More Than Meets The Eye

As mentioned in the last entry, yesterday Scott picked me up and we went to see Transformers.
Because he was driving back from DC, he decided that, thanks to traffic, he wouldn’t have enough time to drive home and then up here to pick me up, so he opted to pick me up early so we could get something to eat before the movie.
We opted for Uno’s, where I had their new specialty, the BLT deep dish pizza. It really was like a BLT in pizza form, and was actually pretty good.
From there we went to a book store to kill time before finally heading to the theater and taking out seats.
There was a group of NOC employees that was going to attend that showing, so we expected to see people that we knew, but the one person we saw that we did know wasn’t from the NOC, it was the guy who works at the comic shop, which was unexpected but not really surprising. We expected a nerd crowd, after all.
(And we weren’t disappointed; there was some kid there in flip flops, shorts, and an Nvidia T-shirt)
Apart from geeks and nerds like us, the theater was packed with teenagers, who were surprisingly well-behaved once the movie started. In fact, with our frequent asides to each other, Scott and I were probably more disruptive than they were.
As for the movie itself, as I mentioned, it was pretty damn awesome.
The pacing was good, the plot, minimal though it may have been, hung together pretty well, and the effects were amazing.
When they played it for laughs – and they did a lot of that – it delivered, with lots of funny scenes and bits of dialogue and characterization.
One of my favorites aspects of the movie, though, was the fact that the voice of Optimus Prime was provided by the person who did his voice on the cartoon. Very nice touch, as there really was no one else who could have done it.
There was, of course, the requisite teen love story and, spoiler alert, the geeky, goofy male teen lead (Shia LaBeouf, who has been something of a box office juggernaut of late), successfully hooks up with the incredibly hot, yet multi-layered female teen lead (Megan Fox). I have to say I was just floored by that happening. I never would have expected them to hook up. It’s a really surprising twist.
Okay, the above was sarcastically written from the perspective of someone who’d never seen a movie before, but I will say that the even the cliché teen romance was made entertaining by the input of one of the Autobots (the good Transformers).
I only have a few small complaints about the movie, one of which is actually the fast pace of the action scenes. The CGI Tranformers are not quite so easy to distinguish from each other as their cartoon counterparts, so during some fights scenes it was a little difficult to determine who was who, though it’s only a minor quibble.
My other complaints relate to plot elements that I’ve seen so often in other movies that I would like to have Hollywood impose a moratorium on their use.
First up is the whole idea of all of humanity’s technological advancements being the result of reverse-engineering alien technology. This is just such a hackneyed concept that’s been used so many times, and usually done so – as it was in Transformers – as a throw-away line that doesn’t really add anything to the plot.
Beyond that it’s just insulting. Sure, a good percentage of humanity can be characterized as having sub-moron levels of intelligence, but we do have a few smart people who are capable of coming up with good ideas on their own. Come on; give us credit where credit’s due.
(I would also like to see an end to the sort of converse proposition that all great evil in human history was propagated by some outside force like demonic influences or whatever. Just as we have the capacity for great advancements without outside influence, we’re also quite capable of tremendous evil by ourselves.)
The other plot element - and I know this one isn’t going anywhere but I’ll still suggest it – is the hot chick who is the object of desire for the protagonist but is dating the meathead jock.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with this in and of itself because, after all, it has verisimilitude: hot chicks date meathead jerks in real life.
What I do have a problem with is that in the movies (and on TV), said hot chick seldom seems to have any real interest in her meathead jerk boyfriend. If he tries to kiss her, she turns away. In fact, apart from the fact that she’s always with the meathead jerk, you would never suspect that they’re romantically involved at all, and it’s usually pretty clear that the hot chick doesn’t like him, his friends, or his behavior. It’s almost as if she’s involved with him solely for the purposes of a plot point, as if by spending all of her time around the meathead jerk’s boorish, insensitive behavior will make the thoughtful, sensitive nature of the geeky protagonist stand out more clearly in her view.
And if she’s destined to end up in the spindly arms of the geeky protagonist, well, she can’t really be interested in the meathead jerk because then she wouldn’t really be the sweet, caring girl that’s ideally suited to the geeky protagonist, so her relationship with the meathead jerk has to be one based on social pressures and clique politics (she’s head cheerleader, he’s the quarterback – society demands that they date), and therefore she will remain chaste and pure in said relationship, never giving in to the sordid desires of the meathead jock, as she is saving herself for her one true love.
Anyway, I’m not asking for an end to the basic set-up, I’m just asking that writers and directors consider adding a little more veracity to the hot chick/meathead jerk relationship and realize that girls do actually kiss their boyfriends every so often, and there is some level at which – even in the worst relationships – they actually enjoy being in the presence of their boyfriends.
Just a thought.
Anyway, all you really need to know about Transformers is this: giant robot fights and lots of explosions.