Trance-former
Who care$ how much junk Michael Bay can blow up?
By Andy Klein
About a third of the way through Transformers, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) - on the run from driverless vehicles that turn into Giant Robots - utters the irresistible set-up line: "This is like a bad dream." Having no shame, I'll take the bait: No, Sam, this isn't like a bad dream so much as it's like a bad movie ... exactly like one. So exactly like one that perhaps ... .
Honestly, it's not like I went into a film based on a merchandising concept expecting Battleship Potemkin or The Terminator or even Spider-man. But I could at least hope for Spider-man 3, until I remembered: Michael Bay ? Sam Raimi.
On the off chance that a few of you out there are, like myself, of a generation tragically born too early to have been suckled at this plastic teat, be apprised that, in 1984 or thereabouts, Hasbro and the Japanese company Takara introduced the Transformers - so named because of their alchemical ability to mutate brightly colored polymers into dull green cash. In a manner analogous to nuclear fusion, impressionable young minds were bombarded by promotional particles - scientists call them "ads" - until the culture reached critical mass, leading to the release of huge amounts of energy, all of it channeled at those who controlled the purse strings ("parents"). From this we get the formulation e=mc2 (economic-gain equals ... mass culture squared? Mind-controlled children squared?).
No, actually, they were Transformers because they could be unfolded from the shape of a car or an airplane into that of a Giant Robot.
With the help of Marvel Comics, a whole (sometimes shifting) mythology developed. In the current cinematic manifestation, we have the good Autobots battling the evil Decepticons. The latter are looking for long-lost leader Megatron and for the Allspark - a Rubik's-like cube that is an infinite power source or something. The Autobots are led by Optimus Prime, which, I believe, was the name of a hybrid savings/checking account I had at Crocker Bank in the '80s.
The film begins in Qatar, where we quickly learn that the Decepticons do not support our troops. In fact, they attack them, killing everyone except a half-dozen men, including Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson). If a reason was given for the attack, it has long since evaporated from my brain. In fact, if there's any crucial reason for this entire plot thread, it utterly escapes me.
Meanwhile, in plot thread two, the Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) is trying to figure out what the hell is going on but is summarily dismissing the insights of computer-code analyst Maggie Madsen (Aussie actress Rachael Fox), who has top security clearance despite her unexplained Tasmanian accent. She enlists the aid of superhacker Glen Whitmann (Anthony Anderson), playing what might politely be called "the Mantan Moreland role." (There are also two - count 'em, two - comically irascible older black women, because, let's face it, old black ladies = guaranteed laughs galore!) In fact, maybe that's the whole point of plot thread one - to make room for brave fighter Epps, as a counterbalance to the other minstrel-show refugees. Unfortunately, Bay and his screenwriters don't appear to have even attempted to give Epps (or Lennox) discernible personalities. They are basically G.I. Joe salt-and-pepper shakers.
Finally, there's plot thread three, which is, you know, the actual story. LaBeouf's Sam is a geeky 11th-grader, obsessed, like straight 11th-grade boys everywhere, with getting close to a girl - in his case, Mikaela (Megan Fox). In real life, LaBeouf and Fox are the same age, but onscreen she appears a good 10 years older than him, a leggy twentysomething supermodel inexplicably stuck in high school. Sam is the grandson of famed Arctic explorer Captain Witwicky, who, the Autobots have learned, discovered the Allspark buried in an ice cave and left a map to its location embedded in his spectacles in some manner that, once again, is never adequately explained.
A yellow Autobot named Bumblebee turns himself into a beat-up Camaro, stalks Sam, and pretty soon the Decepticons are after the both of them. Sam says, "This is like a bad dream," and we're back at the first paragraph.
Of course, Optimus P. shows up and saves him, explaining, just in passing, "Sam Witwicky, you hold the key to earth's survival" - which is a hell of burden to lay on a goofy 16-year-old.
OK, so I shouldn't expect plot coherence or character depth in a Michael Bay film, but I do expect good pacing. Sadly, the first third of Transformers - which, by the by, clocks in at two hours and 23 minutes - is amazingly pokey, as Bay listlessly crosscuts among the three groups of characters. The middle third picks up a bit, particularly after the arrival of John Turturro, who, even in a stupidly written role, at least tries to raise the energy level.
The final third is - no surprise - one long chase/battle sequence, in which there is no attempt to justify, within the story, anything the characters do. If Bay wants to shoot some cool shit showing downtown L.A. getting pulverized by 30-foot-tall robots, he'll just have a random character yell, "Quick! You have to take the Allspark to 11th and Grand!" If you stop to think about it - which is more than can be said about anyone involved in the production - the last place you want to secure an all-powerful energy source being sought by an evil 30-foot robot is in a crowded urban area.
Once they're there, Optimus insists that Sam take the Allspark to the top of a nearby building so an Army helicopter can grab it, apparently having forgotten that Megatron and his metal minions turn into fighter jets, able to outfly and shoot down helicopters. Fucking swift.
I wouldn't have minded all this silliness if the action had raised my pulse rate. But the exposition is so muddled - at least, for those of us who didn't take Comparative Comic Book Mythology 101 in college - that it's hard to tell the good guys - Transformer and human - from the bad. There's a fairly lengthy, but still inadequate, explanation of how every microchip-containing device in the world shares electronic DNA with Megatron and can therefore turn into a Decepticon, but the payoff is tiny.
Or maybe not. By my experience, the whole thing would be better characterized as a "trance-former," so perhaps this model of clarity was simply wasted on the likes of me. On the other hand, I checked with a half-dozen other viewers on my way out, and none of them had any more of a clue than I did. Most of them were, admittedly, closer to my own age than to the film's presumed demographic, but one was a younger chap, a lifelong Transformers fan, and he was just as confused.
Bay's notion of excitement is to smash up bunches of stuff on screen, with no rhyme or reason, no characters to care about, and no clarity or structure to the action. If that floats your boat, go ahead and have a blast. I'll be in the next auditorium, rewatching Live Free or Die Hard.
Published: 07/05/2007
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