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In fact, I’m sitting around wondering when I’m going to get to see it again (because that beats sitting around worrying whether my passport will come in time for my honeymoon). There are a number of reasons why I enjoyed it so much, and I think a lot of the criticisms people have of the picture comes from misguided nostalgia.
If you’re not aware, there’s been quite an internet furor over many aspects of the movie. Everything has been debated, from the choice of director (“Michael Bay is a hack! He doesn’t know what he’s doing!”) to the designs for the robots (“Flames on Optimus Prime?! That’s worse than nipples on Batman!”) to the types of the Transformers picked (“Starscream was an F-15, not an F-22!” “Why the hell doesn’t Megatron transform into a gun?!”) to the actors (“Shia LeBarf?! Please!”).
I have read serious complaints that the flames on Optimus Prime do not hold true to the original personality of the character. Such complaints make me laugh. The original personality of the character was a one-dimensional stereotype, conceived in a rush for children who see the world in black and white, and who had parents with money they wished to spend on toys.
Even the script, once leaked, was scrutinized and criticized as being terrible. But through all of this, I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about… and I loved Transformers just as much as any kid in the ’80s. In fact, at one point during my youth I actually had a dream that I owned Blitzwing, the Triple Changer, only to be incredibly disappointed to the point of tears once I woke up and went to retrieve him from my toy shelf. And while I don’t see my opinion as being more valid than anyone else’s, I really can’t see what all the fuss is about when fans throw a fit over something like Transformers.
Lord of the Rings? Sure. Harry Potter? Maybe. But Transformers? Come on, really.
To put Transformers in perspective: Adherence to the “source material” is not really all that important. This is not an adapted novel or comic, where a singular artist toiled for months or years (or decades) to carefully hone characters and drama, and there exists an intricately crafted story that deserves respect in translation to film. This is a marketing hype movie based on source material that was marketing hype from twenty years ago.
Let’s face it, the original Transformers cartoon was drivel. It was three seasons of twenty-two minute commercials for toys that became both increasingly expensive and more shoddy. The stories were hastily-written and badly animated justifications for particular characters whose toys were already in production. If you’re not familiar with the sordid history of the Transformers, let me fill you in: In 1983, Hasbro took a bunch of pre-existing Japanese robot toys and lumped them together for sale in the USA. In order to better sell them, they got in touch with Marvel comics to come up with some character names and backgrounds, found some cheap animators, and launched a marketing blitz on the unsuspecting male youth of the nation. And man, it worked.
So for two years they added new characters to the cartoon, as the introduced more and more of the Japanese toys to the American shelves, and we ate it up and ate it up. Then in 1986, they released a feature-length version, in which many of the old characters were killed and new ones were introduced, forcing us to abandon the first waves of toys and replace them with the new ones.
To sum up: The source material of Transformers is tripe. Don’t get me wrong, it was enormously entertaining tripe that I remember fondly, but tripe nonetheless. Adherence to the source material, in this case, would mean making a two-hour commercial for a group of toys, with a bunch of explosions thrown in to keep our eyes open. And, hell, that’s exactly what they made with the film.
Now, my personal reaction to the movie is mixed. First off, design-wise I think everything was right on target. I actually prefer that the characters look nothing like the Generation 1 toys. The less toy-like, more organic look to the robots is something that I sort of missed as a kid. I was always kind of disappointed that the toys didn’t look like real creatures, they looked like… well, toys. So in order to sell the reality of the special effects, they took an animate-first approach to the designs, rather than adapting pre-existing toys for animation models. Spot on.
Action-wise, I was blown away. Blackout’s attack on the Qatar base was so overwhelming, particularly the distance shots of the facility being leveled by one central figure. I loved the fight with Bumblebee and Barricade (Bumblebee was my first Transformer and I’ll always have a soft spot—and no, I don’t mind him being a Camaro at all) and the fantastic city battles at the end.
The montage scene of the Autobots arriving on Earth was fantastic.
And by the way, movie gods, thank you for Peter Cullen.
What I could do without is the long drawn-out attempts at humor. Particularly the “hide-the-giant-robots” scene in the Witwicky’s yard that seemed to drag on for about an hour. Also I wish Turturro had played his character straight (like every other government agent in the movie)—since his organization was in possession of Megatron, his bumbling cheeseball-ness undermined the Decepticons as threats.
Otherwise, bravo Michael Bay, Hasbro, GM and DreamWorks! This is Transformers as they always should have been.
I think that same marketing thing happened with My Little Ponies. What? Am I sullying your site with mention of the ponies? :D