Transformers

I should have known.

I am not the demographic this film is aimed at.

I hated it. It sucked. In fact, it was pants.

But I’m really glad I saw it because it taught me a thing or two about the state of the nation.

First things first, why did I bother? Good question. Essentially, I was fooled by the trailer – it actually looked quite exciting and then I came over all nostalgic for Nephew’s company and I sent him a text suggesting we see it together because he is my comic-hero/sci-fi/genre viewing buddy and because I miss him.

In the end he couldn’t come but the dirty, seed had been planted like e.coli, waiting to have me doubled over in regretful agony only a few days later. So I called Phallatia; we both have pay-per-month cinema passes which means we’re more liable to take risks with our viewing. She being a lot younger than me, was brought up on the Transformers TV cartoon and was a big fan. Like that’s an excuse. But it was better than mine.

Well, it was full of robots fighting. I should have known.

I like a bit of fighting – two of my favourite films are House of Flying Daggers and Kill Bill but…but…this was shite fighting. I couldn’t tell the Deceptamoron (baddy) robots from the Automoron (goody) ones and once I’d ‘enjoyed’ the first transformation moment (in the first two seconds of the movie), er…that was it. All the transformations were the same. The robots (to my un-teenage eyes at least) looked the same. I did notice some were smaller. Or ‘cute’. Two robots (goodies) did so much jiving they would have made Huggy Bear blush,

“Racial stereotypes much?” I snarked at Phallatia in the seat next to me.

And because I’m on regime, I couldn’t even comfort eat.




Meanwhile, the rest of the audience made up of teenage boys, young boys and their dads and one or two family groups were having a terrific time. I passed the long hours studying them carefully. I wanted to know what kind of people went to these films. At least my excuse was fairly elaborate. I wish I’d heard Xan Brooks of the Guardian’s answer to the exact same question before I’d wasted my time. He said, “Morons. And there’s a lot of them.” I am a moron.

So what was wrong with this film other than the boring robots, their boring fights, the incessant NOISE and EXPLOSIONS and SPARKS? Everything else.

I think director Michael Bay had better have his excuses carefully rehearsed when he’s reached the front of the line at the pearly gates.

GOD: How can you excuse this pile of sexist, boring shite, Mr Bay?
MICHAEL BAY: I fucked the frame, sir.

Very loud sound of eject chute swooshing Bay to Hell.

If only.

By the way, that is exactly how Mr Bay(tor?) describes his ‘work’.

If I was the frame, I would have smothered him with a pillow and snuck out the bathroom window.

When I’m prime minister, making films like this will be illegal.

The ‘performances’ are worth a mention. Mr Le Boeuf looking bewildered and dorky, which demeanour apparently (in teenage boy fantasies) pulls the hawt chicks and helps him save the planet, has absolutely zero charisma. The floosie playing the lead woman, Megan Pouty, is straight out of an FHM wank centrefold.

“Her mother must be very proud of her.” I told Phallatia. Then, “Does she have to pout every ten seconds?”

Fortunately no one in the audience leant over and told me to shh because they couldn’t hear me due to the burst eardrums from all the EXPLOSIONS.

Megan Chesty gives an extraordinary display of her range, pouting, running really well in slow motion, and straddling a motorbike like a pro.

And wtf was John Turturro doing in this movie? He must have a heavy gambling habit to pay back, or paying bollock busting alimony. Or something. He, like everyone else over the age of teen involved in this sorry excuse for celluloid, was required to do the staring eyes, the table punching, SHOUTING and spitting. And no one should sweat that much even if they are in the desert.

I didn’t realise that watching a pair of toy dogs have sex could be quite this hilarious.

So why did I enjoy it?

Because I learned something. This explains things to me. It gave me a snapshot (admittedly skewed) of the very young male psyche. What they like to see; what they get to see whether they want to or not; the level of violence that’s acceptable in their lives; the portrayal of women they’re given. When I see some girl draped across a motorbike I find it as offensive as the worst Jewish stereotype. And shouldn’t everyone? Somewhere in my brain newsreel footage of a suffragette throwing herself under a horse plays out. I wonder whether she’d have thought twice if she knew that women would be wondering round and round in little circles still and in the 21st century?

The other thing I learned is something hard to define; it’s about the level of ‘concentration’ required when watching anything aimed at children these days. I’ll digress for a moment…a while ago, in my professional capacity, I was searching for information on how to broach the prickly issue of internet-stranger-danger-security for very young kids.

The BBC had a fabulous series of videos aimed at children covering all sorts of things including not giving out your details online etc. But. They were unwatchable. At lest by this old lady. For a moment, and I promise you I don’t mean this disrespectfully, I wondered if this must be what it’s like to have epilepsy. While the ‘characters’ spoke, in the background there was incessant noise. And the mix of sound was such that the talking, which was actually mumbling could hardly be made out over the background. And, for good measure, there where occasional, random, infuriating chirrups and twitters and crashes drowning out the words.

The overall feeling was that none of this was worth listening to, nothing was worth paying attention to fully and it’s entirely ok for people to talk over each other. And this was the BBC. It made me understand certain hyper individuals that I’ve taught over the years, generally male, at least a handful in each class, who are just twitchy and impossible to engage for more than ‘goldfish time’.

So, no surprise that the same thing was in evidence when cock-bearing Michael Bay, had exactly the same thing going throughout this piece of crap film: throbbing music in every moment; people falling over, being humiliated, bullied and loads of fast talking; gibberish exposition giving you no time to say, “Now wait a minute! That doesn’t make sense!”

