You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.-P.T. Barnum
Transformers 2 just broke some kind of opening day box-office record, despite terrible reviews and a questionable director at the helm. Sadly, I contributed to this box-office juggernaut, slapping down 9 bucks to see the premier of it last Wednesday. Not the best decision I've made as it turns out, but in a summer where the best thing to hit theaters is an animated film about a cranky old guy and his boy-scout companion, there aren't a lot of options.
Background: Transformers are possibly the coolest toy ever created. The great thing about the Transformers as toys was their complexity. Most toys are pretty simple. It's usually up to the person playing with them to create the action. The Transformers, however, were complex in and of themselves. Figuring out how to turn a robot into a tank is a fairly difficult task for your average eight year old. They even had stuff like the Constructicons, which you were able to put together to make one giant robot called Devastator (a watered down version was in this movie).
There was also a Transformers animated movie that came out in 1986 which I adored as a child. Definitely not the best movie to bring a ten year old to, but a classic in my book nonetheless. Ostensibly as a way to create a new line toys, the film was tasked with killing off most of the old characters to make room for newer, cooler Transformers. This included (spoiler warning) the death of Optimus Prime and the kind-of death of Megatron. Needless to say, having a beloved television character murdered by his greatest enemy was pretty controversial, and I can only imagining it being traumatizing to many a youngster.
Anyway, getting back to the movie at hand, I enjoyed the first live-action Transformers film when I first saw it. I didn't think it was epic, but that one did a fairly good job with a pretty fantastical premise. I was pretty skeptical going into this one. So, at the risk of rambling on, suffice it to say that I am a huge Transformers fan, and I plan on keeping my toys and my VHS copy of the 86' film until the day I die.
What Worked: The fight scenes are pretty solid. There's a lot of stuff blowing up, at any rate. I mean, there's really an absurd amount of damage dealt out: cities are ruined, entire aircraft carriers are taken out, etc. The CGI is pretty effective. Seeing the robots transform, complete with bad-ass sound effects, is always cool. Oh yeah and this worked pretty well:
Michael Bay may not have made a good movie,but he at least gave us a bevy of opportunities to ogle Megan Fox.
What Didn't Work: The movie is a sequel to the first movie, but it almost feels like a remake in the sense that there's so little that differentiates the two from each other. I don't have a great recollection of the specif plot points from Transformers 1, but I just had the nagging sense while watching that I had seen this movie before.
The Skids and Mudflaps characters have taken a beating for being racially insensitive caricatures of black people. I didn't catch this during the movie, but looking back on it I can totally see that. From Wikipedia: "The characters have been given ape-like appearance, speak in street-slang dialogue, and confess and inability to read." In response, Michael Bay said they were "good clean fun". Not much of a defense.
I mentioned Megan Fox in the "what worked" section solely for her looks. Her acting leaves a lot to be desired. I watched the Big Lebowski the other day, and her acting skills are reminiscent of Tara Reid's Bunny Lebowski in the scene where Maude shows the Dude the porn film with Uri(man that took a lot of explaining, but you know what I'm talking about).
The thing that bothered me the most was the overall tone of the film. A no point in the movie did I feel like there was any real danger. Even in the scene where Sam Whitwicky is on the verge of death , I was thinking "there's no way they're gonna let him die." Even when Optimus Prime died, I knew they'd somehow bring him back to life, I was just waiting to see how it happened. Last summer's big blockbuster, The Dark Knight, was the complete opposite. I had no idea what to expect. I wouldn't have been shocked if Batman had died, or if it was revealed that Alfred and the Joker had been in cahoots the whole time and were plotting to take over the world.
Best Scene: Probably the fight between Optimus Prime and the Decepticons where Optimus gets killed.
Worst Scene: Hmm, I guess I'll go with the entire sequence of events when Sam is at college. Really brutal stuff to sit through, especially at 1 in the morning. Starting with the Sam's dorm was being populated exclusively by models, then the episode with the mom smoking pot, leading up to the ridiculous exchange with the Decepticon disguised as a college student. Just a terrible sequence of events. I'm not expecting a movie about robots that can turn into cars to be picture-perfect representations of reality, but make an effort, man. Also, Transformers cannot turn into humans.
Best Lines: "This is top secret: do not tell my mother" was the only line that I truly laughed at. "Autobots roll out" was a nice throwback to the cheesy lines that dominated the television show.
Worst Lines: Pretty much anything that comes out of Sam's parents' mouths is terrible. These two were moderately funny in the first film, but incredibly annoying in this one.
I don't actually remember hearing this during the film, but in the trailers there's a part where Lennox, the head soldier guy, says, with apparent sincerity "We got a lot of fight coming up" or something along those lines. Terrible.
Unsung Hero: John Turturro is much better in this film than in the previous one. He provides some comic relief that is actually funny, unlike Sam's roomate, his parents, Skids and Mudflap, the annoying dog, etc.
Final Anaylsis: The problem with both of these Transformer movies is that they just do not work in live-action. Transformers 1 got by, I think, because of the novelty of the action sequences. By necessity, the brunt of the story has to fall on the humans in a live-action film, something which was not even close to being the case in the cartoons or the 86' movie. I wouldn't necessarily blame the actors either. Shia LaBeouf does an adequate job, John Turturro is good as usual, Fox is terrible, the army guys are alright. A word about Shia LaBeouf: I think he's a good actor. However, for the past two summers I have seen him in two atrocious movies (this one and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). He was also in Eagle Eye, which was awful.
What's really infuriating about this film is that the one storyline that could have saved the film was destroyed before it ever got off the ground. The Watchmen-esque story featuring the guy who wants to ban the Autobots because they are bringing the Decepticons to Earth was the one part of the plot with any ambiguity to it, but Michael Bay dissolved that one in the bluntest, stupidest way possible: he literally had the guy thrown out of a plane. That about sums up Michael Bay as a director. Rather than letting a nuanced, morally ambiguous plotline develop, Bay chucks it out of a plane.
Grade:3/10
