The Password is Swordfish

Let’s say Michael Bay has already made the first Transformers. It was the colossal hit that it was, and a sequel was greenlit immediately. Instead of beginning to storyboard action sequences without any regard for the parts in between, let’s hypothesize Michael Bay pulled some creative writers into a room to bat some ideas around. Here are five ways in which an alien robot movie could have been made inventive, thoughtful, and simply better.

1. Don’t treat the existence of an alien robot race so flippantly. If we’re already at the point as a cynical society where all military men accept the fact that their co-soldiers are robots the size of buildings without the blink of an eye, then why even make a movie about something so ordinary? The mere existence of this race of aliens is astounding, much less fighting alongside them. Don’t you think they would ask far, far more questions to these aliens?

2. Explore the positive effects the Transformers are having on our society from behind the scenes. One of the most interesting lines in the sequel is when the government man enters and chews out Optimus Prime for only sharing their positive technologies with the government and not their weapons. Several months have passed since the first Transformers, yes? What type of technological advances has the human race made since the first film with the help of these robot aliens? The fight scenes are important in a movie like this, but so are the scenes where we discover how those who aren’t in the middle of the war might be impacted by the arrival of these aliens, even those who are completely unaware of their existence.

3. Don’t ignore the Youtube factor. Remember the movie Cloverfield? When that first trailer hit the Internet, everyone would pause the trailer, go through it frame-by-frame, and insist they see the leg, claw, or face of a monster in the most imperceptible places? Now take a look at those Youtube videos in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, where the conspirators have footage from Shanghai. First of all, there is no chance that there is only one fuzzy video when an entire city is nearly demolished in robot combat, certainly not in today’s society. Furthermore, if an entire country loses their minds over trying to find a monster in a movie trailer, there would be a nearly unquenchable thirst for the truth from the government about these alien robots from a large number of the public. How would the government deal with this? Simply saying “It’s not true” when there have been countless Transformers missions since the first film, and thus countless opportunities for anyone to whip out their cell phone and document irrefutable evidence of their existence.

4. Give the robots character development. This is really the jewel in the crown of how Michael Bay dropped the ball. One of the biggest problems with the film is that most of the robots are indistinguishable from one another, and the few Transformers who do have a unique visual style are fairly one-note. It seems that the writers forget that these are not robots– these are aliens. They have personalities, friendships, desires, fears, and histories, which we know very little about. Even pushing personalities aside for a moment, how about weaponry? In most action films, when there is a posse of fighters, each have their own unique weapon specialty, training, and capacity. Aside from Optimus Prime’s sword, which we’ve only seen but we know very little about, the robots seem to all have a variety of guns, swords, and fist-fighting training. Some of this was lightly touched upon—there is a doctor transformer, for example. But how does he know how to fix the Transformers more than the others? Is there a Transformers medical school? Did these Transformers have families back on Cybertron? Were there ever any female or child Transformers, or was it always simply a race of all men created by a cube? Why spend all the time showing the human characters when you have a brand-new race with personalities and histories that could be explored? Aliens are capable of being 3-dimensional characters as well.

5. Make humanity smarter. If there is a special type of gun that can take out a Decepticon that the government is in possession of, why in the world didn’t they put that type of gun surrounding Megatron? If humanity knows from the first film that the Decepticons are expert hackers, why would a government worker explain in detail where Megatron and the Allspark chunk are located? If new small Transformers were created by the sliver of the Allspark, why wouldn’t Shia have called the government and asked them to hide it, or better yet, why didn’t the government find out why Bumblebee blasted the Witwicky house to smithereens? If entire cities have been devastated by these alien robots, an entire Middle Eastern village from the last film had them fighting in plain sight, a college campus is run through by several of them, and they climb on top of the pyramids in the middle of the day, how in the world is the government still covering up their existence? Do the filmmakers think no one owns cameras in the Middle East? Did they think there are no tourists with big cameras visiting the pyramid? This film is a classic case of where humanity acts as simpleminded as possible in order to propel the plot forward without any complications. Sometimes, a less complicated plot that is more fully explored through the inherent complications within can make for a smarter, more engaging movie without sacrificing any of the action.

Some will respond to this article thinking, “Why over-think a film like this? It’s just Transformers, we just want to see alien robots fighting one another.” Others still will think about smart films packed with special effects and action sequences, like last year’s Iron Man, Hellboy 2, and The Dark Knight. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen still was diverting entertainment in its own way—but last year pushed Hollywood towards a smarter, more developed action extravaganza, and here’s hoping this film is merely a roadbump in society’s path towards higher expectations. Better yet, here’s hoping Michael Bay decides to make the inevitable Transformers 3 action-packed and intelligent—after all, smart action flicks make box office bank too.

Read this article and others like it here.

~ by russellhainline on June 27, 2009.

Posted in The Thoughts of Russell Hainline
Tags: Action film, Allspark, Autobots, Bumblebee, Cloverfield, Cybertron, Decepticons, Hellboy 2, intelligent action, Iron Man, Megan Fox, Megatron, Michael Bay, Optimus Prime, Sam Witwicky, Shia LaBeouf, smart action, special effects, The Dark Knight, The Fallen, Transformers, Transformers download, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Youtube