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Friday, June 24, 2011

Transformers, No. 3 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (need I really go into its backstory? No!) is the poster movie for the “just turn off your brain and enjoy” school of film watching. Amongst many thoughtful movie fans, it has generated an intense amount of hatred, with which I agree, though hopefully with moderation. As a sequel to Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen errs in a lot of significant ways. It doesn’t repeat to an absurd degree, possibly because even the relatively more stately Transformers is already a freeform jazz sort of blockbuster. Rather, Revenge of the Fallen takes the classic sequel maxim of going bigger, as director Michael Bay tests just how much bigger it can possibly become, but in a way that is still strangely mellow and inconsequential.

By sacrificing nearly every sane thought in human history in its quest to achieve every horrible sequel sin possible, Revenge of the Fallen loses the following – story, plot, characters, emotion, basic comprehensibility. Even while at least one lesson was learned – the action is clearer, especially in regards to the robots. Plus I took several Advils before this movie, and didn’t drink. Everything else is just a magnification of the rather damning faults already present in all “Transformers” media.

It’s like a litmus test. At what point do you totally bail on Revenge of the Fallen, or can you follow its arbitrary form of explosion-based stream-of-consciousness all the way to the overblown finale? For me, there are intentional moments of rule-breaking (changing continent in mid-scene with no justification, or altering the universe’s rules for a single set piece), almost as though Bay knew the challenge he was creating for calmer, more rational viewers. Do you surrender entirely to the willful anti-intellectualism of Revenge of the Fallen, or do you draw the line and say “No, I like a good popcorn movie, but even these unpretentious films need to respect their audiences to at least some degree?”

Because Revenge of the Fallen is, by design, an exercise in thumbing its nose at good storytelling (while embracing purely technical skill), it is not sporting to approach the film by standard means. As often individual shots have no greater context, rather I choose to just pick out random moments of known idiocy. Sometimes I shall just nitpick…

- 10,000 B.C. one-upped with a 17,000 B.C. intro, to no end

- The setting is now “today,” as opposed to Transformers’ “present day”

- General masses of collateral damage left unaddressed

- “Punk-ass Decepticon.”

- Sam’s (Shia LeBrlspltttt) parents maintain an obsession with rap culture

- Perpetual gay Chihuahua dog anus sodomy:

- Random object found (sliver of the Cube) just in time for the sequel, and never sooner

- Single scene Gremlins plagiary wedged in

- The state of alien knowledge changes in each scene, with hugely varying degrees of acceptance

- Bumblebee’s voice, though restored at end of Transformers, is gone again

- Sam gives up Megan Fox (Megan Fox) and a sentient transformin’ car for a frattastic college freshman experience, simply to artificially return us to “relatability”

- References to “the president” seem a preemptive rejection of Obama’s anticipated pacifism, following Transformers’ “parody” of Bush

- Sam’s mother buys “pure Hawaiian green” marijuana brownies, having missed all pop culture since 1936. As proof this is not our physical universe, the marijuana affects her like methamphetamines, which entirely demands a multi-minute detour, because this movie isn’t 147 minutes long or anything

- A Decepticon “camouflaged” as a gigantic metallic saber-toothed tiger doesn’t really make logical sense, but that’s consistent with the toy line

- Humans can rarely see Decepticons hiding in plain sight, because to them the CGI is not yet rendered

- Decepticons can now also transform into humans (specifically, supermodel blondes, for those odd males without a taste for Megan Fox), in keeping with no preexisting brand lore I am aware of. This fembot was presumably enrolled in advance at Random Generic East Coast College just in case Sam went there, and just in case Arbitrary Shard Rules X, Y and Z were to occur…or something

- Bumblebee cockblocks

- Bumblebee ejaculates on the fembot

- Autobots hide in a massive photogenic graveyard without repercussion (“without repercussion,” the Automot mantra)

- The screenwriters cannot do basic arithmetic (though they do cop to this), as 5 – 1 + 1 ≠ 6. Though maybe Decepticons count differently

- A general observation: The plot conditions change roughly every 5 to 10 minutes as it conveniences the latest pre-shot set piece

- Sam cannot stand Dwight K. Shrute, professor. Instead one of those loopy plot tumors inspires him to act out – i.e. to combine his mother’s stoned capering with LeBooooooooof’s Ian Malcolm

- “Standing up on web-chat dates” is now the grist for major emotional arcs!

