| Trash-Talkin' Transformers |
| Friday, 13 July 2007 | |
 After two (almost three) decades of waiting for a Transformers movie, my dreams have finally come true.Unfortunately, my worst nightmares have also come to life, care of none other than Michael Bay and his total miscomprehension of the basic plot behind the Transformers. What follows could possibly be labeled "fanboyish" and as a matter of fact, it probably should be. In letters so tall you can see them from space. I love this movie for all the wrong reasons and I hate this movie for all the right ones. Let's start out with the reasons I love this movie. For one, it's the friggin' Transformers. That's pretty much enough for me, but I'll continue on. Secondly, the film is a shining example of a startling new trend I've discovered (and therefore named), which I like to call: Action Porn. GEEKTIONARY Transformers is action porn of the highest magnitude. Don't get me wrong, I love action porn. I watch action porn all the time. Sometimes I watch so much action porn I'm afraid I'll go blind. But Debby Does Dallas will never win an Oscar, and Transformers should never be called a "good movie". Fun, definitely. Entertaining, yes. But quite frankly the movie is terrible. From the total misdirection of the plot, to the mischaracterization of the main characters, to the terrible directing and almost unwatchable action scenes, Transformers will forever be placed in the exact same bin with Masters of the Universe (yes, the horrible He-Man movie starring Dolph Lundgren). 1. The Characters Seriously here. WTF? Would you make a G.I. Joe movie about the janitor that keeps their base clean? Would you make a Thundercats movie about Snarf? No? Then why in the hell would you make a Transformers movie where the majority of the story is about THE HUMANS?!!  Even girl-style, she still did more pushups than him. I understand why they needed Shia Lebeouf's character. You need a human face for the audience to relate to, to cheer for. But let it end there, people! The allure of the Transformers is that they are super advanced alien robots, but they have the same thoughts, feelings, and emotions as us. They laugh, they fight, they bleed, they die. They mourn their dead. As the movie is now, the actual robots almost get lumped into a "supporting cast" role behind their human counterparts. 2. The Directing It's called a "wide shot", Michael Bay. Learn it. It wouldn't be so bad that every ten minutes heavy rock music starts blaring while Mr. Bay cinematically jacks off by showing us scene after scene of pointless action "badassery" if it wasn't for the fact that half the time, you can't even tell what the hell is going on. Having come from an 3D animation background, I shudder when I think of all the hard work that went into the character models for the individual transformers. Each gear, cog, piston, panel, dent, and ding was painstakingly sculpted and rendered, only to be deemed totally unnecessary by a director who can't seem to pull the camera back ten friggin' feet so that the audience can see what's going on. Here, this will illustrate my point better:  Figure 1a. A medium shot with both characters.  Figure 1b. The Michael Bay version of the same shot.  Figure 1c. Actual footage from the movie. Just pull the damn camera back, Bay! I paid good money to see robots fighting, not blurry footage of vaguely robotic limbs cracking back and forth.  Optimus Prime aka Waste of an Artists Time 3. The Design Ok, prepare yourself for complaints on a totally new scale. I hate the Transformers character design. Hate it. Oh sweet little 8 pound, 6 ounce Baby Jesus do I hate it. The new Transformers are poorly designed, stylistically innacurate, and mostly unrecognizable or totally forgettable. But what really angers me? What really pisses me off? How poorly built these characters are for a multi-million dollar film. With that much money, you should be able to pull off damn near any seemingly impossible feat, even bringing to life the beloved characters of a long cancelled childrens cartoon. Instead, they spent too much time trying to make the characters look detailed, when (due to the above problems) you don't even see that detail in the final movie. Color schemes are pointless because in the midst of all the action it's hard to determine who is who. Megatron looks like some kind of hulking insect monster. Soundwave is now some sort of monkey-insect hybrid. I could go on and on. The key to any good character design is clarity. Plain and simple. The reason you hire designers is to make sure that your characters still "read" once they hit the big screen. This is why the original transformers worked. Bold, bright color schemes + simplistic block design = character readability. Now, I don't fault the creators for trying something new with the design. I would have been disappointed if they had just ported over the blocky cartoon characters to live action. The point I'd like to make is that when the action starts in the movie, the characters tend to just blend into a hideous amalgamation of steel and chrome. I know that GM paid you vast amounts of money to put their vehicles in your movie, but c'mon. Give them more color. Hide the metal innards a little more. Put the emphasis more on creating memorable-looking characters, rather than "having cool mechanical crap all over them". Don't even get me started on Optimus Prime's lips. Don't ask me why they felt the need to give Optimus a mouth in the movie. He's a robot. They don't need mouths, they are robots. Make the mask shake. Add speakers in his mask that rumble when he speaks. Hell, I'd rather they added a little volume EQ meter in the center of his forehead than watch that pathetic attempt at a mouth. Another one of my pet peeves is that none of the characters faces look very humanoid. The Autobots in the movie