TRANSFORMERS: PRIME – DARKNESS RISING: Maximum Overdrive

Transformers: Prime – Darkness Rising (2010) – Starring Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Steven Blum, Jeffrey Combs, Ernie Hudson, Sumalee Montano, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Dwayne Johnson.

I haven’t seen the TRANSFORMERS: PRIME cartoon before. Heck, since I don’t have cable, I hadn’t even heard of it before the DVD release of DARKNESS RISING, the 5-episode mini-series that launched the most recent incarnation of the TRANSFORMERS franchise, showed up on Netflix.

I’ll take notice of it now.

DARKNESS RISING is a fantastic cartoon, expertly striking the right balance between being accessible to kids and engaging for adults. It’s got lots of love for old school TRANSFORMERS, yet it clearly moving in its own, exciting direction. I was a bit nervous, at first. I wasn’t thrilled with the computer-generated animation and there’s far too much emphasis on the human kids (of course, I pretty much want no humans in my TRANSFORMERS stories), but both of them grew on me to varying degrees.

While not the best look, PRIME nonetheless offers a clear, bright, consistent look. Unlike what happens far too often in the movies, it’s clear to tell the robots apart here. As the 5-part series unfolded, the animation grew on me enough that even if I didn’t come to love it, I certainly don’t hate it.

As for the kids …

Give me a moment.

Let’s talk Transformers first. There’s a small band of six Autobots on Earth: Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), Arcee (Sumalee Montano), Ratchet (Jeffrey Combs), Cliffjumper (Dwayne Johnson), Bulkhead (Kevin Michael Richardson), and Bumblebee (hoots and whistles).

Actually, make that five Transformers because before the first action sequence is done with, Cliffjumper has been killed. I know. Killing a Transformer in a kids’ cartoon in the first episode! It sets a great tone for the series because it tells you right up front (much like the animated movie did) that actions here have consequences and that the stakes are high without the producers having a character repeatedly tell us that the stakes are high. That it’s Cliffjumper – or rather, that it’s Dwayne Johnson who gets offed just adds to the effect.

The Transformers are operating out of an abandoned United States military base in Nevada, which makes sense because it gives them a big facility in a non-high population area. They have a government liaison in Agent Fowler (Ernie Hudson) but he’s basically just there to bust their ball bearings. The Transformers aren’t working for/with the American government the way they are in the Michael Bay movies; instead, the vibe that Fowler puts off is of the “we don’t want you here but we’ll tolerate you as long as you stay in line” variety.

The mix of Autobots has clearly been chosen because of how they play off one another. Instead of randomly grabbing the most popular Transformers (or their personal favorites), either Hasbro or the producers (including Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) have assembled a superhero team. Optimus Prime is the wise leader, Rathchet is his second-in-command, Bulkhead is the muscle, Arcee is the young, semi-hotheaded soldier, and Bumblebee is the young, loyal soldier. This version of Bumblebee neither talks nor does that annoying “speaking through film clips” nonsense from the movie. Instead, he beeps and whistles. It might sound annoying, but it’s actually the best version of this character’s “voice,” yet.

There’s a lull in the Autobot/Decepticon hostilities, but that comes to an end when some Decepticons take Cliffjumper out and then reanimate him with “dark energon.” And where does dark energon come from?

Unicron.

F*cking Unicron!

It’s actually the blood of Unicron and it brings the dead back to life, turning them into animalistic robot zombies. Megatron has got a sample of it and intends to bring the dead on Cybertron (which is everyone on Cybertron because it’s a dead planet) back to life to serve as his army. It’s a pretty awesome plan. The final battle takes place on the Transformers’ space bridge and it feels decidedly epic.

Okay, let’s talk about the humans. Two of the three aren’t annoying so I’ll give the show credit for that, at least. Jack, Raf, and Miko are the kids, and each of them bonds with a specific Autobot. Jack gets Arcee, Raf gets Bumblebee, and Miko gets Bulkhead. What’s nice is that each of their relationships is a bit different. Miko loves being in the mix of things and so she annoys Bulkhead with her constant ability to stick with him when he enters dangerous situations. Raf is the typical little kid genius and his relationship with Bumblebee isn’t totally flushed out here. These two relationships are fine. It’s Jack’s relationship with Arcee that is the least effective.

