Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 44

For fans of the original comic book and cartoon, Transformers couldn’t come soon enough. Moviegoers have been subjected to vague trailers in the cinema for months now.

Now that the movie has arrived and co produced by Steven Spielberg, these fans have something to look forward to.

While I watched Transformers as a Saturday morning cartoon when I was a child, and enjoyed it well enough, as a filler between Bugs Bunny and the Tarzan/Zorro Hour of Power, I wouldn’t call myself a diehard fan. My eleven year old son, wanted to see this live action Transformers, so I gladly took him to the show.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but found out soon enough. I felt as if I were bombarded with every stereotype of American excess for about two and half hours. This movie didn’t seem so much to me a story about alien robots, chasing what amounts to be a giant car battery, but a subtle commercial about the American military. Great amounts of footage were shown of the men in middle east, a sort of GI Joe, halcyon setting with men showering, and floating about in plastic inflatable pools. It made me think of MASH in the middle east. There was even a scene, designed to touch the sentimental, of one of the men, talking to his wife and newborn baby girl (whom he had not yet met) over a web cam. For some reason, this touch of humanity failed to evoke the emotions, that director Michael Bay had hoped for. All of this rah rah rah’ American military, support for the war on Iraq and Afghanistan fell short. It rang hollow. The attempt vaguely reminded me of second world war propaganda pictures, created to bolster the flagging optimism of a nation and build support for the war effort.

Everything in this movie carried an American connotation to it, right down to the young hero’s name being Sam. This unlikely young man, wasn’t your typical hero, or anything special. His claim to fame were his great grandfather’s deeds, that he thought so highly of, that he tried to hock family heirlooms over Ebay, in order to buy a car. The discoveries Sam’s great grandfather made in the Arctic Circle were what ultimately led the Autobots to search Earth.

Speaking of cars, every one of the cars in the movie, save for a very brief drive by of a Porsche dealership were American heavy metal cars, including Bumblebee the autobot who turned into a yellow Camero. There was a constant and reinforced message, that everything was more than it seemed. For example the Daisy Duke look alike,