Why are the Transformer movies so cool and yet so dumb? Or is that how coolness works? Is there an inverse ratio between coolness and smartness? No, that’s not right. Perhaps the formula is that the probability of dumbness increases 2x the coolness, so the more fun, cool ideas you have, the more likely you are to say, “Who cares how it happens? It’s cool!”

Two self-professed Transformer experts are talking about the latest movie (spoilers aplenty) and not understanding what they saw.

Swansburg: ‪Let’s talk about how Cade Yeager and his leggy daughter meet our old friends the Autobots.

Wickman: ‪Right. They find a truck inside a movie theater, of course.

Swansburg: ‪Obviously. The movie theater scene was really weird. There were several possibly meta jokes about the movies that didn’t really land. Could you distill a message from those musings?

Wickman: ‪I could not. There was definitely a part where someone complained about how all the movies these days were sequels and remakes, but it didn’t seem like the makers of Transformers 4 were the butt of the joke. It felt more like we were the butt of the joke, for watching.

Here’s a helpful review of a previous Transformer movie from Steven Greydanus in which he describes how Michael Bay makes disaster films in contrast with Roland Emmerich (2012, Armeggedon, etc.)

On a loosely related note, Alan Jacobs just posted this question: why should we expect intelligent alien life would want to explore and/or colonize other planets?