Transformers (or Awesome Robots Fighting Each Other Awesomely)
Written by Sullivan Smith
Published on 07/03/2007
Originally from Binary Culture / [the-lowdown.net]
http://www.binaryculture.net

I think we can safely, for the moment, take Michael Bay off the list for potential candidates of people who may or may not be the Anti-Christ. I don't even know why he was on there in the first place. I mean, he's made some crappy movies, but he's also made some fun ones - plus, I also think he made Armageddon really bad on purpose because he didn't want to be responsible for making Ben Affleck famous. Plus, it's not like he decided to have Greedo shoot first.

Oh, that's right. Michael Bay - who directed Transformers which is, for those of you in a big fucking hurry, awesome - was a potential candidate for the "[Insert Director's Name Here] Raped My Childhood" torch and pitchfork treatment - does not, I repeat, NOT rape your childhood with his latest film, Transformers, which if I hadn't mentioned already, is awesome.

Steven Spielberg produced this film and during some convention (it might have been the San Diego Comic Con, but honestly, who gives a shit as all those things are the same anyway) that Michael Bay was "the perfect director to make Transformers." Yeah, maybe. Michael Bay, for all his flaws as a director, makes visually arresting films and is good at making things blow up on the screen. And that's what we want to see.

Imagine if M. Night Shyamalan made this film. It would probably be some single mom and her family watching news footage of Transformers fighting on television for, like, three hours. We don't want to see that. We want to see Transformers.

There were some things in this film that bothered me a little bit. I'm going to mention them now for the sake of being objective, because they were pretty obnoxious but they are overshadowed by the awesomeness of everything else.

Awesome, by the way, is the only word appropriate enough to describe this movie, and any other positive adjective you might come up with mut be preceeded with the adverb "awesomely".


But the be fair, if anyone calls this a BIG DUMB MOVIE, that would be kind of true too, in the sense that this movie is really big and it's dumb in the sense that the plot doesn't require you to wrap your head around anything too complex. The bad guys (the Decepticons) want to rule the universe and there's something on Earth that will let them do that. The Autobots come to Earth to stop them. Humans get involved. Fight fight fight fight fight.

While Bay does a pretty decent job of showing us the humans of this planet (as opposed to the humans from somewhere else, I suppose) reacting and interacting with these robots in disguise (which will make this film more tolerable to people who watching giant robots fighting each other just isn't good enough), some of the characters are just kind of pointless. Some of these characters could have been taken out of the movie, and their screen time could have been used to show robots punching each other some more.

There's also some blatant product placement (mostly involving cars, obviously) that's a little distracting. Also I thought to myself "why does that cube that turns machines into Transformers only turn the machines into Decepticons?"

But all the little stuff like that, stuff that would normally take you out of any movie and make you go, "well... meh" - they're all overshadowed by three things.

The robots. Holy shit, the robots. The robots fighting. The robots turning into cars and planes and shit. The robots fighting as they turn into cars and planes and shit. These are the coolest special effects ever and you will probably want to take an extra pair of pants in the theater. Don't be embarassed - you will not be the only one in the auditorium changing their pants. In fact, you could all probably start a "I Shit My Pants When Optimus Prime First Arrived On Screen Club".

Even some of the cheesy stuff - "My bad", how the learned about Earth culture and language on the "world wide web" and "Ebay" - works a little bit because it walks that fine line of being played straight and being played for laughs, especially because although it seems cheesy, it also makes sense if you think about it and since you won't be doing a lot of thinking during this movie, you shouldn't find it too difficult.

Secondly, Shia LaBouf. He has a silly name. But he is going to be a huge star. He carries this film. When the next Transformers movie comes out (and it will), the ads will read "Shia LaBouf. Transformers 2." His performance is what will make this film more appealing to people other than Transformers fanboys.

Finally, Megan Fox. Holy shit. She's on my list. My Celebrities I Want To Have Noisy Sex With List. She's also a pretty good actress. Not that she has a whole lot to do here, but she handles it really well, to the point that it's easy to think that if she's given some real material she can get her teeth into, she might surprise a lot of people. Did I also mention she's hotter than a lit match?

So, basically, Transformers is awesome, Michael Bay does not rape your childhood, and you will have a blast at this movie.

oh, but here's a spoiler. Optimus Prime is gay. Hearing that iconic voice say "I'd like to get my optics on what's underneath HIS hood" is a bit distrubing.* But otherwise, it's an awesome movie.









*This doesn't actually happen. Lies, really.