More Than Meets The Eye?
Well, thanks to Netflix last night Isabelle and I finally got to see Transformers.
Now, giant robots haven't really ever done much for me. At least not unless they are modelled on giant monsters. Hence why I enjoyed the all too brief appearance of a killer scorpion robot in this film.
On top of that, I never watched the cartoon of Transformers. I have never seen Transformers: The Movie either. Now, I did have one or two of the toys, but as far as I knew as a kid they were just random toys of cars that turned into robots. Which, thinking about it, now totally reminds me of when McDonald's had those toys that were like a shake, or a McNuggets box and transformed into dinosaurs. Now those were awesome. When do we get a movie based on those?
Point is, I was not excited by the prospect of a live-action Transformers movie. If anything, I thought the idea of presenting such a film as serious was ludicrous. Then I kept hearing so many good things about the film, I assumed I had judged it too harshly without seeing it first.
Now that I've seen it, was I right?
Well, Transformers is not an awful film. It's just not a good film.
The special effects are excellent, no question about that. If you wanted to watch the movie just to see some great CGI effects of transforming robots, you'd certainly have a lot to enjoy. However, if you wanted to watch the film for any other reason you'd be disappointed.
Right off the bat the problem is this film is 2 hours and 23 minutes long. Let me tell you, you're aware of that running time. Part of the problem is that it seems like the filmmakers forgot that this was a film about giant robots. So we get not one, but two completely pointless subplots. First is a group of hackers helping the government discover what was hacking into their system. (Hint: This movie? It's about giant freakin' robots!) The second is a secret government agency called Sector 7 that is devoted to studying the frozen body of Megatron and the All-Spark, aka the Gigantic Cube that somehow transforms into a medicine ball-sized cube without maintaining its mass! I mean, come on guys, I know this movie is about robots that transform into cars, but you can't transform a cube the size of a football field into one about a foot across without that bastard's weight being compressed into a smaller area--thus making it even heavier. There is no way Shia LaBouef could even lift that damn thing, much less run around with it!
Okay, so the movie is too long. "So what?" you say. "You liked Godzilla: Final Wars and most people think it was too long." That is true. However, Godzilla: Final Wars was not only shorter than Transformers, but it tried to cram as much fun shit into its running time as possible. Sure, there was not enough monster action and its human action blatantly ripped off The Matrix, but at least the non-monster scenes were fun. The same cannot be said of Transformers.
Now, I will say this up front. The cast of this film is pretty good. John Turturro is completely wasted and Hugo Weaving as the voice of the Decepticon's leader Megatron seems to be coasting, but even so he makes a pretty good bad guy. Megan Fox is actually very pretty and the more I see of Shia LeBouef, the more I realize that he is a very capable actor. After all, Shia managed to carry Disturbia which was also quite a flawed film. Certainly, a less capable young actor given the material he must work with in his introductory scenes would have been completely dragged down by the sheer crappiness of the writing. Even with his great performance the scene where he tries to distract his parents from seeing the Autobots as the Autobots hide in the backyard is still a painfully stupid sequence.
Also, Megatron, whose head looks kind of like a cross between The Guyver and one of the robots from Neon Genesis Evangelion, is the ultimate bad guy, right? You really wouldn't know it since he plays about the same role as Gigan in Godzilla: Final Wars--ancient alien organism discovered in some kind of suspended animation after thousands of years, thaws out/wakes up, and goes on a brief rampage before being abruptly killed. Although at least Gigan got his head blown off by Godzilla; Megatron gets "hoisted by his own petard" courtesy of a teenage boy.
Then there's the whole thing about Bumblebee's voice being broken, so he has to communicate through the car radio. That's fairly interesting. Except that the Autobots have specifically said that they can't fix his voice, but at the end of the film he has somehow "fixed" it so he can speak. Look, if you're going to give him this character trait, either ride it all the way out or don't even bother with it to start with.
Still, 30 Days of Night had pretty crummy writing and I still enjoyed it. The problem is that Transformers has been saddled with Michael Bay as a director. Almost every action sequence is so poorly set-up and filmed that they become completely incomprehensible. The climactic action sequence of the film is almost impossible to make sense of. Basically we have giant robots shooting at other giant robots while humans scurry about. Not only is it impossible to tell which robot is which, you can't even tell which human is which!
