Five attempts to be positive about “Transformers”

I was playing Pokemon when the phone rang.

“DO YOU WANNA SEE TRANSFORMERS?”
“But you hate Transformers“
“YEAH”
“Then why do you want to see it?”
“NOTHIN’ ELSE TO DO”

And so, we did. Then it was too crowded, so we left. On the way home, I suggested we could watch the 1986 movie on DVD instead.

“TRANSFORMERS ARE FUCKING STUPID. THEY TURN INTO STUFF. DOESN’T MAKE SENSE”
“Then why do you want to watch this movie?”
“BORED”

We went back the following night.

After having been compared to House by three people independently of each other in the last month, I made a concentrated effort to be positive about Transformers. Even the trailer for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry seemed to be saying “Go on, I dare you sit through this” rather than “Yes, it really is all as pointless as you imagine”, and Rob Schneider’s face was merely a minor irritation rather than a raven-like omen of impending doom (I’ve never actually seen House, but I glean from the commercials that it’s about a lovable-yet-misanthropic doctor, which is a step up for me. The general consensus, back when I was on speaking terms with enough people for there to be a general consensus, was that I was “like something from Poe”. This initially just seemed like a fancy way of saying “miserable and needs more sun”, but I notice that I’ve already managed to bring up ravens during a review of Transformers. The guy who insisted we see it has a morbid fear of being buried alive, which, given my reaction to the film, almost seems like an invitation). Nevertheless…

MY FIVE ATTEMPTS TO FIND SOMETHING POSITIVE TO SAY ABOUT TRANSFORMERS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MY USUAL BLOGGING TOPICS, RATHER THAN ANYTHING ESPECIALLY FANBOYISH:

Attempt #1: It’s one of the few Hollywood movies in which, when disaster threatens Earth, we get to see bits of the planet other than America.

HOWEVER! The movie opens in “Qatar - The Middle East”, to which my internal monologue responded “What, as opposed to the Qatar in Surrey?”. This was, with hindsight, naive of me; given how little Hollywood expects of audiences, it’s entirely plausible that the producers assumed we’d think “Qatar” was an alien planet unless informed otherwise (similar to the way it’s obligatory to refer to “King Zog of Albania“, in case people think you’re talking about a Martian warlord). Despite opening in Qatar and remaining there for a sizable chunk of the action, the invasion of Qatar by space robots is always seen from the perspective of US soldiers stationed there; upon hearing, years ago, that the movie was going to partially set in the Middle East, I thought that there was going to be some attempt at social commentary, in which Earth was going to be bombed into oblivion by the Decepticons because we were harbouring known enemies of Megatron’s regime, even though we didn’t have anything to do with them and just wanted to be left alone. Yes, I know. But but but the poster said “Their War, Our World”, and and and… Oh, alright. It’s still an improvement on the original series’ treatment of the Middle East, which was depicted by a country called “Carbombya” run by a greedy sultan with a herd of camels running around outside his palace. Even people who watched the series as children have trouble coming to terms with Carbombya; I’d managed to erase it from my memory, yet still remember the layout of Optimus Prime’s tomb, so watching the restored episodes on DVD was like finding childhood photographs of myself playing with a golliwog. On the subject of restored DVDs, the increased sharpness and clarity has been a double-edged sword. Grubby, blurry VHS hid some of the animation’s choppiness and dulled the more garish colours, but on DVD, these things are all out in the open, and some of the restored episodes are goddamn ugly. But speaking of things which are nice to look at…

Attempt #2: Conventionally-attractive high school girl displays a modicum of self-respect by dumping her boyfriend for calling her his “little bunny” (I can relate to this, having been christened “Mr Cuddles” during a period of my life that I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to blot out for the last eight years), then reveals herself to be an expert mechanic and is instrumental in saving the world.

