Transformers
Starring Shai Lebouf and Megan Fox
Directed, appropriately, by Michael Bay
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman with Steven Speilberg looking over their shoulders.
I’m a man. And as a man, I feel it is my duty to admit when I’ve been defeated. When I’m fighting a losing battle. I would like to imagine that other great men in history have known and will know when to put away the war drums and make peace. Great men like Darth Vader knew it, Malcolm X knew it, Captain America knew it, The Dalai Lama does it on a regular, and Hillary Clinton will never know it.
I’ve been waging a losing battle since last summer against “Transformers: The (other) Movie.” I’ve stood by and watched supporters of my cause drop off like flies. Caching the film in theatres as the summer weeks went by. Then turning around and purchasing it DVD, putting it on their netflix. I had rallied an accomplished group of fellow haters against Transformers.
Why? My reasoning was simple. A Transformers movie that is successful during the blockbuster season will give birth to other 1980s, rehash, live-action Saturday morning cartoon adaptations. I was boycotting for the greater-good. After the travesty of Spider-Man 3, I could not idly stand by and watch Hollywood get all 2-girls-1-cup on another fond adolescent memory.
After all making a Transformers movie work is impossible. It’s not a concept that lends itself to a movie. Taking the concept for what it is cannot support 2 hours and anything additional is unnecessary tinkering. Right?
Well, while not in my right mind, my girlfriend sat me down and made me watch it without telling me what it was at first. Watching the little kid fishing on the moon as the Dreamworks logo came on screen I was more confused. Then it hit me.
“Oh, no.”
But I can be man enough and admit when I am wrong about something. So I say this:
“That shit was okay.”
Transformers belongs in the oddball family of films that is too simple for adults but too crude and violent for kids. It’s like the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie or “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It exist purely as an expensive exercise of “because we can.” And that’s why it works.
Director, Michael Bay is some sort of idiot-savant in that respect. Just like Pixar films are for the kid in us, and Superhero movies are for the nerd in us, Transformers is for the adolescent teenager in us. Satisfying our violence quotient but not challenging our concepts. Bay directs Transformers like his “Greatest Hits,” he’s quite happy with his destructive nature and it shows. The Transformers (or these things that, kinda, resemble the toys) spend as much time destroying cities as they do saving them (kinda like “Armageddon.”), there are cool cars, and freeway chases with falling vehicles (Remember “Bad Boys 2.”), kissing in golden fields(“Armageddon,” again.), light flare rescues (Remember “The Rock.”), military shootouts (“Pearl Harbor.” Check.), Hans Zimmer and people sweating gold and dirt (All of the above). It’s all here, completely unoriginal, and, quite at home.
Naturally, I have to give credit to, producer, Steven Speilberg, who forms some sort of unholy union between heaven (himself), and his polar opposite from hell (Michael Bay). It’s befuddling --- very Speilbergian (casting, Disney prototype #4509-1229, Shia Lebouf, for starters) and, simultaneously, very Michael Bay (casting, stereotype-wire act, Anothony Anderson as a hacker). Both are adept at milking an audience and somewhere here the two minds converge to create another crowd pleaser.
Starring Shai Lebouf and Megan Fox
Directed, appropriately, by Michael Bay
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman with Steven Speilberg looking over their shoulders.
I’m a man. And as a man, I feel it is my duty to admit when I’ve been defeated. When I’m fighting a losing battle. I would like to imagine that other great men in history have known and will know when to put away the war drums and make peace. Great men like Darth Vader knew it, Malcolm X knew it, Captain America knew it, The Dalai Lama does it on a regular, and Hillary Clinton will never know it.
I’ve been waging a losing battle since last summer against “Transformers: The (other) Movie.” I’ve stood by and watched supporters of my cause drop off like flies. Caching the film in theatres as the summer weeks went by. Then turning around and purchasing it DVD, putting it on their netflix. I had rallied an accomplished group of fellow haters against Transformers.
Why? My reasoning was simple. A Transformers movie that is successful during the blockbuster season will give birth to other 1980s, rehash, live-action Saturday morning cartoon adaptations. I was boycotting for the greater-good. After the travesty of Spider-Man 3, I could not idly stand by and watch Hollywood get all 2-girls-1-cup on another fond adolescent memory.
After all making a Transformers movie work is impossible. It’s not a concept that lends itself to a movie. Taking the concept for what it is cannot support 2 hours and anything additional is unnecessary tinkering. Right?
Well, while not in my right mind, my girlfriend sat me down and made me watch it without telling me what it was at first. Watching the little kid fishing on the moon as the Dreamworks logo came on screen I was more confused. Then it hit me.
“Oh, no.”
But I can be man enough and admit when I am wrong about something. So I say this:
“That shit was okay.”
Transformers belongs in the oddball family of films that is too simple for adults but too crude and violent for kids. It’s like the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie or “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It exist purely as an expensive exercise of “because we can.” And that’s why it works.
Director, Michael Bay is some sort of idiot-savant in that respect. Just like Pixar films are for the kid in us, and Superhero movies are for the nerd in us, Transformers is for the adolescent teenager in us. Satisfying our violence quotient but not challenging our concepts. Bay directs Transformers like his “Greatest Hits,” he’s quite happy with his destructive nature and it shows. The Transformers (or these things that, kinda, resemble the toys) spend as much time destroying cities as they do saving them (kinda like “Armageddon.”), there are cool cars, and freeway chases with falling vehicles (Remember “Bad Boys 2.”), kissing in golden fields(“Armageddon,” again.), light flare rescues (Remember “The Rock.”), military shootouts (“Pearl Harbor.” Check.), Hans Zimmer and people sweating gold and dirt (All of the above). It’s all here, completely unoriginal, and, quite at home.
Naturally, I have to give credit to, producer, Steven Speilberg, who forms some sort of unholy union between heaven (himself), and his polar opposite from hell (Michael Bay). It’s befuddling --- very Speilbergian (casting, Disney prototype #4509-1229, Shia Lebouf, for starters) and, simultaneously, very Michael Bay (casting, stereotype-wire act, Anothony Anderson as a hacker). Both are adept at milking an audience and somewhere here the two minds converge to create another crowd pleaser.
0 comments:
Post a Comment