A meditation on the crapness of the new Transformers movies

Having recently been a victim of ‘Transformers- Revenge of the Fallen’ and a lifelong fan of our fiddly plastic cousins, I feel it is my duty, nay, my responsibility to educate those unfortunate enough to believe that either of the new Transformer films are anything more than the most recent of Michael Bay’s crimes against cinema. Could it be his masturbatory use of slow motion to pad the films out by twenty minutes? Could it be the redundancy of every single human character? Could it be the staggeringly annoying fat black guy with the gap in his teeth that thankfully seems to have now disappeared off the radar? Consult the matrix of leadership and read on…

In order to prove my point viz a viz the suckiness of these two films, I am going to compare them with the undoubted masterpiece that is the 1986 ‘Transformers: The movie’. Wasting no time, we’ll begin by comparing the opening 20 minutes of each film and judge which is superior at grabbing and holding our tiny attention spans.

• Transformers- We begin with some douche called Witwicky or another equally stupid name trying to sell some of his great grandfathers false teeth or whatever. We have a flashback of the old coot exploring the north pole to find santas workshop when he promptly falls through a lame plot device and discovers a mysterious metal man. Being the visionary he is, Mr Bay also manages to show us that this kid is a bit of a geeky outsider, but the humorous twist comes when we realise he has a teen crush on a far more attractive popular girl. Then he buys a car which turns out to be Bumblebee. A helicopter flavoured enema swiftly follows as a deceptacon blasts the bejesus out of a military base, which is cool. So, a slow start but we’re beginning to warm up, although god knows what all that human stuff was about in the beginning.

• Transformers: Revenge of the baddie- After a chubby inducing voiceover from the autobot leader, we’re back with the main character at his home relishing the hilarious dynamic he shares with his parents, which as anyone can see is completely relevant to robotic interstellar warfare. Then his uber hot girlfriend arrives and I forget what happens, I think his toaster transforms and his house blows up for no reason. Then we get back to the important stuff, an incredible sequence of explosions and robo fighting culminating in a totally badass mafia style ass-capping by Optimus Prime. I have to admit, this totally blew me away, I could have sworn I was in a half decent action film.

• Transformers: The Movie- We start with a rip- off of The Star Wars rolling text intro, only this time with a voiceover by a man who sounds like he’s talking through a fan. Already I feel like I’ve been injected with Red Bull, and we’re about a minute in. There’s a planet of robots just minding their own business when a huge ‘monster planet’ appears and eats the crap out of them, devouring them whole like a child’s innocence at Neverland. Then the deceptacons attack the autobot city, killing a bunch of main characters as the whole thing turns into a gargantuan gun turret and all out warfare ensues, climaxing in a life and death mano-a-mano punch-up between Optimus and Megatron. Holy shit ! I need a lie down because my jaw has just been rocked and the thing’s barely started.

So there can be no doubt as to the winner of that comparison, ‘T:TM’ blowing the doors off whatever transforming car you care to mention. Watching the opening of each film I notice that roughly fifty seconds is devoted to any human character in the animated version, after that the creators new that nobody gave a damn and got on with the robo-carnage. The Bay monster, however, seems determined to lead us through a series ineptly written examples of human interaction that have nothing to do with anything ever. I don’t care if his mum eats space cakes or Megan Fox’s dad is back in town, get on with it! The clue is in the title, Transformers is about Transformers stomping each other out, not Shia Ladouche and his ‘wacky Witwicky’ family.

Before I ‘bring the rain’ and move in to my main problems with these films, I’d like the compare the quality of their respective casts. I know this isn’t strictly to do with the film’s structure or whatever it is I’m supposed to be griping about, but a cursory glance at the lists shows just how weak Bays band of misanthropes is compared to my beloved animated beauty. With the exception of Megan Fox, we like her. I’ll be using my patented, family friendly ‘Pimp or ho’ stamp of judgement.

Transformers: The movie

Leonard Nimoy- Spock. Pimp.
Orson Welles- Director of Citizen Kane, broadcast war of the worlds, turned down the role of Darth Vader. Pimp.
Peter Cullen- Optimus Pimp.
Transformers: The other ones
Tyrese Gibson- Sucks. Ho
Josh Duhamel- Win a date with someone better. Ho.
Jon Voight- has a creepy rubber face. Ho.

All the other people they just stole from the original. There is my fair and unbiased comparison.

You may be wondering why I would use such juvenile terms with which to compare these people. Anyone who has seen Revenge of the Fallen will be quick to recall the two delightfully retarded black man caricatures Mudflap and Cottonpicker ( One is correct for sure ). Just when the action might begin to focus on a narrative plot our dynamic duo are there to quip away , calling people “pussies” and busting all up in this bitch or other, gold teeth gleaming. Ah, the laughs we never had.
So what the hell is your problem, guy? I hear you ask. Well, since you asked so nicely, I will tell you. In order for an action film to shine through from the rest of the pack and become a classic, it must adhere to and obey the 3 cast iron laws of action films. As anyone who had ever seen an Arnie movie will tell you, they are:

1) Killer one liners
2) Badass villains
3) Super sweet set-pieces.

For my first point I’m going to compare Prime’s words at the beginning of ‘T:TM’ and the end of ‘T:ROTF’. In the animated version, he stands toe to toe with Megatron and says “One shall stand, one shall fall”. That’s right fool, Optimus is gonna whip the matte finish right off your tin can hide, it’s a line so badass it should be illegal. In the other, he says, “I stand, you fall”, which isn’t bad, but reminds me of Bart Simpson’s comparison of Radiactive Man and Radiation Dude. “Up and Atom!” will always be superior to “Up, and let’s go!”.

On to the calibre of the villains that threaten our robots in disguise. In Bay’s first crack at Transformers, Megatron is one bad mofo, although he loses points for falling over and freezing in the North Pole at the beginning. He even rips Jazz in half, which is even more cold blooded than Rick James. In the second one, however, he’s rebranded as some simpering tool who follows some squid face thing called ‘The Fallen’ around like an ugly metal puppy. ‘The Fallen’ has some neat tricks, like teleportation and staff twiddling, but when compared to Unicron, well…Seriously, he wants to eat the entire universe, what can compete with that? Set pieces, the bread and butter of all action films. The live action films delight in showing us robots making mincemeat of human cities, and then bizarrely a big desert that nobody cares about. ‘…The Movie’ climaxes with a galactic scale space battle between a transformed Unicron who pimp slaps Cybertron whilst Galvatron and Rodimus (yes, really) Prime have a fist fight inside his head. I need another lie down, this is all too much.

I know that in graphical terms the 1986 version can never compete with its newer, more polished siblings and therefore might be considered inferior. This might be true, but if the original was remade with all the shiny CGI and a 60 million dollar budget, there isn’t a person alive who would say the other two were better. In conclusion, buy Transformers: The Movie, it’s much better than the other two; it’s got everything- redemption, comedy, monster planets, what more could you possibly ask for?

P.S. Don’t bother with the ‘U’ rated version; it doesn’t have the immortal line “Oh shit! What are we gonna do now!?”

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