Transformers, on paper, should have physically repulsed me. Based on a toy from the 1980’s the intellectual property manages to combine empty-headed nostalgia with soul-less children’s TV in the shape of a Michael Bay-directed blockbuster. That’s Michael Bay of Armageddon and Pearl Harbour fame. The film is a ceaseless barrage of explosions, cheap sentimentality and directionless violence featuring giant robots. However, despite all of these excellent reasons for hating Transformers, I can’t help but think it’s by far the best blockbuster that the weak summer of 2007 has thus far delivered.
The plot of Transformers is, somewhat predictably, slight stuff. Two groups of giant robots are lured to Earth by the promise of a cube capable of rebuilding their civilisation by giving life to any form of technology. The evil Decepticons track down the cube by attacking a US military base and hacking their computers while the much nicer Autobots infiltrate the life of the great-grandson of an arctic explorer whose equipment, now being sold on eBay by the grandson, contains a map to the cube. Unfortunately, the government records have been cleansed of any mention of the cube and the Decepticons promptly come after beta-male Sam (LeBeouf) and “evil jock concubine” Mikaela (Fox) forcing the Autobots to move to protect them. Meanwhile, the US government are trying to work out what is going on, prompting absurdly glamourous Australian NSA operative (!) Maggie (Taylor) and hacker Glen (Anderson) to lead grizzled a grizzled Secretary of Defense (Voight) to the headquarters of secret alien hunters Section 7 where they meet up with some special forces types and the Autobots and prepare to make a stand against the Decepticons.
One of the interesting things about this film is that it takes about 45 minutes for the giant robots to really show up in earnest. Prior to that there’s lots of blurred shots of them destroying military bases and sneaking around but the bulk of the screen time is devoted to the story of a geeky upper-middle class kid trying to woo a glamourous working class girl whose combination of leathery skin, black hair and white teeth make her look like an elongated version of Kat Slater from Eastenders.
Indeed, the human elements of Transformers by and large work surprisingly well with Bay’s more outlandish and irritating presentational quirks reigned in seemingly for the sake of foreign consumption. Indeed, rather than draping himself in the flag, Bay makes sure to include some foreign accents and despite featuring the US government, the political message is not so much “USA USA” as it is the idea that heroes will succeed despite the actions of their own government, which is presented as bureaucratic and largely inept. Bay also chooses to forego the schmaltz of the couple fighting to be together dynamic he had used in both Pearl Harbour and Armageddon in favour of the more realistic and subtle idea of a couple who barely know each other being thrown together by conflict and circumstance. Indeed, most Michael Bay films deliver CGI thrills despite the human elements of their script, Transformers’ script is actually perfectly serviceable even if early sections feel a bit like a censored American Pie with all the gross out humour cut out leaving only attractive but embarrassed-looking young people. but enough with these sideshows, what of the action?
Transformers is one of the best paced films I have seen this year. When the robots turn up they are spectacular to see but are also rather low key, including one great shot of 4 30-foot robots trying to hide in a garden. However, once the main plot kicks in the action slowly ramps up as we take in muscular chase sequences, firefights, battles and eventually a screaming, retina-scarring dose of sensory overload as two loads of gigantic robots kick the shit out of each other and a city. Indeed, at times, the action is so intense and the visuals and soundtrack so loud that I almost felt a little queasy from sensory overload. This is rare for me as usually CGI leaves me cold. Transformers’ sensory onslaught is brutal and unforgiving. It’s the cinematic equivalent of playing an XBox game whilst listening to the first four Black Sabbath albums, snorting coke and getting a blow-job all at the same time. There is simply too much going on for the human brain to take it all in. Indeed, I suspect that this is intentional in order to stop the weaknesses in the CGI animation from being too obvious (hence also the blurred shots and corner-of-the-eye camera work of the early set pieces). Indeed, such is the sensory onslaught that my brain allowed me little time to analyse the film or pick up on any serious plot holes as all my processing power was routed to making sense of the pictures and sounds being fired at my poor tortured skull. I may well have had drool on my chin by the end of the film. This is EXACTLY what you want from a big Blockbuster summer movie. Lots of films promise you action and excitement but few actually do. Transformers is just as relentless as Black Hawk Down in this respect.
