So my friend John and I went to see Transformers Monday night. I have to admit, I enjoyed the movie. Now don’t get me wrong it had some pretty cheezy scenes, but the action was well coreographed and the animation was quite believable (and I RARELY think CGFX are any good). Mostly it helps that we don’t really know what a giant transforming robot ought to look like, and that glossy metal surfaces are easy to replicate in the theoretical ray tracing world of a graphics engine. Overall I enjoyed the film and I don’t (completely) regret the $9 it cost me.
Some spoilers may follow, but since the theater run is all but over I’ll press on.
That said, there are plenty of little highlights for the fans of the cartoon series of the 1980’s. I was thrilled to see the courtesy allusion to the Volkswagon Bug by the new Camaro version of Bumblebee. The initial scene with Bumblebee sitting next to the battered yellow bug, and the wonderful bumblebee mirror toy (was it just me or did the text under this dangly toy keep changing??)
Michael Bay movie. ‘Nuf said. The action was fast and the cuts epileptic, but it was a rocking fun thing to watch. The opening battle sequence between Blackout (the Pave Low helicopter) and the base in Qatar was a wonderful start (actually it was one of the most fantastic battle sequences in the film)*. It left me wanting to get a nice close up look at whatever that wave/pulse/energy weapon was he was blasting everything with (I didn’t get my wish). It was blue, and glowy, and distorted the image of objects seen through it and made a great whooshy-whung sort-of noise. Or maybe I’m making that up and it should have. I can’t remember.
I loved watching Optimus Prime stab a Decepticon with his energy sword (giant flaming light saber anyone!?). He looked almost satisfied, as if 15 years of cartoons where ‘bots are horribly damaged and disabled but still escape to fight in the next episode left him wanting some finality. Unfortunately this same finality came back in spades with the complete dismantling of Jazz, one of the coolest characters from the original cartoon.
I understand that big movies have big budgets which require big sponsors, but the whole GMC takeover of the Autobots really irked me. What sort-of name is Bumblebee for a Camaro? It’s not because he’s got black stripes on a yellow paint job people! And Jazz a Pontiac sports car? Like that’s not a HUGE step down from a Porche.
I was also really looking forward to seeing Megatron become a giant weapon of some kind, the sort-of spindly jet thing was a bit odd. It was like this giant hulking ‘bot of death suddenly became this frail (but spiky) graceful (but powerful) aircraft. Enough contradictions for you? Yeah, me too.
Finally, the male lead was mostly believable, and a sort-of geeky cute in the predictable coming of age geek story kind of way (what was with all the tech gear in his room if he was trying to make money to buy a car? Sell the wacky computer gear that you never seem to use, kid!). The female lead was disturbingly stunning in her crop-shirt low-riser sweaty post-teenage body as a supposed high school student (um she’s 21 folks). The whole ‘looking under the hood’ scene was a bit over the top, but at least the director seemed to be admitting that to the audience with the antics of the male lead more of a commentary on the scene then participating in it. Anyhow, I guess the target audience is pre-teen/early-teen boys, but they won’t get nearly as much out of that seen as the adults in the audience do. So am I the only one that was waiting for a chick fight between the female lead and Australian accented blond beauty model geek? Oh.. yeah… different movie.
Anyhow, a fun romp in action and explosion land. Pros: Transformer characters actually seemed to ‘die’. Cons: Serious sequel setup with Starscream’s escape and the ridiculous ‘drop the Decepticons into the abyss’ ending. Throw them in a frelling smelting vat people!! Haven’t you seen Terminator 2!?!? It’s the only way to be sure! (Of course there was a T3… but that’s another posting.)
August 8th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I agree with your post pretty much altogether. Joe and I saw Transformers and Die Hard in the same week, and I actually enjoyed Die Hard even more (so if you haven’t seen that yet, get thee to thine Cineplex). The old-school Transformer references were awfully fun. But I was a bit disappointed in the modernized version of the ch-ch-chu-cho-choh “transformation” noise (though very glad that they at least had some version of it). The product placement was blatant, but somewhat understandable in this day and age. I also turned to Joe at least twice during Megatron’s scenes and said, “Am I remembering this wrong? I thought he was a gun? Wasn’t he a Giant Flying Gun?”
Anyway, an altogether worthy summer flick. Wish my kids were old enough to see it. Matthew just LOVES the old Transformers cartoons.