Not only that, but the editing is terrible. Characters jump from place to place without any explanation and the film's sense of time is completely shot. For instance, Bumbledee is being chased by a police car Decepticon in broad daylight and I mean that "washed-out film" kind of broad daylight that Michael Bay loves so much. Literally, there is a cut and it's the middle of the night and the chase is still going on as if no time passed. Ed Wood would be proud.
If that's not bad enough, the film's ending is ludicrous for many reasons. First off, it turns out that the US government has taken the remains of the destroyed Decepticons--and presumably Jazz the Autobot, who was torn apart by Megatron--out to sea and dumped them in an ocean trench, while shutting down Sector 7. (Oh, if only they had shut it down before the film started) That's fine, but we're also told they successfully covered the whole thing up! Okay, so explain to me how the US government covered up giant robots engaging in an all-out battle in Los Angeles with hundreds of witnesses! Not to mention the surviving inhabitants of the village in Qatar who helped the US troops fight a giant robot Scorpion!
The other reason the ending is terrible is that after the film is finished and the credits have started, we still keep seeing random scenes. The first two contribute nothing except some annoying comic relief from Shia LeBouef's character's parents. The third is a brief bit of Starscream, one of the Decepticons, flying into space. Okay, the film implied that all the Decepticons were destroyed when Megatron and the All-Spark were destroyed. Yet apparently not. So, then only Starscream survived? What about that Scorpion-bot? Where is Starscream going and if it was so important for us to know that he was going somewhere, why wait until the end credits to show us?
So, yeah, it may not be an awful film, but it's not very good. I'd put it maybe on par with Spider-Man 3, but not really any better. I'm glad I didn't try to see it in the theatre. I doubt that getting to see the "Cloverfield" trailer would really have been worth the price of admission.
EDITED TO ADD: My comparisons to Godzilla: Final Wars may seem out of place, but there are two areas where they are dead-on. First, is of course the fact that Megatron is a frozen hulk that has been waiting in the Arctic ice for centuries and thaws out to go on his rampage. Secondly, the "comic relief" mini-Decepticon accidentally beheads himself by firing buzzsaw-like discs that fly back and hit him, in almost exactly the same way the Modified Gigan beheads himself. I can't be certain, but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet Michael Bay might've seen Final Wars...
Now, giant robots haven't really ever done much for me. At least not unless they are modelled on giant monsters. Hence why I enjoyed the all too brief appearance of a killer scorpion robot in this film.
On top of that, I never watched the cartoon of Transformers. I have never seen Transformers: The Movie either. Now, I did have one or two of the toys, but as far as I knew as a kid they were just random toys of cars that turned into robots. Which, thinking about it, now totally reminds me of when McDonald's had those toys that were like a shake, or a McNuggets box and transformed into dinosaurs. Now those were awesome. When do we get a movie based on those?
Point is, I was not excited by the prospect of a live-action Transformers movie. If anything, I thought the idea of presenting such a film as serious was ludicrous. Then I kept hearing so many good things about the film, I assumed I had judged it too harshly without seeing it first.
Now that I've seen it, was I right?
Well, Transformers is not an awful film. It's just not a good film.
The special effects are excellent, no question about that. If you wanted to watch the movie just to see some great CGI effects of transforming robots, you'd certainly have a lot to enjoy. However, if you wanted to watch the film for any other reason you'd be disappointed.
Right off the bat the problem is this film is 2 hours and 23 minutes long. Let me tell you, you're aware of that running time. Part of the problem is that it seems like the filmmakers forgot that this was a film about giant robots. So we get not one, but two completely pointless subplots. First is a group of hackers helping the government discover what was hacking into their system. (Hint: This movie? It's about giant freakin' robots!) The second is a secret government agency called Sector 7 that is devoted to studying the frozen body of Megatron and the All-Spark, aka the Gigantic Cube that somehow transforms into a medicine ball-sized cube without maintaining its mass! I mean, come on guys, I know this movie is about robots that transform into cars, but you can't transform a cube the size of a football field into one about a foot across without that bastard's weight being compressed into a smaller area--thus making it even heavier. There is no way Shia LaBouef could even lift that damn thing, much less run around with it!
Okay, so the movie is too long. "So what?" you say. "You liked Godzilla: Final Wars and most people think it was too long." That is true. However, Godzilla: Final Wars was not only shorter than Transformers, but it tried to cram as much fun shit into its running time as possible. Sure, there was not enough monster action and its human action blatantly ripped off The Matrix, but at least the non-monster scenes were fun. The same cannot be said of Transformers.