- More traditionally, so does a male’s inability to mouth the word “love”

- “What’re ya lookin’ at, slobberpuss?”

- “Ow, that’s my eye, you crazy bitch!”

- Director in-jokes are usually hidden in some way

- The fembot reads textbooks on astrophysics. In America, this is how you know somebody is evil

- The fembot runs through a Terminator/Species “homage” (read: rip-off), which would completely upend the rules of this universe/franchise, if they were to ever to commit to an idea for longer than one scene. ADHD must be an entertaining condition!

- Sam vomits randomly. I do not remember this from the theatrical cut!

- In most movies, the hero dangling hundreds of feet in the air would have some excitement to it. Michael Bay’s approach kills that connection – a problem he shares with the Star Wars prequels

- Sam undergoes a variation on that “swallowed biomechanical insect” scene early in The Matrix, the assumption here (as when any movie is stolen from) is that Bayification makes a scene automatically better

- Optimus Prime dukes it out with multiple Decepticons in a forest, and I genuinely have no complaints

- …until I realize all other Autobots are lost in a continuity error, in order to facilitate Optimus’ rather early death (in keeping with The Transformers: The Movie)

- It has been shown robots can be resurrected by pieces of other robots, as with Megatron’s return; this will for whatever reason not work for Optimus. It has been stated Sam’s Cube Shard can restore robot life; this will for whatever reason not work for Optimus. What was that about the plot proceeding arbitrarily?

- The Decepticons just ripped down an American flag! That’s the last straw!

- France is a land of mimes, snails, and incomprehensible words. This is the live action, serious version of Team America

- Oh look, Michael Bay is destroying Paris…again

- The Decepticons just murdered at least 7,000 people randomly, without provocation, and without ultimate dramatic implication. At least it makes for a nifty special effect

- Skids and Mudflap:

- “That’s old school, yo.” “Read? We – we – we really don’t do so much readin’. Not so much.” “That’s ‘cause you a pussy.”

- John Turturro’s glorious wedging back in

- The movie has circled around a deep, dark conspiracy. As with all movies which do that, it turns out to be ancient alien architects. Why do people keep insisting the Egyptians couldn’t construct their own buildings?!

- “Wanna throw down, you pubic fro head?”

- Ass:

- The Shard, which might’ve been used to revive Optimus, is used instead to revive Jetfire, who reveals how to revive Optimus.

- Opening the doors of Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian reveals an airfield in Arizona. This decision was made solely for the better visuals

- A Decepticon (but not Megatron) humps Megan Fox’s leg

- Jetfire farts a parachute

- Jetfire teleports everybody to Egypt, even though he is a jet, an event which has never happened before, and never shall again, because the plot…

- “You landed on my testicles.”

- The Sahara is mistaken for Las Vegas, reflecting the characters’ small reference pool

- “Beginning. Middle. End. Facts. Details. Condense. Plot. Tell it.” A rare lucid moment from our screenwriters?

- Plot, revealed 90 minutes in: A million billion jillion years ago, possibly during the 15th century, the Deceptoboticons hid a sun-destroying machine within Egypt’s pyramids, for shits and giggles mostly, and to fuel a sequel, should the need someday arise. The titular Fallen wants to destroy our Sun, for Energon, but he needs the Matrix of Leadership, hidden a whole several miles away from the pyramids, inside Sam’s mind, and…Okay, re-simplifying: MUST STOP BAD GUYS

- Car chase: 25 seconds

- An Egyptian midget is played for laughs

- Sam and Megan Fox have their first opportunity for a calm heart-to-heart, in reference to something which happened an hour ago (movie time)

- Petra: within driving distance of Giza

- Skipping DVD. My player has entered self-preservation mode

- The pornographic destruction of the Great Pyramid proceeds for our delectation, with an expected minimum of cultural sensitivity.

