Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 46

Transformers: More Than Sliced the Eye

In 1929, Luis Bunuel shocked audiences in an early scene from his film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) depicting a women’s eye being sliced open by a razor. The image, now nearly eight decades old, continues to twist viewers in their seats. In the realm of special effects, its achievement depends more on the expectations of the viewer than the technical production. The actual image shown on the screen is of a dead cow’s eye being sliced open, but through tight editing with the image of a razor passing before a women’s face, the cows head is rarely detected.

While Bunuel hoped to mask the mechanics of his craft, Michael Bay is depending on his craftsmanship of mechanical objects to awe rather than shock his audiences. Transformers, the film adaptation of a popular children’s toy and comic book series from the 1980s, progresses with the measured pacing of an inaugural film in what is sure to be a very lucrative franchise. The story maintains decent plausibility for adults while maintaining accessibility for younger audiences. Two warring factions of robots, the protective Autobots and evil Decepticons, are drawn to Earth in search of an all powerful power source, referred to as the All Spark. The tale follows two major plotlines: that of Sam Witwicky, the unsuspecting hero in possession of crucial information to the discovery of the treasure and another focused on a small Army unit that unwittingly entangles itself with the cruel Decepticons. Sam Witwicky, played by Shia Lebeouf (Disturbia), is the traditional teenage hero, beset by contemporary versions of age-old themes: frustrating parents, the unattainable girl and a lack of a car. We have seen all of these things before, but Bay does a nice job of layering these human interactions against the developing robot story. Similarly, the secondary plot following the Army unit appears to function solely as a means to introduce action in the early scenes of the film. Eventually, the two plots intertwine, with the much-anticipated conflict between the robots accompanied by their human allies.

It would be unfair to expect a film based on giant fighting robots to be character driven, which makes the performance of Shia Lebeouf as Sam Witwicky notable. This promising actor shined most when opposite engaging characters. His interactions with his quirky parents, played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White, had the glimmer of an interesting plot line that could have developed,

Memorable TV cartoon characters of the past and present – Part 1

The Rise and Fall of Optimus Prime: When Creativity Fails

The Beginning

In 1984, a cartoon showed up on Saturday mornings that was immediately an enormous hit. Transformers. Transformers centered around two warring factions of alien robots, the Autobots and the Decepticons. The Autobots were good guys and the Decepticons were bad guys but both factions needed little cubes called “energon cubes” so they could leave Earth and duke it out on some other planet. The leader of the Decepticons was called Megatron and had a voice like a 50 year old woman who smoked all her life. The leader of the Autobots was called Optimus Prime. Can you have a more manly sounding name than Optimus Prime? I think not.

Optimus Prime was a semi truck who turned into a massive, gun wielding robot. Basically in the cartoons, the Decepticons would attack oil tankers, gas lines, power plants, etc.. to create thier energon cubes so they could either enact some evil plan or try to leave the planet. They always failed in the show because Optimus Prime would send other Autobots like Jazz, Bumblebee, and Hotrod to thwart them. They usually did a half-assed job so Optimus Prime would have to go clean up the mess.

No matter what, if you were a kid in the 1980’s you had to love the Transformers. Each season it got better and better with the inclusion of the Constructicons who combined into a massive robot and their Autobot counterparts the Dinobots were just bad asses who talked like drunken retarded people, the Hulk, or some combination therein.

The Beginning of the End

Transformers was made into a CGI extravaganza in 2007 and got great reviews for explosions, robots, and Shia LeBeouf. I thought it was alright but it was a little difficult to tell the Autobots from the Decepticons. During the big fight at the end, I couldn’t really tell who was fighting who because they were all big, gray, metallic jumbles. Maybe I’ll try again someday. Probably not.

In this movie, Optimus Prime has a very modern look and that was just fine. He still looked like he could whip the metal ass of any robot that decided to mess with humans or do anything stupid.

I knew after the ratings of this movie that a new cartoon would follow. Designers always have two choices, stick with the old formula that was adequate or try to be creative and aim for a “new and hip” generation. Unfortunately, this time, they chose the latter.

Game over man. Game over.

I really had no idea that this cartoon existed. This morning