Now, I will say this up front. The cast of this film is pretty good. John Turturro is completely wasted and Hugo Weaving as the voice of the Decepticon's leader Megatron seems to be coasting, but even so he makes a pretty good bad guy. Megan Fox is actually very pretty and the more I see of Shia LeBouef, the more I realize that he is a very capable actor. After all, Shia managed to carry Disturbia which was also quite a flawed film. Certainly, a less capable young actor given the material he must work with in his introductory scenes would have been completely dragged down by the sheer crappiness of the writing. Even with his great performance the scene where he tries to distract his parents from seeing the Autobots as the Autobots hide in the backyard is still a painfully stupid sequence.
Also, Megatron, whose head looks kind of like a cross between The Guyver and one of the robots from Neon Genesis Evangelion, is the ultimate bad guy, right? You really wouldn't know it since he plays about the same role as Gigan in Godzilla: Final Wars--ancient alien organism discovered in some kind of suspended animation after thousands of years, thaws out/wakes up, and goes on a brief rampage before being abruptly killed. Although at least Gigan got his head blown off by Godzilla; Megatron gets "hoisted by his own petard" courtesy of a teenage boy.
Then there's the whole thing about Bumblebee's voice being broken, so he has to communicate through the car radio. That's fairly interesting. Except that the Autobots have specifically said that they can't fix his voice, but at the end of the film he has somehow "fixed" it so he can speak. Look, if you're going to give him this character trait, either ride it all the way out or don't even bother with it to start with.
Still, 30 Days of Night had pretty crummy writing and I still enjoyed it. The problem is that Transformers has been saddled with Michael Bay as a director. Almost every action sequence is so poorly set-up and filmed that they become completely incomprehensible. The climactic action sequence of the film is almost impossible to make sense of. Basically we have giant robots shooting at other giant robots while humans scurry about. Not only is it impossible to tell which robot is which, you can't even tell which human is which!
Not only that, but the editing is terrible. Characters jump from place to place without any explanation and the film's sense of time is completely shot. For instance, Bumbledee is being chased by a police car Decepticon in broad daylight and I mean that "washed-out film" kind of broad daylight that Michael Bay loves so much. Literally, there is a cut and it's the middle of the night and the chase is still going on as if no time passed. Ed Wood would be proud.
If that's not bad enough, the film's ending is ludicrous for many reasons. First off, it turns out that the US government has taken the remains of the destroyed Decepticons--and presumably Jazz the Autobot, who was torn apart by Megatron--out to sea and dumped them in an ocean trench, while shutting down Sector 7. (Oh, if only they had shut it down before the film started) That's fine, but we're also told they successfully covered the whole thing up! Okay, so explain to me how the US government covered up giant robots engaging in an all-out battle in Los Angeles with hundreds of witnesses! Not to mention the surviving inhabitants of the village in Qatar who helped the US troops fight a giant robot Scorpion!
The other reason the ending is terrible is that after the film is finished and the credits have started, we still keep seeing random scenes. The first two contribute nothing except some annoying comic relief from Shia LeBouef's character's parents. The third is a brief bit of Starscream, one of the Decepticons, flying into space. Okay, the film implied that all the Decepticons were destroyed when Megatron and the All-Spark were destroyed. Yet apparently not. So, then only Starscream survived? What about that Scorpion-bot? Where is Starscream going and if it was so important for us to know that he was going somewhere, why wait until the end credits to show us?
So, yeah, it may not be an awful film, but it's not very good. I'd put it maybe on par with Spider-Man 3, but not really any better. I'm glad I didn't try to see it in the theatre. I doubt that getting to see the "Cloverfield" trailer would really have been worth the price of admission.
EDITED TO ADD: My comparisons to Godzilla: Final Wars may seem out of place, but there are two areas where they are dead-on. First, is of course the fact that Megatron is a frozen hulk that has been waiting in the Arctic ice for centuries and thaws out to go on his rampage. Secondly, the "comic relief" mini-Decepticon accidentally beheads himself by firing buzzsaw-like discs that fly back and hit him, in almost exactly the same way the Modified Gigan beheads himself. I can't be certain, but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet Michael Bay might've seen Final Wars...