Autobots Waged Their Battle To Destroy the Evil Forces of Michael Bay

As he mentioned yesterday, The Uncommon Wife allowed The Common Man to indulge his inner eight year old, and went with him to see Transformers on the 4th. Careful readers will remember that The Common Man was all atwitter five months ago in anticipation of this film, when he wrote, "The Common Man prays that this film will be good, for it holds the unfulfilled dreams of his childhood in its hands." So how did it stack up? Was The Common Man's childhood reduced to robot-pummeled rubble by Michael Bay or was he magically transported back to 1986, in his parents' basement, making the familiar chkee-chkoh-chkoh-chkoh-kuh-kuh-kuh-kuh noises of his Transformers transforming?

The movie requires a significant suspension of disbelief (even more than you'd probably expect for a movie about giant transforming robots from outer space) and will require you to turn off your inner logic-detector (one is forced to continuously wonder whether Optimus Prime's extreme selflessness is a sign of stupidity, for instance, and why Megatron is the only Decepticon who speaks English when he's been frozen for 4,000 years and his minions have been living here for some time).

Also, some of the characterization of the Autobots was disappointing. Jazz and Ironhide, in particular, come off as petty and annoying. Bumblebee, for some reason, can't talk and speaks almost entirely in movie and song clips. Also, Bumblebee turns out to be a total bad-ass, which is ridiculous given how wussy he was in the TV show. And Ratchet may as well not even be there.

On a somewhat related note, The Uncommon Wife and The Common Man are in agreement on this point, there were far too many people involved in this movie, and not nearly enough giant transforming robots from outer space, or at least not enough time spent developing those giant transforming robots from outer space who were in it. The movie (and TV show, and cartoon, and the other movie, and the comic books, etc.) were called Transformers, not Some Kid and His Giant Transforming Robot Friends. But the inclusion of Shia Labeouf as Sam Witwicky is at least understandable, given that Spike Witwicky was a main fixture of the original. And the inclusion of his love interest (Megan Fox) is fine because it gives the kid something to do and because she's hot. But spending time with all the computer hackers, with a group of random soldiers (only one of whom is even decently developed) is totally unnecessary. Likewise, the inclusion of a government conspiracy subplot only made what should have been a fun sci-fi ride seem ludicrous (even for a movie about giant transforming robots from outer space).

Finally, there are long sections of the movie that are essentially motionless, allowing Bay to channel Charley Chaplin and do some physical comedy with his CGI robots. It's largely unnecessary (The Common Man really didn't care that Ironhide wanted to "eliminate the parents" or that he will rust after getting peed on by a dog. And as funny as it was to watch giant transforming robots from outer space try to hide around a back yard, it took away from the action. Also, some of the humor was inappropriate for a movie targeted toward a younger audience and suggests that Michael Bay is incapable of subtlety of any kind, given that characters openly and directly discuss masturbation (The COmmon Man imagines that an email exchange with Michael Bay would go something like this: Q: Did you enjoy making Transformers? A: YES, I ENJOYED MAKING TRANSFORMERS A GREAT DEAL. IT PLEASED ME AND I CAN'T WAIT TO DO IT AGAIN. I ONLY WISH THAT I HAD THE TIME TO INCLUDE MORE UNCOMFORTABLE SEXUAL REFERENCES SO AS TO DISTRACT YOU FROM THE FACT THAT 40 FOOT TALL ROBOTS ARE FAR COOLER THAN ANY IDEA FOR A MOVIE I COULD POSSIBLY COME UP WITH ON MY OWN.)

But Michael Bay's lack of subtlety does help the movie where it really counts. If Michael Bay knows how to do one thing, it's make things explode, and it turns out that, in a movie about giant transforming robots from outer space, explosions are pretty damn important. And cool. Very, very cool. It turns out that, once you turn off your brain, the movie is a hell of a thing.

The voice acting of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Megatron (Hugo Weaving) are excellent, as Megatron has never seemed more menacing and Prime has never seemed more like Prime (Peter Cullen needs to read The Common Man's eulogy as Prime; he doesn't care how old Cullen is, they can pre-record it).

And the Transformers themselves, the main attraction, are excellently rendered. Their fight scenes are fast but intricately detailed. In all, they are very cool. Which is why, of course, The Common Man wanted more of them. And more robots fighting. Perhaps in the inevitable sequel, The Common Man will get all the robot-on-robot violence he so desperately needs and the film can rid itself of those meddlesome fleshlings. Until then, The Common Man has gotten his fix, and actually enjoyed it a great deal. All things considered, The Common Man had an excellent time at the theater, watching his Transformers, but it's more because of how awesome the Transformers were than anything else about the movie (particularly the script and director). He recommends the film to any fans of the old school toys, though he's quite certain that it's not going to mean much to you if you never cared for Optimus the way The Common Man did and, sadly, still does.

The Squeaky Third Wheel

The Common Man hopes that you had a wonderful 4th of July holiday. He did, going to see Transformers (review forthcoming), taking The Boy down to the creek and dipping his feet in, eating and drinking with The Deacon, and curling up with The Boy on The Deacon's front lawn to watch fireworks/pretend to be awake. It was a good day.

