The Devil’s Advocate

On tuesday night (technically Wednesday morning) I went to see the blockbuster of the summer… Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I saw it, in IMAX with hundreds of other people in King of Prussia.  Hundreds of rabid, crazy, robot loving fans.

This movie did not disappoint me in the least!  From the first minute the movie was nonstop Michael Bay.  It was a knock down, drag out, loud, explosive ‘bot battle and I loved every minute of it!  One complaint of the first movie is that there weren’t enough ‘bot battles.  In this one, the ‘bot battles are nonstop.  Clanging of metal fists against metal bodies, metal blades slicing metal limbs, missiles, blasters, explosions, etc etc etc.  I can’t wait to see it again!

When I got my first chance, I jumped online to see what others were saying.  My first mistake was looking at the reviews.  They were horrid!  Most critics absolutely panned the movie!  On Rottentomatoes.com they gave it a 22% over all!  That was insane!  Among the top critics, it was a little more likeable, but still negative overall.

This pissed me off.  No, this incensed me.  These people didn’t know, they don’t understand.  Or maybe… yes… that’s it, they must have it in for Michael Bay!  Michael is a big time big movie kind of director, but I don’t think the critics ever loved him.  I checked the reviews of Transformers from 2 years ago.  They were 57%.  Better, still not great, but better.  This explained a little bit of the dislike, but it seemed like there was just outright hatred for the movie.

And then I went places like Facebook, and saw a different story.  People who would make quick posts to Transformers groups and pages saying how they loved it!  It was the best movie of the summer… of the year… EVER.  Cheers and applause all over the social net, like the applause I heard in the movie theater when the movie was over.  The masses love this movie!

But how can this be?

I for one tend to listen to the critics a little bit.  I listen in hopes of gauging movies mostly I’m on the fence about, and looking for those avant guard movies that are thought provoking and mentally stimulating.  However, I try to understand that sometimes critics get caught up in their own little worlds.  For example, there is a critic on NPR that sometimes comes on at the end of Fresh Air.  Last year, he reviewed The Dark Knight, a movie that was overwhelmingly positively received, and one that people thought might be up for a best picture oscar nomination (reports say it was most likely just edged out, maybe a #6 or #7 choice).  This guy said he didn’t like it… at all!  His reasoning didn’t make sense, and he claimed things that exist.  I lost all interest in any mainstream movie review he had.  The only mainstream movies he likes are from Pixar.  Everything else he likes is a movie you’ve never heard of.  And often his reviews are a soaring and hyperbolic, overly complicated, and not at all entertaining or informative.  So I don’t listen to him much, and like all wise people, I take reviews with a grain of salt.

But I was also incensed because I have an emotional attachment to this movie.  Star Wars is my #1 fandom of all time.  However, only slightly behind it in the #2 slot is Transformer.  I remember racing home from Sunday school to try to see episodes that came on Sunday morning (one reason I didn’t like Sunday school and became an atheist… it cut into my TV time!) and then later every afternoon after grade school.  The first Transformers movie was good, but it needed more bot busting action.  The second delivered in spades!  It also includes plenty of hat tips to comics and the original TV series.  So with all this investment I had to take a step back and look at it from another point of view.

The critics didn’t like the plot.  The plot was simple… bots kicking tailpipe!

The critics didn’t like the character development.  The characters were developed already… the bots had no time to develop they had to kick tailpipe!

They didn’t like all the effects and loud noises and explosions.  Why the hell not… you need that when bots kick tailpipe!

So then it dawned on me simply that this was an example of a movie that critics will never like because it’s not a movie made for critics… it’s made for fans who like seeing bots kicking tailpipe!  Michael Bay promised more bot on bot action, and he was true to his word.  People will go to the theater to see this because of that promise.

The movie is far from highbrow, I will of course concede that.  The first wasn’t either.  The original cartoon wasn’t!  I also don’t expect everyone who goes into the theater to suspend their disbelief for 2.5 hours and expect to be sucked into the realism of the plot, as there wasn’t any.  There will also be plenty of hardcore snooty transformers fans who won’t like this.  I say hardcore and snooty, because they are snobs about their transformers fandom.  Transformers is also a comic, and they want to preserve it just the way it was.  They dislike most movies in general anyway.  I can respect that.  I also think that Michael Bay has a lot of fans, and also has a lot of haters.  While I don’t mind his movie style, a lot of people hate it because of the exaggerated slow-mo shots and constant camera motion.  Not everyone will like this movie.  If you like Michael Bay style action, or if you are a transformers fanboi, go see this movie now… right now… stop reading and go right now!

But it’s a far better movie than the critics say it is.  And if you are willing to see something with a huge… and I mean huge… amount of action and motion, you’ll want to see this movie.  Just don’t give the critics too much credit.  Once it a while there’s a movie which defies the critics tastes.  Here’s another example of that.

