A friend and I just saw the latest summer blockbuster Transformers.
I must say I hadn't gone in with too much in the way of expectations
for a stellar plot. I was just hoping for some cool special effects and
to be entertained. Sadly even those low expectations were not met.
The plot:
The Sparkle of life made it's way to earth and the Autobots and
Decepticons have come to claim it. A bad comedy ensues punctuated by
occasional special effects. Our hero, Sam Witwicky gets the girl, Some
snooty, blond English Hacker chick makes authority looks like war
mongering fools, Some reject from Saturday Night live pretends to be a
hacker, some random people from Men in Black do inexplicable conspiracy
stuff. All I know is that for a movie supposedly about Transformers,
most of the time was spent with very non mechanical objects.
The Good:
- Blackout's attack on the military base in Qatar. It was
very excellent, with really cool special effects. Also the fight with
scorperon was cool.
- The Transformation sequences were nicely done
The Bad:
- The lack of laser guns. Anyone who
watched the original cartoon saw lots of laser weapons. Conspicuously
absent form this movie.
- Megatron doesn't turn into his classic gun, but instead into some
lame alien jet thing. Supposedly the director felt that having Megatron
shrink down to a gun would be "cheating". wtf, the other
transformations are basic transmutations and have no relations to the
normal laws of physics. Case in point would be Blackout, it flies as a
helicopter but transforms into a huge Mecha thing, there's no way a
helicopter could carry that much weight!
- Lack of interaction between the Deceptacons. Sure they looked cool,
but how can you have transformers with out Starscream's plotting?
- The map to the cube was magically imprinted in some random broken glasses. Why?
- Everyone in the movie, (except for the stuck-up Genius Blondie
Hacker chick with a bad accent) is a complete moron. You'd think a
bunch of super intelligent machines that have been around the
millennial would have a better strategy than wander around aimlessly
looking for the sparkler of ultimate power? Then there's the Hollywood
induced war mongering of the Defense department. Okay a base is
destroyed by some thing, so It must be the Chinese? One would think
they'd be able to take a look at some spy satellites data and see this
giant robot, but then this movie would make sense.
- Mr and Mrs Witwicky were extremely annoying, in fact anytime there
were on screen was like we'd been transported into a lame teen comedy
involving band camp and pies. What is this doing in a sci-fi movie
about Giant Transforming Robots? I thought the scene at the Witwicky
household would never end.
- The hero is not Optimus prime. Instead he's some loser who gives the Sparkle of life to the villain. What's up with that?
- The ending where even though the climatic battle took place in the
middle of a large city with skyscrapers, the move attempts to make the
audience think the government could cover it up. I suppose it's
supposed to be a heroic attempt to wake up the audience that the
government is not trustworthy and is keeping the source of all our
amazing technologies a secret. Or maybe that script writer pasted that
portion over from Men in Black. All I know is it put those annoying
Witwicky parents on the screen to waist more time.
Conclusion:
I don't really understand what was so difficult about making this
into a decent movie? Did they really need the American Pie and Men in
black ripoffs? It seems that it would have been simple to stick to the
tried and true, transforming robots. I mean the idea is to sell toys
and cars isn't it? All they needed to do was rip the plot off the
begging of the animated series, kids would have loved, guys my age
would have loved it, it seems like a no-brainer to me Robots awaken
after millenia and do battle on earth. What so hard about that? The
1980's animated version was much cooler, while it's plot wasn't
Shakespeare at least it was still Sci-Fi, not a lame teen comedy movie.
I suppose I shouldn't expect a summer movie to make sense or that
Hollywood actually take pride in their work.