Arcee is a bit of a hothead (plus she’s the most effected by Cliffjumper’s death) and Jack is a bit of a whiner. Where Miko is all, “Hanging out with robots is the best!”, Jack is a bit too angst-ridden. He wants out. He likes to complain. He leaves.

And then comes right back.

Ugh.

It’s my hope that he becomes more positive about all this as the show moves forward. And I’ll be checking it out when the DVDs come out later this year because DARKNESS RISING ends up being a pretty darn great cartoon. It’s not perfect but it is really good. It’s always great to hang out with Optimus again, of course, but Arcee ends up being the star of the show for me. She takes her anger and hurt at Cliffjumper’s death and first channels it into getting revenge but then ends up salving her hurt by bonding with Jack.

Which will hopefully make him less of a douche.

THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE: You Got the Touch!

Transformers: The Movie (1986) – Directed by Nelson Shin – Starring Peter Cullen, Eric Idle, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, Lionel Stander, Scatman Crothers, Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Susan Blu, and Orson Welles.

In 1986, TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE was just about the coolest thing ever.

In 2012, it’s still pretty darn awesome.

When I saw THE MOVIE in the theaters, I was stunned. That big ship just ate a planet! Autobots DIED! Spike said, “Sh*t!” Megatron was turned into Unicron’s b*tch and got turned into Galvatron!

But nothing compared to the death of Optimus Prime. By the time Optimus (Peter Cullen) passes the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack) on his deathbed, we’ve already seen Megatron (Frank Welker) kill Ironhide (also Peter Cullen) at point blank range. The Decepticons intercept an Autobot ship headed from Cyberton to Autobot City on Earth and kill everyone on board. Clinging to life, Ironhide weakly crawls towards Megatron to stop him. Megatron looks down and with utter disdain remarks, “Such heroic nonsense” and then blasts Ironhide in the face with his arm-mounted cannon. We don’t actually see Ironhide getting blown to bits, but the intent is clear and it sets up the violence to come.

The opening 25 minutes of THE MOVIE are among the coolest sequences in cinematic history. It’s all-out war between the Autobots and Decepticons that ranges from Cyberton to Earth. Scores of Autobots get eviscerated. The Decepticons show intelligence and ruthlessness. We get to see a veritable who’s who of the Transformers universe. And unlike the live-action Michael Bay movies, you can actually tell these robots apart because the animators believe in things like color and individuality.

It’s this opening sequence that sees Optimus and Megatron have their final battle and it’s a doozy as the two leaders throw down in Autobot City. It’s an evenly matched affair until Prime gets the advantage and knocks Megatron to the ground. Megatron then proceeds to beg for mercy as he crawls towards a gun hidden out of sight. That’s when Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) interferes. The poor whippersnapper is trying to do the right thing, but he just ends up giving Megatron the advantage he needs to hit Optimus with enough laser blasts to cause his demise.

These opening 25 minutes move fast and hard, and they look amazing in that awesome mid-80s Toei animation style. Hair metal music (and Weird Al’s “Dare to Be Stupid”) fills the soundtrack. While I’m continuously worried that these elements will make THE MOVIE feel dated, it’s given it a sense of timelessness, instead, although that might actually be a form of masquerading nostalgia for my early teenage years.

The remainder of the movie sees a new cast of Autobots battling the Decepticons: Ultra Magnus, Hot Rod, Arcee (Susan Blu), Kup (Lionel Stander), and Springer (Neil Ross) step to the fore, joined by some old faces like the Dinobots. Megatron and some other injured Decepticons are dumped from Astrotrain (seriously, it’s a train that’s also a rocket ship – one of the coolest Transformer vehicles) in the middle of space, and captured by Unicron (Orson Welles, in his last screen role) and transformed into new Tranformers that work for him. Megatron becomes Galvatron (Leonard Nimoy) and given a mission to destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, the one and only thing in the universe that can destroy his large self.