- Oh hey, Luxor is also right next door to Giza!

- Marines arrive with Optimus’ body, for Sam to somehow revive (in a way even Sam doesn’t understand). Rather than airdrop it right next to Sam, they drop it several miles away, so Sam can race through an action sequence first

- Winds strong enough to suction up entire vans, but not Turturro

- Oh hey, Sam’s parents are here in Egypt now!...for whatever reason

- “I don’t know what’s going on!” More self-aware dialogue

- Military pornography. I’m impressed Bay held that load for so long

- Decepti-scrotum!

- This action sequence has been going on for twenty-five minutes, which is enjoyable in that lizard sort of way. It also temporarily cripples the critical facilities

- Sam dies and goes to Transformers Purgatory (!), which is apparently exactly what was needed to bring both himself and Optimus Prime back to life

- “Fulfill your destiny.”

- “This was always your destiny.”

- “Let’s roll.”

- With nigh a half hour of buildup, Optimus flies in to do battle at once with both Megatron and the Fallen. Oh, this is gonna be utterly kick-a- Oh wait, it’s over already…

- Sam loves Megan Fox, a touching and permanent moment – until Dark of the Moon

Many smart people I know have the enviable skill of being able to fully embrace Revenge of the Fallen on its own terms. They possibly notice the obvious plot holes and awkward non-plot, but don’t see that as important – not when shit blows up real good-like. I do not share this skill. When watching it with them (that’s back in 2009, shuffling to the theater with the same resigned sense of duty as we all once brought to Attack of the Clones), it was nearly an out-of-body experience. Am I that far beyond the average moviegoer? Why am I enjoying the movie purely as a sort of Manos exercise, while others are perfectly pleased to grant it just under a million jillion bazilgzjillion dollars in box office?

Then, two years later, I go and watch The Tree of Life with a like-minded audience of appreciative cineastes, and all is well. I think there’s a value in judging films by their own intent, and embracing an action movie on more simplistic terms than an art film. (I also hold art films to an impossibly higher standard.) Yet I believe that, despite my desires to be cinematically all-embracing, that there are certain movies that are simply worthless…and Revenge of the Fallen sure does straddle that line!

Transformers, No. 3 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Transformers, No. 2 - Transformers (2007)

Where’d the idea of doing a live action Transformers movie come from? Well, nostalgia, the ongoing sense that every revered 1980s property could (nay, should) be brought back for the old audience with a filter of maturity, while also appealing to younger, newer audiences. Filmically, the same rough 2007/8 period renewed Die Hard by Living Free, gave us a Rambo actually called Rambo, and then there was that Indiana Jones movie we shan’t speak of again.

Plus, movie producers are always looking for the latest untapped lode (uh heh heh) from which to pilfer. Within the larger post-millennial period which Transformers defines, they’ve gone to theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean), comic strips (Garfield), and soon enough we’ll get an influx of board game movies (Battleship, et al). (Comic book movies barely count, as they are genuinely respectable.) Of course, earlier periods produced occasional “odd source” movies, like Clue or Mars Attacks! (both of them awesome), but without the prominent ubiquity of the ‘00s.

And Transformers represents the “toy line” side of that thought process, though to say this ignores the Hasbro’s innumerable TV and comic manifestations – to say nothing of The Transformers: The Movie. Any promising source is worth doing repeatedly – hence Hasbro also created the live action G.I. Joe, initially switched out for Transformers thanks to goddamned Saddam Hussein. In a similar(ish) vein, there would’ve been the now-scrapped Thundercats flick, plus one only assumes “My Little Pony,” “Candyland,” and in ten years we’ll all be even the wiser.

Ah, but Transformers…Doing this property in live action is indeed a good idea – I say, willfully ignoring what’s been done. To begin with, the allure of specifically a live action film (as opposed to more animation, likely for TV or DTV or HDTV) is the sense that it is the official story – Obviously no pragmatic adaptation can be perfect, but more people will know it, give it more credence, and thus the Transformers characters enter the mainstream consciousness as never before. It’s a sort of pinnacle, or tent pole, to increase awareness of lesser “Transformers” entities – as a Hasbro business decision, with no question as to artistry, this is a sound choice.

