ok so let's think things through here: Bay's take on the franchise specifically emphasizes how, in addition to being a sort of sinister disguise, transformation literalizes the connection between a symbol and its ideological content. most Autobots are cars, and we're told over and over again that cars represent freedom, consumerism, luxury, the archetypical American teenagehood, etc, all of which are values the movies' so-called heroes align themselves with (until the CIA gets second thoughts in AGE OF EXTINCTION). so a lion's alt mode would obviously be adjacent to monarchy, maybe a warship named after a monarch or a specific fancy car used by one, since that's what lions are all about in our cultural imagination

kind of a difficult question because i do think that something being interesting enough makes it "not garbage" on some level. i guess these are some i genuinely can't defend as art but still had a blast watching.

LYCAN COLONY: one of the better "so bad it's good" movies, imo. it's rarely uninteresting because there's so much stuff happening all the time, and there's some self-awareness to how it treats itself as a work of the genre

THE LIVE-ACTION "SILVER FANG" (ANIME WHERE DOGS FIGHT BEARS, AMONG OTHER THINGS) MUSICAL: bad as a musical but i can't say that a single second was unpleasant to watch. and the show being so physically demanding that the actors look sweaty all the time certainly is something

THE EMOJI MOVIE: i think it's not as quite as bad as people say (there are a couple of genuinely good parts, like the environment designs, and the finnish dub rules), but it's strangely thrilling to watch how a very bad idea for a movie inevitably crashes and burns

THE BOOK OF HENRY: insane on a level difficult to comprehend without watching, impossible to engage with on an emotional level but baffling enough to be compelling

CATS (2019): terrible as a musical, tom hooper should have googled "music" before starting the project, but there are some images in there that will stay with me for the rest of my life

let's see... i've seen too many bad blockbusters and no-budget indies with zero redeeming qualities to list, so trying to go for stuff that sucked in a personally memorable way:

– if you've been around, you already know about my visceral hatred of Timo Koivusalo's PELLE HERMANNI movies. deeply bad movies that also perfectly embody the lack of care the Finnish film industry feels toward child audiences

– i don't like The Daniels in general, but SWISS ARMY MAN is probably my top pick for the worst movie ever made. just a nauseating product in every way

– BUNNY THE KILLER THING deserves credit for being the only thing i've seen that actually made me feel like cinema, as a medium, was a mistake. the same goes for RENDEL, really, but it's more just boring, sloppy, and conceptually undercooked. BUNNY is tiresome edgelord bullshit that doesn't even dare to commit to the bit, being so desperate to hammer in "it's just a joke!!!!" that it's left completely weightless and purposeless as a narrative