Whenever stuff was blowing up, I was in love. They knew how to do a fun and over-the-top action sequence, and they knew how to do a fun and over-the-top Beta-Male-Becomes-Alpha-Male sequence, but every bit of dialog, every cut of the camera, every part where the director got to, I don't know, do stuff, was rife with indications that the guys making the movie thought that we were idiots.

Director: So, okay, we're almost done with this scene.
Producer: What's the scene?
Director: The hero is coming back home to his cheating ex-girlfriend and asshole friend. He punches the friend, ignores the harping cheating ex-girlfriend as he goes to get the gun he left in the apartment, and comes back out to tongue-kiss Angelina Jolie in slow motion while the harping ex-girlfriend stammers incoherently. Then the hero leaves the room without ever talking to her.
Producer: Hm. It needs more.
Director: I know. How are we supposed to tell the audience that he's become a badass cool Alpha Male if the only clue we're giving is that he's ignoring the ex-girlfriend, punching the asshole ex-friend, and tongue-kissing Angelina Jolie in slow motion?
Producer: Okay, what if, what if, what if after he leaves, the asshole friend lying on the ground, with his nose and mouth bloody, says, "Oh, yeah, he's the man."
Director: To who?
Producer: Um. To the audience, I guess.
Director: Love it.

Director: Got another tough scene coming up.
Producer: Hit me.
Director: The hero is returning to the lair of the assassins who live in the top of the textile factory.
Producer: Why is it a textile factory?
Director: Uh, the writer wanted it. Something about how they're the Weavers, and they look at errors in these giant looms, which apparently give errors that form a binary code that actually translates to English ASCII code of the names of targets.
Producer: Okay. Love it.
Director: But the hero, he got trained by them, but now he knows that the leader is evil, right? He's coming back to kill the leader, because the leader is making up targets instead of listening to the loom.
Producer: Right, right.
Director: And he comes in, and Morgan Freeman looks down at him. He's the assassin leader guy.
Producer: Was he trying to cure Alzheimers?
Director: No, you're thinking of Deep Blue Sea.
Producer: Isn't that a movie about the chess thing?
Director: Maybe. Anyway, I've got Freeman looking down at the hero as he enters the courtyard. I need to make it clear that Freeman is an evil manipulative guy.
Producer: Who's all weaving the threads of fate and stuff?
Director: Bingo.
Producer: Cat's cradle.
Director: He's playing cat's cradle with thread while looking down at the hero? Like he's the weaver now, instead of the weaven?
Producer: Right, right.
Director: What if the audience doesn't get it? I mean, they might think he just has a nervous twitch or something.
Producer: Okay, you do one shot of him doing that, looking down at the hero. Then cut to the hero. Then cut back to Freeman, but this time, get this? The camera? It's just on his hands. So it's several seconds of you looking right at him playing cat's cradle.
Director: Oh, yeah. Watching somebody play cat's cradle for several seconds is just what the audience signed on for. Plus, at the end, there's a bit of the hero walking through the tangled wreckage of the place after he blows it up using hordes of rats covered in plastic explosives--
Producer: Gold. That stuff is pure gold.
Director: --and I was worried that people might not understand that by having him stumble through all these tangled and knotted up threads, we were symbolically showing that he had screwed up all the careful weavings that had been going on all these years.
Producer: But a five solid seconds of watching a grown man play with twine?
Director: Oh, yeah, that does it for me.