Review: Transformers

Ahh, the sum­mer of ’07 bar­rels for­ward at an unprece­dented pace. We still have the Simpsons movie on it’s way, and we’ve already set every record there is to set. Weekly, Daily, Overseas, Wednesdays, Tuesdays, record BOs. Harry Potter even set the record for sin­gle screen­ing slot, mid­night. But we’ll get to that in another blog.

For now, let’s dis­cuss Michael Bay, pic­tured left. Even after “The Island”, they still let the guy make movies. Which is fine. He serves an impor­tant role in our ecosys­tem, film­mak­ers that is. He makes money so the rest of us can make the movies that are worth watch­ing. After all, it was a Dreamworks film, the Dreamworks film that proved the Paramount buy­out as a suc­cess, being that it set yet another record for Par (fastest stu­dio to $1 bil­lion in a year). He’s well aware of his role as cash cow, although delu­sional about his tal­ent as film­maker. I could go on all day about Michael Bay, so let me move on to the film for a spell.

It’s amaz­ing how much of a missed oppor­tu­nity this film is. As with any comic book or toy or hero film, myths and leg­ends abound, and one is left with the ulti­mate bat­tle between good and evil. It’s every writ­ers dream because you are given the mold (and the audi­ence) to say what­ever the hell you want. I’ve been against cin­e­matic preach­ing for a long time, but get your shit together Transformer folk! The story teeters on both sides of the line polit­i­cally. It accuses the gov­ern­ment of jump­ing into war with the wrong coun­try, then of course cel­e­brates the actions a hand­ful of rough­necks for whom “los­ing is not an option”. It broke action movie code by putting an imper­son­ator of the pres­i­dent, in a very poor cameo indeed which only fur­ther con­fused the issue of what the hell this movie was try­ing to say.

Huzzah to the FX crew, for the only char­ac­ters worth watch­ing were the Transformers them­selves, although even they had con­fus­ing arcs. Are the auto­bots fun guys or just idiots? Is Optimus Prime actu­ally that self­less or just suf­fer­ing from a Jesus complex?Not to spoil it if you haven’t seen it, Prime says the allspark must be placed in his chest if they can’t save it from Megatron, but it becomes appar­ent it could be put in anyone’s chest. Why not plan to shove it in mega­tron the whole time? Well, there’s no real char­ac­ter devel­op­ment at all to tell us why he would want to sac­ri­fice him­self. Or hey, why is mega­tron such a bad dude? How come Shia LaBeouf is capa­ble of becom­ing a sol­dier at the turn of a hat? Or hey, how come this movie had so many chances to redeem itself but didn’t?

I’d like to see the film where mega­tron joins some ter­ror­ists and the decep­ti­cons set up an attack against the states, whilst the auto­bots and rough­necks take on the world. Perhaps with­out the cold war, this kind of shit makes less sense. I’m bab­bling on a bit because I’m in a hurry to fin­ish this review. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed watch­ing the film, as did mil­lions around the world. It’s wor­thy of mak­ing the kind of money it is, but still, it’s an awful film. I’m hop­ing that one day Michael Bay will make a film as good as The Rock. Perhaps he and Tony Scott should spend a week­end away together, and maybe Bay would come out with a cre­ative thought. For now, his spine is still with­out a sin­gle cre­ative ver­te­brae. Oooh, like I said, I could go on all day. Just watch this: