10th Anniversaries, Pt 5

 

“Transformers”

2007

D: Michael Bay

**********

Pros: Special Effects, Decent Score, Jon Voight

Cons: Lack of Focus on the Transformers, Vulgar Humor, Formulaic Plot

      Being a fan of Transformers when I was a child, I was moderately excited to find out that there was a live-action film adaptation coming out.  Michael Bay may not be a truly great filmmaker, but Transformers is no Shakespeare.  A popcorn movie director seemed like a perfectly appropriate choice for the project.  Despite my reasonably humble expectations, Bay managed to completely miss the point of the franchise.  The real movie may have had its flaws, but compared to this travesty it was an Orson Welles film.

Which it...technically is.

     The problems of this movie began with its development.  Perhaps when executive producer Steven Spielberg asked Bay to direct and was told by the latter it was “a stupid toy movie,” he should have taken that as the obvious sign it was.  It didn’t help that screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were insecure about having the Transformers even talk, let alone allow them to be the focus of the story.  Compromising the premise of this franchise for a wider appeal was arguably the original sin of this movie. 

      One selling point to the filmmakers was the idea of “A Boy and his Car.”  The movie begins when Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) gets his first car from a used car salesman (Bernie Mac), which ends up being “Bumblebee” (Mark Ryan).  His newfound freedom includes access to the blandly sexy and halfheartedly tomboyish Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox).  This adolescent sentiment could have been given an extra sense of wonderment if the car was also a friend to the boy.  Imagine if your first car was also a person you could confide with?  This was the relationship between Spike and Bumblebee in the source material, and it could have been easily reproduced in the movie.   Instead, “Bumblebee” is more like a naughty pet to Sam.  Bumblebee was also relatable in the cartoon because he idolized Optimus just like the audience did.  There are very few times when Bumblebee is talking in this movie.  His voice box is damaged, and he has to communicate using snippets of radio broadcasts.  This is not only annoying, but also depersonalizes the character.  His voice is inexplicably repaired at the end so he can say his only line, but he reverts back to the annoying snippets for the rest of the series. 

      The other transformers are not terribly well done, either.  “Optimus Prime” (Peter Cullen) and the remaining “Autobots” “Ironhide” (Jess Harnell), “Ratchet” (Robert Foxworth), and “Jazz” (Darius McCrary) don’t show up until past the better half of the movie.  “Ratchet” talks in a stereotypically sophisticated English accent so he can sound smart as the group’s doctor.  “Ironhide” annoyingly quotes famous movie lines (the autobots reveal that they’ve learned about Earth culture through the internet and TV, which reduces them to the level of the Junkions), and has to be constantly reminded by “Optimus” not to murder the earthlings.  “Jazz” is killed off unceremoniously in the final battle and I’ve never felt so little for a dead character.  “Optimus,” whose original counterpart has always been a perfect adversary for Megatron in the franchise, tells Sam that he cannot defeat his nemesis in battle.  Contrast this with the epic final battle between the two in Transformers: The Movie.  Sam has to finish the job.  Yet he’s depicted in all the sequels as nearly unstoppable.  All of them are two dimensional at best.

     As for the “Decepticons,” they’re not the memorable villains in the source material.  The only ones who have any role in the first half are a “Barricade” (Jess Harnell), “Scorponok,” “Frenzy” (Reno Wilson) and “Blackout.”  Barricade is a police car who attempts to extract information from Sam, who has inherited a MacGuffin from the family, and is killed by “Bumblebee.”  The bulk of the “Decepticons” appear about the same time as the “Autobots.”  “Starscream” (Charlie Adler) gets negligible character development, and his iconic relationship with Megatron is reduced to this exchange.  Adler is well cast, but his voice doesn’t sound appropriate to the character until the sequels.  “Megatron” himself is bland as a villain can be.  Even worse, Frank Welker, the voice actor who helped define this character, was rejected for the role in favor of Hugo Weaving, whose voice was filtered beyond recognition.  Unfortunately, thanks to Michael Bay’s nonsense, Bumblebee is effectively mute in all the new adaptations, and Megatron can’t sound like Megatron even when he is voiced by Frank Welker.  Other Decepticons include “Bonecrusher” (Jim Wood), and “Devastator Brawl.”

        The eponymous robots don’t even look like themselves.  Rather than being faithful to the recognizable designs of the toys, Bay wanted something that looked “cooler.”  The new designs are so complex it became almost impossible to tell the “Transformers” apart from each other, especially during fight scenes.  This presented a challenge to the special effects teams.  More attention was given to the physics of the Transformers’ design and effects than their personalities.  It’s good to know that the filmmakers had their priorities straight.  “Megatron” looks far too feral, and “Optimus’” iconic mask is retracted most of the time to show an awkward-looking mouth (this was suspiciously downplayed in promotional material, as if they knew fans wouldn’t like it).  “Starscream” takes the cake in off-model character design.  Unlike some fans I did like the choices of the Peterbilt 379 for “Optimus” (even though I hated the red/blue flame pattern) and the 1975 Camaro for “Bumblebee.”  The beaten-up old Camaro is far more in tune with the spirit of the original than the New Beetle.  Unfortunately he changed into one of the ghastly new Camaros just because Megan Fox insulted his first form (and for commercial reasons).  For the most part, the other vehicles are good choices, in spite of the excessive use of GM product placement.

        More attention is given to the pointless human characters.  The filmmakers thought that viewers would not be able to relate to the sapient robots who are supposed to be the main characters of the franchise.  Sam Witwicky is a shade of Spike from the cartoon, and his friendship with the “Transformers” is not as compelling as Spike and Bumbee’s  dynamic.  Instead of being half of the first friendship with an alien race, he’s the “chosen one” hero in a “Transformers” movie that isn’t even about Transformers.  Distracting comic relief come from his parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White).  His mother is particularly crude and exponentially more annoying in the sequel.   Sam vacillates between being lovably awkward and annoying, but he becomes more unlikable as the series progresses.

       The “Transformers” themselves where given more attention in the sequels, and I believe the rationalization for the focus on the humans (particularly in the first movie) is that the audience couldn’t relate to this beings right away and we needed humans to connect to.  This is lazy hack logic.  A good writer would have made the eponymous characters identifiable through good narrative, and anyone not diametrically opposed to the idea would have been receptive to it.  It’s the same shallow assumption that motivated contrived child characters’ presences in children’s shows as well as Raymond Burr’s in American Godzilla releases.  Even then, the “Transformers’” belated appearance in the third act is too little, too late.  Still, this formula could have worked passably well had the humans and robots been more interesting.

       Early in the movie Barricade and Scorponok attack an Air Force base in Qatar, which involves a few soldiers (Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Amaury Nolasco, Zack Ward).  This attracts the attention of Secretary of Defense John Keller (Jon Voight), who is one of the few redeeming things about this movie.  He’s likable enough, and in the third act he gives the movie its most spontaneously awesome scene: he chases after a small “Decepticon” with a shotgun.  

Above: The real hero of the movie.

The government recruits hacker Maggie Madsen (Rachael Taylor) and her fat funny black sidekick Glen (Anthony Anderson) to help interpret evidence from the attack in Qatar.  Maggie’s arc is probably the most forgettable one in the entire movie.  Everyone is eventually led to a secret government agency called Sector 7, run by Tom Banachek (Michael O’Neill), one of whose agents is the obnoxious Seymour Simmons (John Turturro).
      As for the military involvement with the movie, I don't mind too much.  I like how the "Transformers" cooperate with the military to combat both races' enemies.  It's a redeeming feature.

      Overall, the plot is a typical three-act blockbuster.  Slow buildup in which characters figure out an alien invasion, with a lot of action at the end.  The plot structure is formulaic, but passably effective.  It’s probably why people preferred this movie over Revenge of the Fallen.  In my opinion that makes the difference between the two movies the same as that between an amorphous smear of poo and an orderly one.  Earth is invaded by an alien force.  It takes a while for the buildup and exposition to come out, there’s a lot of patriotic imagery, and there’s a lot of explosions.  When I saw this I felt like I was watching Independence Day, except Independence Day did it better.  And it did it eleven years prior.  I don’t understand how all these people who hated ID4 are somehow okay with this movie eleven years later, and without the benefit of nostalgia.

