#ROBOTIZE ME TRANSFORMERS SKIN#

#ROBOTIZE ME TRANSFORMERS SKIN#

The destruction of Chicago is on the same scale as the 'execution' of a robot, which is on the same scale as the orange skin tone and fake hair of John Malkovich, or the ritual humiliation comedy of job-hunting, a human subplot which unexpectedly is placed, like in Malick's The Tree of Life, within the context of a violent cosmic struggle.

There is no nuance to the film’s love of its subjects, all are equal, from the way two cars colliding magnificently transform into robots in repelling slow motion to the emo hard rock musical transitions whenever the film moves back to its human story, to the camera’s description of a woman’s legs, or its preference for dilapidated modern baroque architecture. But at two and half hours long and starring animated objected replete with dozens upon dozens of micro-movements, details of puppeteering and robotics, all the ligaments and muscle movements of humans robotized and animated with maniacal attention by ILM, Dark of the Moon defaults to an unimpressive constancy of the big, the important, the energetic, flattening the film over its long timespan. The filmmaker’s preference for an action of vibrantly colored frenzy over one of eloquent spacing obviously means lots of activity. A computer generated extravaganza, despite much evidence to the contrary, is not what he excels at. One major problem is the gigantism and maximization of Michael Bay. Indeed, will there ever be a filmmaker who will come to represent such a romantic advocate for the era, now perhaps fading gently, of the automobile? To get out of a car in a Michael Bay film is an event in and of itself, and so how fitting is it for him to devote three feature length films to the empowerment of vehicles! The glory of combative vehicles in the Transformers films is on par with the other tremendous moments Bay deems worth of cinematic note: a young man’s emotion when his favorite robotic car may be summarily executed by other robotic cars (note: no tears are shed over the human loss of life in Dark of the Moon, when Chicago is torn asunder), the embarrassment caused by clueless parents, a futuristic airborne squad suspended in the air navigating between Chicago skyscrapers, the jealousy and spite that tears your guts out when you only date supermodels, the number of immediate ways unsuspecting automobiles can be totaled, the backlighting of the sun producing that color blue unique only to Michael Bay films, and, of course, the way the camera can arc around a body slowly raising in the frame in wonder, awe and alarm. This 'human' side of the story is repeatedly overturned by the real protagonists of the film, the real heroes who are the world changers, the models of behavior, the giants who walk the earth and decide our fates…the cars, planes, trucks and other means of transport who anthropomorphize to become emblems of a perfect ruling class. The film's ostensible protagonist, a young human male played by Shia LaBeouf, is preposterously and perpetually held in a simultaneous state of resplendent fantasy lifestyle and catastrophically fantastic worldly anxiety-as fatted by luxury as he is worried about its loss in the form of his endangered girlfriend, vapid, reclining parents, and geek-gigolo lifestyle. The eponymous robotic machines are the most extreme, obscene expression of the film's splendid glamour of material wealth and overabundance, where every object in the film is an advertisement for luxury goods unobtainable by the general audience, every key, non-fantasy device used in the film (and some fantasy ones too) are powered and branded by the glory of real world firms.

Robotize me transformers