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Daren in Brief - TRANSFORMERS 2 WTF
by Daren Foster

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Daren in Brief
Transformers 2: WTF?

by Daren Foster

Taking a GOB Bluth level dare, I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Nearly two and a half hours later.. let me say that again but this time in numerical form.. 2 ½ hours later for a sequel in a franchise based on a toy for 6 year-olds.. The Godfather was only a ½ hour longer and it, you know, had a story with 3-dimensional characters and touched on themes and ideas that might be at least passingly engaging to the average adult who isn’t, well, a babbling idiot. So yeah, that kind of 2 ½ hours later. I emerged bleary-eyed from the theatre and the first thought that escaped from my brain that still rattled around in its skull casing was: what the fuck did I just witness?!?

I hadn’t been to see a movie. I’d been mugged, assaulted visually, aurally and intellectually. The first two I can deal with. Sometimes I even go out of my way seeking that kind of over-stimulation. But the paucity of ideas, the sheer lack of thought or care given to basic tenets of storytelling technique struck me as simply shocking.

Early in and not up on my Transformers lore, I found myself trying to make sense of what was going on before quickly realizing that there was no sense to be made. It’s based on a toy for 6 year-olds! They’re just making this shit up as they go along, fitting whatever story they need to set up the next computer-generated visual sequence. When all you’re looking for is the clanging and smashing sound and fury of two indistinguishable metal objects doing battle, you could care less how it is they came to blows.

How great it must be to be director Michael Bay. With no discernible style other than churning out loud bad movies that make scads of cash, he is the face of New Hollywood. It can’t really be that difficult to direct the movies he makes. Seriously. I picture the dude sitting around with informal storyboards looking through computer mock-ups of robot fighting, saying, that’ll look cool, that’ll look cool, that’ll look really cool.. and no one around to tell him that, maybe, just maybe, 2 ½ hours of looking cool doesn’t really make a movie.

But who would suggest such a thing? With $300 million in box office to date that man is now as unstoppable a force as one of the robots he films. Transformers: ROTF isn’t a movie about robots. It’s a movie made and watched by robots. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d lay cash down on Michael Bay being some sort of android, created and developed by Dreamworks and built in secret out on the Skywalker Ranch. Certainly Transformers star, Megan Fox, the hottest woman in the world is one of the robots living amongst us, disguised as the average super-model-girl-next-door type; a pure product emerging from the same Weird Science 14 year-old nerd experiment that brought us Angelina Jolie and populating the pages of Maxim.

So a plea to the Transformers generation out there: let go of your childhood. Grow up and realize your cherished toy was nothing more than a test-marketed product designed to drain your parents’ wallets. It was OK to be all excited about them when you still wet your bed regularly but it’s kind of embarrassing now that you’re a teenager or even worse, older. If you really need your Transformers fix, can’t you please restrict it to games on the computer or more tactile battle reconstructions using the action figures down in your parents’ basements and stop polluting our theatres with your soul deadening and will draining movie versions. Help us stop Michael Bay before he harvests any more of our sun.