More than meets the eye!
Saw the
Transformers movie last night. Two words...AWE-SOME!
You know when Michael Bay is attached to a movie, it ain't gonna be no Jerry Maguire. It's gonna have explosions and car chases and violence. You don't go see this kind of movie for its dramatic cinematic content or engaging plotlines. Let me tell ya. Transformers did not disappoint.
I went to the 10:40 showing in Oaks. I wanted to go to a midnight show, but there weren't any around. I go to midnight shows for movies like this because I hate sitting in a theater with 4,000 nine-year olds. I want to be able to curse and yell at the screen without having to worry if I'm pissing some angry soccer mom off. At midnight shows, there are people my age, who do the same thing and it enhances the movie experience, not ruins it. 10:40 would suffice. It's past their bedtimes.
You ever have one of those moments where you say to yourself, "I didn't just see that"? I did. I'm in the concession line buying nachos and out of the corner of my eye I see a guy walk past. Since what I saw, my brain couldn't interpret, I just dismissed it...until I saw him walk by again. I saw a dude that came to the theater decked out in a homemade Optimus Prime costume, composed entirely of beer cases. This dork had duct taped empty Budweiser packaging around his body and head and actually left the house like that. I'm not sure but I don't think there were any Drunkicons in the movie. I gotta give him credit, though. For a stupid idea, it was pretty ingenious. I could tell this was going to be fun.
Cut to theater interior.
I stake myself out a little spot in the middle of the theater and get comfortable with my $6.00 nachos and the bottled water I snuck in my pocket. (I'm not going to pay $4.00 for a bottle of water.) I came in mid-trailers. I saw the one for the new Adam Sandler/Kevin James movie,
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Good God Jessica Biel's got a hot body. She strips down to her underwear and jiggles around a little bit. Man I gotta find video of that.
Anyway...
[Spoiler Alert! (but nod bad)]
The movie starts and there's that old familiar voice, Peter Cullen, better known as Optimus Prime, narrating the opening. Cut to Sam Witwicki (Shia LeBoeuf). A teenage boy who desperately wants to get noticed. He wants to be popular, get the car, get the girl, etc. We all remember that, don't we? And if you don't, well fuck you then. :) He's trying to save up for a car that his dad (Kevin Dunn) promised to go halves with him on. His father takes him to a used car lot, which is run by Bobby Bolivia (played by Bernie Mac), who coins the phrase, "The driver doesn't pick the car. The car picks the driver." Nothing could be more true. As Sam is inundated with old clunkers, he finds himself suddenly gravitating towards this old beat up '74 Chevy Camaro, with a yellow rust-job (I mean paint-job), which no one on the lot can determine where it came from. He sits in the driver's seat and brushes some dust off the steering wheel to reveal...the Autobot insignia. "This is the one. I know it."
A good deal of the comedy surrounds Sam and his awkwardness in high school.
OK, enough exposition, let's get to violence! Cut to USAF airbase Soccent in Qatar. An attack by Blackout, a Decepticon disguised as a Sekorsky Pave Low helicopter used by the U.S. Navy, sets the stage for
Oh shit! factor. This fucker just demolished this base. The puny humans have jack shit that can hurt it and don't really know how to handle this kind of situation. I mean really, how exactly can you train and prepare for this scenario? When an unidentified helicopter lands, transforms into a 50-foot tall robot and starts kicking the ever-loving shit out of you. Humans, you have been pwned!
Part of the greatest bits of comedy were the soldiers who survived the attack losing all composure in a subsequent attack by Scorponok. Tyrese Gibson, who played one of the soldiers gave one of the best lines I think I've ever heard. He's on the horn with the Pentagon/Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) describing the threat. "Friendlies North of orange smoke... Attack vector: West... Man, if you could see this shit!!!" Greatest line ever written! The whole theater was rolling on the floor laughing.
