The Guardian blames Michael Bay for the current trend. "The Rock was cut in such a rat-a-tat style that a well-respected (and non-elderly) critic later confessed to me he hadn't had a clue what was going on. A decade on, The Rock looks almost stately next to Transformers..." The Rock is the only Michael Bay movie I enjoyed, and seeing it recently, I realized it really is slower than anything else he's done. Transformers was so Cuisinarted that they could have been using the actual toys and their hands and I wouldn't have noticed.

About Quantum, writer Anne Billson explains that "[d]uring the boat chase in Quantum of Solace, I got a headache trying to work out from the blitz of unconnected images which boat was supposed to be where." I did, too, and since we're on the subject of the tonally confused, disappointing latest installment of 007, the film is indeed overly edited. The opening chase sequence, which completely ruined my automotive dreams (you'll see), looked as if I were viewing it from The Scrambler. A later scene featuring a rope and a dropped pistol was somewhat more exciting but still not very enjoyable due to its over-editing. And the film's climax, which features two people out for revenge (this should have been called Death Wish 007), completely confused me. (How exactly do they get out of that fire, and why didn't it kill them?) If the editors really wanted to do me a favor, they could have removed that painful Jack White-Alicia Keys theme song.

If I had to blame someone for the over-editing of movies, I'd blame Steven Seagal. After he got too fat to do his aikido moves, the editor took over. Look at his early work and his later work (if you can bear either) and see for yourself. I just hope editors don't start editing sex scenes like they currently do action sequences. That would make me a sad panda.