More than meets the eye, baby

I imagine I'm embarrassingly late here, at least compared to the rest of this planet, but I finally saw the Transformers movie last Thursday. As the Transformers have been near and dear to my heart ever since Weird Al first graced the original cartoon with "Dare to be Stupid" in 1986, I can't pass up the opportunity to turn my impressions of it into a blog entry.

The Good

Peter Cullen. Bringing back the original voice of Optimus Prime was nearly enough nostalgia to bring a tear to my eye. The choice of Hugo Weaving for Megatron's voice was also a fine one, indeed.
Consistency? At first I was worried when I heard that Megatron didn’t turn into a gun…whadya mean you’re not sticking with the classics? Shame! Shame, I say! But as it turned out, having the Transformers able to change into any object they had studied/analyzed/whatever was a wise move that gave them a much more…hmm, organic feel, I guess. In any case, I approve.
And I know it’s been said and said and said by this point, but the special effects are totally badass.

The Bad

Soundtrack use. The credits were packed with moderate to really good songs (ok, aside from Stinkin’ Park), some originally written for this movie, but a much better effort could have been made to meld these songs into the movie itself, like they used to do with soundtracks in days of old. Disturbed’s “This Moment” comes to mind – that would have been perfect for the battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron. Instead, though, we’re left with some quasi-epic orchestral blah, and this song is number 3 into the credits. Psssh, I say. In modern times I’m not sure they can even legally be called soundtracks, as ‘Music Inspired By The Movie’ would be a much more accurate way of describing the damn things.
Michael Bay. Michael Bay blows shit up and occasionally tosses in some pithy dialogue to make us groan and shake our heads. Michael Bay is not a plot guy. No effort whatsoever was made to develop the backgrounds of characters like Megatron or Optimus Prime, who apparently had some serious history together. There’s a line toward the end of the movie that hints at this, but all we’re given is that taste and nothing more.
Sequel setup. In this age of trilogies, follow-ups, and rehashes this comes as no surprise, but from about 10 minutes in, the entire movie felt to me like it was foreshadowing the inevitable sequel. Worse yet, I can see indications that the sequel will follow some of the plot of the original Transformers cartoon movie. Granted, if justice can be done in bringing Unicron (yes, I know Orson Wells is dead) back to the big screen, that may not be entirely a bad thing…still, it annoyed me to sit in the audience and think, Do they really believe us to be this stupid? But then, when you consider that 50% of all people are below average intelligence…*sigh* Yes, they do. Say it with me, kids:

low·est com·mon de·nom·i·na·tor [loh-ist kom-uhn di-nom-uh-ney-ter]; IPA: /ˈloʊ ɪst ˈkɒmən dɪˈnɒməˌneɪtər/
noun.
1. The most basic, least sophisticated level of taste, sensibility, or opinion among a group of people.
2. The group having such taste, sensibility, or opinion

The Nauseating

Oh, this is an easy one - fucking product placement. I was at first horrified to hear that Soundwave would turn into an iPod instead of his classic boombox. Then, to my great relief, I heard that they had axed this idea. Now that I’ve finally seen the movie, I understand that one little travesty like that is as a drop of salt water in the freaking Pacific. I can immediately recall utterly shameless plugs for eBay, Mountain Dew, and Ford Camaro, and I have not the slightest doubt that I’d find fistfuls more were I to journey up to Hirosaki to see this commerc…erm, movie again.

And just to keep this post semi-relevant to Japan, I’ll end with a hilarious online comment from Austin, another teacher I know…

“I once asked some of my junior high kids to think of a kanji version of the Japanese version of my name, ‘Osutein.’ They settled on ‘big/great’ for the ‘o-’ and ‘vinegar’ for the ‘su.’ They then claimed that ‘tein’ was too hard and settled on ‘chin’ instead. Those of you with some familiarity with Japanese can imagine which kanji they chose for ‘chin.’
Thus, I became known as ‘Great Vinegar Penis.’ I tried to get a hanko with that, but for some reason my Board of Education refused...

-Great Vinegar Penis”