About two months ago, I wrote that “Humans are more important than all other living things combined and multiplied by a bazillion.” Well, a lot’s happened since then. After watching and reading about all the hoopla leading up to last weeks’ major media event, I am ashamedly forced to admit that I was wrong, and that I’ve been wrong all along about how mankind relates to other life on this Earth.
Humans are not as important as Transformers.
SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know that the Autobots emerge victorious over the Decepticons, stop reading now.
I am not alone in having denied this fundamental truth for too long—Michael Bay is just as guilty. At first, I thought he’d be the ideal director for a movie that should have been nothing but gigantic robots fighting and blasting the living daylights out of everything. But he managed to screw it up. Here’s how:
There were too many humans in this movie. I didn’t care about the humans, and I didn’t want to care about the humans. The humans should have been doing nothing other than screaming and trying not to get smooshed by the fighting gigantic robots. Instead, we got what seemed like only 45 minutes or so of action, and 100 minutes of blah blah blah trying to justify the action.
Michael Bay should understand by now that things like screenwriting, plot, theme, and character development are not his strong points, and thus he should avoid them. As a favor to him—should he look into making a Director’s Cut of this movie—I’ve done a little editing and fine-tuned the human dialogue for him.
Here’s Transformers as written by Vincent Viscariello:
And then a quick cut to 172 minutes of battle scenes, starting off with Blackout wiping out the army. Then Bumblebee fights Blackout. Then Scorponok jumps in. Then the rest of the Autobots and Decepticons jump in. Transformers fight and chase each other all over the place, with battles in the following locations: New York City, the Sahara Desert, the Himalayas, Mount Vesuvius as it’s erupting, Siberia, Area 51, the Amazon Rain Forest, the Grand Canyon, the Arctic Circle, Antarctica, the Moon, and on the surface of Halley’s Comet. Transformers trash-talk each other incessantly, with lines flat-out stolen from kung fu movies, professional wrestling, and Superman II (e.g., “Come to me, Prime! I defy you! KNEEEEL before Megatron!”).
Optimus Prime and Megatron square off early in the action, with Prime losing and narrowly escaping death. Starscream tries to overthrow Megatron, fails, and weasels his way back into Megatron’s good graces. Ironhide gives Prime an inspirational speech stolen from any Rocky movie. Prime tracks down Megatron and defeats him in a deafening 27-minute battle so jaw-droppingly, saliva-droolingly, eyeballs-drying-out-because-if-you-blink-you’ll-miss-somethingly awesome that they retire the Academy Award for Special Effects. The End of what would have been the greatest movie ever.
Really, Mike, writing this film shouldn’t have been that difficult. Call me when it’s sequel time, I work cheap.
4 Responses to “Regarding humanity’s role on this planet.”
- Doctor Hmnahmna Says:
July 11th, 2007 at 6:41 AMI believe that I said at NIT (Nurse-in-training) Hmnahmna’s apt that I was excited about a Transformers movie until I saw that Michael Bay was the director. Then I knew it was going to suck.Now here’s a QUALITY Transformers movie. Yes, kids, this movie starred the voice talents of Leonard Nemoy, Orson Welles, Eric Idle, Robert Stack, and Judd Nelson, with a rockin’ 80s soundtrack!
- twink Says:
July 13th, 2007 at 6:53 PMSorry, but it’s taken over the number 2 spot on Twink’s favorite movies list. My only issue was that they never once said “Autobots… TRANSFORM”. - Doctor Hmnahmna Says:
July 14th, 2007 at 8:56 AMAnd here’s another Transformer that was apparently cut from the movie . . . - aabrock Says:
July 21st, 2007 at 4:52 PMSo I saw it last night…initial reactions:1) Agree with Dom, too many people talking and not enough Transformer battles. However, this may be because most of the battles become confusing and hard to tell who was who. For instance, I had to wait for the end speech to realize the identity of the dead Autobot.
2) Not that it mattered, as the Autobots were given nearly ZERO personality so I really didn’t care too much.
3) Megatron is a big gun, not a plane. We have a plane already. Starscream. The most awesome Transformer ever.
4) Starscream is the most awesome Transformer ever. But I had to wait until the final battle before he even shows up? Weak. At least he lived to fight and then run away another day.
5) Optimus Prime was incredibly cool and the original voice was a master stroke.
6) I cannot recall a performance so incredibly annoying and yet likable as Shia Labeouf’s turn as Spike.
7) Bumblebee’s lubricant. Why????
8) No human can utter the phrase “I am not leaving without Bumblebee” without sounding completely ridiculous.
9) John Turturro’s character was hilarious.
10) As a general note, it sucks that these 100+ million dollar movie franchises WASTE a good portion of the first movie with exposition.
11) Most of these are minor quibbles, I really enjoyed the movie and look forward to the next one.
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