Last year, when the ashes of a burning Hollywood were but a metaphor, three films rose above them to challenge the bloated, scurrilous morass that is Double-Twenties Cinema. All three movies, in their own unique ways, restored my faith in the medium’s future. One uses extensive practical effects, one features CGI characters, and one is fully computer-animated top to bottom, without a single human element visible.
The first on the list is director Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore effort The Substance, simultaneously a Cronenbergian body-horror, a Kubrick satire, and the performance of Demi Moore’s venerable career/lifetime. The second is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth of its series, which despite its weak-footed landing features totally convincing simian conversation. The third is my favorite of the three, but not just because of my four-decade affection for the intellectual property, but because it’s a genuine science-fiction spectacle, right down to the visible quality of the aesthetic.
This is why I’ve chosen to show you still-frames from the film, rather than telling you how much I loved it or how many times I’ve watched it. I don’t have to tell you how much the creators of this movie “got it”, or how perfectly the lore is depicted, or how well the movie nails the subconscious joyful feeling of poring over catalog photos of toy robots in the year 1985. I can just show you shots from the film itself, and let your imagination do the heavy lifting. Regardless of your feelings about the toyline, your sentimental attachment to it, or lack thereof, you can look at the above picture and be both intrigued and impressed. The characters pictured, despite being alien robots, appear alive and so real you could touch them. The decal on the shoulder of the robot on the right is a decal. Some of the best scenes in the movie are centered on this decal. This one detail is more in tune with the film’s longtime fans than anything Disney ever put in their movies. And make no mistake; it’s just a decal.
Look at the vista above. Everywhere, there are tiny details to draw you in; the scattered crowds, the dusty devastation, the magnificent frieze, statue and bridged towers. This is but one of dozens of panoramas like it in the film; your mind races as you imagine what might be happening inside the colossal structures you glimpse for mere seconds. Although all that you see is artificial and alien, the visuals and sound form a tangible reality in your mind.
Compare this to James Cameron’s Avatar movies; certainly, the visuals are believable, but what about them intrigues, or stokes the imagination? It’s unspoiled nature, ancient ruins, and floating islands. Within the Avatar universe, there are primitive alien tribes and weird fauna/flora. When you look at one of Pandora’s admittedly impressive views, there’s no mystery to keep you in your seat. It’s just sightseeing.
This is a picture of something that has existed since 1986, and yet has been made both new and still respectful of its long history. This one scene, which is legitimately tense and unnerving, introduces a plot device that completely re-energizes the central dramatic conflict of the overall saga. Good and evil are emphatically solidified as based on deeds, rather than pre-programmed alignment. This adjustment, recent to a franchise that has traditionally and explicitly labeled its villains as evil, opens up a wider universe of imagination wherein any toy robot can fall into darkness, or be redeemed into the light. Every robot has autonomous freedom.
There is a great race in this film, as are there many high-speed chases through incredible, shifting environments. It all unspools before you almost too rapidly to keep up. A runtime of one hour and forty minutes whips by so quickly that I confess to starting the movie over and watching it a second time lately. If you don’t like the Star Wars prequels, then the race in this film is way better than the Podrace. If you like or love the Star Wars prequels, then the race in this film is not quite as awesome as the Boonta Eve Classic. It is amazing, but I’m just being realistic here.
The cast ranges from great to legendary. Everyone gets a scene to steal. Not every voice is perfect on first listen, but in short measure they earn the characters they play. The robot pictured above has a name that myself and the general fandom found corny and risible when it was leaked to the public in 2011. At present she’s a respected part of the mythos and we all think her name is wicked cool.
Think for a moment on the lesson in that; when you earn respect, people stop making fun of your name. They stop making fun of you; not because they’re afraid of you, but because you bested what they expected of themselves.
Here again we have characters who have been iconic for just over four decades, and despite this they look and feel brand-new. Just enough of their origin is revealed to intrigue, so nothing is demystified. Nothing clashes with the audience member’s personal “head canon” and pulls them out of the experience by trying to “subvert expectations”. This picture was my fourth attempt to get a good shot because the frame and main subject are in motion. It looks just like an expensive wall poster I’d have bought at Oxford Comics back in the early 2000’s.
There are numerous moments in this film that evoke the sensation of seeing original Star Wars movies in the theater, or seeing The Transformers: The Movie on the big screen in 1986. The intense thrill of not quite understanding what you’re seeing yet, the frisson of witnessing things both alien and familiar come to life before your eyes. The discovery of concepts and ideas that excite your imagination, which you giddily fumble to describe to your friends and family, overcome with titillated emotions.
