So, then...what did I like about
the newest Transformers film? Well, hearing Peter Cullen’s voice work is
always good, especially since his performance here came over as very genuine.
Having him opposite Frank Welker again was a joy. There were some stunning
location shots, especially out in the American desert and in Hong
Kong – plus a nice Giger-esque spaceship interior. The cars chosen
looked rather awesome, even if I’m no gearhead, and the 3D was some of the
best-executed I’ve yet seen. Hound as a grizzled, overweight Autobot with a
plentiful supply of guns and John Goodman’s voice was a good decision. There
was some iffy CG, especially when the ‘transformium’ was being demonstrated,
but towards the end when it was great boats being dropped onto the heads of
giant robots, it was extremely well-done. Sometimes the humour worked well,
like when three silly old Chinese ladies got in the way. The Dinobots were cool
when they finally showed up. Oh, and I enjoyed the fact that there was no Shia
LeBoeuf to be seen, as like most people, I am fed up of him.
That’s quite a list of
positives. But they really don’t redeem this tedious, badly-made, vastly
over-long blockbuster. It’s been critically panned, and that’s no surprise. It’s
thrown together sloppily, too much goes on at once, and there’s very little
sense of resolution.
There’s a hint at an attempt
at a reboot here. There’s a hint at those pseudo-gritty superhero films where
the hero is in hiding and has grown a scruffy beard – which we saw in Wolverine
and Superman films lately. Instead of the beard, Optimus Prime has
gone into hiding as a beaten-up, filthy truck, barely functional now after
narrowly escaping bounty hunter Lockdown, who is in cahoots with the CIA
to hunt down transformers. Why? Well, the now-ubiquitous Stanley Tucci plays a
tech guru and inventor who is fairly obviously meant to be Steve Jobs. He is
harvesting ‘transformium’ (right up there with ‘Gundanium’ and ‘Unobtainium’
for the cringe factor) to make Transformers that humans control – but of course
using Megatron’s semi-active mind for this is a terrible idea. Lockdown,
meanwhile, is in league with the transformers’ original creators – presumably the
Quintessons – and wants to bring Prime back to them. He has made a deal with
Kelsey Grammar’s CIA operative – and the old
ham is having a marvellous time here – to be able to take Prime back in
exchange for a ‘seed’, which will create a large amount of Transformium in what
is essentially a terraforming nuke, and Megatron plots to set it off in a
populated city.
And all of that complexity?
Yeah, it’s all subplots. The main plot follows Marky Mark, who still looks a
bit too young to be the father of a 17-year-old model, as he gets caught up
with the Transformers. He has an incredibly cliched background – he is a
strugging single father who can’t quite make ends meet, because he is following
his passion for invention. His daughter, meanwhile, has started a relationship
with a dishy Irish racing driver – and admittedly, the trite old comedy dynamic
of young couple and disapproving father actually works pretty well, especially
given that the human characters are otherwise so completely cardboard. There is
also a comedy sidekick, but his dorky sub-Buffy dialogue is atrocious
and he soon gets offed anyway.
It’s all too much, especially
as none of it is very interesting, and it all becomes so clumsy at the end. Giving
the humans something to actually do towards the end is incredibly awkward, and
we have to buy that Megatron – now Galvatron – just stands about watching the
final Prime/Lockdown confrontation without swooping in to take victory. The
issue of Galvatron and that of the creators get left for yet another sequel,
and there’s very little sense at the end of just how many lives have been lost.
The women in this film are even flimsier than the men, and it’s a shame the
dinobots get no dialogue at all.
This is also the worst example
of product placing I have ever, ever seen. So much of it is so graceless that
it effectively made me hostile to the products shown. Though one cameo from
another Hasbro property did raise a chuckle...
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