THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Arriving to a special press screening of the new Transformers movie at the Empire cinema in Leicester Square in what I thought was good time, actually meant I had to join in a rather long queue of people who had turned up way before I had. It was quite a funny sight as the queue weaved across Leicester Square, blocking the way for a large number of rather bemused tourists and locals. This screening was in fact over a month in advance of the films release in the UK, so obviously advertising it in one of the busiest tourist areas in London inevitably meant a number of passing people enquired as to whether they could get in. As you might expect - if your name isn’t on the door, you ain’t coming in.
I managed to jump most of the queue thanks to some earlier advice from Transformers comic writer Simon Furman – leave your mobile phone at home. Sure enough, ultra-tight security meant everything that was capable of recording an image was being confiscated on the door, including camera phones. Skipping past the queue thanks to a collection of lovely women, each wearing a t-shirt adorned with the rather unusual slogan of “Giant F**king Robots are Coming” (it may have said something slightly different, but the image of what horrors Michael Bay might actually have filmed between Optimus Prime and Bumblebee after seeing those t-shirts have scarred my mind), I even managed to not get searched by a group of security guys with metal detectors and duck into the huge screen.
Taking a seat next to Simon Furman and his family, people scattered about included legendary Transformer artists Andrew Wildman and Geoff Senior, and Mackenzie Crook of Pirates of the Caribbean fame was a few rows ahead with his kid. Obviously the Transformers fans outnumbered everyone else, as demonstrated by the number of related t-shirts dotted around the seats. Before the film starts, the director and the cast are introduced to the crowd, Michael Bay stating he is only there to “Make sure it is loud”. The next two and a quarter hours are a visual treat, and the THX sound ensures I am almost deaf by the time I wander into the street.
As you may expect, once the film starts there are a number of cheers for everything from the BBFC certificate to the adult supervisory warning for its 12A rating in the UK. Then the film starts, and those unmistakable tones of Peter Cullen strike out, narrating the back story of the Transformers conflict on Cybertron that stemmed from Megatron’s desire to control the Allspark, a cube device that gives life to inert objects and as such holds the power needed by Megatron to control the universe; or some equally dramatic motivation. Obviously the Allspark is fired into deepest space and lands somewhere on Earth, with Autobots and Decepticons alike spreading out across the universe to try and find it.
The opening scenes of the movie take part in and round a US Military base in the Middle East, as a helicopter that bears the markings of the US lands…the opening conflict that follows is truly breathtaking, the initial transformation of Blackout, complete with that sound is staggering, as is his subsequent decimation of the army base – his complete decimation of the army base. In fact it’s only after you get to the end of the film that you realise, the sheer amount of power Blackout possesses here seems a lot more destructive than anything that happens subsequently,; the robots never look as powerful as Blackout does in these opening minutes.
This attack leaves only a handful of soldiers still alive and they have footage of Blackout, so they set off to find help and try to alert the world. Cut to America, and Spike Witwicky is a high-school nerd – see how the film drags it’s target market in there – who is unliked at school, fancies a girl way out of his league (the lovely Megan Fox), and uses eBay to flog his grandfathers belongings so he can buy a car. When he eventually gets said car it turns out to be Bumblebee who knows that Spike holds the key to locating the Allspark. Obviously this means the Decepticons are also after Spike, and much chaos ensues. Shia LeBeouf is great as Spike, and is probably the only person who manages to act, his sense of comic timing both physical and spoken is great, and luckily he manages to allow the audience to empathise with the events happening around him.
Bumblebee’s method of contacting the other Autobots, who are in deep space, appears to be to shine an Autobot symbol at the sky, ala Batman. Looks naff, would surely draw attention, and nothing suggests it actually passes out of the atmosphere, but hey-ho. A number of crashed meteorites later, and we have our full contingent of ‘Bots, and the scene where they arrive together and transform in front of Spike gets a huge cheer from the crowd. Having a handful of Autobots just stood around in shots is amazing, the animation on the CGI models is absolutely incredible, all those complaints of them being too busy are mostly allayed when you see them walking and talking. They are very agile and quick, hanging from bridges and hiding in gardens; more so than a classic look would have enabled them to be. On the down side, Optimus Prime’s mouth still looks horrible.
