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Transformers
Jul. 19th, 2007 02:47 amSo I saw Transformers...
There will be no cut for this, as I'm going to spoil nothing that hasn't been shown in trailers. Well, possibly one thing. I'm going to unrepentantly spoil how awesome that movie was, and how I watched it with rarely anything but a big, indulgent grin of fun on my face. The movie was spectacular, the effects seamless, and it was everything a big action movie involving alien robots could be.
And more. There's just something about seeing a childhood dream coming as close to real as you could ever hope when you were still counting your age in single digits and Saturday mornings. It's the kind of thrill in my stomach that I got when I saw Jurassic Park on the big screen for the first time, when I counted myself so damn lucky to have loved dinosaurs and memorized name prefixes and suffixes in Greek and Latin just so I could look up at a full-size Tyrannosaurus Rex and enjoy it that much.
And in all honesty... I didn't watch near as much of the original Transformers movie or series as much as most. My love for the self-made genre came from this series. I would watch it with my little brother under the kitchen table at my after-school babysitter's house, then at home on Saturday mornings, then at midnight or later on YTV when it fell out of syndication, just so I could possibly catch an episode that I hadn't seen. Possibly on the heels of my dinosaur love, my favorite character was Dinobot... one of the most disturbingly dark and evolving characters I've seen in kid's programming (which, really, is arguable in both directions). I'm even considering saving my pennies, as my new job has alerted me to the fact that all three seasons of the show are released as box sets. If I can't get my hands on ReBoot, I think I'll still enjoy this.
So I've never had a huge love for cars. So I can't tell the difference between models at twenty paces like some of my family members. So I can't recount the entire history of the original series of Transformers, and haven't followed it... for years. This movie? Doesn't care. It picks you up by your inner child that stares wide-eyed at shiny things and gives you such a big smile on your face that you, the adult, drives home, powerless to resist the smile on your face when you realize that your very own car just might transform into a practical, fuel-efficient, ass-kicking dream toy with rocket launchers, stealth mode, and a black vinyl bra.
... so maybe mine might.
Hugo Weaving as Megatron was perfect, even though, expectantly, the voice was heavily filtered with such utter malevolence that there were only two or three lines where I could distinctly hear him. Peter Cullen as Optimus gave me shivers of Saturday morning glee from the word 'go'. That voice has an indoctrinated response in adults who lived through the eighties of Saturday morning tv.
Shia LaBeouf is... well, has to be one of the luckiest actors alive to live that kind of role. He did a perfect job as Sam, acting like the sharp, heroic, panicked, in-over-his-head teenager that every one of us wished we could be in the middle of a pack of AutoBots. I enjoyed him very much.
On a practical level, and I spoiled myself a little with this, I'm fumingly disappointed that I know for a fact that the score CD does not exist for this movie. Yet. It was a good score, and I know I'll have to end up picking up the soundtrack at work, as a few of the tracks are insufferably fitting. The score, unapologetically cannibalized an extremely recognizable percussion theme for itself coughTerminatorcough, but really, it is too damn fitting for me to feel any ill for it. I just want it that much more.
If anyone can find it before I can, on torrents or any imported version, please please let me know.
Best of all... movies that are this much fun for me, that show this much scale and enthusiasm and adventure, make me want to write. Seeing Blackout utterly shred the army base put my brain spinning into the opening scene of tekMage, where Ash and Maji do the exact same thing. Seeing Starscream take out air support like picking off flies... dammit, I was cheering for him, and envisioning just how a dragonman would move in the sky in combat.
Frenzy made me think of Wulf on evil crack.
I have a two hour drive tomorrow... later today, to go pick up my brother. I will pack myself with about four soundtracks and hope that Chai doesn't eat half of them. I want to think. I want to write this thing down. I need to sleep eventually, so... forty minutes. I will open up tekMage and write for forty minutes. Yes.
In end, see this movie. See it repeatedly. It's all your Saturday mornings that you've been missing since homework took over and you started your first job.
