Movie Box Review

As millions will be spending their holiday weekend watching marauding robots rip apart Chicago in TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON, it's a fine time to salute some troubling machines of the past:

10.  HECTOR (Saturn 3 - 1980):  I'm not making this up:  in 1980, the director of Singin' In the Rain made a movie in which Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett played a pair of lovers living together on the moon, until they were attacked first by Harvey Keitel as a homicidal fellow human, and then by Hector, a robot programmed by Keitel to kill Douglas and lust for Fawcett.  Hector wasn't all that terrifying as evil robots go, but the combination of tax shelters and illegal substances in the 1970s and 80s sure made for some scary studio greenlights.

9.   CHRISTINE (1983):  Not the first killer auto, since it followed The Car, which stalked James Brolin in 1977, and some would also count the truck in Steven Spielberg's 1973 Duel (I don't--it had a driver).  But Christine, in the hands of Stephen King and director John Carpenter, is the Plymouth Fury who became part of pop culture history.  It's actually shocking that no one has remade this yet.  (Fun fact:  Keith Gordon, the kid who was terrorized by Christine, left acting to become a writer/director, and Deadline is reporting today that he'll be doing his next film under the aegis of Christopher Nolan.)

8.   ASH (Alien - 1979):  The revelation that Ian Holm's Science Officer aboard the Nostromo was not only an android, but one coldly willing to sacrifice all the human crew members in order to bring the title creature back home, was exceeded only by the alien itself popping out of John Hurt's chest.  Best evil moment:  calmly shoving that rolled-up magazine down Sigourney Weaver's throat.

7.   PROTEUS IV (Demon Seed - 1977):  The 70s were prime time for fear of computers taking over the world (discuss amongst yourselves), and one of the most evil was Proteus IV.  It took control of the systems powering Julie Christie's house, and in a major step forward for evil computers, it managed to impregnate her with sperm synthesized from her own cells.  In the creepy ending, theit newly-born, human-appearing baby spoke with the voice of Proteus.

6.   ROY BATTY (Blade Runner - 1982):  Think of it when you look at this summer's unexciting franchise pictures:  during the summer of 1982, not only were ET, Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, Tron and An Officer and a Gentleman released, but the season's boxoffice disappointment was what is now widely considered Ridley Scott's masterpiece.  Roy Batty, the leader of a group of killer replicants, was so soulful as played by Rutger Hauer ("all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain; time to die") that his hard-earned humanity almost outstripped his evil. 

5.   THE GUNSLINGER (Westworld - 1973):  Before Michael Crichton came up with the idea of a theme park with live dinosaurs, he created this adult resort where, as the tagline of the time said, "Nothing can go worng."  In particular, tourists Richard Benjamin and James Brolin found themselves pursued by a wild west killer who looked just like Yul Brynner and who Just.  Wouldn't.  Stop.  Clearly a film James Cameron kept in his mind for the next decade of his career.

4.   COLOSSUS (Colossus:  The Forbin Project - 1970):  The "cutting-edge" technology in this thriller is so tame now that it's unintentionally comic, but at the time, this was an all-powerful computer system to give one pause.  Think of it as the Doomsday Machine from Dr. Strangelove with a chip on its shoulder; created as the ultimate defense, it recognized the puniness of its human creators and took control for itself.  Its best line was its last in the movie:  "In time, you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe... but with love."  (This is one of those pictures that's constantly in development for a remake, but after 40 years, it hasn't happened yet.)

3.    CYLONS (Battlestar Galactica - 1978/2004):  Whether as straightforwardly violent "toasters" or synthesized humans, these mechanical beings meant business.  In Ron Moore's brilliant reboot, not only were they, for the most part, visually impossible to distinguish from humans, but they had a morality and belief system equal, and arguably superior, to those of their flesh-and-blood forebears.  They could casually destroy a planet, and then mount a sustained argument for why it was the right thing to do; their existence called into question the very concept of what it means to be a human. 

