Transformers

Alright everyone, it’s time that I talk about a series of films that are based off of a 80s cartoon that I never saw because I was too young for it, “Transformers.” I know there’s an animated movie that was made back in the 80s, but I never saw that. Instead, let’s take a look at the very first movie, directed by Michael Bay, released in 2007.

In an interview in Seoul, Michael Bay told Simon Ang that Bay has fans that will say, “We are so sorry, Michael Bay, you still suck but we love you.” Even Roger Ebert mentioned in his review, “He could have been speaking for me. I think Michael Bay sometimes sucks ("Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon," "Bad Boys II") but I find it possible to love him for a movie like "Transformers."” It’s silly enjoyment with a lot of stuff that explodes very nicely, and it has the grace not only to realize how ridiculous it is, but to make that into an advantage.

The movie is inspired by the line of Transformer toys that turn from a vehicle into a gigantic robot, like how Ebert describes it as a “Rubik's Cube crossed with a contortionist.” A yellow Camaro turns into a humongous robot, helicopters become walking death beasts, and the arch-nemesis Megatron crashes on the screen and introduces himself: “I—AM—MEGATRON!!!” Ebert describes the voice as, “resembles the sound effects in "Earthquake,"” which is a movie that I’ve never even heard of.

Megatron, voiced by the great Hugo Weaving, is the type of a robot that deserves the description I gave him. He is the most terrifying robot of the evil Decepticons, enemies of the compassionate Transformers. Both brands of robots escaped the dangerous planet Cybertron and have landed on Earth because Megatron crash-landed near the North Pole a century ago and holds the Allspark, which is the key to a grand thing, which Ebert speculates as, “I'm not sure what, but since it's basically an alien MacGuffin it doesn't much matter. (Note to fanboys about to send me an e-mail explaining the Allspark: Look up "MacGuffin" in Wikipedia.)”

The movie starts like all those typical teen comedies where the likable main character is bullied in school, kind of because he didn’t make the football team, and mostly because he doesn’t have the coolest car. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) convinces his dad (Kevin Dunn) into buying him one (this is where the late insult comic Bernie Mac came in for a cameo), and he gets an old beater, a yellow Camaro that is actually a Transformer named Bumblebee (Mark Ryan) and gets furious when his paint job is insulted that it transforms itself into a shiny new Camaro.

This is more than a hot car. It plays the soundtrack to Sam’s life. It helps Sam get the attention to his hot classmate Mikaela, played by Megan Fox, who asks, “Do I know you?” Sam tells her carelessly that they take four classes together and have been going to the same school since first grade. The high school section, which could be a teenage comedy on its own, segues into the robot battle, and there are some low-key political jokes where Secretary of Defense, played by Jon Voight, runs the country, while the president (not even in the movie) reduces himself to ask for a Ding-Dong.

Voight sends the armed services into action, and we see too much of Sgt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Tech Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson). Every single one of these men work for a good majority of the movie thinking optimistically that a metal robot as tall as a 10-story building can be defeated by, or even brought to notice, automatic fire weapons. Sam and Bumblebee are essential to fight back, although a secret ops man, played by John Turturro, asks the defense secretary, “You gonna lay the fate of the world on a kid’s Camaro?”

Ebert went on in his review to say, “Everything comes down to an epic battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons, and that's when my attention began to wander, and the movie lost a potential fourth star. First let me say that the robots, created by Industrial Light and Magic, are indeed delightful creatures; you can look hard and see the truck windshields, hubcaps and junkyard stuff they're made of. And their movements are ingenious, especially a scorpionlike robot in the desert. (Little spider robots owe something to the similar creatures in Spielberg's "Minority Report," and we note he is a producer of this movie.) How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible.”

All the while, the Transformers battle rages on and on and on, with robots bumping into each other and crashing into buildings, and buildings falling into the street, and the military firing, and jets brushing in the clouds, and Megatron and the good Transformers, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, who has been voicing Prime since the days the cartoon was on air), fighting it out, and the soundtrack cutting away at exciting music, and enough is enough. Just because CGI makes such limitless parts possible doesn’t make them necessary. They should be choreographed to look like a strategy and not only look like shapeless, random violence. Here the robots are like wrestlers on TV who are down but normally not out.

Ebert describes when he saw the movie like this: “I saw the movie on the largest screen in our nearest multiplex. It was standing room only, and hundreds were turned away. Even the name of Hasbro, maker of the Transformers toys, was cheered during the titles, and the audience laughed and applauded and loved all the human parts and the opening comedy. But when the battle of the titans began, a curious thing happened. The theater fell dead silent. No cheers. No reaction whether Optimus Prime or Megatron was on top. No nothing. I looked around and saw only passive faces looking at the screen.”

I guess we’re probably getting to a point where CGI should be used as an appetizer and not the entire meal. The movie is 144 minutes long. You could reduce it to two hours by taking out the CGI parts, and have a better movie.

Look, I know this is a stupid movie, but I enjoyed it. If you want to watch it, do so, and embrace a time when you were younger watching the cartoons growing up in the 80s. You might like it, but if you don’t I understand.

Stay tuned Friday when I take a look at the sequel for “Transformers Month.”