Slashing The Seats

One day in and Slashing The Seats attends its first red carpet premiere. We’re feeling particularly pleased with ourselves. We’re dicks. Really.

Confession time. I am a Transformers fan. Not an ‘oh – Transformers – they’re cool’ fan. An ‘I can quote the entire animated movie verbatim and sing all the songs on the soundtrack’ fan. A ‘proud owner of an original mint-in-box Generation 1 Megatron with tech spec reader’ fan. An ‘own several badly photocopied fan produced comics that feature obscure characters only seen in Japan’ fan.

I’m surprised I don’t live in a basement too.

So – lets say I have a vested interest in the new Transformers flicks.

We arrive under-dressed and ill-prepared at what amounts to a security lock-down. No phones are permitted in the cinema, as everyone’s so paranoid that the film will leak onto the Internet. Too little, too late Hollywood – its already there. Bay and the cast make an appearance, then we begin.

We get the usual intros to the characters: Shia Labeouf is an annoying everyman, off to college, Megan Fox is working in an approximation of American Chopper, bending over and delighting teenage boys (and, yes, fullygrown men) and the remaining Autobots from the first film and a few new merchandising opportunities disguised as characters are hunting down Decepticons around the world with square-jawed army types. This leads to our first action piece as giant robots trash a large section of Shanghai. So far so explosive-filled and overblown. Bay to the MAX.

Some needful set up and plot involving a shard from the McGuffin in the first movie – the Allspark – sets thing in motion as we are sent on a quite frankly baffling plot involving ancient Transformers, a sun destroying laser, a prophecy, space-based new Decepticons and LeBouf having secret robot knowledge somehow implanted in his noggin. All of this is really an excuse to cut to the money shots. GIANT ROBOTS KICKING EACH OTHER AND EXPLODING.

Of which there is plenty.

The first movie had some of this but not enough. T: ROTF has it in spades. And in all its wonderful permutations. Robot on Robot, Robot On Human, three-on-one with laser swords, Tanks On Robots, Jets on Robots, Experimental Weaponry on Bigger Robot than usual, e.t.c…

The action is spectacular, with effects seamlessly blending into real scenes. But it does become a bit samey. I didn’t think I could become bored of massive robot action, but after yet another throwaway Transformer goes down under a hail of tank shells, I don’t really care. Looks damn good though.

The performances are alright. Not much more to be said. They are there essentially to make us care about what happens, but don’t. They are overpowered by the sheer scale of the action. It doesn’t help that Shia Labeouf’s acting style is based primarily on repeating the same word over and over at varying volumes. ‘No’, ‘wait’, ‘go’, and weirdly ‘tongue’ all get the repetition treatment. Also, it’s a shame that I kept wishing that Jeff Goldblum played John Turturro’s character, which was written with him in mind, I’m sure.  He would have done a better job.

The climax of the film descends into military hardware and explosion pornography. But in a good way. It’s massively gratuitous as most of the antiquities in Egypt get wrecked up (at one point, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find one of the ‘comedy’ smart car / Kenan & Kel characters pissing on the Sphinx, such is the destruction) But it could not end in any other way. It needed to be big and stupid. It is a film based on action figures.

(Very good action figures).

And that’s how it is to be approached. No subtlety. No subtext. Tasty treats for the eyeballs. The ideal summer blockbuster. My nerdboy urges are satisfied, also, with occasional nods to the original animated movie and a genuine respect for underlying character traits. Obviously the door is open for Transformers 3, and I’m looking forward to it.

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