Plus, live action demands discipline in a way animation doesn’t – even with a budget as permissive as Transformers’. With limited resources, and the need for relative realism, bombast becomes grounded. A strange thing to say, I know, about any Michael Bay movie – for now I point out what everyone knows going in, that Michael Bay directed Transformers. And while Bay’s approach is the furthest from disciplined, the medium does it for him. The Movie, for its hallowed position amongst nostalgists, is just as hyperkinetic and sugar-rushed, in its 1980s way, so Bay is actually a good choice to update and modify what seems to be the franchise’s main mode – for better or worse.

Helping out Transformers the most, conceptually, is its need to go mainstream. I know, hear me out! With an excessive budget, Transformers cannot just appeal to pre-initiates as The Movie does; it must balance that sort of hardcore fan with the absolute ignorantsia. Thus Transformers, under the guidance of executive producer Steven Spielberg (it’s perpetually odd to think he and Bay aligned), focuses upon humans – It’s Blockbuster 101: Devise an outrageous premise (in this case, space-faring giant robots that have evolved naturally to turn into 20th century Earth vehicles), and present it normally. Transformers then eliminates a lot of the zanier “Transformers” baggage, such as a space setting, or the Transformer sub-groups (Insecticons, Dinobots, most anything post-Generation 1). Instead Transformers takes place on Earth. In the present day. Humans are the main characters.

That last part is a major sticking point for many “Transformers” faithful, for whom Optimus Prime is Jesus Christ. But this is the sort of necessary trade off one makes in adapting “Transformers” to live action, since the title characters are expensive: CGI behemoths whose rendering process is known to blow up computers (because Michael Bay needs explosions everywhere).

Though this is…an avoidable problem…The Transformer redesigns are hideous, a fallout of Bay’s insistence (back when he was surprisingly reticent to shepherd a “stupid toy movie,” he being so mature and all) that the Transformers be believable. By “believable” he means technically so, thus an undue amount of effort was put into making robots which could actually transform – and then squelching that effort anyway, by making the transformations superfast and totally incomprehensible. The result is a bunch of visual diarrhea, a baroque spiky nightmare which (honestly) is a lot more coherent on my television than it was in the theater. Anyway, these complex, complex designs are harder to render, so the Transformers are given less screen time as a result – no time to make a dramatic impact (in keeping, frankly, with The Movie).

(Complexity-for-believability is Bay’s chief contribution, and it doesn’t work. It especially jibes poorly with how he shoots the frequent – but not frequent enough – robot fights, as though from a puny human’s point of view. It’s simply difficult to parse out. On the big screen, this technique gave me the single worst headache of my life. Yes, Transformers is literally the most painful movie I’ve ever seen – though my choice to drink a yard of Blue Moon and sit in the front row didn’t help.)

Oh wait, I’m nitpicking fundamentally flawed character design, when perhaps we ought to take a step back and consider the larger concept of Transformers. If we accept the need to stick with humans, a new narrative must be devised. While Transformers still tells of Autobots and Decepticons, we take a human perspective. How would humans perceive two warring robot factions?

There are two approaches. The Spielberg approach does like E.T., and tells of a boy’s first car – a universal (enough) story. Then the car turns out to be alive and, unlike in Christine, it’s good, leading the boy into an ever-expanding universe. It just happens to be “Transformers.” It also just happens to be a narrative which celebrates blind consumerism, which is in Hasbro’s interest.

The Bay approach highlights military hardware, because he has a nine-hour erection for the U.S.’s military industrial complex, and an unquestioning faithfulness to our recent the icky imperialistic politics. So he shows soldiers in Qatar (further subtitled as “the Middle East,” because we have the IQs of lobsters) fighting an alien invasion – of robots.