What’s impressive is that even with the majority of familiar faces gone and presumed dead, the movie is still really entertaining. In large part, this is because the film keeps everything moving at breakneck speed. Hardly a scene or two goes by without some new conflict for our heroes to overcome or some new potential toy to grace the screen: Wreck-Gar (Eric Idle) and the Junkions, Sharkticons, and the Quintessons.

Maybe because I grew up with the Transformers as being both cartoon and toy, I wasn’t bothered then and I’m not bothered now by all of these new characters being an excuse to get me to buy new toys. Know why? Because I liked buying toys. As much as it sucked to see Prime die, and Jazz (Scatman Crothers, also in his last film role) and Bumblebee (Dan Gilvezan) getting sucked into Unicron and sitting the movie out, the story here was solid enough to keep me involved. None of the new Autobots are all that engaging or cool looking, but the sheer force of the plot and diversity of Transformers keeps me entertained.

Plus, it’s wholly rewarding to watch a Transformers movie where the stars are, you know, the Transformers. While we get Spike and Daniel Witwicky here, we don’t get a lot of them. They’re characters that are part of the story, not the story itself.

Everything build towards the final battle, which sees Hot Rod versus Galvatron. During the fight, he becomes the Optimus-prophesized hero and becomes the new Autobot leader: Rodimus Prime. (Rodimus Prime? Seriously? Sounds like he should be making movies with Kayden Kross and Asa Akira instead of leading the Autobots.)

The toy angle isn’t just a cheap joke, either. (The porn crack was a cheap joke. Keep up.) THE MOVIE takes place between Seasons 2 and 3 of the cartoon, and they Hasbro wanted to use the film to get rid of discontinued toys and introduce the new line. According to the Never Wrong:

“One of the intentions of the movie was to rid the Transformers cartoon universe of the majority of characters from Seasons 1 and 2. Story consultant Flint Dille elaborated: ‘In the next season (3), we were going to have all these new characters, and people are going to be wondering what happened to the old characters that they liked so much. What we knew, in a business sense, is that they had been discontinued, because they were the 1984/1985 (toy)line – but, we needed to tie them off. So, we had this one scene where the Autobots basically had to run through a gauntlet of Decepticons. Which basically wiped out the entire ’84 product line in one massive ‘charge of the light brigade.’ So, whoever wasn’t discontinued, stumbled to the end. That scene didn’t make it into the finished movie. But if you think kids were locking themselves in the bedroom over Optimus Prime, basically in that scene they would’ve seen their entire toy collection wiped out.”

Ha ha ha! Stupid ki- wait! I was one of those kids. Dick.

As a movie, however, TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE is as cool now as it was then. Whenever TV properties gets transported to the big screen, filmmakers often struggle with how to make the story feel “big” to deserve the move. The makers of this film do a bang-up job of making THE MOVIE feel big and important and epic. Clearly, the stakes are raised here, and the added inclusion of hair metal songs (Stan Bush’s “The Touch,” Lion’s version of The Transformers’ theme song, Spectre General’s “Hunger”) make THE MOVIE feel both familiar and different from the animated series.

TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE might have been made to sell toys, but it’s a darn good movie, too.

Also, for those who want “The Touch”:

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: Is Sam Witwicky the Most Useless Lead Character in Sci-Fi History?

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) – Directed by Michael Bay, Starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Leonard Nimoy, Charlie Adler, and James Remar.

To answer the question posed in the title of this review: Probably not. On another day I might spend hours combing my Blu-ray and DVD collection, soliciting feedback, and perusing IMDB to try to find a worse lead character, but today I don’t have the time or the inclination to be bothered splitting hairs. After watching DARK OF THE MOON last night, I’ve struggled to find anything useful that Sam Witwicky brings to this installment of the Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS trilogy and I can’t come up with anything. He is a dreadful lead character sitting in the middle of a perfectly fine CGI orgy.

