However, the aforementioned car-robot-smacking still appeals today, and so it was that I came to see Michael Bay's big-screen adaptation late last week.
The biggest problem I have with it is that it feels like a first-draft screenplay. Firstly, there are too many characters, most of whom serve no function in the plot.
There's Sam, our main protagonist, a kid that the writers can't decide if he's geeky, smart, stupid, charming or inept, plus his love interest Mikaela (I had to check IMDb for her name, it was that memorable), who is unfazed by the idea of Sam's 30-foot transforming Chevvy Camaro. They're hounded alternately by Decepticons, Sam's parents, highschool jocks and a US Government department so secret, even the Secretary of Defence doesn't know about them. They're led by a highly-trained smarmy idiot of a man, who is easily embarrassed by a 17-year-old, and then urinated on by Bumblebee.
Then there are the other two plots. New dad and badass Marine Captain Lennox is in Qatar (which we are twice reminded is in THE MIDDLE EAST), exchanging jovialities with local children when the base is attacked by Blackout, posing as a military chopper. He almost succeeds in downloading the entire US Defence network, but is halted in the nick of time by 24's Secret Service agent Aaron Pierce, with an axe. Cap'n Lennox and his team of marines (plus the local whelp who was just hanging around this US military installation) are the sole survivors, and are pursued across the desert, culminating in an exciting firefight with Scorpirok (spelling?) in some collection of dirt hovels. They're rescued and spend the next 2/3 of the film being ferried back to the States for the final setpiece.
Meanwhile, about a thousand hackers (only one of whom actually does anything in the story) are recruited by the Secretary of Defence to "break the signal that hacked our network" - and if you think THAT technobabble's bad, that's merely the tip of a very inaccurate iceberg.
This meandering cast of millions would be bad enough if it was just human characters, but half of the Transformers themselves are largely extraneous, and were presumably shoved in for nostalgia/fan-pleasing purposes. Obviously Optimus Prime has a largish role, as does Bumblebee, but Jazz, Ironhide and Ratchett are there just to fill out the final battle.
Only two of the Decepticons really further the plot in a significant way, and one of those (Frenzy) is the most irritating slapstick Jar-Jar-style character I've seen since... well, since The Phantom Menace. He giggles, twitters and skids about all over the place, which would be bad enough, if it weren't for the fact that he's meant to have infiltrated Air Force One, and I don't see how the entire Secret Service weren't aware of his presence, cunningly disguised as a cheap plastic CD player under a Pentagon General's seat. It is he, following the last-minute foiling of Blackout in the opening setpiece, who has to hack into the US Defence mainframe in order to... um, access eBay.
See, the plot (such as it is), contrives that Sam's great-granddad or somesuch inadvertently discovered the Allspark (a stone cube that has the power to create life), and unknowingly had the location etched (in microscopic code, naturally) into his glasses, which Sam is trying to flog on eBay. That's right, eBay has a bigger role than half of the Autobots.
Overall, the whole thing just feels bloated, and would have benefitted no end from tightening up and trimming or filling out the plethora of secondary characters or ideas that went nowhere. At one point, Sam steals a government agent badge, essentially a carte blanche, and is reapprehended before he even gets to use it. Of the half-dozen or so marines rescued from THE MIDDLE EAST, only Lennox himself plays any real part in the final battle.
The dialogue is witty and (apart from the awful techspeak) pretty well written; but it seems to have been written for about four different movies. There's no real target audience, with punchlines ranging from slapstick (Autobots falling over powerlines and trampling gardens), to peurile toilet humour (Bumblebee "urinating" on a government official) to Teen Gross-Out Comedy (Sam's mother's wonderful masturbation conversation).
It's a pity, too; the action's fantastic, and the CG so good I occasionally forgot it even was CG. ILM certainly earned their paycheck on this one. The music's suitably bombastic, and the Transformer voices are all acceptable (the Decepticons only speak Cybertronian, anyway), with the exception of Wacky Black Man™ Jazz, who is reminiscent of the two guys speaking Jive in Airplane!. He only gets four lines, though, so it doesn't have a chance to really grate.