Neither of these approaches really meshes with the other, so naturally Transformers does both of them…at once. The military angle affords Bay an opening action sequence, but at the expense of further wonder or discovery (though the preview trailers have already sabotaged that emotion to begin with). His tale of warfare, entirely independent of the other plot threads until well over halfway through, also grants Bay the chance to cut away whenever Spielberg’s domestic suburban tale isn’t hypermacho enough (i.e., “not enough military”). Considering Bay’s exclusive marketing agreement with the armed forces (essentially), lotsa pointless military porn was probably inevitable. ‘Merica – FUCK YEAH! Of course it has nothing to do with “Transformers.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles of course, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf , a stuttering young Jewish actor who reminds Spielberg of a falsely “manly” version of his younger self, and does nothing for anyone else) wants a car. He gets a car. Fascinating! Specifically, he gets Bumblebee, now a Camaro because of an unavoidable GM tie-in – this is consumerist hagiography, and “better” than The Movie simply by being a more sophisticated commercial, for more products. In the long run, Sam does learn that his car lives, and seeks a mystical space MacGuffin (the All Spark, available now at Pep Boys). Meanwhile, Sam romances Mikaela (Megan Fox – no comment), which doesn’t feel like the usual tacked-on blockbuster romance because A) Sam is clearly just filmmaker wish fulfillment, and B) Mikaela gets us as close to pornography as the PG-13 rating will allow.

There is the promise of…some sort of movie in Sam’s antics. One can see the Spielbergian heart buried deep under all the chrome, and wonders how J.J. Abrams might’ve handled this same basic movie. Bay, who is clearly embarrassed by the need to dwell upon a normal teenager, rather dudes up even Transformers’ baseline reality with all sorts of strangeness.

Every time some past event is referenced (an Arctic expedition, football tryouts, the Mars rover), it is shown, for upwards to 10 seconds each – which seems like a very frivolous use of budget. Some of Sam’s tale is told with an attempt at humor, a sort of American Beauty for mouth-breathers. That’s when the movie isn’t randomly attempting, for all of several seconds, to ape Kill Bill – mostly by “borrowing” musical cues.

And the whole movie boasts the same sort of whiggerism I’d identified in Scary Movie 3, the clear product of a white man accidentally misreading “urban” culture. Sam’s comic relief parents (who intermittently shatter whatever “reality” Bay goes for) refer to “bling” and whatnot with utter ignorance; the movie as a whole does similarly, slopping on the surface details of hipness everyplace – e.g. Sam’s love of faded faux-retro T-shirts, which is totally not in keeping with his ostensible “nerdy” persona. Also, his spray-on douche tan. Plus, Bay casts Anthony Anderson, which is automatically evil – especially since he gets a completely isolated “super kewl exxxtreme ballz” hacker subplot.

Actually, to limit myself to the human details, there are a lot of individually indefensible decisions in Transformers:

Bernie Mac (rest his soul) appears as a used car dealer, and forces laffs in, in a way which reflects Bays’ prison shower gang rape conception of komedy. He calls his mother a bitch, berates a Puerto Rican for being a Puerto Rican (or some sort of non-black ethnic). It’s all very ugly.

Anthony Anderson gets largely the same routine with his grandmother, minus the racism. This is the modern equivalent of sambo dancing, a tone-deaf parody of hood rats that somehow is meant to appeal directly to said hood rats.

A U.S. soldier is ridiculed for speaking Spanish, because that’s not a language that is spoken by American citizens. Another soldier is lambasted for having slightly irregular culinary tastes. This is in the film’s first Earth-bound scene, setting the stage for our species as a whole!

Sam has an extended-wannabe-Jeff-Goldblum-stutter-off with a drug-obsessed cop, who likewise exists in some skewed comic reality unrelated to any other scene.

White people, for the most part, are frat boys, a lifestyle which is celebrated. Sam is weaker because he hasn’t fully embraced douchiness yet. His conquest of Mikaela is just one crucial step in his arc towards embracing assholism, Bay-style.

Also, Bumblebee “upgrades’’ from a 1976 Camaro to a 2007 (probably) Camaro, which seems equally distasteful – but maybe that’s just me.

