Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, or Michael Bay Disaster...

Welcome to Critical Point, Every Peoples. My name is The Director, and I am sort of the TV and movie geek around these parts. I watch a lot of movies, and an unfortunate amount of TV, so it just kind of fits.

Today, we are going to be talking about one of the biggest movies out right now, Transformers. Now before we get started, I feel it is in the interest of full disclosure that I tell you all that I really enjoyed the cartoon series growing up and was a huge fan of the toys, like most boys my age when they first came around. Cars and airplanes that changed into robots were pretty much the coolest thing around at that point. But I digress, we are here to talk about the movie.

When one talks about Michael Bay movies in general, there are always two schools of thought, a very divided audience: people who love him and people who hate him; people who admire the spectacle, the whiz-bang atmosphere of his movies, the fast cuts, the huge explosions, and who don’t really mind the plot holes or the sometimes scant story - and those who can’t look past those marks of a Bay movie. I was always able to watch his movies with a grain of proverbial salt, enough to suspend disbelief at the right times to get me through the movies. But then I heard that Michael Bay was going to attempt the nigh impossible and bring a beloved staple of my youth to the big screen, in live action no less. For more than two years, all I heard from people was that “Bay is gonna screw this up, all he does is big explosions movies...yadda yadda yadda…” I have to admit, I was a bit worried that the fate of one of my favorite cartoons was in the hands of Michael Bay. But then again, to be fair, I would have been worried no matter which director took the helm. Enough about all my reservations; let’s dig into the movie.

Alright, let’s start with the good. The choice of which of the Autobots (the “Good Guys”) and which of the Decepticons (the “Bad Guys”) to include was pretty solid. They didn’t go overboard trying to bring on the massive numbers of robots that even the smaller episodes of the cartoon series had (one thing that could be said about the original series is that they knew how to sell toys). The movie, however, kept the numbers small, about five per side. The robots looked brilliant and their transformations looked clean and fluid rather than forced or sloppy. Peter Cullen reprised his role as the voice of Optimus Prime, but that was the only voice carryover from the show.

Shia LaBeouf was fantastic, simple as that. He is maturing as a young actor and is certainly one of the rising young stars of Hollywood. Megan Fox was alright in her role as Shia’s love interest and prerequisite action movie eye candy; nothing really special here other than a miniskirt and a smile. Her action sequences seemed a little bit forced, but not overly so. Josh Duhamel was good as Captain Lennox. Again, he was kind of still at places, but not enough to distract from the film. Tyrese Gibson as Sgt. Eps was wholly believable and he did a wonderful job. The surprise actor in this movie, in my opinion, was John Turturro as Sector 7 Agent Simmons. He was a great comic foil when he needed to be, but also served well as dramatic sub-plot.

And let us not forget the robot characters: the Transformers, who we all were dying to see in this movie. In the Decepticon camp, we start with Blackout the helicopter, who methodically destroys the military base in Quatar. It's a fantastic sequence to begin the movie. He was truly terrifying and not at all cartoony, as most Decepticons were in the cartoon. Next, we have Scorponok, who was a crazed animalistic killer, and his scenes were also pretty damned intense. My only gripe with his character was that he didn't really seem to be a Transformer per se, but rather just a scorpion-shaped robot who liked to kill. Frenzy, the smallest Decepticon, was indeed a frenzy of movement, an ADD-riddled character who destroyed with reckless abandon and handled the spy-master talents of the cartoon series' Soundwave with aplomb. Barricade was by far my favorite Decepticon. He was fast, mean, and slick, and when he was face-to-face with Sam, we felt a real, palpable sense of danger. Megatron was also a very evil, very dangerous character, but we only get him for the last battle of the movie. I would have liked to see more of him and his menacing growl. The other Decepticons (Starscream, Bonecrusher, and Devastator) get relatively little screen time, which was a shame. I personally was a huge fan of Starscream back in the days of the cartoon, and I think the film could have benefited from a bit more Megatron/Starscream interaction. And for as much screen time as Bonecrusher got in the trailers, it would have been nice to see a bit more of him in the movie as well.

Bring in the Autobots. The heroes of the film are the robots people most wanted to see. Leading the pack was the ultimate robotic John Wayne, Optimus Prime. Voiced by Peter Cullen, Optimus represents what all Autobots strive to represent: honesty, integrity, and a great, big, open can of whoop-ass, ready to be unloaded on any Decepticon. Bumblebee, the advance scout on earth for the Autobots, was a quirky, lovable, and downright kick-ass member of the Autobot squad, and any 16-year-old boy's dream first car. In fact, screw first car, I want one right now! Ahem... We are also joined by the Autobot medic Ratchet, who gets such a little amount of screen time that we are not really able to dig into his character much, but I liked what they did show. Next we have Jazz, the Second in Command to Prime and the most fun to watch visually. He had a distinctive voice, a swagger in his step, and a no-holds-barred attitude that seemed infectious. Finally, we have Ironhide, the weapons specialist and all around gun nut. In the cartoon series, he just seemed like a brawler, but his attitude screamed for more definition. This is the definition he was lacking. He fills the role with a lust for action that makes us all want to go out shooting, and he is the Charlton Heston of the Autobot clan. As a whole, good guy or bad, the robots in this movie are impressive to watch, their transformations are clean and incredible, and on the whole, simply brilliant. True to the nature of Robots in Disguise, I was impressed by them all.

And now, for the bad. And not just bad, but terribly bad. The whole government hacker subplot, where they are trying to track the signal that was used by the Decepticons to steal information, seemed half-assedly put together, and just as unnecessary. It was tolerable enough when Rachel Taylor was the “Smart Girl Haxxorz” on scene, smarter than all the boys and is the only one, apparently, able to see the importance of the signal, but when she takes the information to someone she refers to as “the one person on earth who can break this signal”, it takes a turn for the unbelievable. Anthony Anderson plays said genius, who is also an apparently jobless, fat, sad sack who lives with his grandmother, yet happens to have the skills necessary to break the Decepticon code. Anderson’s character was totally unneeded, and the film could have been slimmed down by removing him completely. That whole subplot left me unimpressed and it felt like it took us away from the all-important robot-bashing fun that we were there to see.

All in all, the movie was almost exactly what I expected it to be. It had a little story to get things moving, a whole lot of robot-on-robot destruction, and some very touching scenes involving both humans and machines. The movie, which topped all box office records (raking in a week total of $152 million), shows no sign of stopping just yet. Parents and children alike can both enjoy this movie, which succeeded in becoming a vision unlike many others. For all of Michael Bay’s faults as a director, he certainly knows how to set up a spectacle and how to blow things up well. In a world that involves giant robots fighting, that’s bound to happen, and often. Overall, I enjoyed this movie and have seen it twice so far, and I definitely will be buying the movie on HD DVD once it comes out.