Transformers Movie
At first glance this appears to be your standard comic book sci-fi action flick. But as you probably guessed, there’s more than meets the eye.
Through a series of mechanical plot turns and a few extreme bends of both logic and physics, this movie turns into…
…a commercial.
Some of the brands on display:
- GM (I think. If not GM, then at least they were all American manufacturers- Not japanese, which is funny.)
- Taco Bell
- Nokia
- Apple
- eBay
- US Military (you know they do that kind of thing, right?)
I bet this thing paid for itself before it even hit the theaters. Maybe I haven’t seen enough movies lately. Maybe this isn’t unusual these days. Maybe I’m getting old but I’m also getting sick of everything turning into an ad. We’re turning into Idiocracy for real.
I thought i was the only one to watch idiocracy…Optimus Prime must be rolling over in his grave. I always wondered why there was never a transformer that started out as a dill-dough and transformed into a compact? or vice-versa??
ramdung
3 Jul 07 at 7:40 am
Check out this review: http://filmcritic1963.typepad.com/reviews/2007/07/transformers.html
We’re seeing it tonight and suddenly I’m not sure I’m up for my favorite big robots to be warmongering for the Man. No, I don’t know which Man, there are so many the Mans these days… ( =
David
3 Jul 07 at 9:53 am
I think The Mans is french, as in Le Mans
ramdung
3 Jul 07 at 12:35 pm
From a movie presented “in association with Hasbro” (in the opening credits), would you expect anything else? There were so many minor human characters I expected to find ‘action figures’ for sale every last teen-staffed ‘analyst team’… but alas, the overbroad cast was probably just demographic pandering.
Could the marketing angles have been any other way? As this great article at Wired documents, the Transformers were always a way to sell toys.
Still, what a goofy-cool idea: robots in disguise. And it may be my nostalgia, but the original cartoons seemed to do the concept justice… lots of twists, varied characters with conflicting goals, some space opera.
I thought the movie had potential: advanced terminator-like machines, but from an alien culture, and half good and half bad, transplanting and adapting their ancient battle to Earth is a pretty good premise, even without the cool toys and built-in audience. But interesting developments on that scale in the movie just got broken up by something lowbrow and nonsensical. (If you plus 5 giant walking talking robots the size of small houses need something from your room, you can ask your parents to help search for it. They’ll understand when they see the robots.)
Gordon Mohr
4 Jul 07 at 6:12 pm