“Transformers”: Less than meets the eye

Sorry. I couldn’t resist that title, obvious though it is, because Michael Bay’s Transformers is comfortably the most shallow movie I’ve seen for a long time. It really is a most puzzling film – starting with exactly why it exists – and I’m not entirely sure I can figure it out entirely. I’m going to take a good try at it, though, so expect a SPOILER WARNING (although what exactly counts as a spoiler that wasn’t already shown in the trailers I’m not currently aware) for beyond the jump.

 

Transformers (2007)

[d. Michael Bay / w. Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman (story by John Rogers and Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman) / Paramount, DreamWorks / US]

I knew that when I went to see this film that I had to take it for what it was. It’s a movie based on a TV series based on a toy. It has been in development for years. It only exists because of 80s nostalgia. And the director is Michael Bay.

Now, I never cared about the toy, I didn’t see the cartoon that often and can’t remember a thing about it and the original movie is sitting unwatched on my V+ in order to see whether I dislike it as much as the last time I saw it 10+ years ago. So I went in with only Wikipedia-level knowledge of the original backstory and the knowledge that there are an awful lot of people out there who are very very into Transformers.

Taking these into account, it’s surprisingly fun in a wrong sort of way. But wrong the film is, and how – the closest comparison I can think of is “Independence Day, but some of the aliens are good guys.” Let me count the ways:

1. It’s directed by Michael Bay, ID4 was Dean Devlin, same thing really. Thus the visual style of the film is like watching a 140-minute hair metal video. Not only is there about two different shots every ten seconds, but the camera’s moving at breakneck pace through the shots as well; thus it is often difficult to make out certain important things like which transformer is which, which tank is which, and why exactly we should care.
2. It’s rah-rah-USA-USA-USA! Following on from (1), Bay has used his connections with the US military (who love him for Armageddon) to put on a sickeningly slushy display of overpatriotism with occasional worrying undertones. Now this is only to be expected from this type of Big Action Movie: it follows the Independence Day template to the letter. Which means of course…
3. It also features an Evil Ultra-Secret Government Conspiracy. Here called “Sector 7”. Now most of us would think that this directly contradicts point (2), but in the minds of these writers and Devlin/Emmerich before them it doesn’t. Continuing the ID4 theme…
4. Technobabble and pseudoscience. Actual line given by a supposedly intelligent character in the script: “stop thinking Fourier transforms and start thinking quantum physics”. Of course, Fourier transforms are an important part of quantum physics, as any technical advisor would have told you. And it uses “all the world’s technology was reverse-engineered from this secretly captured alien technology”, again; it’s one of my Least Favourite SF Tropes, and incredibly overused.
5. Very patchy writing. One of the most embarassingly terrible moments in the film is Evil Government Conspiracy Guy (John Turturro) getting pseudourinated on by a Transformer. Most of the film’s attempts at humour, like this, fall flat. At least ID4 was genuinely funny in parts.
6. Almost deliberately screwing up actual facts. The movie’s explanation for how the government know the Decepticons are out there is that “JPL’s” (the Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech) Beagle 2 probe saw a transformer destroy it on Mars, despite the fact that Beagle 2 was (a) European not American, (b) had completely unencrypted traffic so any attempt to cover it up would have been doomed to failure, and (c) didn’t really give off any data at all. Going that far to put in something wrong that didn’t actually need to be there (since we already know the bad guys are here) stinks of arrogance in the writing team.

The writing needs further discussion because the writer of the first draft screenplay, John Rogers, has a very fine blog. He’s also a physics graduate, and as such I doubt the crap science originated from him – today’s entry on the blog discusses a previous movie of his, the entertaining despite itself The Core, and how all the government conspiracy and unphysical crap was inserted into the movie over his protests (it shows it too). It also mentions how one of the many unbelievable howlers in Transformers was inserted later in the script phase than him; also, in an earlier comments section, he mentions that he “didn’t have Sector 7”.

Thus we should aim at Orci and Kurtzman, the credited writers, whose currently produced writing history is this:

• Whole bunch of episodes of Alias (a show about a government conspiracy, created by J.J. Abrams); showrunner roles on same
• Mission: Impossible 3 (featuring a secret government organisation, directed by J.J. Abrams)
• The Island (about a military-industrial conspiracy, directed by M. Bay, horrendous movie)
• The Legend of Zorro (featuring Annoying Comic Horse, not nearly as good as the first one)
• Transformers (featuring a government conspiracy and various Annoying Comic Transformers)

You may notice some themes going through their writing.

Nevertheless, all this criticism is missing the point somewhat. Michael Bay does not, and never has, cared about subtlety, decent dialogue, pseudoscience content or keeping the camera still; Armageddon alone should prove that. What he does care about, which can be seen throughout the movie, is the Spectacular. He likes things blowing up, action sequences of Transformers transforming (which is the only way he can be made to keep his camera still) and large, gleaming boy’s toys.

This is perfect for a Transformers movie. As the credits state, it is “based on the Transformers(tm) action figures from Hasbro”. And that is why the bits of the movie that work work – they all involve blowing things up. ILM have done a fantastic job on the Transformer CGI that manage to make them seem slightly less incongruous in a real world setting than giant alien robots that fold into cars really should. Some of it, despite itself, even manages to be exciting. Quite an incredible achievement, really.

So is it a good movie? Hell no. Is it watchable? Hell yes. Can I understand why? No, not really. The movie really is “less than meets the eye” – it’s dumber than its visuals. There’s even a faint stench of xenophobia, especially in the Middle Eastern sequences. And notice that I’ve only mentioned the humans once in this review? There’s a good reason for that – they’re all average at best, extending to ‘dreadful’ in the case of John Turturro (who deserves better), all outacted by a bunch of voice recordings attached to giant CGI robots.

Transformers is disposable. It’s fast food cinema, and too much of it really will screw up your brain. But if you’re in the market for giant robots, explosions and unintentional laughter, this is the film for you.