After the destruction of the army base, we also get a side story concerning a bunch of hackers brought in to work alongside military experts to crack the strange signals that the robots emit. This carries on throughout most of the film with some truly pointless scenes, and culminates with the hackers fighting off Frenzy; after which they are never mentioned again. No sign of any of the characters after the main fight, nothing, nada. It would appear that particular story element was meant to play a more important role in early stages and became more sidelined as the film developed. Curious.
Of the Autobots, Optimus Prime is the only one that really gets to show characterisation, Ironhide waves guns around, Ratchet doesn’t do anything, Jazz has a few lines, Bumblebee can’t speak and so communicates in a very annoying way. The Decepticons fare even worse, Starscream doesn’t appear to have any personality, but that’s more than Barricade, Brawl, et al. And why is Scorponok the only life-form “disguised” Transformer? Only Frenzy is given enough screen time to appease the kids and show a comedic side. Megatron only shows up for 30 minutes and quite frankly could have been voiced by anyone, let alone Hugo Weaving. This is where the real crux of my concerns with the movie lay, whilst the robots look awesome, they aren’t really personalities as such, and so you can’t connect with them. Bumblebee is picked on to try and draw some emotional connection from the audience via Spike, but it just doesn’t really work. Although, this is a Michael Bay movie, and so he must go through his checklist of patented “Bay-isms” that he believes the audience wants – dramatic sunsets, fighter planes, slow motion, waving flares around, etc.. To a certain extent, of course, he’s right because massive amounts of explosions and property damage will satisfy 90% of the people who want to see the film.
And my, how those explosions and fights batter the senses. Bay pushes his strongest point to the extreme; his grasp of action scenes is quite amazing. Prime’s tussle with Bonecrusher is brutal and literally makes your jaw drop, particularly with the way it ends. The whole film builds towards a climatic battle in a city street (the reason for fighting in the streets? Well, let’s just say American soldiers don’t seem to be the brightest when it comes to protecting people) and Bay goes all Saving Private Ryan on us. There are some shots that are so close-up it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on, not helped by the similarity of the robots when actually in robot mode, and other shots are from a variety of point-of-view angles meaning you tend to end up tilting your head to determine what is in front of you. I have to admit the choice of Autobot to die is a little baffling when you consider the other choices available, but it’s better than the way Megatron shuffles off to the big Matrix in the sky.
There are a large number of flaws with this film (I haven’t gone into the vast amount of product placement, nor the ridiculous ending that really does come out of nowhere), but it still holds up as a great action movie, something that really should be seen at the cinema to get its full effect. Kids are going to love it, in fact I can imagine myself as a less cynical teen probably thinking it was the greatest film ever committed to celluloid. Alas, I am a bitter man who appears to be stuck in 1985 and craves a decent plot, acting and characterisation. Woe is me.
This film will make untold millions of dollars with or without my comments, and I’m sure that the majority of people who go to see it will be very happy, which is a good thing. I’m sure it will also have at least two successful sequels that will hopefully continue to push the extremes of CGI. A different choice of director would be interesting, and now the concept is there, some characterisation of the robots wouldn’t go amiss.
Overall, Transformers is a film that appears to exist purely for its amazing special effects. Try not to think about silly things like plots or the fact they aren’t the Transformers you grew up with, simply disengage your brain and enjoy it for what it is – a solid American summer blockbuster.
If you want to know Simon Furman’s opinions on the movie, take a look at his blog - simonfurman.wordpress.com and look out for Comics International #203.
James Dodsworth - Born and raised in Yorkshire, residing in London since 2000, James has a Law Degree and works for the Anti-Financial Crime Office of a International Asset Management Company. He is a writer and editor for FractalMatter.com.
But his main claim to fame is living next to the pub where Shaun of the Dead was conceived.