Transformers

Dream Works

Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Bernie Mac, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson
Directed By: Michael Bay
Produced By: Steven Spielberg, Brian Goldner, Michael Bay

A giant Rei Ayanami is on Earth's other side.

We have fun here at the Comic Book Bin, but every now and then, we need to get serious. There’s a condition that, every year, claims the taste and integrity of countless movies. It’s called Big Stupid Action Movie Syndrome (BSAMS, or Big Stoop, for short).

BSAMS is a tragic disease. It’s harrowing symptoms include copious explosions, incoherent plots, gratuitous product placement, and the occasional government official with a slight southern twang. Corollary symptoms include Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. In this review, I’d like to address the latest victim, Michael Bay’s Transformers.

Freud once said that the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis. Similarly, Transformers is impervious to criticism. What angle can a reviewer take? One can’t speak of Transformers as an adaptation, because it’s nothing like the original show. One can’t speak of it as an action movie, because there’s too much obnoxious, sitcom-y humor. One can’t speak of it as a coming-of-age movie, because there are too many explosions. Reviewing Transformers is like dueling with someone who holds his gun backwards, Elmer Fudd-style: he’ll do himself in before you fire a shot.

Autobot leader Optimus Prime.

Transformers, inspired by the famous 1980s toy line/tv show of the same name, is the latest Summer blockbuster. In Transformers, two races of intelligent robots, the good-guy Autobots and the villainous Decepticons, come to earth to locate the mystical Allspark. The Autobots ally themselves with Sam Witwicky, a teenage boy who unwittingly holds the clue to the Allspark’s location. A series of battles ensues, providing audiences everywhere with more eye-popping stupidity than even Barbarella.

Transformers bears only passing resemblance to its source material. Most of the movie isn’t even about the Transformers, but instead focuses on various mildly interesting human characters. It takes over an hour for the Autobots to show up, and villain Megatron is present for only thirty minutes. Starscream gets two lines, Ironhide lacks his (cheesy) Texas accent, and Ratchet’s apparently from England. Don’t even ask about Prowl and Wheeljack.

Bay and company’s attitude towards the titular characters is best summed up by an embarrassing scene where the Autobots sneak around Sam’s yard, trying to hide from his parents. Likewise, the production staff seems embarrassed to be making a movie about cartoon characters. The irony is that Michael Bay feels embarrassed by something besides himself. He’s a fortysomething with long hair whose movies feature so many fast cars and faster women that they’re basically mid-life crises.

Shia LaBeouf with beautiful mannequin Megan Fox.

Does accuracy matter, though? Was the original Transformers tv show that good? Why, yes, of course! It was groundbreaking television that meticulously synthesized the visual idioms of Sergei Eisenstein and Fritz Lang, all while making the viewer smell like a spring rain! What the f**k do you think, of course the original tv show wasn’t that great. It was a kids’ show. But you know what? None of us cared. We still loved it. There’s a reason why, too.

In their own commercialized way, the Transformers were our generation’s epic. America in the 1980s wasn’t exactly in touch with its literary heritage. By the late 80s, Homer and Vergil had become dirty words on college campuses. King Arthur and Sir Roland were white-as-rice relics unworthy of an “enlightened” society. Heroes were passé anachronisms easily dismissed by Deconstructionist theories. The need for heroes, however, refused to die. Into the void stepped the cartoon characters of the 1980s—Optimus Prime and co. included. They were colorful, simple, and virtuous. They were just what young boys needed.

Cooler than Clint Eastwood and Bruce Lee times a gajillion.

This is why grown men still wear Autobot t-shirts. It’s why so many children of the 80s stubbornly hold onto their animated childhood favorites. We didn’t have Arthur and Mordred, we had Optimus and Megatron. The dialogue was goofy and the animation was bad, but Transformers got the important stuff right. It was many a child’s crash course in good and evil. Megatron was manipulative and rotten. Optimus was honest and self-sacrificing. Simplistic, sure, but little kids can’t always handle shades of morality. If they could, Disney would have made an animated musical out of Crime and Punishment. Young kids need a hero who, like Optimus, can be a grief counselor one moment and George Patton the next. Like any great character, he had heart. Too bad one can’t say the same for Bay’s latest effort.

Worth the money? No, and it’s not worth the time, either. Two and a half hours? That’s more than enough time to practice your eighteenth-century pistol dueling, or at least turn some poor schmuck’s gun the right way.