It’s a complete tonal mess! This is what Transformers does. Nothing which happens has any emotional relevance to anything else. Nor plot relevance. For instance, it appears Bay wanted to film a scene of a gremlin-sized Decepticon (that’s Gremlins gremlins, not car Gremlins) – it transforms into a boom box, because that’s “gangsta.” This beast, whose name I dunno, raids Air Force One, simple because. Because Bay wanted to film an Air Force One scene, why not, and toss in an utterly spineless “caricature” of George W. Bush too – The man wants ding-dongs, oh the political commentary!

Then the Transformer robots get sorta halfway almost kinda involved in their own story, and come across badly. Bay doesn’t seem to “get” robots (at least when they’re not military hardware). Despite their transformation camouflage, the Autobots physically hide behind puny hedges. A Transformer is mistaken for the tooth fairy, something which makes zero sense. A Transformer urinates on John Turturro’s head – you don’t fuck with the Jesus! A dog (a Chihuahua, which affords a Taco Bell reference and $) urinates on a Transformer. Assorted childhoods are raped.

This isn’t necessarily what a live action Transformers should’ve been like. Surely, there’s a lot of stupid, stupid stuff in the older series, but that isn’t what’s perpetuated the brand. Nostalgia-wise, memory upgrades the Transformers into something more effective than they really were, and it’s that notion which Transformers should’ve aimed for. For all the “detail as realism” misdirection, Transformers needn’t be this reductive. Raiders of the Lost Ark still stands as what should be done with properties like this – realize the potential of silly old genres, elevate them.

That all being said, revisiting Transformers has been far less painful than I’d anticipated. In light of The Transformers: The Movie, Bay’s magnum Optimus really does feel a little calmer. For newbies it’s approachable, which is surely something can’t be said for other “Transformers” products. As for a lot of the genuine miscalculation, well, that is “Transformers,” only here in its 2007 guise – hip hop and Bush worship and bad comedy, in place of cock rock and Reagan worship and bad comedy.

Transformers, No. 2 - Transformers (2007)

Transformers, No. 1 - The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

It is every film blogger’s occasional joy to run across a complete blind spot. Given my age, interests, and the never-ending rants of the ever-expanding nerds I went to college with, I am somehow a deeply lesser human being for having never seen The Transformers: The Movie – to go by the nerds’ wizened jabberings, the single greatest animated film conceivable.

Actually, I had next to nothing to do with the Transformers brand growing up, except for a few toys I think I must’ve burgled from somebody. But do not weep for a childhood that never happened, because every young boy has two possible career options: be a giant truck, or a dinosaur. I was a dinosaur. My hosannas then and now go out to the almighty Turtles – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to the layman. That’s when I wasn’t intentionally wrecking my childhood with R-rated junk instead (e.g. RoboCop), so a single cartoon utterance of “Oh shit!” probably wouldn’t have even phased me.

Time to do my penance for pop cultural ignorance, and probe this Transformers trend…

It all began as a toy! In an eternal tale of inspiration, in 1984 Hasbro proved Orwell right and acquired preexisting molds from Japan (MicroChange, which spun-off from Diaclone, which spun-off from Microman, which spun-off from G.I. Joe). The toys: robots which could transform. Hasbro’s witty contribution was to call said transformers “Transmorphers” – er, no, “Transformers.”

Largish robots that can turn into cars, and vice versa – it’s a truck enthusiast’s automotive wet dream. To fuel and overwrite children’s playtime fantasies, Hasbro commissioned a story for their semi-Japanese-ish car-bot-itrons. These guys were involved: Jim Shooter, Dennis O’Neil, Bob Budiansky. (Through advance research, it seems I am a worthless scrap of meat for not knowing that a priori.) Thus there are two robot factions, the Autobots and the Decepticons, who battle each other…over energy resources. Despite seemingly interchangeable tactics, one side is good and angelic, and the other side as evil as Pazuzu. The Decepticons, because their innate ancestral name sounds like the English Earth word “deceive,” are the “bad” ones. And…let the hyperactive schoolboys choose their allegiances!