Another surprising aspect of my Transformers experience was that a lot of the action was framed by Tom Clancy-style military talk with people discussing what kind of shell to use and other barking acronyms at each other. This gives the whole proceeding an interesting MilSF edge as while the giant fighting robots are very much front and centre, human combatants also get a good deal of screen time. This helped bring some order to the synesthaesic chaos and stopped the whole film from descending into bright colours and loud noises, giving us a sense of scale as well as human commentators against which to measure the vast screen presence of the giant robots.
The only thing that is really missing from Transformers is some kind of subtext whether intended or accidental due to the film resting the bulk of its narrative on a particular set of unconventional assumptions. The best example of this kind of film in recent times was 300, which, much like Transformers, was a balls-out action film but its homoerotic imagery and its quasi-mythical 7 foot drag queen Xerxes made it seem far more interesting than most so-called intelligent films, let alone other action films. Transformers really suffers from Bay’s desire to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The difference between the Autobots and the Decepticons boils down to the fact that the Autobots believe that all sentient life has the right to freedom. There’s little here for a critic to get his teeth into. However, in and around the explosions and the sexual tension there are a few chicken nuggets of complexity.
The most notable one is the cube itself. The cube is a potent object as its touch is enough to turn any item of technology, not only into a sentient being but also a transforming robot. Particular examples of this are a Nokia mobile phone (the Product placement people make sure we know it’s a Nokia) which turns into an angry little robot and what looks like a Mountain Dew vending machine that similarly turns into a gun-toting robot killing-machine. This is interesting in itself but at one point Optimus Prime points out that the race of giant transforming robots were once violent and primitive too... like we humans. The implication is then that transforming robots are “born” hostile and violent, like the Decepticons, but some of the transforming robots have managed to hoist themselves out of this nasty, brutish and short existence by acquiring morality. Indeed, Optimus Prime is not only the most powerful of the Autobots, he is also the wisest and most moral. There is something rather wonderfully old fashioned in this vision of what it means to be sentience as it suggests that selfishness and violence are things that we simply grow out of the more refined and developed one becomes. This is an old idea that harks back to the golden age of SF and it is really nice to see it surface again, particularly when Revenge of the Sith saw George Lucas drag his entire franchise into the quicksands of moral relativism simply because he couldn’t work out how to show someone willingly choose to be evil.
Another interesting nugget is the relationship between the kids and Bumblebee. Bumblebee immediately takes an interest in his “owner”’s personal life by intentionally stranding the couple in a pretty spot and playing some cheesy music. Later on he is revealed to be the boy’s protector and at the end of the film he chooses to stay with him. The epilogue (featuring a sequel-baiting cheesy speech) then shows the kids making out on Bumblebee’s bonnet. So Bumblebee is a sentient being but he spends his life driving a teenager around allowing said teenager to penetrate his emaciated Cat Slater girlfriend on top of him. If Bumblebee’s a car this is fair enough but if he’s an actual person that doesn’t sound like much fun at all. Indeed, Bumblebee is like a slave in some ways... he is intelligent but he is also part of the furniture and weirdly happy to be considered such.
In a genre that frequently promises white-knuckle rides, Transformers is one of the few big dumb summer action movies that really delivers. Its human elements are largely forgettable (indeed, six and a half hours after the film finished I can’t remember the names of any of the human characters) but perfectly written so as to give a human context and sense of scale to the sensory onslaught that makes up the film’s action sequences. So despite being a Michael Bay film about a type of toy I never played with as a child, I’m actually quite eager to see a sequel.
Would you believe this review actually gives me hope this might not suck horrendously? Yes, I've been avoiding it, but my resistance is gradually being worn down.
Posted by: Serdar | August 07, 2007 at 12:44 AM
Well, if you do give in make sure you see it at the cinema. It really is a sensory experience. By the end of the film I actually felt quite emotional as everything was so... big and loud.
I enjoyed it though.
Posted by: Jonathan McCalmont | August 07, 2007 at 10:59 AM