Let's Get This Straight

Earlier today, io9 wrote this article about how self-hating fans cause problems for the very genre fiction they love by criticizing things just to show that they don't have a knee-jerk love of genre works (or to keep "outsiders" from joining their exclusive geek fraternity.) Which is a pretty good message, all told (if for no other reason than I didn't choose "fraternity" by accident--many of the "outsiders" that geeks are trying to keep away are actually insiders that don't happen to be white guys...) But there is one thing I want to make perfectly clear.

I don't hate the 'Transformers' movies out of hipsterism, pretension, or some desire to convince people that I'm more erudite and learned than I actually am. I hate the 'Transformers' movies because they are ineptly executed, dimwitted, sexist, lazy, incompetent crimes against eyeballs, and I am utterly sick of being told every time I mention this, "Oh, you just don't like 'popcorn movies'."

No. I love 'popcorn movies'. 'Jaws', 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', 'Star Wars', the 1999 version of 'The Mummy', 'Iron Man', 'X-Men', 'Spider-Man' and even 'The Rock' are all perfectly silly, perfectly unpretentious pieces of enjoyable entertainment that I can sit down and watch time and time again, and they're only the tip of the iceberg. I did not dislike 'Transformers' because I'm a snob. I disliked it because Michael Bay can't hold a camera steady, because Shia LeBeouf grates on the nerves like biting down on tinfoil, because every shot of every female character either zoomed in on their butts or down their cleavage and yet the film tried to pretend it wasn't sexist because it had women who could fix cars, and because it was a goddamn movie about alien robots that turn into cars and Michael Bay couldn't even make that worth spending a couple of hours watching.

Also, I am annoyed by the perpetual and snide observation, "Well, you say you don't like them, but the sequels keep making money," as though the person has some sort of secret footage of me buying a ticket for the sequels while wearing an unconvincing wig. I didn't see any of the 'Transformers' sequels. You know why? Because they looked even worse than the first one, and it's been a long time since I willingly paid money for a movie that looked like it wasn't worth watching from the trailers.

I understand that there are reflexive hipsters out there who will hate anything that is popular. But please don't assume I'm one of them just because the thing I hate happens to be popular.