HOWEVER! She mentions that she doesn’t reveal her mechanical knowledge in front of men, because it makes them uneasy, and then… doesn’t actually reveal any. Or, rather, she opens the hood of the car, but this is merely an excuse to have her stretch her torso out and bend over at the same time, and we get what looks like the beginning of a commercial for either Pepsi or a nondescript compilation album with “Hot” in the title. We’re then treated to my two least favourite movie tropes of all time, which are awful not because of what they are, but because they show up in virtually every movie ever made, and neither of them have any relevance to my robot-filled wank-fantasies:

• Trope the First: The female lead displays the minimum amount of independence and competence required to get her classified as “Spunky”, then immediately defers to the male lead for the next two hours. The fact she’s an expert mechanic and former car-thief is just there to make her cooler, in a “Your girlfriend likes cars? Cool!” way (which is acceptable) rather than “Your girlfriend knows more about cars than you? Cool!”, or more accurately “Your girlfriend knows more about cars than you? You pussy-whipped doormat, grow some balls you goddamn faggot!” (Similarly, female action leads are allowed to fast, but not strong. Or if they are strong, it’s due to genetic engineering or magic, rather than simply having larger muscles. Silly girls, muscles are for boys!). This did work for me when I was an adolescent and had fewer principles (and tolerated being called “Mr Cuddles”), but quickly became embarrassing and annoying after I finished puberty. Not only do I not care if my fictitious lust-objects are better than me at things, but they’d be fairly shite lust-objects if they weren’t, since I long ago made peace with the fact I’m preternaturally incompetent at virtually everything, and the thought of somebody worse than me is just going to bring out my pity rather than anything hormone-expanding, even if they have got great big tits. And even from the perspective of pure shallowness, by not having Mikaela do any proper engine maintenance, they missed out on the opportunity to show us Megan Fox grunting while covered in sweat and engine grease. Bay, nuls points.
• Trope the Second: She’s only ignoring the lead dude because, like all popular and attractive girls, she’s shallow and only cares about guys with big biceps, but the lead dude deserves her because he’s a Nice Guy, sod the fact he’s not actually very interesting. Self-explanatory. We’re led to believe this happens all the time in high school, but does it? Obviously I can only speak for myself here, but I saw an unpopular nerd pining after a popular girl exactly once, and only because he was completely oblivious to literally everything in the entire world. Unpopular geeky guys know they don’t have a chance with the upper-castes, so they lust after unpopular, geeky girls. Or at least an idealised unpopular, geeky girl who’s attractive, but not attractive enough to have her own sexual agency, who’s into the stuff they’re into, but not enough to threaten their position as King Geek, and otherwise has no personality. Boy, it sure is hard being a nice guy

Attempt #3: The two greatest hackers on earth are an Australian woman and a ker-azy black guy, rather than a bunch of white American men with neckbeards who say things like “HRRMMM I’M GONNA GET A HIGH SCORRRRRE ON MAAAAAAAGIC DUNGEEEEEON!!!”.

HOWEVER! Australian woman is the only visible female computer expert there, and is thin, white, blonde and in her early 20s. It’s not that I have a problem with thin white blonde 20something computer hackers, but they don’t feel the need to make the men look like characters from The OC, and I can’t think of any fictional female computer geniuses (alright, genii) who aren’t conventionally attractive. If we’d seen ruggedly-handsome male computer experts, or other female experts who weren’t conventionally pretty, I wouldn’t have minded, but on her own, she jars. Especially when she’s got to go on a mad dash across town to prevent the approaching apocalypse, and does so in high heels, clomping along like a gazelle that’s been raised by Clydesdales. That the world’s greatest computer hacker is a wacky black guy is an interesting way of breaking the mold, except that they chose to play him entirely for laughs, and he doesn’t really do anything besides make Stan Laurel noises and eat donuts. He’s also the source of the second Sassy Black Grandma; I’ll accept that there are some people out there who aren’t already sick of Sassy Black Grandmas, but surely nobody needs two of them in the one movie…? Actually, if the Sassy Black Grandma had been the world’s greatest computer hacker rather than her layabout DDR-addict grandson, the entire wretched enterprise could have been redeemed.

