A Boy And His Car

The somewhat controversial Transformers flick is out on DVD today, and boy, did they do it in a manner that just revels in the capitalistic spirit. EVERY major retailer has their own bells and whistles special-edition crap, making deciding where to get the movie was a chore- Best Buy throws in repainted chibi-figures, Wal-Mart has some kind of animated featurette, K-Mart, I dunno, probably puts a sticker on it or something. (Our local one is pretty run down.) I was out looking for a dresser, so I ended up getting it at Target, along with a figure to net me a five dollar gift card. (The gift card also transforms, though I passed on their gimmick, a DVD case that transforms into Optimus Prime.)

At any rate, there was a lot of teeth-gnashing over the movie itself through the production- radically different-looking aesthetics for the Transformers themselves, the selection of schlockmeister Michael Bay to direct, the very fact it wasn’t animated- all made long-time fans hesitate. Most of the changes were explained as being ‘necessary to attract a broader audience,’ which is another reason that most comic book movies are doomed to suckitude- alienating their built-in fan base while maintaining the inevitable air of cheese super-spandex people carry with em.

For all the lambasting the movie may get, it does succeed at what seems to be its Job One: being a loud, stupid action movie, with all that entails. Contrivances, flubs, and cliches abound, and there’s a sort of schizophrenia to the whole production where it wavers between Spielbergian in the beginning and Bayesque toward the end. In particular, the ‘epic’ downtown battle at the end of the movie feels like it was thrown in just for the sake of having an ‘epic’ downtown battle sequence.

For a movie that’s two and a half hours long, it does at least succeed in being entertaining enough that I wasn’t checking my watch repeatedly during the feature. Though the intricacies of Sam’s personal life bore the shit out of most sentient beings, the fact that none of the humans are especially well-developed does mean that we don’t need to look at them for that long.
The movie suffers a bit in my eyes for having played the games before seeing it in the theater though, since the Decepticons are reduced to basically large monsters that jump out and go BLAH at the heroes. By placing the focus on the robots, the entire conflict really makes a lot more sense. My personal favorite character, Barricade, for example is characterized in the games as something like a gruff, no-nonsense veteran and spy, but in the movie, well, he’s a gorilla-like monster who screams “ARE YOU EBAY USER LADIESMAN217!?” at the hero. In one storyline he meets his end stalling Optimus Prime; in another, he’s defeated by Starscream in an attempt to stop him from double-crossing Megatron. Frenzy, the dimunitive boombox character gets the most screen time of any villain (or even possibly Autobot) as he twitches, gibbers and generally steals the scene without speaking more than a handful of recognizable words.
The worst thing that the near-constant glossing over of characterization brings on is that when a genuinely intense or significant moment happens, it’s pretty much without impact: the best example being the death of Jazz, which Optimus mourns for all of maybe five seconds before spouting a line evocative of Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s “lost a son, gained a daughter” line.

And I normally don’t like to harp on this kind of thing, but throughout the proceedings, I have to wonder how many black people Michael Bay has actually MET. Between the ‘black’ Transformer biting the dust, the basketball-playing Army guys, and by far the worst- Bernie Mac in a role that’s a nappy hair’s breadth away from a minstrel show (He even yells “MAMMY!” at his off-screen mother.) It’s just kind of hard to ignore so many little examples together like that. (Incidentally, Barricade, who is actually painted black occupies February [Black History Month!]) on my 2008 calendar. Hmm.) About the only action-movie cliche Michael Bay actually AVOIDS, surprisingly is the Army Guy on videophone to his wife and kid at home doesn’t get kacked, in spite of being close to returning to home. Kudos! Well…. half a Kudos granola bar anyway.

I like to leave these things on a good note, though. Though the movie itself isn’t much more than a summer blockbuster tends to be, at least we got some interesting designs and a palatable extended universe out of it. I think I’ll make a dedicated nitpick list down the line sometime for my own amusement, still. For example, as I watch the final scenes, I can’t help but wonder that after the revelation of the Transformers being weak to high-heat ammunition, the Army goes right back to using machine guns and concussive grenades to little effect. Or why they don’t simply slow them up with the freezing spray they use to capture Bumblebee. Or why the hell the Autobots are driving on the wrong side of the highway near the end. Or…