There will be no cut for this, as I'm going to spoil nothing that hasn't been shown in trailers. Well, possibly one thing. I'm going to unrepentantly spoil how awesome that movie was, and how I watched it with rarely anything but a big, indulgent grin of fun on my face. The movie was spectacular, the effects seamless, and it was everything a big action movie involving alien robots could be.
And more. There's just something about seeing a childhood dream coming as close to real as you could ever hope when you were still counting your age in single digits and Saturday mornings. It's the kind of thrill in my stomach that I got when I saw Jurassic Park on the big screen for the first time, when I counted myself so damn lucky to have loved dinosaurs and memorized name prefixes and suffixes in Greek and Latin just so I could look up at a full-size Tyrannosaurus Rex and enjoy it that much.
And in all honesty... I didn't watch near as much of the original Transformers movie or series as much as most. My love for the self-made genre came from this series. I would watch it with my little brother under the kitchen table at my after-school babysitter's house, then at home on Saturday mornings, then at midnight or later on YTV when it fell out of syndication, just so I could possibly catch an episode that I hadn't seen. Possibly on the heels of my dinosaur love, my favorite character was Dinobot... one of the most disturbingly dark and evolving characters I've seen in kid's programming (which, really, is arguable in both directions). I'm even considering saving my pennies, as my new job has alerted me to the fact that all three seasons of the show are released as box sets. If I can't get my hands on ReBoot, I think I'll still enjoy this.
So I've never had a huge love for cars. So I can't tell the difference between models at twenty paces like some of my family members. So I can't recount the entire history of the original series of Transformers, and haven't followed it... for years. This movie? Doesn't care. It picks you up by your inner child that stares wide-eyed at shiny things and gives you such a big smile on your face that you, the adult, drives home, powerless to resist the smile on your face when you realize that your very own car just might transform into a practical, fuel-efficient, ass-kicking dream toy with rocket launchers, stealth mode, and a black vinyl bra.
... so maybe mine might.
Hugo Weaving as Megatron was perfect, even though, expectantly, the voice was heavily filtered with such utter malevolence that there were only two or three lines where I could distinctly hear him. Peter Cullen as Optimus gave me shivers of Saturday morning glee from the word 'go'. That voice has an indoctrinated response in adults who lived through the eighties of Saturday morning tv.
Shia LaBeouf is... well, has to be one of the luckiest actors alive to live that kind of role. He did a perfect job as Sam, acting like the sharp, heroic, panicked, in-over-his-head teenager that every one of us wished we could be in the middle of a pack of AutoBots. I enjoyed him very much.
On a practical level, and I spoiled myself a little with this, I'm fumingly disappointed that I know for a fact that the score CD does not exist for this movie. Yet. It was a good score, and I know I'll have to end up picking up the soundtrack at work, as a few of the tracks are insufferably fitting. The score, unapologetically cannibalized an extremely recognizable percussion theme for itself coughTerminatorcough, but really, it is too damn fitting for me to feel any ill for it. I just want it that much more.
If anyone can find it before I can, on torrents or any imported version, please please let me know.
Best of all... movies that are this much fun for me, that show this much scale and enthusiasm and adventure, make me want to write. Seeing Blackout utterly shred the army base put my brain spinning into the opening scene of tekMage, where Ash and Maji do the exact same thing. Seeing Starscream take out air support like picking off flies... dammit, I was cheering for him, and envisioning just how a dragonman would move in the sky in combat.
Frenzy made me think of Wulf on evil crack.
I have a two hour drive tomorrow... later today, to go pick up my brother. I will pack myself with about four soundtracks and hope that Chai doesn't eat half of them. I want to think. I want to write this thing down. I need to sleep eventually, so... forty minutes. I will open up tekMage and write for forty minutes. Yes.
In end, see this movie. See it repeatedly. It's all your Saturday mornings that you've been missing since homework took over and you started your first job.