As he enters the film, we discover that Sam (Shia LeBeouf) has been dumped by Megan Fox and is now shacking up with Carly Spencer (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) in Washington, DC. He hates his life because he’s been out of college for three months and doesn’t have a job, yet. He’s mad because he’s saved the world a couple times and he can’t tell anyone and the government won’t help him find gainful employment. Carly doesn’t care about any of this, though. She loves Sam enough to buy him a lucky bunny rabbit and pay all of the rent. Sam doesn’t care about that, though, because all he wants to do is b*tch and moan about how awful his life has turned out to be since he, you know, saved the world a couple times.

Plus, his parents are coming to town! In a week! And if he doesn’t have a job by then, well, you know how parents are!

Ugh.

This basically goes on throughout the entire movie – Sam whines, Sam complains, Sam cops a bad attitude, Sam gets possessive with his girlfriend, Sam plays big man because he knows he’s a little man. It’s … so … tedious.

Watching DARK OF THE MOON it’s easy to see that the TRANSFORMERS story has progressed beyond the Sam Witwicky character. As much as Sam complains about not having an important life and being left behind as the Autobots play nice with the military, the truth is that the overall story really has left him behind. Michael Bay and his scriptwriters have done nothing to make us think Sam Witwicky even needs to be in this movie. DARK OF THE MOON is a military movie, and would have been much better served with Josh Duhamel taking over lead acting duties. Lt. Colonel William Lennox is smart, assured, in a command position, and, oh yeah, works with the Autobots every flipping day as a high ranking officer in NEST, which apparently stands for Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers.

Honestly. Someone got paid to come up with that.

When Sam is on screen, DARK OF THE MOON grinds to a halt. There’s a whole subplot with him, Carly, and Carly’s boss, Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) that only gets mildly interesting when Dylan is revealed as being the Decepticons’ human liaison in their attempt to take over the world. Before this reveal, Dylan exists as a character just to make Sam look small. And Sam obliges by looking and acting small. Instead of being super appreciative of his girlfriend for being with him, he gets all jealous, which makes him even whinier and more insecure. We don’t need this angle; or if we’re going to get this angle we don’t need the “Sam can’t get a job” angle, because it doubles down on the lamest aspect of the movie. It’s almost like everyone got a blind spot with Sam and forgot this is a popcorn flick and not a male parody of Jane Austen. Dempsey is perfectly fine in the film; while not as extraordinarily gifted actor, he can handle fastballs in his zone and that’s what DARK OF THE MOON asks him to do. Casting is so much about finding the right actor for the right role, about knowing what an actor can do and what a role requires and then finding a perfect match.

Which leads us to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Because she’s a model with no prior acting experience (Bay apparently worked with her on a Victoria’s Secret advertisement), and because Michael Bay is a pervert, I’m required at this point to say something about her looks and inability to act. When DARK OF THE MOON was originally released, I remember some magazine (Entertainment Weekly, I believe), making at dig at her by saying she was Bay’s new robot or something, and while she’s not a very good actor, DARK OF THE MOON doesn’t require very good actors. John Malkovich is in the film, but it’s not exactly like they’re asking him to do Dostoyevsky. Huntington-Whiteley is supposed to be Sam’s hot girlfriend who her boss is trying to sleep with, and she does that well enough with that. (She has a sort of blank look on her face that I don’t find overly attractive, but she does have a British accent, which helps. You get the feeling, though, that Bay cast her just for her opening scene where his camera lingers on her legs and ass.) It’s not like the four or five scenes where she’s required to bring emotion to the role are going to make or break the film, after all.

The problem with her character is just that she’s sort of pointless to the main plot. Just like Sam is sort of pointless. DARK OF THE MOON would have been an infinitely better film if this whole Sam/Carly/Dylan subplot was not here and the focus was kept on the characters who get name-dropped in the title.

You know, the TRANSFORMERS.