Cut back to Sam (LeBoeuf). Sam is at home sleeping when he notices his car is rolling away. Thinking someone is stealing it, he runs it down on foot. Sam calls the cops from his cell phone. After catching up with it...holy shit. He sees it transform! It's Bumble Bee. (Yes I know, Bumble Bee was a VW Beetle in the cartoon, but you know what? GM has a ridiculous amount of money invested in this movie. What's funny is that when Sam picks out this car from the lot, it happens to be parked right next to an old yellow Beetle.) Needless to say the kid is slightly more than a little freaked out.
A cop shows up. Oh thank God! Granted you're freaked out kid, given the shit you just saw, but you should probably notice that something is amiss when a cop pulls up in a Mustang. What police department uses Ford Mustangs as police cruisers? Much less an '09 Saleen Mustang? Holy shit! It's Barricade! Another transformer! Only this one wants your ass!
Bumble Bee transforms back into the camaro, scoops up Sam and a hot ass car chase ensues! The music changes. You can really get into it. BTW, the soundtrack is hot!
After the car chase is over, the question is asked, "If this is super advanced alien robot technology, why would you choose to be a piece of shit car?" That's when Bumble Bee gets pissed of, ejects his passengers, flips a U-ie in the middle of a tunnel, whips himself up on two wheels and scans an oncoming car. Bumble Bee returns a moment later as the new hotness!...The '09 Chevy Camaro concept car.
Even more comedy is the introduction of the character played by John Turturro. A special agent with a branch of the government that no one has ever heard of, and no one ever will; Sector 7. I won't give too much away here, but you could tell Turturro had a lot of fun playing this character.
The cool part about this movie is the perspective. Nowhere ever in the cartoon did they deal with the human response to the Transformers. It was always Autobot vs. Decepticon and maybe save some humans. In the movie, it's more about governmental response, terror threats, keeping it quiet, & military response. Very much a
What the fuck!?! factor.
Car chases, explosions, guns, violence, dogfights, aliens, robots, a bigass battle in the middle of a city with billions of dollars in collateral damage; what more could one ask? Transformers was awesome.
OK, now it's bitch time. The bitching is numerous, but insignificant.
First, the Beetle thing. If you read above, you found out that in the movie Bumble Bee transformed into a Camaro instead of a VW Beetle. Nerd purists would say that's disingenuous. I agree, but you know what? You can't get the new hotness with a fucking '08 bug. Did you see that Camaro concept car? Damn that's hot!
Second, General Motors is a total whore. Just like the latter movies of the Matrix trilogy, every vehicle, save for two or three in the movie was a GM car. Chevy's, GMC's, Pontiacs, Saturns, Hummers, and Saabs permeate the movie. Barricade was a Ford/Saleen Mustang. There were a couple of Crown Vics used as cop cars and taxis (Of course, not without the appropriate sprinkling of Impalas as cop cars). Optimus Prime was a Freightliner, but that's because GM don't make 18-wheelers.
For me, they did a great job on the special effects in general. However the Transformers themselves could have used some work. In many cases I though they were TOO detailed. I'm sure almost everyone will disagree with me. I think they put way too much time and effort into giving the robots detail. So much so that your eye couldn't focus in and absorb any of those details. The just became a mess of machinery. In addition, every last one of the Decepticons was gray. That made them almost indistinguishable. Starscream and Megatron stood next to each other and I couldn't tell them apart. Also everyone had round eyes and mouths. A number of Transformers originally had masks over their mouths. I read that it was so the animators could make them emote more. I don't know, it just seemed wrong to me.
When it comes to the eye absorbing detail, the digital camerawork was too fast. This is where a good DP (that's Director of Photography for you neophytes) earns their stripes. With so much detail for the eye to absorb, the camera should slow down a bit. Things happen so fast that the eye can't perceive it, so the brain can't absorb it. This causes the effect of,
"Damn, that looked cool, but what the fuck just happened?" Two Transformers fighting just becomes a blur and one of them ends up fragged in the end.
More bitching...
