Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Transformers - The Movie

Ok. It's not like anyone who's going to go see this thing is going to see it or avoid it because I said so... but since it's 2 am and I'm bored and i have this LOOOONG diatribe about housing and city planning and burbclaves and outgrouping that I dont really want to go post on Sharon's blog (i know... i know... shoot me)...

Freedom is the right of all sentient beingsSo instead I'm going to talk about robots. Now just because I used to use Transformers as the naming convention for all our servers at the ISP... and I actually OWN a mid 80s version of Optimus Prime and he's sitting on top of my monitor right now... that doesnt make me biased. Well... ok... maybe it does. Cause see... Transformers is ROCKIN COOL. Ok - maybe not THAT cool... but it's a lot more fun than that insipid Shrek crap and a HELL of a lot better than anything Pixar has done in 5 years. There. Got your attention?

Lots of graphic violence without the violence... there are homage shots to the way they did violence in the 40s... giant scorpion robot chases special forces soldier across ruins - special forces soldier is screaming like a banshee - scorpion robot whips its tail back - piece of rubble gets in the way JUST as the tail comes down and the sound cuts off. No blood. Just an implied 'fatality' (if only he had said 'GET OVER HERE'...) Anyway - the plot is silly... but it is SUPPOSED to be silly. They're GIANT ROBOTS looking for the allspark!!! - a giant cube that makes machines into psychotic killers (would loved to see how the 30s engineers handled their cement mixers back in the day). But it never takes itself seriously... there's big city fight scene - where one transformer protects the others from harm by holding up a truck full of furbys... another scene where Megatron is disgusted by having landed on a bunch of humans (they did refer to humans as insects previously - so that sorta holds up) - all achieved in an absolutely absurdly bloodless environment. Lots of dead people - 0 buckets of blood - no boobies (but the film does make Megan Fox look pretty damned good)... NO hubris bobs - because the damned movie even pokes fun at its constant hawking of chevy cars (they use the pontiac commercial music at one point)... only 3 Bobs for Predictability (which is impressive for a movie where you KNOW whats supposed to happen) because Bay just basically strings one crazy explosive chase seen into another and you really dont know where he's going to take it... and, of course, 5 bobs for stupidity - but name a film that's been greenlit in the last year that didnt earn 5 of those. Great contributions from Turturro and Bernie Mac in a movie that really isnt about the actors - its about the GIANT FREAKIN ROBOTS. And VERY good to get the original voice of Optimus Prime in there guys. Full points on that one (if Ebay doesnt use Optimus in a TV ad - they're idiots).

Bay and the studio could have done bad things to this... made it into an Inspector Gadget sorta film... but they didnt. They made it gritty and violent - peppered it full of sappy military montages (which are almost a guarantee of imminent military deaths), and lots of absurd fun.

At the end of the summer, do you want to look back and say 'i should have gone to see Transformers'... yeah - exactly...

1 comment:

fearlessvk said...

i want to see your long rant about burbclaves :P


i also want to see the transformers movie. and die hard 7. or 4. or 5. or whatever number we're on. because i have no taste.