Destination Unknown

I knew Michael Bay’s Transformers will be flawed. I knew that
the plot will be nonsensical and incomprehensible. But I didn’t care and went
to see it anyway, hoping that it will channel my inner child and get me
high (as though experiencing funk music).

It doesn’t. But unlike most of this film’s detractors, I bought into the
Autobots vs. Decepticon concept. I admit that this is shallow, but I love
watching epic battles of good vs. bad robots.

Indeed, the movie’s best moments are when the Transformers are present,
but those moments are too short. The movie has a 144 minutes runtime, half of
which is used to develop these human characters:

Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) is “Spike” to this movie’s Bumblebee, a
“used” car he buys before courting Mikaela (Megan Fox) and before all the
havoc. Despite the shallow personality, he’s the only one with a presence, if
only because a hornier Peter Parker is fun.

Sergeant Lennox (Josh Duhamel) is a family-loving and patriotic American
soldier. Defense Secretary John Keller (Jon Voight) babbles about protecting
the country while the president sleeps and while accusing North Korea and Russia for Decepticon’s ambush. Maggie
(Rachael Taylor), a foxy blonde computer engineer, fumbles in all her scenes. Mikaela
could be interesting if she has more chemistry to Sam than to her breast.

Under a better director, these casts could come together (no matter how
ludicrously) and interact in an eccentric, Little Miss Sunshine way. Thanks to
Bay, they do nothing besides coming together against ultimate forces of evil.
Why am I supposed to root for characters that can be summarized as either
"funny" or "dead-serious"? Also, notice that all the main casts are flawless and heroic
whites. And Decepticons are redesigned and painted dark. What is a Bay film if whites can’t be macho in the
final battle? Heck, even the elderly John Keller pumps shotguns to a Decepticon
as though he’s fighting zombies from Dawn of the Dead! Right.

Transformers has always been inspired by Hasbro’s transformable robot
toys, and now we have a movie about humans who are more tepid than Bon Jovi’s
songs. Nobody shows any emotional or psychological depth. Oh, and the blacks only
dispenses gags and punchlines. I wonder if Bay will ever give them other roles.

It’s also worth noting that in all series (even now), Hasbro has never
made a human Transformer toy (save the Star Wars Transformers, but that’s
different). I wonder why.

Now about the robots, they are the movie’s saving grace.
I nearly cried when Optimus Prime appeared and coaxed me with his
“father-figure of the 80’s” voice (courtesy of Peter Cullen). I’m happy that
he, among with the Autobots, remains faithful to his cartoon character. Why do
I have to wait until the movie is halfway done before I can see the Autobots?

Megatron is also great, although he arrives too late to be threatening.
Hugo Weaving (why is he always on geek movies?) sounds exactly like in the
cartoon (who wasn’t Hugo), and hearing him brings back memories of the classic
Prime vs. Megatron battles. Sadly, I can’t praise the other Decepticons as they appear briefly and do not develop. The worst offender is
Starscream. He has none of the intelligence and cunning that he possessed in
the cartoon. In fact, Frenzy, a mini-con who can transform into CD players or
cellphones, is more Starscream than this movie’s Starscream!

Anyway, it all comes down to Autobots vs. Decepticons. That’s the buildup and it pays off, but only barely. Even if the fight scenes are a visual
feat, they are very amateurish when compared to 300. The camera shakes too
much, there’s too much explosion but (oddly?) too few civilian casualties, and
the action occurs too fast I can’t tell who is getting blown. Though the
audiences’s minds are getting blown, I wonder if anyone would have cared have
it not been for all the CG and for being Transformers. But maybe that’s the
whole point: it is fun because it’s Transformers.

Here’s what’s not fun: I watch Transformers thinking of transformable
sentient robots, not some black guy who shouts after he gobbles a dozen of
donuts. I don’t watch Transformers for lame dialogues such as Optimus Prime saying
“my bad”, or girls asking if Autobots are “tooth fairies”, or moms uttering the
“M word”. I don’t need the product placements too. Oh, and what’s a family
movie without the innuendos and fart jokes? Throw in a few Adam Sandler scenes
of Bumblebee “lubricating” and we have a homerun to haha-land. Classy.

Upon expressing my views to my friends, I was told that I didn’t like
the movie because I didn’t get it and wasn’t a Transformer fan. That’s damn
wrong! I AM a fan; I grew up watching Transformers, loved the animated
movie, and bought some toys with my hard earned cash. THE TRANSFORMERS is what we all grew to love, and that’s why I’m bitter with this movie. The robots beg more screen time and raise
questions worth exploring, but Bay is more interested with jingoism. Thus we
have a disaster, King Kong flick about humans fearing robots until they have reached
an understanding. Ironic that the animated movie defied formula yet this one couldn’t be more formulaic.

This is Bay’s best movie, but that’s simply not enough for Transformers fans (like me) who crave for more Transformers content. I’ve always thought that
Bryan Singer can do the movie better justice. Just imagine if X-men didn’t focus
on the mutants but on the military and government fronts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.