The toy line lead swiftly to a TV show, “The Transformers” (“Fight! Super Robot Life Form Transformer” in Japan, which is an infinitely cooler name). Plus, such publicity leads to more toys purchased, which a cynic without a childhood to rape (i.e. me) would point to as the ultimate goal. For this great mid-‘80s renaissance of product promotional programming, we can thank regulators for lifting a previous ban on such glorious capitalism. (Thanks to “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero,” because you cannot oppose crass marketing in light of such patriotism!)

The show, by all evidence, explores the war twixt Autobots and Decepticons over the planet Cybertron. It is contemporarily set, with scant Earth humans from the Witwicky family in there not to be further toys (though who really knows), but to entice those weirdos not auto(bot)matically interested in robots. Robo-wise, the cast is massive, to reflect each and every toy available for purchase at your local participating toy emporium: Optimus Prime, Brawn, Bluestreak, Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Gears, Hound, Huffer, Ironhide, Jazz, Mirage, Prowl, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Trailbreaker, Wheeljack, Windcharger, Hauler, and those are only the good guys, and only from the pilot.

Imagine now, as we artlessly jump ahead to 1986’s big damn theatrical The Transformers: The Movie, an uninformed viewer suddenly plunged into a universe more overloaded than the one outlined above. This is the effect of attempting to watch The Movie now without proper grounding. As animated by Japan’s Toei (though an English-language American release), the Transformers characters are…difficult to tell apart. The movie makes no appeals to newbies, no effort at introductions or explanations. It is mostly by color that I can pick out at least the most important characters (Optimus, Megatron, Hot Rod, Starscream)…though one could complain similarly about the Turtles, I suppose.

The voice cast is really show-offy – among others, Peter Cullen, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, Frank Welker, Eric Idle – in perhaps an effort to create some personality distinction. For whatever reason, the DVD’s vocal synch doesn’t work, so this one is screwed up – with hilarious results! Plus, stiff robot faces aren’t the most expressive, so it’s hard sometimes to know which head is yakking anyway.

I feel rather like Stan in “South Park’s” recent “You’re Getting Old” – exposed to entertainment so clearly not meant for me, as it’s both juvenile and instantly time-stamped. Everything throughout feels like the same bombastic visual and aural noise (no, I’m not yet reviewing the Michael Bay efforts). The Movie is no doubt designed for those consumers already initiated in the “Transformers” world – the “Generation 1” world specifically, though they didn’t know that at the time.

The animation is the perfect representative of “Super Robot Seizure Happy Time Hour” – flashing lights and visual dissonance, done with admittedly some budget for a mid-level Japanese 1986 production, but wholly cluttered to behold.

The soundtrack is inundated with period power ballads, and assorted sub-New Wave synth what-have-you. “The Touch,” Stan Bush’s central tune (originally meant, amusingly, for Stallone’s Cobra), is the sort of inspirational pap Daniel La Russo wouldn’t be caught dead training to. Plus, it’s sorta awesome. The entirety of every scene is pumped to full volume with it and similar noise, forever overpowering the hard efforts of the voice cast. (To say nothing of including “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Dare to be Stupid,” which I like – because it’s “Weird Al” – but is wholly out-of-place near the climax of a self-serious American mecha monstrosity.)

Individually, the story works just like the songs or the visuals – that is, at 11, independently trying to overwhelm the senses with so much spectacle and event and detail that one is never able to get a grasp of what exactly is happening. Or at any rate, my laid back adult mind cannot do this – The whole of The Movie plays like the fever sugar rush babbling of an explosion-happy six-year-old, which no doubt explains its appeal to those who were that age in that year…a limited, niche audience, to be sure.

Here’s what I could figure out: The always-hungry, planet-devouring Unicron (voiced by the similarly omnivorous Orson Welles, who then died) threatens to destroy the peaceful tranquility of the Autobot-Decepticon war. It is also the distant future year of 2005 now, allowing for a heady combination of robots and hoverboards and prophetic Bush satire (okay, only the first two).

