At Cannes Film Festival, Shia LeBeouf recently spoke about his true feelings regarding two films that he starred in that received a lot of criticism about how much they blow. The two movies in question were Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas‘ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). We all have our opinions about how shitty these two films were, but rarely do you ever have an actor/actress/director/etc. that will publicly say the same. As Topless Robot put, takes serious balls for anyone in Hollywood to criticize their work, especially when its been so financially successful. Transformers ROTF made over $835+ million just in the box office worldwide and Indy racked in a cool $785+ million in the box office. Shia is a serious box office juggernaut has his last films six films made at least over $150 million. That is quite an impressive resume for a 23 year old with a long career ahead of him. Even with the huge success of his film, Shia will willing to call it as he sees it and won’t pull back the punches.
Shia first spoke about the weak story that doomed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
“I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished,” LaBeouf said…
“You get to monkey-swinging and things like that and you can blame it on the writer and you can blame it on Steven [Spielberg, who directed]. But the actor’s job is to make it come alive and make it work, and I couldn’t do it. So that’s my fault. Simple.”
LaBeouf said that he could have kept quiet, especially given the movie’s blockbuster status, but didn’t think the film had fooled anyone. “I think the audience is pretty intelligent. I think they know when you’ve made … . And I think if you don’t acknowledge it, then why do they trust you the next time you’re promoting a movie.” LaBeouf went on to say he wasn’t the only star on the film who felt that way. “We [Harrison Ford and LaBeouf] had major discussions. He wasn’t happy with it either. Look, the movie could have been updated. There was a reason it wasn’t universally accepted.”
LaBeouf added, “We need to be able to satiate the appetite,” he said. “I think we just misinterpreted what we were trying to satiate.”
Considering Shia’s relationship with director Steven Spielberg, I am pretty sure if was hard for him to say and be quoted on it.
“I’ll probably get a call. But he needs to hear this. I love him. I love Steven. I have a relationship with Steven that supersedes our business work. And believe me, I talk to him often enough to know that I’m not out of line. And I would never disrespect the man. I think he’s a genius, and he’s given me my whole life. He’s done so much great work that there’s no need for him to feel vulnerable about one film. But when you drop the ball you drop the ball.”
When asked about the problems faced in Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and less than spectacular reviews by critics, Shia feels the same way as most Transformer fans do.
On the second movie, “we got lost. We tried to get bigger. It’s what happens to sequels. It’s like, how do you top the first one? You’ve got to go bigger,” LaBeouf said. “Mike (Michael Bay) went so big that it became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie. … You lost a bit of the relationships. Unless you have those relationships, then the movie doesn’t matter. Then it’s just a bunch of robots fighting each other.”
Unlike, Indy, Transformer 3 is underway and Shia promises to make it up to the fans for the problems found in Transformers ROTF.
“There’s going to be a lot of death, human death. This time, they’re targeting humans,” LaBeouf said. “It’s going to be the craziest action movie ever made, or we failed.”
As much as I like and trust Shia LeBeouf, it is hard to say whether Transformers 3 will be any different considering Michael Bay is STILL fucking attached to the project as director and douche bag.
Considering the failures (storywise) of Transformers ROTF and Indy 4, Shia also is very aware of what may happen if his role in the highly anticipated sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleep is not a success with critics and fans.
“If I was going to do it twice, my career was over. So this was fight-or-flight for me.”
As much as I hated Transformers ROTF and Indy 4, I can honestly say that Shia was not part of the problem. I seriously believe that he is a impeccable character and dramatic actor and feel that the blame is on the writers and the vision of the director and producers. Personally, I don’t feel right that he takes the burden of the crappy nature of those two films, but I do applaud him for his honesty. I doubt Michael Bay has the balls to do the same. I enjoy his acting and will most likely fork out the money to see his films. Even Transformers 3.
[topless robot | la times | huffington post]
