Saturday, July 12, 2014

Zombie Column: Trans4mers

Last night, Bill, Ty, and I went to see Transformers: Age of Extinction, because we do not have enough Michael Bay in our lives. I mean, I suppose Bill and Ty may have had different reasons, but I was greatly missing the Bayhem.

Trailers for the movie were Dumb and Dumber To (no thanks), Mockingjay part 1 (featuring what I've been informed of is an evil Peeta. By the way, this is a universe in which people have names like Peeta and Katniss, instead of normal names like Cade Yaeger. Okay, bad example. Nevertheless, pass. I guess I'm just not as interested in young adults killing each other amidst love triangles as other people. I'm more interested in cars going so fast they cause explosions. Also, robot dinosaurs), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yes. Absolutely), Guardians of the Galaxy ("Aaaaah-aah-aaaaaah-aah-aaaaahm ... hooked on this trailer." and going to see this movie) and Herculues ("I! AM! SEEING THIS!"), the latter three of which are coming out this summer, so that's all kinds of awesome.

Transformers opens up with a slightly different take on the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs - it was robots, because they're always coming here and messing up Earth, and the Autobots have to save it in the present day. That is the plot in every Transformers movie. Sometime in the past, Transformers come (100 years ago, 17000 years ago, 50 years ago), then the problems started back then suddenly emerge today. It's weird how that works out, and how none of the movies seem to be aware that robots are constantly interfering in our history except for the one instance in the movie that forms the backstory for the plot.

Anyway, we also get to introduced to Cade Yaeger (A giant robot? No), an inventor who's inventions are constantly breaking down. For my money, he's actually pretty good, managing to fit voice recognition into just about everything he does, even if they don't work as they're supposed to. He looks after (and is looked after by) his daughter Tessa, who'll be graduating from high school soon. Cade's business partner/employee is Lucas, played by T.J. Miller, whom you may recognize as a mammoth douchebag in Silicon Valley, and is one of the reasons I'm no longer watching that show (why is it people mistake awkwardness for funny? I like my funny to be funny. Also, absurd).

The main plot of the movie is that Autobots are hunted down because Chicago in the previous movie has made people wary of any alien robots, regardless of faction. Which totally reminded me of Star Wars, when everyone hates the Jedi because Sith are so evil, and bystanders tend to think everyone with a Lightsaber should just shove off. Are bystanders in conflicts so stupid they can't recognize both sides of a war? A war in which one side victorious would certainly spell their doom? Bystanders in fictional universes are idiots, I guess.

So, this movie has many explosions (which are great) and wrecks Chicago (again. What does Bay have against it? Did it dump Bay for a sexier director?) and travels to Hong Kong, where we do, in fact, get Dinobots. Robots in disguise ... as dinosarus! They'll fit right in! It also has the requisite humour, and manages to redeem Nicola Peltz after the disaster/debacle/disasticle that was The Last Airbender. Also, they brought back Steve Jablonksy to do the score, so the music is fantastic too.


All in all, it's a theatre movie. All the critics are wrong, and I am right, because this is my blog, and were you expecting anything else?