Transformers and the Birth of Our Nation

I will offer my obligatory Transformers review.

First and foremost, I did not watch the cartoon as a child. I got three and a half channels growing up as a child, and none of them offered Transformers. Thus, I am entering into this with no fanboy preconceptions, prejudices or even predilections. I don't care that Optimus Prime had flames painted on him and wasn't a flat-nosed semi. I went into this cold. Add to that the fact that I don't think I've seen a movie in a theatre since 300, and I was truly coming into this with my tabla completely rasa-ed. I wanted to love this film. For me, it was all about giant robots whomping on other giant robots.

Unfortunately, there was not the density of robot whomping I had hoped for. The film clocks in with a runtime of 144 minutes, and somewhere within that time span is a good 100 minute movie. Unfortunately (at least for me) there are those annoying 44 minutes of "humor" and "not robot fighting." I sat through much of the film waiting for a giant, metallic fist to drop into frame and crush people making lame jokes. That giant fist never materialized. Ironically Michael Bay, the king of over-editing, could have made a few more cuts in this.

Here's a quick rundown that shoudl tell you everything you need to know. SPOILERS AHEAD.

1. Humanity's biggest problem is not the fact that they cannot develop technologically advanced, transforming robots. Humanity's biggest problem is that house-sized, technologically advanced, transforming robots can be fighting ten feet away and no one seems to notice.

Seriously. How stoned are the people in this film that they don't see/hear/feel the vibrations from the 40 ton robots stomping through their backyards? These robots didn't need to transform into cars and planes to hide, they just needed to pull a gigantic baseball cap down low over their glowing eyes and act casual--or perhaps hold up a newspaper. Why? Because apparently earth is populated by idiots.

They're giant, fighting robots. We don't want to see them hide. We want to see them walk into the middle of a crowded, open-air market and say, "I am a giant fighting robot. I have no need to hide. There is nothing you can do to stop me. Come get some." That's why Megatron was cool. At least he understood that he was a giant, fighting robot.

2. The plot actually gets in the way of the plot.

I get it. The writers wanted the movie to have a cool story. They wanted people to say, "Whoa! That's so cool." You know what would have made me say that? More robots whomping on other robots.

We get some Joseph Campbell Hero With a Thousand Faces action thrown in, more characters than you can shake a stick at, and plot lines that literally disappear because even the writers didn't care anymore.

Here are some questitons to ask yourself after you see the movie:

- We are told that Megatron's plan was to come to earth and use the Allspark to turn earth's machines against humanity. Then why is it he came to earth and was frozen before we had developed electronics?

- Whatever happened to Anthony Anderson and the most unrealistically attractive British hacker chick in history?

- Remember when all the machines came to life and started attacking people? Then remember how less than thirty seconds later they all just disappeared? Remember how there was a lot more fighting between Optimus and Megatron before the whole battle ended, but we never saw any more of the army of machines? What was up with that?

- Did you notice how Shia LaBeouf lived in both the city, and the country?

- Whatever happened to the scorpion robot thing that escaped from the army in Qatar?

- Why would any soldier in his right mind ever decide that the best way to protect humanity from killer robots would be to take the one thing the killer robots wanted and "hide" it in the middle of the largest population center he could find?

- When the government destroys the evidence at the end of the movie, did they also kill the thousands of people who had witnessed a giant robot war that destroyed the better part of a city?

- And the list goes on and on.

3. John Turturro, one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood, apparently thought he was in a different movie than everyone else.

I don't know what movie it was, but it wasn't good. It's like he got on the set and decided, "This is my Showgirls, and I'm Gina Gershon. I'm just gonna ride this wave into shore."

4. Megan Fox is not bad.

Also, she was apparently assembled by a committee of adolescent boys. She manages to make some pretty bad dialogue work admirably. She is helped by the fact that she perpetually wears an expression that makes her look as though she is on the verge of climax.

5. Michael Bay lives in a world where the sun sets suddenly and without warning.

On more than one occasion, we go from broad daylight to the dead of night in a matter of moments. You can argue that there is an implied passage of time, but you'd be wrong. Bay wanted it dark, and it got dark, dammit.

6. The rest of America has a very different sense of humor than I do.

There was a moment when Shia LaBeouf started his new Camaro and a cloud of black smoke belched out of the tailpipe. The girl next to me laughed as though she had just free based the collector's edition DVD of Borat. She laughed at times when I not only thought it wasn't funny, but I couldn't even discern how it was intended to be funny.

7. I swear that one of the robots in the film was the recycled carcass of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.

Also, it was apparently animated by the same puppeteers who ran Stripe in Gremlins.

8. Apparently, a robot war can break out on the freeway, and no one will even touch their brakes.

I reflexively hit my brakes if I see a squirrel. If a dump truck turned into a robot and cut a bus in half, I'd at least put on my blinkers.

9. Transformers are invincible to human weapons--unless you ride slide under them on a motorcycle and shoot them with the same gun you've been shooting them with all along.

I know, I know. He says their armor is weaker underneath, so if you shoot up, it will harm them. But this fails to take into account the fact that the robots tower over the soldiers, so every shot fired is fired from underneath.

10. I wouldn't have cared about any of this if there had been more robot whomping.

Also, it would have helped if the editing had allowed me to clearly understand the nature of the whomping when it was happening. Hey, Michael Bay. We get it. Just caaaaaaaaalm doooooooown. Let the camera linger for three seconds every once in awhile. After all, you didn't have a problem letting it sit there for an interminable amount of time during your ode to E.T. scene in Shia' bedroom. Why couldn't we have seen a little longer sequence of of Optimus vs. Megatron?



It's a summer movie. There are some robot fights (just not enough) and a cute guy and a ludicrously attractive girl. Eat some popcorn and enjoy. I can't because of who I am and what I do.

Good night, and happy birth of our nation.