Originally, my plan was to screencap directly from the film, but for various obscure and frustrating reasons, I can only run the movie on my laptop, and it won’t allow me to screen-capture. So I figured I’d just pull from YouTube clips of the film, on my desktop. As such, I was unable to show frames from about 75% of the film, including many of the sights I wished to show you. Nevertheless, every shot I’ve posted here is incredible (see above), and there is an economic quantity of fewer than twenty, rather than, like, a hundred. You’re welcome. Or, I’m sorry, depending on your preference.
Have you ever needed a layman’s explanation of how hard-light constructs work? This movie gives you a solid one, almost entirely without words. The screenplay is an excellent distillation of generations of world-building; reference is omnipresent but never intrusive, nor distracting. The flow of action is constant and practically overloaded with wonder and fascination. The central dramatic conflict between the two main characters, a famous legend on par with Skywalker and Kenobi’s final duel in Star Wars, unfolds organically, unhurriedly, and with realistic motive and purpose. Its mythic heft is undeniable, yet totally accessible to newcomers. Ideas about society and politics that might be lofty and complex on paper are deftly illustrated here.
Look at that picture and tell me you’re not the least bit curious about what’s happening there. Look at the sky, and how it implies the clouding of ethics, of public perception. This isn’t just an exemplary “toy movie”; it’s legitimate and intelligent science-fiction. It’s so brilliant that I never thought to complain about there being on-screen words in English (the setting is an alien planet, three billion years ago). It just “makes sense”, much like the alien robots speaking colloquial American English, “hell” and all. This is another risk that pays off for the movie, much as it did for Star Wars and Tron.
The eye of the viewer is consistently tricked into believing that everything on the screen is cold, hard metal. The surfaces of the planet are as real as they were in Dark of the Moon, Age of Extinction, The Last Knight and Rise of the Beasts. Without human faces or Earthen environs for comparison, the entirety of this film gels as tangible reality. Every footstep betrays the mass and weight of its stepper; every sound vividly describes a fully mechanical being in motion. On headphones it is truly something to behold.
I’m just gonna let that shot speak for itself. Knowing nothing, look at the composition, how it leads the eye across the image. The people who created this didn’t just earn their paychecks; they clearly had love for their work and what they do. This scene doesn’t pull any punches, either; even though the outcome is expected, it still packs the requisite wallop.
Just take that image in. It’s like the cover of a very expensive coffee table book about the movie. I intended this article to have the effect of picking up an issue of Cinefex or Starlog in a bookstore back in the old days, and drooling over glossy photos of Blade Runner or The Abyss. That picture could even be the cover.
Rumors persist that this film was originally conceived as a light space-comedy for young children, and although cooler heads eventually prevailed, there are vestigial traces in the final product. Truthfully this only widens the appeal of the finished article, and literally not one aspect of the movie caused me to cringe, other than the awful auto-tune pop song that plays over the closing credits. No other Transformers movie shares that honor, not even the 1986 classic. (Remember the dancing and kissing on the junk planet? That still counted as a cringe.)
One of this film’s most laudable victories is also its most subtle; its depiction of combat. Use of firearms is done in a way that, if imitated by children, won’t easily be confused with realistic gun violence. Pistols and rifles are used, but if one pays very close attention (or uses a slow playback speed), the act of firing is either cleverly obscured or unseen. The above image wouldn’t inspire an accidental strangling, because the hands of the aggressor aren’t choking the victim. In context, it works brilliantly, without the risk of a kid throttling a sibling during a playtime reenactment. Nothing in this film even remotely resembles a real gun, meaning a child could see this movie a hundred times, and never mistake a pistol for a toy.
Look closely. It’s not new to this “cinematic universe”, but it’s worth pointing out to the world.
That’s metallic-flake paint.
That burn mark is the decal I told you about before, mockingly re-positioned and then scored with a white-hot welding torch.
I leave you with this final shot of the newly-christened Megatron, looking through the hole left by the killing blow he dealt his former brother-in-arms, Orion Pax. A picture speaks a thousand words; this movie speaks a billion.
Transformers One is not only the finest of the brand’s 21st-century big screen efforts, it could be argued that it surpasses the first of them all, from 1986. It has an affection and admiration for the property’s history and core ideas that even the most profitable fictions can only dream of. It bows to no agenda save for the absolute enthrallment of its audience. It pleases longtime fans in ways we had forgotten we could be pleased. It isn’t perfect, in that it’ll never change the world, bring eyesight to the blind, or be anything other than what it is: the best Transformers movie so far, and one better.
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