There’s a reason why the film isn’t called SAM WITWICKY: HE NEVER STOPS WHINING.

I really hate the way Sam treats Carly. When a Decepticon kills a worker (Ken Jeong) at the job Sam gets thanks to Dylan, he jams Carly in his car and hauls over to the top secret NEST base in DC. She wants to know what’s what and why he’s freaking and he basically tells her, “Sit there and shut up.”

I’m sure the decision was made to keep Sam in the film because he was so central to the first film and such a big part of the sequel, but he’s just not needed in this one. Perhaps if they’d made him part of NEST, with a job he wasn’t allowed to tell his girlfriend about, there would be a reason for his nervousness when it came to Carly and her super-rich, playboy boss. As the film plays out, though, Sam is either an annoyance or in the way.

When DARK OF THE MOON sticks with the Transformers and the military, it’s a pretty good action picture. It still annoys the hell out of me that they make all of the Transformers look awfully indistinguishable when they’re in robot mode. It’s literally like someone gets paid a dollar for every single, separate part they can jam onto the robots. They might look reasonably cool in a still frame, but when they start moving around, it’s just a bunch of flashy metal and brief flashes of paint.

I dig the Transformers plot in the film. During the big war on Cybertron, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy) piloted a craft with super technology and it gets blown up and crashes onto the moon. This is the “secret history” that led to the Apollo program. Flash forward to the future and Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) finally finds out about all this after an incident in Russia, which introduces us to Shockwave (Frank Welker), and goes and rescues Sentinel. After bringing him back to life, the seen-it-coming-a-million-miles-away twist of Sentinel’s betrayal happens and then there’s plenty of awesome robot action.

The sequence in Russia with Optimus and Shockwave is pretty great. The highway chase scene is pretty great. Sentinel’s betrayal is pretty great. The storming of Chicago is pretty great.

The problem with all of this, however, is that the film doesn’t have enough faith in the Transformers plot without adding in all of this human junk. Megatron (Hugo Weaving) is basically an afterthought. It’s like they forgot that the main reason there is a Transformers movie is because of the Transformers. Did they even make a Sam Witwicky action figure back in the day? Whose favorite moment from the cartoon involves Sam being a whiny, self-entitled punk? Sam is so useless and so annoying that he just gets in the way. Michael Bay also brings back John Turturro’s annoying secret agent Simmons, though thankfully he’s toned down the craziness. He has perhaps the best line of the film, too, when he says to Sam, “Years from now they’re gonna ask where were you when they took over the planet? And we’re gonna say we just watched.”

I’ll give Bay credit, too, for making this film feel like an ending. While these movies have never really felt like a proper trilogy, the final action sequence feels like it’s a final battle. Optimus is in total take-no-sh*t mode, insisting the Autobots “will kill them all.” He personally takes out both Megatron and Sentinel. I could have watched two hours of the storming of Chicago instead of just an hour. This is where the film really takes off, where it gives Sam something useful to do, rescuing Carly and storming the city with Epps (Tyrese Gibson). Epps sets the tone for the second half. No longer a part of NEST, he tells Sam he’s going with him. When Sam asks why, Epps tells him, “These assh*les killed my friends, too.”

I mean, yeah. Turn this bad boy into a Western and we’re getting somewhere. Sam and Epps, NEST, the return of the Autobots … this is good stuff. This is popcorn entertainment at a really high level.

Unfortunately, having to sit through all of that Sam junk in the first half is like a movie theater refusing to give you your popcorn without first reading you all of the nutritional information and forcing you to eat spinach before you can have your snack.

I can’t believe this is the last TRANSFORMERS film, though. This franchise simply makes too much money. I wouldn’t even be opposed to Michael Bay coming back, but it’s time to let the Transformers take over their own franchise, become more well-rounded characters, and dump the Witwicky kid. Or at least give him something useful to do. DARK OF THE MOON doesn’t reach the heights of the first TRANSFORMERS movie, but it is a big improvement on REVENGE OF THE FALLEN.