      Still, I probably would have shrugged “Transformer’s” mediocrity off as inoffensive if not for the movie’s vulgarity.  I wish I had watched Bad Boys II before this, because I was completely unprepared to see this from Michael Bay.  This comes to a head in the scene in which “Bumblebee” urinates on Simmons while “Optimus” lamely protests not to “lubricate” him.  If there was one moment that confirmed how little regard Bay had for this franchise, it was this.  For those of us who grew up associating the Transformers with heroism and our past innocence, this moment in particular was a slap in the face.  And, no don’t give me that “Transformers was always stupid” crap.  Yes, it was a very a cheesy 80’s cartoon, but much of its charm was from its naïve earnestness.  It was goofy, but it was never vulgar, and it believed in itself.  An adaptation should have remained faithful to that tone or elevated to genuine respectability.  The half-ironic, eye-winking tone is why many homages to 80’s cartoons fall flat.   In fact, I believe this defense applies to the earnestly cheesy G.I. Joe: Rise of COBRA, even if it did get some things wrong.  This establishes “Transformers” as the most contemptuous film adaptation I’ve seen since Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers.  So don’t tell me these cartoons demanded the presence of masturbation jokes and a giant robot with wrecking ball testicles inspiring John Turturro to say he’s “underneath the enemy scrotum.”

     It was rather odd how people didn’t seem to understand why “Transformers” would be so obviously off-putting to fans of the franchise.  You’ve always cared about it since childhood, even if it wasn’t perfect.  Then, a shaggy-haired usurper is given control of this thing despite his being on record for having never liked it in the first place.  He then proceeds to turn it into a vulgar parody of itself.  It even expands the franchise’s appeal to people who never understood what it was about.  People shrug it off as unsurprisingly while you try to explain, “No! No!  This isn’t what it’s about!”  Then you eventually realize that no one cares about what you think.  You’re just part of a demographically insignificant minority whose only influence was a tenuous grasp on this franchise, an influence that only existed on borrowed time.  Now the franchise is different.  The bastardized new version is the franchise now.  You had no control over it, and you never did.  In other words, it was the same way many conservatives felt when Trump got nominated. 

      Of course, the special effects are great, and there’s a lot of attention to detail in the designs.  Credit where it’s due, but the effects, like those of Avatar, were more evolutionary than revolutionary, and don’t compensate for the movie’s mediocrity.  The action had its moments, but it was mostly forgettable and doesn’t hold a candle to the real movie’s fight scenes.  It was often just incoherent white noise.  Steve Jablonsky’s score is good, but I would have preferred more of the original theme.  I find it refreshing that this series makes use of voice actors, which is becoming rare in animated films and shows.  Maybe they’re just desperate for work. 

      As for “Transformer’s” legacy, I don’t see how it influenced much aside from being popular in its own right.  What confused me was how it somehow managed to seduce so many rational people I know had good, discerning taste.  Its popularity directly led to the existence of Revenge of the Fallen, which doubled down on everything that was terrible about the first.  The first movie had some amazingly bad toilet gags and ambiguously racist humor, but it was nearly constant in the sequel.  I’d hesitate to say it was worse than “Transformers” because the action was much better.  I would like to say that those two movies were my least favorites of 2007 and 2009, but each of those years saw a movie that somehow managed to be even worse.  Fortunately, it was so bad that people reacted negatively, oblivious to the fact that they enabled Bay to make it by their praise of the first movie.  As angry as I was with Michael Bay for his apparent contempt for the franchise, he has been receptive to criticism, and the movies have gotten increasingly more earnest and less vulgar.  I can understand how people who somehow liked the first movie think that the latter sequels are more of the same, but my hatred of this film has ironically made me more open-minded to the new ones.  I know that the relative lack of things that made me actively despise “Transformers” may not be the best argument for Age of Extinction (Mark Wahlberg’s replacing Shia LaBeouf helps), but it was presentable.  At this rate Last Knight might actually be decent.