I can’t believe that parents will bring their kids to a 12A when they are only five or six. In one case, a toddler sat on his mum lap. I asked myself, what did he make of the incessant NOISE, the constant violence, the misogyny (for we must hate women to not entrust them with personality). Ok, the decapitation and eviscerations were of robots and frankly, they deserved it, but they still are what they are. I’m proud of the fact that this bothers me. My own children have a healthy love of zombie films, the more gruesome the better, but they didn’t watch anything like that until they were in their late teens and had a chance to form a context. We mustn’t make the mistake of looking at the world through our eyes when making decisions for children about what they should and shouldn’t watch.

Don’t give this guy your money. Just don’t. Every little counts.

I leave you with this story. Apparently Megan Booby’s audition went like this. Michael Bay asked her to come over to his place and wash his Ferrari for him. And she got the part.

Like I said, her mother must be proud.

Star Trek

It took a second viewing and a lot of deep breaths before I was half able to articulate why Star Trek was such a good movie; there is much to praise but, it won’t surprise you, that which delivers for the sternest, old school fan and yet also engages the husbands, wives and girlfriends who came along for the ride with their Trekkie dates, was the casting.

For loyal fans of the original series, much was familiar to give that feeling of security; and director JJ Abrahams took everything very seriously, consulting advisors along the way on important minutia such as which sides to holster up phasers; just like back in the day, Kirk was beaten up on a regular basis and slammed face down onto dusty surfaces and table tops; there was the same multicultural, multi species crew; and an undercurrent of racism - while Bones only made one ‘dodgy’ comment sotto voce when he refers to Spock as a goblin, most of the unsavoury remarks come from the Vulcans and were directed at the humans and, specifically at Spock who as, half human , half Vulcan (is there anyone who actually needed me to tell them that?) was seen as tarnished and weak by his dual heritage; and the ship made the same sounds: the swish of the bridge doors, the transporter whine and the hailing whistle. And, the guy in the red shirt who beams down to the planet and we know is going to die, he’s there too!

There are some upgrades. The bridge of the Enterprise was a modern take on the 24th century, all white and shiny with, so I read somewhere, more safety barriers than in 1966. The uniforms are the same but different with updated lines still shorty but not as skimpy ; the transporter beam is swirly not speckly and the phasers look less like they fell out of a cracker.

And gone are the dodgy sets.

This is the story of Kirk, McCoy and Spock before the Enterprise. We meet them while they are children and then as twenty-somethings on their first missions for Starfleet. The casting is spot on with the leads bearing enough resemblance to their predecessors and enough flair and personality of their own that they become entirely believable within minutes. All roles are filled with respect and no sense of irony with all parties finding a hook to link them to their predecessors’ performances yet managing to remain themselves. You could sense instantly that the actors believed in this universe and so, by default, did we.

Kirk, the “genius level repeat offender” from the mid west, is played by the gloriously handsome Chris Pine, who brings a touch of James Dean and young Steve McQueen to the role with a slouchy, cocky physical performance which is more of an homage to William Shatner rather than an impersonation. When he takes his place in The Chair, it’s as if Shat in his hey day had been reincarnated.

Spock, played by Zachary Quinto, is a tortured, more emotional Vulcan than we have come to know and who, we are shown, has to learn to get a grip on his impulses; it all makes sense if we understand his origins and how defensive he is under the surface.

McCoy played by the dashing Karl Urban is a perfect Clark Gable impersonation; I had forgotten the sexy Southern drawl from the original series.

We also have Scotty, Sulu and Chekov who bears a striking resemblance to Justin Timberlake and provides a tongue in cheek comic turn where his pronunciation is hammed up to 11 - “wick-tor” rather than Victor.

The baddies are the Romulans; I hadn’t realised on first viewing that it was Eric Bana playing Nero, the rogue Romulan leader in louche, mildly stoner-like performance; a cross between a snake and a Tahitian native in his tattoos. He and his henchmen, dressed in Issey Miyake style coats stride runway style down unnecessarily dangerous walkways with no barriers keeping you form the sheer drops.

JJ Abrahams does a fine job: with slick, even editing and deft pacing he manages to pull off a sense of scale which is vital in ‘space’ with sweeping camerawork and a deft use of swelling music and silences; this is particularly effective in the scene with Kirk senior, where Abrahams creates a beautiful, emotional change of mood caused entirely by the shift in sound from the chaos and buzz on the bridge and the silence of space. The movie, like the cast, is easy on the eye, painted with a pale blues and gold palette which gives a timeless solidity to the scene rather than it being a washed out view of the future, here we could connect.
It’s the perfect fusion of mind and body, ideas and sex.


We never forget that Starfleet is a military organisation and it particularly resonates in these times of the Iraq and Afghanistan situations. One reviewer spoke of how one way Star Trek has been brought up to the minute is that it no longer represents the forward looking, hopeful sixties. Instead this is a movie for the inward looking noughties.

The journey now, isn’t to seek out new lives and new civilisations but to boldly go inwards and find out who you are.

In Star Trek, the characters are on a journey – to find out what their destinies are and without wishing to spoil you, this knowledge is the real climax for the film.



I loved this film; for me it’s everything SCI-FI should be, the perfect fusion of mind and body, sex and ideas. I only wish we’d had a few more domestic details to fulfil my inner geek.