Rambling Commentary on Transformers. Lots of Spoilers.

Those that know me know that I had been anticipating the new Transformers movie for some time. Like most guys my age, I was a pretty big fan of the toy series, the comic books and the toys themselves. Though they were never to scale…

Anyway, I knew better than to expect that this movie would be Oscar material. It’s not like the Transformers cartoon was ever high art. Go ahead, Watch one. They’re pretty bad. But I held out for an enjoyable, well crafted summer spectacle. True, Michael Bay was at the helm, but Steven Spielberg was the executive producer and surely if anyone could get Bay focused on telling a good story it would be him.

In the months leading up to the film’s release I kept track of movie info and images of the Transformers as they were released. I wasn’t crazy about them, especially the insect like faces, but I understood why the filmmakers went in a different direction. So, unlike some fans of the original, I didn’t check out at this point. I still couldn’t wait.

I wasn’t able to see it until Friday night.

I felt compelled to write this commentary, because this was a pretty bad movie and people just seem to love it. Plus, I’m fairly certain that Michael Bay is out of his mind.

To start, what did Transformers teach us about race? Apparently, latino soldiers just burst out into fits of speaking Spanish and according to said soldier, doing so is part of celebrating his culture. Well, his fellow soldiers are not so into it and at every turn they scream “SPEAK ENGLISH!” at him. Anyway, this guy dies. So does the guy from Christmas Story. Probably because he had glasses.

We are presented with three black characters. Tyrese, another soldier, and my two favorite cartoon characters Bernie Mac and Anthony Anderson. Mac plays an unscrupulous used car dealer and Anderson plays a genius hacker (or something, I think) who apparently can’t find a real job, as he plays video games all day and lives with his grandmother.

Amazingly, both Mac and Anderson threaten to beat the shit out of their grandmothers in separate scenes.

Then we have Jazz, who is an alien robot and thus can’t really be African American or any race at all. I know he is black though because he breakdances, is the more acrobatic & athletic of the autobots and he says stuff like “Yo, dis looks like a good place to chill out!” Jazz is the lone Autobot to die. Gets ripped in half.

We are also treated to an Indian Customer Service rep joke and the flatly stated matter of fact - “Iranians are not smart enough to do something like this.” That is to say, I guess, that Iranians are not born with the natural brain capacity to devise some sort of computer virus. They must be too busy wiping camel shit in their faces while plotting to blow up the infidels, right Michael?

I also learned that you can’t assemble a team of hackers (more on them later) without having at least one be Asain. You see, Asians know a lot about computers.

We are also blessed with three female characters.

First, we have Shia Le Bouf’s mom, who is worth having around because she is a funny drunk.

Megan Fox – what are the odds that her family’s last name is Fox and then boom, she just turns out to be, well, a Fox? This girl is hot yo! And, dude, she knows how to fix cars! That shit is hot. She’s also a horrible actor. “I’ll drive, you shoot” or “I’m glad I got in the car.” Take your pick.

Then we have our hacker chick. This girl is hot, yo! And dude, she knows how to hack computers! That shit is hot! What’s her name? Where is she from? Why does she pal around with Anthony Anderson? WHO CARES? She’s Australian and has a tattoo on her neck. I’ll give the actress a break though, because she was forced to stammer out some of the most inane exposition in the entire film.

Bay has always been a military sychophant and I am convinced that he could sign on to do the next Meet The Fockers film and he would find a way to have several scenes take place on an aircraft carrier. So It was no surprise that we got scene after scene of sweaty soldiers toting around grenade launchers and talking about “sabo rounds” and screaming shit like “Make it rain.”

Bay loves that shit.

Honestly, this movie drips with Bayisms. It’s the most Michael Bay movie that Michael Bay has ever made. The guy has been teetering on the edge of self parody for some time and I think he crossed it with Transformers.

