What's it all about? The moon landings were a cover for the retrieval of samples from a crashed alien spaceship, which turns out to contain advanced Autobot technology. The Autobots want to keep it safe, the Decepticons want to use it to take over Earth. Lots of explosions and fighting ensue.
*****
What's it like? I'm going to have to assume that you've either seen the first two Transformers films or are at least familiar with them. Otherwise we have an awful lot of back-story to fill in and we might be here all day. Really this is more of the same - lots of orange-tinged sunsets, lots of robots changing into cars and then back into robots, lots of destruction, lots of smashing stuff up, lots of explosions, lots of robots kicking and punching each other. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's really just a question of expectations and personal preference. If you like this sort of thing, you'll really like it. If not, it will not make a convert of you. Some of the problems with the second film (Revenge of the Fallen) have been remedied to a degree, such as some troubling racial stereotyping, some ridiculous sexualising of the robots and some wholly incoherent action sequences, but the difficulty of trying to show what is happening, to who, where and why, when all you have are lots of similar-looking robots carving each other up, persists to an extent.
In terms of its technical accomplishments, this is one of the films of the year. The 3D was well-used and crisply presented, the special effects were stunning and life-like and the action set-pieces were brilliantly rendered. A few top-drawer actors were drafted in for cameos (John Turturro, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand) but Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Sam Whitwicky's new girlfriend was a ghastly error in casting. Wooden, expressionless and massively out of her depth, one can only assume that her good looks and career to date as an underwear model lay behind the decision.
As ground-breaking as the scenes of transforming robots were in the first film, that work here is even more accomplished. It is astonishing how well done those effects are and for someone like me who lived and breathed Transformers in the mid-eighties, the constant sight of transforming robots helps cover over a multitude of other transgressions. Of which more later.
This is a very long film, which given its genre and subject matter seems strange. 100 minutes would seem enough, but we get nearly 160 minutes, with the majority of the final hour given over to the carnage of an all-out battle in Chicago. As with the other action sequences it is brilliantly rendered, but that is still a really long time to try to sustain an action sequence for.
Critics really don't like this film, but it has made $400m in less than a week, so that appears to be irrelevant. I quite enjoyed it, although I will share some significant reservations below and certainly if you go in with your eyes wide open and your expectations in check, you shouldn't be disappointed.
*****
Should I see it? In all seriousness, there are some real issues with this film. Although I enjoyed it on a superficial enjoyment/entertainment level, there are many problematic elements. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is an underwear model and the director films her like he's making a commercial, not a film. The first shot of her involves a camera panning up her naked legs as she walks up the stairs and climbs onto Sam in bed and her treatment throughout the film continues in this vein. She is objectified to an almost absurd but nonetheless troubling degree and it is frankly unacceptable for a film to present a female character in this way. At one point Patrick Dempsey's character waxes eloquent about a car, "look at that body, look at those curves, look at those lines", at which point the camera rests on Rosie once again. Frankly, it's pornography without the nudity.
I think the main difficulty here is that the type of film this is causes you to let your guard down. Because it is essentially 2.5 hours of robots hitting each other you're not necessarily alert to how women are being portrayed and so it just washes over you without you engaging your critical faculties. It's all too easy to think, "oh yeah, she's pretty", rather than, "hang on, amidst all this carnage, this woman is being held up as a lust object rather than a person and the camera is leering at her in a way that's pretty tasteless". I know it probably seems like I'm being a killjoy, picking at disposable popcorn entertainment, but we have to engage with these issues, or run the risk of absorbing them, unfiltered.
A further example would be the now de rigeur "you can have the f-word once" rule for 12A films. I could take my 5 year old son to see this, during which he would hear a robot describe something as a "cluster-f***", which can mean either a military debacle or, to be blunt, an orgy. it might pass him by, or it might not, but what do we say to our kids about that sort of content?
I think the main point I would press here is that this film is an absolute juggernaut, commercially speaking, and so if your kids can get to the cinema under their own steam they are going to want to see this. I think that makes it all the more important that we try to see this film with our children, so that we can then take them to McDonalds for a drink afterwards and talk with them about what they thought of the film and how it portrayed women. I think our daughters need to hear from us that they have dignity and worth and are not objects and our sons need to hear from us that women are precious and beautiful and are never to be used or objectified. This sort of portrayal of women can have a really pernicious effect on how we view them.
By all means see this film, enjoy the mayhem , the noise, the excitement. But do not check your brains at the door. Keep them switched on and think seriously about everything you see. It is all important.
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