WRITTEN By Ekaterina Loy
Transforming the transformers June 24th was marked in Australia by the release of the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which contributed to quite a long story of the war between Autobots and Decepticons. So far, according to the NZ Herald, this movie launched the director Michael Bay in the Guinness Book of Records for “the biggest explosion on film with actors present”. Yes, the movie is big, full of graphics, explosions and epic music in all the right moments, but...
WHY TRANSFORMERS are called transformers? Cause they transform, that’s right. Don’t get me wrong, they do some sort of conversion in the movie, but it mostly happens like a trick in a village circus: now you see a car – now everything is hazy – and now you see some pile of metal, which, under a wicked angle, remotely reminds of its heavy machinery prototype. Numerous visual effects of the movie seem to dismiss the whole concept of transforming, which is not in the fact that A is suddenly becoming B. It’s in the way A is becoming B. However, visual discrepancy is generously compensated by extensive sound effects. Hordes of the transformers on the screen squeak and grate so authentically, that last 30 minutes of the movie become somewhat torturous. To soften the whole scrap metal drama, there are some human beings in the cast: Australia’s own Isabel Lucas (let’s wish her a better makeup artist for the next feature), Megan Fox (no reprimands there), and Shia LaBeouf (yes, ladies, he looks a bit childish, but he’s 23 and reached the age of legal maturity by all the international standards, with the exception of El Salvador). Despite its obvious fictional nature, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has a number of details, both intentional and unintentional, connecting it to today’s reality. Besides the usual mention of US president Obama and an instant joke about the swine flu, the movie highlights a new and more sensible post financial crisis and pre eco catastrophe conditions, type of car. Muscle car Camaro doesn’t sell anymore, but is a base of the central Autobot, Bumblebee. Therefore a couple of peripheral characters, Mudflap and Skids, being small engine cars, are absolutely unnecessarily stuck to the group of main characters. Throughout the movie they break one wall and one enemy Decepticon, as well as reveal the battle not less vigorous than the one between Optimus Prime and Megatron. A battle of Chevrolet, the best bet marque of General Motors, to stay afloat, and, if possible, not controlled by the government of the abovementioned president. The reasons of GM for such a plot manipulation are pretty understandable, but coming to watch the movie I somehow do not remember signing up for a 150-minute long commercial as well.
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