapter closing in the fandom world, but we still had the movies to look forward to. However, this is it for this world, and for many of us, it's going to be a very sad farewell.
Plus, let us not forget that the Harry Potter movies are, quality wise, exponetially better than the Transformers movies. My cohort will agree to this. (In fact, we both whole-heartedly agreed that STAR TREK was a better movie, but unfortunately for my sake, that wasn't the terms of the bet). What I underestimated was the Speliberg-magic from the first Transformers movie that obviously flickered in the hearts of the movie-going public who ended up spending $400 million
domestically to see the sequel two years ago. I saw the first movie months after it was released on video, and I actually enjoyed it. It was funny, fun, and had (somewhat) of a heart. So, the ROTF had that momentum going for it. However, I think many will abhorredly remember ROFT moments such as Transformer balls that dangled in front of our faces and a robot dog humping Megan Fox's leg. Many, many, many people, including die-hard fans, felt ROFT was an atrocity to the Transformers legacy. This is what I'm banking on! I'm hoping that people will remember their I-wish-I-didn't-pay-$12-for-the-IMAX-experience feelings they felt after ROFT and not go see the third movie (
which from the trailer looks pretty baysplosion-esque fun).
The fact someone thought this was funny makes me weep for mankind, says Javi
Will I win?? I hope so. I mean I better. Am I completely confident I will? Absolutely not. However, it's all in good fun, and it'll be a great summer to see who will win the epic battle between wizards and alien robots. Plus, the quality movie needs to win!
Javi: Ok, so obviously, I know that I'm rooting for the"wrong" movie. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN was an atrociously bad piece of shit that bastardized the property worse than the third Pirates of the Caribbean. Regardless, the audience of teenage boys, nerds, and bros, made this movie the biggest hit that wasn't called AVATAR during 2009. So why is that, discounting the big love for the franchise since 1986, I would root for this movie to make a load more money than that nerdy wizard? Simple, every bad thing that could have gone wrong with this movie has been fixed and has been improved.
Complaint #1-The Story- The second movie sucked so bad mostly because of the confusing and badly edited story, and the fact that Shia LaBeouf was born. In the past few years, the writers and Bay have been blaming the writer's strike of 2008 as the big reason as to why it failed completely. This time around, we don't have that, sure the worst of the writers Ehrin Kruger is the head of the script nowadays, so I'm sure he'll be messing up completely somehow, but it won't be nearly as bad ass it was that summer two years ago.
Even that nose-less freak would cower in front of this guy.
Complaint #2- Michael Bay is raping childhoods- Yes, nerds can be hyperbolic and have sheer hatred of a thousand burning suns when they don't like something, and I can even admit that I'm not really happy that it was Bay that was the director for this series. Everyone's big complaint is that Bay has a Ritalin-infused ADD style of directing with his cuts lasting fractions of a second. But! for once 3-D has saved the day! Thanks to the technical difficulties of setting up the 3-D rigs, Bay is forced to show long shots to properly show which robot is kicking who's ass. This will at least help with making the visuals of this movie superior than the last movie's
Complaint #3 Racist and childish humor- Skids and Mudflap (The Twins) are two characters I wish I could somehow turn into a hybrid human/robot centipede along with the character of Leo Spitz. They encapsulate many of the faults of the last movie with their moronic and truly racist humor injected into the last movie. Well, this time around, Bay has allegedly promised that there will be no Leo, no twins (even though you can spot them in the trailer), and no "dumb humor". What does this mean? No robots portraying bad racial stereotypes voiced by SpongeBob, although the NASCAR Autobots have been shown to have hats and mullets, no robot testicles, and no overly horny nerds just trying their hardest to get laid. Given the trailers, it seems this might be true. I mean, they have LaBeouf crying like the little girl he probably is. Alll we have seen in the teaser and the full trailer is utter destruction, chaos and desperation.
Finally, last time I heard, HARRY POTTER didn't break any
records for having the most trailer views in 24 hours on the QuikTime/iTunes.
In my mind, the demographic that went to see ROTF doesn't care too much about quality either for the lack of empathy or the fanboy aspect of it, so they'll see the third movie regardless of how much it could suck. The improvements might help sway those that are more savvy towards good movies such as ourselves. Honestly, I just wanna beat Jonesy!
So seriously guys, who do you think will win during the summer? Either one of our choices? A completely unexpected one?
Side note: the winner of the bet will receive bragging rights (until the next bet) plus a Criterion Blu-Ray.
-TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON will be released July 1, 2011 in theatres and IMAX.
-HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 will be released July 15, 2011 in theatres and IMAX.
