Midnight Releases

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

...yeah. This one is a movie post, not a television post, I know. But I just had to interrupt the regularly-scheduled blog post to talk about Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. It was absolutely fantastic, and I saw it at the midnight release. I've been seeing midnight release movies since I was fifteen (to my mother's credit, this was one thing I was allowed to do on school nights that most kids weren't), and I thought it might be nice to make a list of the ones I've seen to go with the "list" theme before I discuss Transformers 2.

I know there's more than this, but here's what I came up with off the top of my head:
- Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (my first midnight release, I went with my neighbor)
- Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
- Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (first midnight release I saw with my now-husband)
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (BK and I organized like 30 residents to go as a joint RA program, so this is a memorable one)
- Spiderman 2
- Spiderman 3
- Iron Man
- The Dark Knight
- Star Trek (the only StarTrek film I've ever seen was the one that came out last month)
- Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

I truly enjoyed Transformers 2. I'm usually one of the first people to rip apart a movie that does poor CGI. Last night/this morning, I made no evil comments. Instead, I was marveling about how well it was done. I loved the vivid expressions that could be seen in the robots' faces and body language. I am still lusting after the silver Autobot (a Corvette Stingray), it was just so beautiful! There's clearly a paper to be written about the use of gender roles in this film, but I spent ten minutes talking about it last night, so I won't bore you here with a long diatribe.

I kinda hope that the public loses interest in Megan Fox now, but I have a feeling that isn't going to happen (given the public's reaction to her onscreen appearances in the film). I was weirded out by the fact that roommate doesn't appear in the final classroom scene, since he should have been right there next to Sam. I thought the jokes were absolutely hilarious, and loved the character use of the roommate and the butcher (I don't want to give away too much for those who have not yet seen this masterpiece). The plot did have a small hole which didn't seem to add up, but perhaps seeing the deleted scenes on the DVD will solve that. I did want to know what happened to Wheelie, though. I was also impressed with the way in which they wrote in Shia LaBeouf's wrist injury, but I had read all about that in EW a few week prior so that wasn't an issue.

Sign me up for 12:01am, July 4th, 2012. I'll be there to see the yet-to-be-written Transformers 3.