More than meets the eye

I guess there are two ways you can look at Transformers. You could look at the film from the perspective of whether or not the script was interesting and flawless, whether the characters were compelling, whether or not the narrative flowed effortlessly, whether the cinematography was awe-inspiring and fluid, and whether the whole thing seems to fit together. Alternatively, you can do what I did and slaver over the special effects and the at-times nifty cinematography and try your best to ignore all the holes in the narrative, the complete lack of characterisation, the weird plot shifts, the annoying comic relief, and the lame scripting.

Director Michael Bay seems to have recognised that there is probably no way you could make a movie about giant alien robots who come from a planet called Cybertron credible or intelligent. So, it appears he has made a film which is cinematic (some of the camerawork was amazing), yet silly and very aware of the ludicrous nature of its subject matter. This is not a film you go to see with friends which you can talk about intelligently over coffee afterwards – this is a film go to in order to see incredible robot death action so you can rave about it afterwards with your friends like twelve year-olds. You go because you are lusting after the special effects, and Bay makes the wise decision to spend much of the film satisfying that lust. From the opening minutes, we are hit with a Transformer going mad in the desert of Qatar, blowing up helicopters and tanks – from there, it’s a rollercoaster that lasts for about two hours and culminates in the Autobots and Decepticons battling it out in the streets while a high school kid tries to outwit the mammoth Megatron (voiced, surprisingly, by Hugo Weaving). This movie is loud and long and screams from its opening frames right through to the end, and I have to say that I loved it.

And, I’m surprised that I loved it. This is a film which is a big, slow-moving target for the critics. After all, we’re talking about giant alien robots who crash-land on Earth to fight a war over a cube-shaped device (the ‘Allspark’) which has the power to make inanimate objects into crazy killing machines. The evil robots, called Decepticons (which is only mildly better than ‘Autobots’), track down a teenage boy who is selling artefacts which contain details about the Allspark’s location on eBay – the evil robots obtain his eBay user name and hunt him down. Thankfully, he is saved by Bumblebee, an Autobot who transforms into an old Camero. Throughout the rest of the film, we meet the rest of the good guys, including Optimus Prime, and watch them talk, socialise, and thrash Decepticons senseless. Tagging along are some dorky secret agents, the token loud black man who seems to do nothing except scream in a high voice, and a spider-like robot who reminded me of the soldier robots in Star Wars: Episode One. It is film that is about one boy saving the world from destruction by helping the Autobots and getting caught up with US Special Forces and students-cum-hackers.

It is utterly ridiculous and utterly ludicrous, but somehow, it works.