First I must preface this post by stating that my drive for posting this is a little selfish and spiteful. A good friend of mine got me very riled up in a heated argument over points like this but since I was so worked up I never made a cogent point about this. I do concede she manhandled me in the debate, but she still isn’t right.

Many people like to make the point that “everyone is entitled to their opinion.”. This is very true, especially in a country like the US where freedom of speech is codified in our constitution. However this has been perverted over time, especially in today’s political climate. Somehow, the right to your opinion has morphed into the idea that your opinion is correct if you hold it. That is, all opinions are equally valid. Every logician and philsopher on the planet will tell you this is utter bullshit.

An opinion is A thought that a person has formed about a topic or issue.  That’s right from Wiktionary.   Being valid means being well grounded or justifiable.  That too is taken straight from wiktionary.  If you want to check Dictionary.com you’ll find the same idea, I’ll give you a moment if you want to look them up there.

Now taking these definitions, and sprinkling in some logic, let’s look at these two statements:

1. All opinions are equally valid.
2. All opinions are not equally valid.

These statements are both opinions, and hey are exact opposites of each other. Let’s look at them logically. If 1 is true then 2 is also true. That’s impossible. Both can’t be true since they are making exact opposite statements. Therefore 2 must be true, since it can be true while 1 is false.

Here’s another way it can be looked at. Let’s say my opinion is that I was born on Mars. Now, I have no evidence backing this up. I’m fact there’s a mountain of evidence to the contrary. For one I’m a human being with needs of food and water and oxygen and there appears to be none that I can use on Mars. Also I have no proof how I got here. There is also my birth certificate which says I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Also despite my parents joking, they have witnessed birth and my life on Earth. You could also get further evidence by looking up their birth certificates, and so on.

This is NOT the same as saying you don’t have a right to your own opinion. In the grand spectrum of opinions most are not something you can easily prove or disprove, and most are different philosophies that simply work for some people and not for others. For example, you might be of the opinion that the Democratic party is better than the Republican party.  Someone else might be of the opinion that the Republican Party is better than the Democratic party.  These opinions are generalized, vague, and it will be very hard to prove that one is more valid than the other, but they are nontheless opinions.  And we endlessly debate these points because we use this information to form choices over who will be our elected leaders.

However this is why we debate these opinions, because one opinion is not necessary just as correct as the other.  We could dissect these opinions, and form more exact opinions that are easier to support, such as “Democrats are better on minority and social issues” or “Republicans are better on national defense”.  We could refine our opinion saying “Republican politicians suck, but the traditional Republican platform of lower taxes and conservative spending is good.”

This is also not to say that there is singularly only one right answer to every question.  Science is pretty clear cut in this regard, but this article isn’t about science, it’s about opinion.  Scientific opinions are hypotheses, which are then proved, thus making them theories, or disproved.  This doesn’t happen often outside of scientific circles, because society at large shifts and changes so much it’s very hard to get things nailed down perfectly.  Morality, society, culture, and art are simply not things we as a people will create a single opinion on.  Therefore there will be numerous opinions that we as humans will never have a clear level of “validity” to determine which opinion is absolutely more correct than another.

We debate to find which opinions are more valid than others, so we can grow as a species and advance our science and culture. Otherwise the opinion that the the world is flat and only 6000 years old would be just as valid as the world is billions of years old and round. Both cannot be true.  Not all opinions are equally valid.

I had to update several of my comic links recently to keep them up to date with new links. Just wanted to let you know cuz I know at least one person who likes to use my links in the morning.

Also, I removed Sally Forth. As much as I like that comic, I can’t find a version you can get free on line, or at least without registering. There are websites you can Google that allow you access but nothing like Yahoo’s new links. The previous link always had comics that were like 2 months old and not constantly available. As such, I’ve removed Sally. Her dry sarcasm will be missed.

I have this poster on my wall from a friend.  It’s a nice picture, given to me by my friend Kait.  There’s a name under it… Wassily Kandinsky.  I always thought that was just some artist I didn’t know.

And then I ran into this quote.

“Those who hunger for illumination, those who see, remain on the fringe. They are derided, they are treated as mad. But those few rare souls resist and are vigilant. They have an obscure need for spiritual life, for knowledge, for progress.”–Wassily Kandinsky

And as the quote says… I now hunger for illumination of who Wassily Kandinsky is.  I shall read more!

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.” Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935

She ordered vanilla ice cream for dessert at a fancy restaurant and it came with a cookie and a piece of mint. When it was placed in front if her, without skipping a beat, she took the cookie in hand held it up in her dainty little hand and like a 5 year old princess proclaimed…

“I don’t want this, or the leaf!”