AUTOBOTS, OOH RAH!!

They can't believe they were just in this movie.

In Chicago’s Lincoln Park, where I live, there’s an athletic center with a fake rock climbing wall located on the outside wall of the building that goes up maybe four or five stories. Whenever I pass it, I imagine myself dropping the anime and doing any physical activity other than biking for once. How would I feel upon scaling this replica of nature, throwing my all into climbing something arduous and challenging but plastic and unreal? Instead of the cold rock and moss of the outdoors, all I would feel is warm plastic; instead of fresh air and a view of the wilderness at the top of the mountain, all I would get is a breath of Chicago smog and a truncated view of the skyline. This would be no man vs. wild, man vs. nature, man vs. beauty; this would be man vs. shit, man vs. artifice.

This is more or less how I feel about the new Transformers movie. Writing about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is like discussing Proust or trying to make sense of the Coheed and Cambria storyline: There’s just too much going on and you know it means something but articulating it is a headache. I got an A in a Proust class and I once read the Coheed comic book, but I can’t try to understand Transformers because every element adds to this feces quiche. Is it the 2 and a half hours of overwhelming CGI robot beatdowns rendered so joyless and hectic that you might as well go to sleep rather than follow who’s fighting who? Is it the fetishization of military culture that justifies the wanton destruction of environment and over-abundance of unnecessary technology as required for salvation of the human race? Is it Megan Fox’s mechanical sex body swinging and swaying in every scene like a Fembot-1000, her skin an orangey bleach on the hi-definition screen, not a character or a pinup but a walking teenage hormone trigger? Or is it the two jive-talking robots who reinvent the blackface caricature for modern audiences?

The morning after seeing the movie, I felt like a zombie. It might be the most lethargic theater experience I’ve had this year, passing Terminator: Salvation because the process of going to the theater, getting tickets, waiting for the movie to start, sitting through trailers and then the film itself will take you over three hours. It will suck the momentum from your day and stick out like a bald spot on a yak. It’s so long and poorly paced that even if you get super drunk, you’ll still be in the theater as your booze wears off and leaves you with a pounding headache. This movie sobers you up in an ugly way. It makes you realize how much you are wasting your life if you see movies like this.

Instead, I recommend reading Transformers fanfiction on the Internet: It’s cheaper, more entertaining, and has a better story. Here’s an except from my new favorite piece, an opus called “My Jazzy Life” – it’s a love story between Jazz the Transformer and a human. It’s riveting!

Jazz stalked over to me and said, “Vi, you need to get the hell up outta here!” I shook my head. I said, “Jazz, you’ve always been there for me, even when I didn’t know about yawl. I wanna be there for you!” He shook his head, and said, “Vi, I did that cause I’m your guardian, like Bee’s Sam’s guardian. It would be weird if I caused you to not be safe.” I sighed and said, “You can keep me safe, I just know it. I wanna help, Jazz!” “Why??” I sighed; it would have to come out sometime. “Because I freaking LOVE YOU!” Within a few moments, before he could say anything, we heard a “bam” and I blacked out, while Jazz fell to the floor.

Compare that to a scene where Shia LeBeouf almost has sex with a Deceptacon disguising as a hot girl and Megan Fox accidentally walks in on them. Does this scene not give you more emotion? Here’s a passage from “Axel’s Mistake“:

“I love you so much…” Starscream reached for her hand, but Axel, being already in love with Optimus, pulled her hand away. She shook her head.

“Well, I don’t love you back. I love Optimus, and we already have three beautiful children. And Siren, well, wasn’t ever supposed to exist. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to her, but I know she’s not going to ever know that she wasn’t supposed to be alive. I’m sorry.”

Give me your poor, your tired, your robot/human love. This is almost certainly better than the Transformers movie, CGI robots be damned.