Am I the only thirtysomething fanboy type in the country who couldn’t care less about the new Transformers movie opening tomorrow next week? Seriously, I can hardly hear my own typing over the sound of all that saliva pouring into keyboards all across the blogosphere. Wired.com has published no less than three articles and a photo gallery; Boing Boing has already posted a point-counterpoint review entry; and my good friend Steve is alternately doing the Snoopy dance over the concept of photo-realistic Autobots and fulminating against the fact that notorious crap-master Michael Bay directed the film.
Me, I just don’t get the fuss. I watched the old cartoon show and found it entertaining enough, and I also think its way cool that Peter Cullen — the voice actor who played heroic Optimus Prime on the old cartoon — was asked to reprise the role for this new movie. But I never owned a Transformer toy, I never saw the 1986 animated Transformers movie, and the previews for this new version leave me absolutely cold. I guess I’m just a couple years too old for this particular pop-cultural touchstone to have affected me… and for some reason, that bothers me. I don’t know why…
I’m with you, Jason. Actually, I remember resenting the fact that I was already “too old” when the first wave of Transformers hit, and thus was too ashamed to own the toys.
And I’m not big on films that ooze CG. Give me the original Star Wars over the “Look-what-George-can-do-now” prequels.
Absolutely! Physical props have real mass that no CG model has yet managed to imitate, and actors have a hard time responding to stuff that isn’t there. That said, of course, I don’t know how you could do a movie like Transformers without CGI. Guess it’s better not to do one, eh? 🙂
Best recollection of anything Transformer themed is someone winning a Halloween costume contest dressed up as the white jet-like airplane (sorry, don’t know specific character name). Truly awesome sight, though, and a well deserved win.