Alright, y’all, I have a deep, dark confession that I need to make. It’s the sort of thing that might absolutely destroy my credibility as a blog review writer, but I feel like I finally need to get this off of my chest so here goes… I didn’t not like the Michael Bay Transformers movies. There, I said it, and I’m not even sorry! Actually, I’ve made this confession before. I did a sweet review about Age of Extinction last year, but this confession goes a bit deeper than just that. I hope you’re bracing yourselves because this is a real doozy of a confession that we’ve got here! Ready? Good. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the 1986 Transformers movie. I know that, much like my opinion on John Williams, this probably isn’t going to be a very popular opinion, but it is what it is. The funny thing is, I didn’t even realize that it wasn’t the amazing work of awesomeness that everyone claims it to be until I took my wife to see The Last Knight in theaters. I’ve noticed a number of parallels in where the general story of the live-action movies has been going, and although not done terribly well, I still get kind of excited that some service is being done to the original show and the lore that it introduced.
The thing is, I go into Michael Bay Transformers movies with extremely low expectations. Watching a Michael Bay film is like driving a Yugo from the 80s. You know you’re going to get a disjointed and underwhelming experience, but you do it for the nostalgia… Or… Something. Okay, that analogy doesn’t work entirely, but hopefully you get the point. Which is, that Michael Bay has a very distinct style, and so no one should ever be surprised by one of his films. He sticks to that style lick sap on your shoe sole. As such, I didn’t expect much going into the experience, but something unforeseen happened that day at that theater. I actually enjoyed myself! And then on the way home, I was excitedly telling my wife about all of the new story points that were being worked into the movie by the end, and where they had come from originally, and I kept saying that she needed to watch the 86 film so that she too could understand. And, just like so many nerds before me, I kept going on about how great this movie was, and how much I had loved it as a kid.
I’d like to think that my wife loves me unconditionally forever and ever. I’ve tested this theory to a miniscule extent by doing some pretty stupid stuff since we got married, and she’s never been anything but loving and compassionate, which left me feeling sheepish at times, but still confident in myself. However, watching the 86 Transformers with her was the first time I can consciously remember feeling embarrassed in our relationship. It’s pretty easy to tell when she’s checked out because she’ll start reading a book, and she did so almost immediately as we watched. That’s really what got me thinking about this particular topic so let’s take a look at the 86 Transformers and contrast it with The Last Knight, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the franchise.
First, let’s briefly look at The Last Knight. The basic jist of the story is that Quintessa, the self-proclaimed creator of the transformers, has brainwashed Optimus Prime, and turned him into a tool for getting some sort of staff that would allow her to restore Cybertron. In the meantime, various government agencies have created a clandestine group to just kill all the transformers, regardless of their affiliation. Also in the meantime, giant horns begin cropping up around the Earth. There’s stuff, and more goofy stuff, like the movie totally riffs on Ocean’s Eleven with a super cheesy round up of the villains scene. The broad strokes is that Quintessa is trying to destroy Unicron, which has melded with Earth, so that she can restore power to Cybertron. By the end, Megatron, who totally came back in this movie, and Quintessa are thwarted from destroying the Earth, but Earth and Cybertron are inextricably linked by the end. Megatron seems well and truly done, but Quintessa manages to survive and she approaches some scientists about a way to destroy Unicron.
I’m sure you can see why I got all excited about this movie, especially as it pertains to the 86 film. Of course, with any new Transformers movie comes the inevitable spewing of rage. Everyone seems to get some sort of cheap thrill over proclaiming to all who will listen that Michael Bay is ruining their childhood, and that the movies are just an underhanded grab for cash, both in the form of Chinese ticket sales, as well as merchandising. People also really enjoy talking about how each movie has its annoying characters that just kill the entire experience, and how the camera work is awful because it’s moving from thing to thing too quickly. And then the coup de grace in the argument for terminating Michael Bay’s access to Hollywood dollars is how much better the 86 movie is than the new ones.
If we’re going to continually come back to that aspect of the argument, the shouldn’t we be acutely aware of what we’re defending in the process. I certainly think so. So let’s take a look shall we? The story goes like this. The Decepticons have seized control of Cybertron after a final confrontation between them and the Autobots. The Autobots have been secretly been preparing a retaliatory operation from the two moons of Cybertron. Needing Energon, Optimus sends a shuttle to get some from the Earth base. Megatron and his goons figure out what’s going on, and they kill all of the Autobots aboard, and then they take to attacking the Autobot base on Earth. A distress signal is sent, and the rest of the Autobots come to the rescue. Unfortunately, Optimus is killed in the attack. Optimus gives the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus.
Meanwhile, all of the Decepticons who were wounded in battle float through space until they are found by Unicron. He eats most of them, and then Megatron talks him into making them his lackeys. Unicron agrees that this is a good idea and turns Megatron into Galvatron. Megatron wastes no time in avenging Starscream’s treachery by interrupting his coronation as leader of the Decepticons and killing old Starscream. Megatron then heads back to Earth to finish off the Autobots. The Autobots escape via several shuttles. This is the sequence where we’re introduced to the Quintessons. We’ll find out later that they created the Autobots and Decepticons to be used as slave labor. But for now, they’re just funky, weird creatures that like to kill things.