It's just about worth seeing, if only for the fights, of which there are plenty. At just shy of two and a half hours, it's long, but I never felt like it dragged, or caught myself thinking, "get on with it"; the pacing is pretty good. At the end of the day, massive fans of the show or the toys (or models, if you prefer) will get either the most or the least out of it (depending on fanboy fervour), but pretty much anyone who likes big robots blowing stuff up will be more than happy.
Then there are the other two plots. New dad and badass Marine Captain Lennox is in Qatar (which we are twice reminded is in THE MIDDLE EAST), exchanging jovialities with local children when the base is attacked by Blackout, posing as a military chopper. He almost succeeds in downloading the entire US Defence network, but is halted in the nick of time by 24's Secret Service agent Aaron Pierce, with an axe. Cap'n Lennox and his team of marines (plus the local whelp who was just hanging around this US military installation) are the sole survivors, and are pursued across the desert, culminating in an exciting firefight with Scorpirok (spelling?) in some collection of dirt hovels. They're rescued and spend the next 2/3 of the film being ferried back to the States for the final setpiece.
Meanwhile, about a thousand hackers (only one of whom actually does anything in the story) are recruited by the Secretary of Defence to "break the signal that hacked our network" - and if you think THAT technobabble's bad, that's merely the tip of a very inaccurate iceberg.
This meandering cast of millions would be bad enough if it was just human characters, but half of the Transformers themselves are largely extraneous, and were presumably shoved in for nostalgia/fan-pleasing purposes. Obviously Optimus Prime has a largish role, as does Bumblebee, but Jazz, Ironhide and Ratchett are there just to fill out the final battle.
Only two of the Decepticons really further the plot in a significant way, and one of those (Frenzy) is the most irritating slapstick Jar-Jar-style character I've seen since... well, since The Phantom Menace. He giggles, twitters and skids about all over the place, which would be bad enough, if it weren't for the fact that he's meant to have infiltrated Air Force One, and I don't see how the entire Secret Service weren't aware of his presence, cunningly disguised as a cheap plastic CD player under a Pentagon General's seat. It is he, following the last-minute foiling of Blackout in the opening setpiece, who has to hack into the US Defence mainframe in order to... um, access eBay.
See, the plot (such as it is), contrives that Sam's great-granddad or somesuch inadvertently discovered the Allspark (a stone cube that has the power to create life), and unknowingly had the location etched (in microscopic code, naturally) into his glasses, which Sam is trying to flog on eBay. That's right, eBay has a bigger role than half of the Autobots.
Overall, the whole thing just feels bloated, and would have benefitted no end from tightening up and trimming or filling out the plethora of secondary characters or ideas that went nowhere. At one point, Sam steals a government agent badge, essentially a carte blanche, and is reapprehended before he even gets to use it. Of the half-dozen or so marines rescued from THE MIDDLE EAST, only Lennox himself plays any real part in the final battle.
The dialogue is witty and (apart from the awful techspeak) pretty well written; but it seems to have been written for about four different movies. There's no real target audience, with punchlines ranging from slapstick (Autobots falling over powerlines and trampling gardens), to peurile toilet humour (Bumblebee "urinating" on a government official) to Teen Gross-Out Comedy (Sam's mother's wonderful masturbation conversation).
It's a pity, too; the action's fantastic, and the CG so good I occasionally forgot it even was CG. ILM certainly earned their paycheck on this one. The music's suitably bombastic, and the Transformer voices are all acceptable (the Decepticons only speak Cybertronian, anyway), with the exception of Wacky Black Man™ Jazz, who is reminiscent of the two guys speaking Jive in Airplane!. He only gets four lines, though, so it doesn't have a chance to really grate.
It's just about worth seeing, if only for the fights, of which there are plenty. At just shy of two and a half hours, it's long, but I never felt like it dragged, or caught myself thinking, "get on with it"; the pacing is pretty good. At the end of the day, massive fans of the show or the toys (or models, if you prefer) will get either the most or the least out of it (depending on fanboy fervour), but pretty much anyone who likes big robots blowing stuff up will be more than happy.
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