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Back to Journal  « 2007 Submission Log: Week 27-28 | Transformers! A Not-Crap Movie In Disguise | Sicko and Other Media/Crit Fun » Transformers! A Not-Crap Movie In Disguise July 18, 2007 OMG! America finally gets its own giant robot movie, and it's ADORABLE! I wouldn't bet my fruit break money or anything, but I think Optimus Prime could totally beat up Hello Kitty, or any two primary color My Little Ponies. He's so invited to my next tea party. (Suck it, Squarepants! Your seat's taken!) John Turturro, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Dunn, and Bernie Mac were all amazing (no surprise there), but I'd rather these luminaries had more to do throughout the film instead of limited to overlong cameo scenese suffering less from Blockbuster Syndrome than Saturday Night Live-itis; just because a scene/skit is moderately-to-surprisingly amusing--and costs less than a million dollars a second because there aren't any robots blowing up--doesn't mean it'll still be funny three minutes later (backyard destruction scene anyone?) when it's still coasting on the initial one joke. But not everything needed to be shorter. Besides the five seconds we get with Buffy alumn Tom Lenk* and the fact that someone from the Man-Thing movie gets to work in Hollywood again**, I think my favorite part was when something action-packed happened. I'm not sure what exactly, because they kept cutting away to more action before I could figure out what was getting hit or exploding, but this movie is so going to rock half-speed in my DVD player. Oh, and the best homage to the early eighties (spoiler here): Remember how in all action or horror films of that entire generation, the minority characters are always the first to die? You know how we've kind of been able to move past that? Well, Nostalgia trumps progress because the the Autobots (good robots) in the movie are Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, and Jazz. Okay, even recognizing that ANY racial stereotype (much less the ethnicity of robots and call-center operators) in a Michael Bay movie is more flavor than anything carefully considered, can anyone guess which Autobot doesn't make it to the end of the film? I kid, but this is easily my favorite Michael Bay movie since The Rock, which has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. Still looking for ways to lower the bar even further, but the story's two throughlines came dangerously close to making it into the final movie: You've got the archetypal boy-and-his-car as a catalyst for personal/sexual/spiritual awakening. Not so challenging, but it has potential as the human heart of a robot story. Good choice, there. But more importantly, there's this interesting comment on the xenophobia of our times, almost a cultural middleground to the "communists are among us" horror films of half a century ago (Invasion of the Puppet Master Snatchers, Romero's Night of the Living Dead, So I Married An Axe Murderer) and the "we shouldn't shoot things just because we don't understand them" feel-good movies that Americans were apparently okay with before September 2001 (Spielberg's E.T., Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Predator): Aliens--horrible alien Decepticons--want us dead for reasons we don't understand because of cultural differences and/or cinematic sloppiness. And they live in hiding among us, posing in innocuous parts of our everyday American lives (and sometimes as tanks). But not all aliens who choose to live non-transparent lives are out to get us. In fact, many of them--the Autobots--want to contribute to society. The powers that be are quick to lump the good guys with the bad, and they almost pay a terrible price for their prejudice before coming to their senses because the script said "Stop it, hosers. You're screwing up my third act!". The message is clear: when we round up foreigners, we should at least check for an Autobot insignia on their forearms before detaining them without a trial. But before we dismiss this theme as not saying anything interesting at all, note how we don't get that juxtaposition with the human characters. Non-aliens (Americans) are always cool. As I said, the humans come to their senses and are never _really_ evil, though sometimes they make some small-consequences mistakes. They misunderstand and are misunderstood. But they all pull together to fight the bad robots. There are no evil people colluding with the Decepticons or even trying to steal the maguffin (The All-Spark? Really? Renaming the Energon Cube is going to make us think it's more sophisticated as it defies the laws of physics and story logic?) for themselves. Optimus Prime recognizes humanity's greatness long before the audience does; he's willing to sacrifice his life to save them in a speech (about how he's seen their goodness) that works in the grand structure of an action film, but has little to do with the story's internal logic (because he's only been on the Earth for a few minutes smashing garden gnomes and fighting the still-ignorant powers that be). And there's the other thing we lack. Robots are either inherently good or evil. Where are the ones who are indifferent, or just trying to get by? Would they be considered good (as the humans are)? It's like the opposite of reality and most considered science fiction, where technology isn't good or evil, but instruments of either depending on the human/user intention and use. But don't mind me. I'm still pretty disturbed by that final scene with Optimus Perv staring at Shia LaBeouf and his girlfriend (who throughout the movie delivers a better blank-expression robot impersonation than any of the Autobots) as they make out on Bumblebee's hood. I liked Transformers as a kid. The toys were too expensive and the show elusive (I was not well-organized enough as a kid to schedule my life around the television, not for lack of trying). But the early Bob Budiansky-scripted comics were fun. Which brings me to the most important point: I have no regrets about spending these two hours in the theater. But if Hasbro expects me to sit half so long as that for some hypothetical G.I.Joe movie in the future, then Larry Hama must write it. *Who just disappears along with two of his brethren after they realize they already have four other characters duplicating his computer-person role in the script. **Rachel something, playing one of the two computer people they keep around to the end. Filed under Bob Budiansky, Film, Giant Robots, Journal, Larry Hama, Michael Bay, Peers & Peerless, Reviews, Transformers  
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Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Rambler, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Futurismic, Shimmer, ChiZine, FutureQuake, Pif, and Dragon. Locus Magazine has called him a "promising new writer," and Publishers Weekly also has nice things to say. Alex runs the audiobook project/podcast Telltale Weekly and the writer wiki Guidevines. He publishes the minicomic/zine Inconsequential Art. He is a 2006 Clarion graduate.  
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