all have oddly shaped noses and eyes, almost like primates or lions. The Decepticons all look very insect-like. Perhaps this was a nod to the Beast Wars series. Or, more likely, their design team sucks. Why not make them look more human? That is kinda the point of anthropomorphizing these robots, is it not? To make them seem more human? Yet their artists couldn't even nail basic facial proportions. Optimus, when sans mask, looks at best like a total retard, and at worst like his mouth is slowly sliding off his weak, noseless, chinless face. The problem? Poor art. The original design (for whatever reason) is misproportionate. The nose looks buried into the face, making it look pinched. The mouth is too low on the head. The chin area, instead of stemming from the jaw, shoots down below, further elongating his face and making him look even worse. The eyes are spaced too far apart on the head. I took the liberties of spending 10 minutes (yes, only 10 minutes) to fix these blaringly obvious mistakes, and I think the final result is lightyears better. See for yourself:  In the original image on the left, you can see what I mean. Whoever did this doesn't even understand the basics of facial proportion, and as a result, Optimus looks, for lack of a better term, "funny". A few minor adjustments later and he actually looks like the heroic leader of an advanced robotic civilization. Someone who could actually put some weight behind the classic quote "One shall stand. One shall fall." 4. The Characterization Or total mischaracterization is more accurate. The Autobots, instead of being portrayed as the noble and honorable warriors of an advanced civilization are cast as a group of bumbling, arguing, silly, accident-prone hooligans. At one point, after trampling through a flower bed, Optimus actually utters "Oops. My bad." Dear Lord, shoot me now. The only Autobot you actually give a shit about is Bumblebee, and only because they've spent the entire movie reducing him to the robot equivalent of a trusty canine companion not unlike Old Yeller. No one wants to see Old Yeller get it in the end. Poor doggy/robot.... Then, they bring the mythos of the Allspark into play, only to consistantly show that when it's used, the resulting lifeforms are inherently evil and try to destroy everything around them. So what, Optimus and the Autobots are exceptions to the rule? Are we to assume that all robots given life by the Allspark are Decepticons? The point of the Transformers is that they were just like us. They could be good or bad. They could switch sides. Optimus and the Autobots protected us because they were good and valued all forms of life. Megatron and the Decepticons are purely evil and want to kill and enslave the human race for their own greedy purposes. These are highly compelling characters that should be able to carry a movie on their own, without help from Hollywoods current "It Boy". If you can't write a Transformers movie that centers around the Transformers, you have no business writing movies. 5. The Commercialization Ok, ok. I know the irony involved in saying that a movie based on toys is too commercial, but seriously. This movie screams "Where's My MotherF**king Movie Paycheck" on all levels. Even worse, it suffers from the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned: "Trilogy-itis". It's not enough that filmmakers focus on the project at hand, and try to make the best damn movie they can. Oh no. They're too busy trying to figure out how to use this movie to set up the events in the next two movies. I want to state for the record here that I would like to sit down and watch a summer blockbuster that isn't just an elaborate setup for a movie studios money machine. I want to see a movie that is complete unto itself. I want to see a movie that doesn't try to be the next Spiderman series(which has jumped the shark in my opinion) or the next X-Men series (which has jumped the shark in my opinion) or the next Shrek series (which has jumped the shark... come on. You get the point here). Trilogies friggin' suck. People should be more concerned with making ONE great movie, instead of trying to make three mediocre ones. Not to mention, it's near impossible to make a complete trilogy without botching at least one movie. Star Wars had Retun of the Jedi (or all three of the prequels if you acknowledge their existence), Indiana Jones had Temple of Doom, Matrix had Revolutions and Reloaded. I don't count the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because I'm pretty sure that there was some sort of deal with the devil involved in making those films. Just make one movie please. I know you're only out to make money, but cut me a break here. I swear, if there are any filmmakers out there that can make a single epic movie that in no way leaves the ending open for a sequel, I hereby swear to see it in theaters at least three times in order to make up for their lost trilogy windfall. So, yeah. That's what I thought about Transformers. Was it fun? Hells yes, it was fun. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I'm an action porn addict. Would I see it again in theaters? Not a chance. Will I buy it on DVD? Not a chance. (I'm very selective about my DVD library.) In five years when it's on TV and I just happen to flip past it, would I stop and watch it? Possibly. Depends on what's on the other channels. All I can really say is that as far as action porn goes, it's a surefire way to get your chase-scene-robot-fight rocks off. I just hope that the next one (and trust me, there will be a next one) gets it right and gives us the kind of Transformers movie that my little pre-adolescent brain imagined all those decades ago. Care to disagree? Want to shout my praises? Go ahead and post a comment below! Yay! Comments (3)
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