And for all the lovely lads out there who’ve sent me mail to the effect of “You’ll stop supporting the feminazis when they cry rape and ruin your life”, I’d like to point out that Anthony Anderson was charged with rape, and nobody saw fit to take away his high-profile acting career and millions of dollars. Another failure for the all-pervading matriarchal conspiracy!

Attempt #4: They brought Jazz back instead of a more obvious (and thus more boring) choice like Hot Rod or Cliffjumper.

HOWEVER! The original Jazz was played by 70ish scat singer Scatman Crothers, who was the last person on Earth you’d expect to be asked to voice a giant transforming robot. Even Eric Idle was a more logical choice. But this is precisely why Jazz worked, because Scatman’s voice was so distinctive, and had such genuine character to it, that Jazz was interesting regardless of how banal his dialogue was. I don’t think the texture of voices in the original Transformers series gets enough credit; Frank Welker’s original performance as Megatron is the result of somebody trying to recreate the sound of scraping metal using only his vocal cords, but come the movie they just get Hugo Weaving to do a generic “evil” voice and then put it through a filter to make it sound “robotic”, which is not only the most cock-obvious thing imaginable, but renders much of his dialogue virtually incomprehensible, even if he no longer sounds constipated. The real victim of the movie’s attitude to voices, however, is Jazz, who’s gone from talking like a 70something scat singer with a unique dialect to a Hollywood executive’s idea of how a black street kid talks, which means he sounds like Ali G. And then he breakdances, before disappearing for the rest of movie until Megatron rips him in half, which is a step backward for shitty action movies, since the black guy died third in Doom. Apparently Arcee - the female (or female shaped?) transformer - was originally supposed to be in the movie too, but test audiences reacted negatively to her and she was cut. We can infer from this that they reacted positively to a giant robot pissing on John Turturro.

Attempt #5: It’s the simple story of a boy and his car, rather than a bloated, confusing mess about intergalactic war.

HOWEVER! Dual assumptions here: That only 16 - 35 year old males watch movies, and that buying a car is instinctively a life-affirming experience for all 16 - 35 year old males. Not only have I never bought a car, I’ve never wanted to buy a car. That doesn’t mean I can’t relate to a movie about a boy and his car, but that would require an understanding of character and storytelling, which are both beyond the grasp of Michael Bay. In much the same way as he thinks “sexy” means “tits” and “drama” means “lots of things happening loudly at the same time”, his idea of “human comedy” is “vaguely embarrassing things happening in front of popular girls”. The problem here, and I’ll admit that, like the car thing, this is entirely personal, is that most teenage comedies of embarrassment are less embarrassing than my actual adolescence. Admittedly I’ve never drunk semen from a beer cup, but I have (for instance) ended up standing in my bedroom with no pants on, holding a mayonnaise-covered sock, and (for instance, again) had all my shoes stolen during physical education and been forced to attend class wearing fluffy slipper, and (because I mentioned it before) loudly been referred to as “Mr Cuddles” in public. I also spent most of high school being called “Phil”, because one of my friends from 6th grade thought it would be hilarious to tell everybody that was my name on orientation day, and by the time it became annoying, it was too late to start correcting people. Not only did all this happen in front of popular girls, it happened in front of the melancholy wallflowers that my teenage self was intent on impressing, so even they thought I was a prat, and it wasn’t until a transfer student unaware of my previous form arrived that I was able to get a girlfriend, and needless to say I messed that up too. I could explain the logistics of the sock-thing, but I’m arse at diagrams. It helps to remember that I’m quite flexible for somebody who does so much sitting.

Final observation before I publish this mess: The original movie has Spectre General on the soundtrack, but this one has Linkin Park. That’s everything you need to know, right there.

Michael Bay’s second least awful film.