1. Multiple sunset scenes, or magic hour…
2. A hero waving a flare on a rooftop at the end of the movie. (See The Rock)
3. Car Porn
4. Sloppy action scenes
5. Military and Government dudes storming into a conference room demanding to know what the hell is going on.
6. Multiple important scenes taking thirty seconds or less. ‘Merica ain’t got no ‘tension span, bro!
8. Unimportant scenes dragging on for several minutes. Anthony Anderson gotta have his donuts!
7. The Michael Bay Says Fuck It Moment. This is the part in the movie where Michael Bay just says fuck it and lets the movie spin out of control. In Armageddon it was when Steve Buscemi started riding around on the warhead. In Bad Boys 2 it was probably when dead bodies were tossed at pursuing cars. In Pearl harbor it was everything after the Pearl Harbor attack and in Transformers it was when Bumblebee takes a piss on John Turtorro. I wonder what “The Jesus” would have said if I walked onto the set of Barton Fink about 12 years ago and told him that in the future he’d be in a movie were a Camarro named Bumblebee would piss on him.

I guess he’d say “How much are they going to pay me?”

Bay also threw fundamental storytelling out the window. Instead of spending time with our protagenist, we are forced to watch two other storylines play out simultaneously. What’s most agregious is that these storylines (soldiers & hackers) seem to function only as exposition. We as an audience were able to piece together the plot fairly quickly. Did we need to watch Anthony Anderson eat donuts? Did we need to watch a stewardess eat a ho-ho? Apparently, we did in order to fully understand what the All-Spark Cube was.

That time should have been used to develop some sort of relationship between Sam and his love interest and also his protector, Bumblebee. But they didn’t use that time wisely, and all of the scenes that are supposed to hit an emotional chord with the audience fall flat, despite a valiant effort by Shia Le Beouf – who was hands down the best part of the movie.

Additionally, the movie is littered with plotholes and unexplained disappearances of previously significant characters. Anybody else wonder where Barricade (the cop car) went? Geez, his fellow Decepticons could have used his help downtown.

Bumblee just up and talks at the end. The only one that seems to take issue with this is Shia “You can talk now?” I know Shia! Isn’t that crazy? Thank god you noticed that. Sadly, he is ignored.

But what about the Robots Steffen, weren’t they awesome?

I said before that I wasn’t crazy about them, but I didn’t hate them like some purists. As an achievment in CGI, they were impressive. The level of detail was amazing. But frankly, they didn’t work. They were too jumbled with moving parts and it was extremely difficult to figure out who was fighting who, especially in the scenes downtown. Coupled with Bay’s ridiculous editing and confusing camerawork, half of the final fight just seemed like piles of scrap metal slapping each other into buildings.. Half. Half, not all. A couple cool shots were in there – Ironhide’s leaping exchange with Brawl was pretty neat.

Ahem.

Some more shit that I found completely crazy:

Optimus Prime says “My bad.” This is not just insane because it’s Optimus Prime saying it, but because apparently we’re still making “Unexpected People Saying "My Bad” jokes? Sad state of affairs. Hats off for letting Peter Cullen stay on as Prime though.

Speaking of that scene – how long was that sequence? OK, we get it. The transformers are big and they are trying to hide in the backyard. We get it. Funny. OK. Get the glasses and let’s move on. Oh… wait… it’s still going? The scene is still going?

At one point, we were actually watching Jon Voight shooting a shotgun for several minutes. Jon Voight. Al I could think about was that I was watching a movie called Transformers yet here I am watching Jon Voight shoot a shotgun.

I can see how some people were able to enjoy this movie for what it was and they'll tell me to "relax, it's just a movie." It’s not like I ever expected it to change my life. This is actually years of movie-going frustration bubbling over. It’s so rare that a summer blockbuster ever delivers anymore. We deserve better. You can make a popcorn flick without having to make it completely brainless. The original Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Spiderman 2 and Batman Begins are the first to come to mind. Those are movies, for me, that satisfy on every level. They don’t pander to the lowest common denominator yet they are accessible. They deliver whiz-bang visuals without tossing good story-telling to the wind. They are often funny without being ironic and self conscious, nor do they resort to bathroom humor. The filmmakers missed a tremendous opportunity with Transformers. But the movie is being showered with adoration and cash so what the hell do I know?

And now G.I. Joe is in development. So is Thundercats. The latter is a bad, bad idea in my book. But maybe I should just grow up.
-steffen