Meanwhile…okay, I think it’s all action sequences from here on out. Anyway, assorted cartoon robots launch special effects towards each other, eventually Unicron is turned into something else all explodey, and…a whole shitload of main characters die!

Okay, The Movie is famous for decimating the “Transformers” lineup, in a cruel act of attrition which utterly devastated many ‘80s boys – Imagine if you first learned about death through the passing of Optimus Prime. Seen in isolation, and with recourse to other period anime features with more decidedly mature tones, one (myself) barely grasps the gravity of all this. Part of it is…I sometimes cannot tell if someone is dying. Honestly, I think there’s something wrong with my brain, that the boundless, uncontrolled energy of The Movie is more confusing than the zanier efforts of a Lynch or a Cronenberg.

Besides, going in I already understood the true motive behind animated mass murder: TOYS! The Transformers: The Movie was put out in the summer between the second and third seasons of the TV show, which is a familiar pattern for – yes – the era’s anime films. (See, e.g., “InuYasha.”) The Movie is subservient to the show, which is subservient to the toy line – and toy lines must renew themselves with time, lest the eternal capitalist impulse dry up without new products. So while artistically the show might’ve wished to continue developing its established cast, each new toy means a new character, and it demands the removal of an old character.

So The Movie is really a filmed product announcement, one you have to pay to see. Only no child heading into theaters knew this – they simply knew they’d be seeing their favorite soulless robot heroes in a glorified adventure. Who’da thunk the freedoms of cinema (over kid-vid Saturday morning TV) meant mecha mortality.

And here are the new toys (er, characters) The Movie establishes: Hot Rod, Kup, Bluur, Arcee, Springer, Ultra Magnus, Wreck-Gar, Wheely, Steeljaw, Ramhorn, Eject, Rewind, the Sharkticons. (God, these names!) I get all this info from outside research, because there’s nothing in the film which makes it remotely that clear. Plus, certain former characters aren’t quite killed, but rather “promoted” into “new” consumer-dictated figurines: Megatron becomes Galvatron, and some other misspellings change as well.

And there’s something called the Matrix of Leadership, and I’m sure it makes sense if I could parse out its exposition over the cock rock. As it is, that just sounds like some phraseology from a business retreat.

“More than meets the eye.” “Robots in disguise.” The central concept of “Transformers” isn’t anathema to something a little less batshit nutsazoid. Robots hidden among us…this opens up a rich fantasy reverie, and is obviously the engine behind the ongoing franchise. Too bad the facts of toy production dictate continuous elaboration, which turns – in no time flat! – into lunacy. To capture a new market share, Hasbro invented new sub-lines of Transformers such as the Insecticons or the…er, the Dinosauriconobotics. (Sorry, “Dinobots.”) Also the Constructicons, and probably something called the Comiconitrons.

So…giant robots morphing into giant dinosaurs. It’s cool, in that reductive, maniac sort of way, but these ideas do rather undercut believability. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this overstuffed world was/is the appeal. Maybe it’s more fun to see gigantic robots on alien planets, where their scale is equivalent to the local architecture, as opposed to on Earth where they look massive. All these things which alienate me, which make me hear farting noises, could be what’s fun about the brand.

And moving on briefly beyond The Movie…“The Transformers” continued on TV for two more seasons. Assorted spinoffs then emerged in Japan, but we expect the Japanese to do silly things to begin with. The line bifurcated within the U.S. as well, creating numerous new animated shows and toy lines and comic book continuities, all distinct from each other, except when they’re not. To wit, there’s “Beast Wars,” “Robots in Disguise,” “Armada,” “Energon,” “Cyberton,” and something simply called “Transformers: Animated,” even though all of those are animated. And those are just – I think – the shows. All hail Hasbro, which develops ideas like tumors! Each new line is a chance for new customers – renewing a fan base is one approach, unlike most series which try to maintain a single audience long term.

And then there’s the live action franchise, which is a separate bag of bolts…

Friday, June 24, 2011

Transformers, No. 3 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Transformers, No. 3 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Transformers, No. 2 - Transformers (2007)

Transformers, No. 2 - Transformers (2007)

Transformers, No. 1 - The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

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