The movie culminates in a final battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Galvatron and Hot Rod face off inside Unicron where Hot Rod gets the Matrix, which promptly joins with him and turns him into Rodimus Prime. Rodimus ostensibly defeats Galvatron, and destroys Unicron using the power of the Matrix, and the Autobots reclaim Cybertron as their home as the audience is left to wait until season 3 of the show to finally see how everything ends.
On paper, there does appear to be more to the animated film than the latest live action film, but we can also chalk that up to the fact that I’ve only seen the newest live action movie once so I’m a little blurry on the story. But story aside, how does this alleged gem of 80s awesomeness stack up to the cinematic abortions that every claims the live action franchise to be? Let’s break a few of the most common criticisms down, and then contrast them with what’s actually in the 86 film.
The most common gripe I hear these days is that Bay puts annoying characters in his movies. Sometimes that gripe is warranted, as in the case of Revenge of the Fallen where the annoying characters were also racist stereotypes. However, take a look one of the characters from the 86 film:
That’s a clip of Wreck Gar. He’s the leader of the Junkions. They speak TV. You read that right. He’s the leader, voiced by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame, and he’s pretty annoying. Now take a look at this wonderful website:
This site conveniently provides pictures of the characters as well as sound bytes of their voices. Do me a quick favor and click on Wheelie and Blurr. Wheelie has a high pitched nasally voice with a synthesized overlay, and Blurr talks at five hundred words per minute. They’d be fine in small doses, but they see a good bit of screen time in the last half of the movie. So....
The next biggest gripe I hear pertains to the frenetic way that Bay shoots his scenes. I got nothing here except to say that he’s Michael Bay. You should know better. Honestly, I only find this mildly annoying. I do like me some grand, sweeping establishing shots, but if the action is supposed to be fast paced, and disorienting, then I could see some merit to this technique if it were being used well. And even I’ll admit that Bay doesn’t tend to use this technique exceptionally well.
The last biggest gripe that I hear from people regarding these films is that Bay doesn’t take any time to develop any of his characters. I’m not really going to argue this point. There’s definitely a lot of room for greater character development from the side of the human characters. On the point of the transformers characters though, I’m willing to contend to a point that those characters require very little development since they’ve been around nearly 40 years, and the live action films aren’t using any new iterations of the characters to begin with. So we’re supposed to already know what the Transformer characters are all about. It’s a flimsy way to look at things for sure, but I think if we’re going to be totally honest with ourselves, then we need to at least acknowledge that it’s a thing. I suppose that related to that, a lot of people don't seem to think that the movies really rely a whole lot on their plot. While I can agree with this point of view to an extent, I think that after Dark of the Moon the films have really been working toward a bigger payoff, and I, for one, am morbidly curious to see what that payoff is, even if it involves watching 14 more films. (I pray that it does not.)
On the flip side, one could say that with the exception of the Primes, there’s very little actual character development in the 86 film. And the extent of that development is in the form of killing Optimus, and giving the matrix to Rodimus. Certainly, that’s to very deep development, but it is present. There’s a little bit more to that as Rodimus learns leadership skills, but it’s skant, and we should just accept that it’s scant. At the end of the day, this 86 movie came out for much the same reasons that the live action films come out every three or four years: Hasbro wants to make money off of merchandise. With every new Michael Bay helmed film, there’s a new slew of toys, and personal accessories to buy. In the case of the 86 film, Hasbro wanted to do a wipe of the entire product line, and start over with new figures to sell kids. One thing that got under my skin for a long time was that the characters after the movie didn’t resemble real world counterpart automobiles. I liked when I could see a character in vehicle mode and recognize the vehicle that they were impersonating. I do like that about the newer movies, even if it means that the films are two hour long advertisements for GM products.
I realize this may not be my strongest offering ever, but I have a bigger point that I’d like to make now that I’ve rambled for a while. Recently, a certain beloved sci-fi franchise attempted a return to form on the Interwebs. There were extreme reactions that went to both ends of the spectrum. Some loved it, some hated it, and still others were still on the fence. This reviewer opted out of striking while the iron was hot so to speak in order to gather a bit more information before passing judgement. The rational, Vulcan side of me just couldn’t make a snap judgement summarily on something for which I had only viewed 80 minutes. I’ll gladly share my thoughts next week. In the meantime, I’ve seen some pretty ugly things go down since this event, and it’s pretty shameful. We all think very much differently from each other. As a result, we all tend to form drastically different opinions of things. Lots of folks have been falling back on the IDIC argument to state their case, but by its very nature, the IDIC principle would have to accept, and respect the opinions of detractors equally as much as those of the supporters. There cannot be Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations if there isn’t diversity to start with. I’ve seen some on social media going so far as to forbid negative comments on this particular revival event. There’s certainly no diversity there.
The fact of the matter is, there are always going to be people on either side of the aisle as it were. Much like the Transformers there will be those who like the live action movies despite their flaws, and there will be those who, through the eyes of nostalgia, hold the original stuff near and dear to their hearts. Neither side can be wrong because the whole experience is subjective. The mark of a great person is their ability to learn how to agree to disagree, and accept others despite ideological differences, assuming, of course, that those principles don’t do harm to others. If someone is a staunch supporter of cannibalism, by all means, shun them! But if they simply disagree with you on the greatness of a new thing, there’s no need for all of the rage and vitriol. It takes way too much energy to be angry to waste in on ultimately trivial things. In the immortal words of one Bill S. Preston, “Be excellent to each other.” In a more serious vein, be the result of the change that you want to see, and also stick around to see what I thought of the new Star Trek Discovery right here next week!
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