OK, this series of bitching is about cartoon-to-movie continuity. You read about the Bumble Bee thing already. In reading this article on
Wikipedia, it is indicated that they wrote in more Decepticons than Autobots to add a greater element of terror. OK, but why did they use so many 2nd generation Decepticon characters, when they only use a handful of 1st generation Autobots? Most of these characters were never in the original ark. The Autobots were outnumbered 8 (at least) to 5. Scorponok was one of the city-sized Transformers, not introduced for years after the show was aired. Barricade and Blackout even later. Bonecrusher was one of the Contructicons, introduced in the second season. All 5 of the Constructicons joined to form a giant robot called Devastator, who is now a separate individual and also an M1 Tank. Frenzy was one of the tiny cassette Decepticons (remember cassettes?), brother in arms with Rumble, Ravage, and Laserbeak, all minions of Soundwave, who transformed into a cassette recorder. In the movie, they took away Frenzy's pile-driving capability, combined him with Soundwave's transformation, and made his robot form look really weird. And by the way, why did they make him a GPX boombox? Why did they have to make him the cheapest, most generic, Toys 'R' Us brand boombox they could find? Oh that's right. Product placement.
| Autobots | Decepticons |
   | - Megatron - Cybertronian "Jet"
- Starscream - Lockheed/Martin F-22 Raptor
- Frenzy - GPX Boombox
- Barricade - '09 Ford/Saleen Mustang
- Blackout - Sekorsky Pave Low helicopter
- Scorponok - Scorpion robot
- Bonecrusher - Construction Vehicle
- Devastator - M1 Abrams Tank
 |
Anyway...
I'm done bitching now. Get out and go see this movie. Forget all that shit I said. It's still a fun fucking time for any child of the eighties. Oh yeah, and the girl in this movie, Megan Fox...not bad.
Transformers rates a 9.5/10 (4 1/2 stars/5) in my book. Well worth the price of admission.
Oh, yeah. And wouldn't you know it? The movie's over, I'm leaving the theater, and I see that same guy with the beer case costume. Only he's got a gaggle of friends,
ALL of whom are Drunkicons. I just had to laugh.
Labels: Geekdom, Movies, Rants, TV
OK, so I just freaked my mother out with my uncanny ability to mimic a specific alien's lines in
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
I told you I was a geek.
The alien's name is
Nien Nunb, from the planet Sullust. He's the mouse-lookin' dude next to Lando Calrissian on the Millenium Falcon in the final fight. How do I know this? I told you. I'm a geek.
I can mimic his lines perfectly and on queue.
I shouldn't admit this, ever, but I actually sat down when I was 13 with a tape of Jedi, and memorized the seemingly gibberish uttered by the alien. It was mostly an attempt to be funny and freak out this other kid, fellow geek, Eric Politowski.
Labels: Geekdom, Star Wars
I am the king of
Star Trek 2.0.
Just for shits & giggles, on Saturday morning I signed up to play along with Star Trek 2.0. For those of you that don't know, on
G4 TV, they air an episode of Classic Trek, along with an interactive "Spock Market", news, and live statistics like the number of Dramatic Music Stabs, Uhura undie shots, Torn Kirk Shirts, and Ricardo Montalban. They also have an interactive chat which the show poses a question and users can respond and it shows up on the air. Neat, huh?
OK, so I'm a nerd.
So I sign up. I respond to the question, "What would interglactic space aliens look like?" to which I respond things like, "I think they would be furry.", "Mickey Rourke", and "Vivica Fox". :D
About five minutes later, I see my name pop up on screen with my first response. HOLY SHIT! IT WORKS!!!! I am a god! I control your air waves!
OK, so maybe not, but still it was pretty damn cool. Now I have a
reason to watch Classic Trek. Another couple of minutes later I see my Mickey Rourke response show up. Obviously, there's a guy just monitoring this feed and deciding which responses make it to air. If there weren't could you just images what filth people would say?
Anyway, I thought that was some of the coolest shit I've seen in a while. And yes, I am a geek.
Labels: Geekdom, TV