Bad Movie Showdown

After posting my review of Pacific Rim, my brother-in-law, Gorka, commented that a comparison of Pacific Rim, Transformers, and Battleship should be done. It would be a showdown of the “best bad movies.” I can dig it but how shall we do a comparison of this sort? After all, with so much of the budget (read, all of it) spent on special effects and so little of it (read, none) on dialog or plot, the determining factor might simply be which movie is the least offensive. Let’s start with the movies’ focus: computer graphics (and I throw cinematography into this category).

In the department of computer graphics, the clear loser is Battleship. It’s a muddy incomprehensible mess that seems to be made out of Transformers leftovers. Transformers gets some points because the graphics were so good, especially for the time. It seemed to kick off a trend of massive special-effect-budget movies. The action however, can be unclear; there is so much going on that you can’t really parse the images. So, in the category of computer graphics, the winner is Pacific Rim. The graphics are really good and the cinematography is such that it highlights the effects; lots of slow tracking shots and super-long helicopter shots give you time to feast your eyes. After all, what’s the point in spending a hundred millions dollars on animation if you don’t get the experience? So, the ranking so far: 1) Pacific Rim 2) Transformers 3) Battleship.

Plot and dialog wise, these movies offer slim pickings. It’s like asking which has the best customer service, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or United Airline. The thing that really bothered me about Battleship was the veteran subplot. There is a man, an Iraq war veteran, in the military hospital. Along with his legs, he has lost his will to fight. He doesn’t have any feelings of self-worth. What made me mad about this is that because they pulled the disabled-Iraq-veteran-card, unless I want to be a total jerk, I have to sympathize. Can you guess what happens? In a key moment he pulls out a giant machine gun, and wearing his prostheses fends off waves of robots. It’s cheap and offensive. Now, when you think about it, Transformers focuses on two things: graphics and Megan Fox. Transformers is classy like that. Is there much else going on? No. Pacific Rim once again pulls ahead of the rest because ‘offensive’ isn’t the first word it makes me think of (‘unnecessary’ would be the first but that’s beside the point). A generic fight against an alien threat is generic enough to get away with anything. The movie can and quite literally does say, “We’re due for another attack.” The plot, correction, anything other than graphics, is like duct tape linking one CGI sequence to the next. The difference between these movies is the type of duct tape used: Battleship uses cheap plot devices, Transformers uses sex and Pacific Rim uses a bare bones scenario.

What else do we have to talk about with these types of movies? They are flashy, expensive blockbusters. They aren’t trying to be much more than a summer distraction. What is the hierarchy of “best bad movies” among these three? Pacific Rim wins because dialog and plot don’t detract from the really good graphics. Pacific Rim has enough confidence in its computer animation that it doesn’t hide any effects behind choppy camera-work. Transformers comes in second because, while it has solid graphics, its miserable sexist attempt at plot brings the experience down. Even outside this comparison, Battleship is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The graphics are shoddy as is everything else in this “movie” (if you are generous enough to call it that).

What do you think about these three movies? What other movies do you think can be included in the mix? Maybe, someday, there will be a movie that is just of a fight between all the aforementioned movies presented in 3D and smell-o-vision (for extra sensory overload).