Something else that The Common Man has been using to put an extra spring in his step for the last couple of days has been this video of Elizabeth Edwards calmly and politely dismantling Ann Coulter. Careful readers will remember Ms. Coulter as the Queen of the Harpies that quasi-called John Edwards a "faggot" back in March. Of course, if you don't read this blog regularly, you've probably heard of her as well. She kind of enjoys attention. The Common Man wants to know what's hiding behind Coulter's sunglasses in this clip, as she's forced to listen to Edwards kindly and politely asking her to not be such a horrible person (not asking her to stop writing or speaking, just asking her to stop being such a horrible person while she's doing it).

Anyway, all of this is a long introduction to say that The Common Man thinks John Edwards is currently in the catbird seat in the Democratic nomination fight. Sure, he is fighting with the non-running film-maker Al Gore (who just got embroiled in his own controversy; The Common Man didn't even know that a Prius could go 100 MPH) for third place in the most recent Gallup poll (at approximately 10% of Democratic voters, as of mid-June), roughly 10% behind Obama and 20% behind Clinton, but Edwards has significant advantages over the two front-runners.

He already has solid name-recognition, but his continued feud with Coulter (one of Democrats' least favorite people ever) will only increase his visibility in the news and make him easily the hero in a very one-sided battle for public sympathy. In addition, from the #3 spot, he can run quietly against the top two candidates while they fight between themselves. As the Obama/Clinton race becomes more heated and (presumably) less civil, Edwards can clean up whatever voters are turned off by their squabbles. And as Bill Clinton demonstrated in 1992, Edwards does not have to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, he simply has to present himself as a viable candidate and finish "in the money".

With the shorter nomination season this time around, it will be more difficult for Edwards to build on any momentum he gets from Iowa and New Hampshire, but if smart campaigning between now and February can cut into the Clinton/Obama lead (particularly by exploiting the additional media coverage he seems to be generating to create more opportunities for free advertising), he certainly can slide into the nomination after Super Tuesday. With Clinton's lack of personality and Obama's lack of specific proposals, The Common Man believes that it's far too early to write off the Democratic nomination as a two-horse race.

More Than Meets the Eye

Over the weekend, The Common Man became excited only to see his dreams crushed against the rocky shoals of reality. You see, when The Common Man was but The Common Boy, he loved his Transformers. He loved the toys. He loved the cartoon. He was traumatized by the movie (in which all his favorite Transformers, including Optimus Prime but not Bumblebee, were killed off in the first 20 minutes) but loved it anyway. The Common Man even loved the lean third season, suffering through the reign of Rodimus Prime, the new, totally wussy, leader of the Autobots. Somewhere, in his parents' basement, The Common Man still has his original Optimus Prime (even though one arm has fallen off),

his decomposing Megatron (a poorly-designed, fragile toy that, by the way, transforms into a realistic-looking pistol; not sure that toy would fly today), his crippled Soundwave(with a broken tape-deck and legs that no longer support his weight), and
Rodimus Prime (in mint-condition...damn it; seriously, this is the Transformer that's in perfect condition??? Is there no justice in this world?), along with dozens and dozens of other Transformers in various states of decay. Suffice to say, The Common Man loved him some Transformers.

Certainly, The Common Man realizes that the cartoons were poorly written with cheesy dialogue, that they often portrayed Muslims in a stereotypical manner (seriously, go back and watch them if you don't believe me), and that they were essentially half-hour commercials for the toy line (as more and more Transformer characters conveniently showed up on theshow just in time for their product release...I'm looking at you Constructicons, Aerialbots, Stunticons, Predicons, Protectobots, and Combaticons). But this does not diminish his affection for them; it only reminds him of how much he enjoyed playing with his toys. Indeed, maybe The Common Man can see how ridiculous crap like Pokemon, Digimon, Power Rangers, and Yu-gih-oh can have such an influence on kids today (or, I guess, 5-7 years ago). Of course, all of those suck and The Common Man's Transformers are awesome, so it's probably not a good comparison after all.

Anyway, as you may or may not know, there is a live-action version of Transformers coming to theaters near you this summer. This has The Common Man all atwitter, and for weeks he has been searching for ever more news, photos, and clips from the new film. The Common Man prays that this film will be good, for it holds the unfulfilled dreams of his childhood in its hands. Unfortunately, those hands are being controlled by Michael Bay, director of Armageddon and The Island. Bay has admitted that, prior to his involvement in this film, he knew nothing about the Transformers. Happily, his hands are being guided by this man, who has had a decent track record in putting together enjoyable films.

This is a lot of explanation to get to The Common Man's ultimate frustration this weekend when he read that various internet "media" outlets had been given a chance to view 25 from the upcoming film at the International Toy Convention. The Common Man thought that, surely, some clever individual had smuggled out some kind of bootlegged copy. So he looked and looked and looked. But none could be found. All these sites have are text descriptions of what they saw. And that's not good enough for The Common Man. He needs his fix. Or, he needs it to be July. Now.

The lesson, as always, is that The Common Man has the emotional maturity of a 10 year old.