2.    SKYNET AND ITS SPAWN (The Terminator series - 1984/1991/2003/2008/2009):  At this point, Skynet doesn't need to destroy all of humanity; it could just coast on its merchandising revenues.  The most resilient and relentless of sentient machines, it finds new models to send back in time for every sequel, and while occasionally John Connor's resistence manages to send back a good Terminator, mostly these things just want to kill everyone who gets in their way. 

1.   HAL 9000 (2001:  A Space Odyssey - 1968):  The granddaddy of all killer computers, and still the one others struggle to equal; in Stanley Kubrick's astonishing conception, HAL was more human than the people it was killing.  The scene of HAL's destruction--its step-by-step lobotomization--is one of the scariest, funniest, saddest sequences in all of film history. 

This is what gives ulcers to control freak movie directors:  despite Michael Bay's well-publicized orders to theater projectionists, at tonight's premiere IMAX showing of TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON in West Los Angeles, the 3D system imploded an hour into the film and was never fixed, causing the rest of the picture to be projected in a mere 2 dimensions. 

As much as I would have liked to see the entire film as the director intended, there's something reassuringly karmic about Michael Bay being betrayed by his own technology, since that's ultimately all he's got.  Transformers 3 isn't suspenseful or surprising, and it isn't even exciting, really; what it is, is Big.  Fantastically, impossibly, spectacularly Big.  And Big is one of the things movies do better than any other form of entertainment.  No medium can so convincingly create the illusion of seeing and experiencing a reality that couldn't exist.  So Transformers 3, if it's to be seen, should by all means be caught on the biggest theater screen, with the loudest sound system, by means of 3D technology that actually works.

This third installment in the fabulously successful Transformers franchise ($700M worldwide gross for the first movie, $835M for the second) is easily the best, which is faint praise but nonetheless earned.  The stupid comedy scenes have been minimized (although Ken Jeong is briefly around to remind us why), Kevin Dunn and Julie White as the parents of Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBouef) are barely around, the plot (script by Ehren Kruger) is more or less comprehensible, and Bay's action sequences have a geographical coherence they've lacked in the past.  More to the point, unlike Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Green Lantern, Thor or any of the other summer action blockbusters except X Men First Class (which is on a far smaller scale), Transformers 3 delivers the set-piece goods, one giant scene after another of massive machines blowing up buildings, people, entire cities, and each other.

None of this makes the picture "good," exactly.  Kruger's script may be an improvement over its predecessors, but it takes far too long to get going and I won't even bother to detail what the plot is (something about materials hidden on the moon for the nefarious use of the bad robots), and the dialogue credited to him (which may well have been partly written by others) is for the most part horrible.  The robots themselves are completely uninteresting piles of machinery, some of them good and some bad (and some purportedly cute, which is painful).  Most of the people don't fare much better.  LaBouef has become less appealing with every part he's played, and as his new love interest, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley manages the considerable feat of making Megan Fox look like an accomplished actress (in the one scene where she's called upon to do some, you know, acting, she makes Fox look like Meryl Streep); even in the looks department--which is why, let's face it, she was cast in the first place--her gorgeousness is pretty generic.  Patrick Dempsey, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson are among the others who barely register amidst the carnage.  Luckily, Bay has a few self-starters in the smaller roles:  Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Malkovich and Alan Tudyk supply some bright moments as they support the more worthy independent work they do. 

But Michael Bay movies aren't about scripts, characters or actors.  So it should be noted that in the hour of 3D that was screened, the quality was exceptionally good, by far the best since Avatar--his insistence on bright projection doesn't just rescue the image from dank blurriness, it eliminates the eye-strain we've all been taking for granted the past year and a half.  The special effects, too, are absolutely top of the line; the presence of those robots on real streets, ripping apart real buildings, is completely convincing.  Amir Mokri's cinematography is crisp and fluid, and even though the movie is inevitably overlong at 154 minutes, the editing by the team of Roger Barton, William Goldenberg and Joel Negron moves things along.  The score by Steve Jablonsky is mostly pounding noise, which is surely what Bay wanted.  

The depressing thing about Transformers:  Dark of the Moon is that it's good enough to guarantee more installments.  Which is also the depressing thing about Michael Bay--he's undeniably talented, and so successful he has no reason to change, but there may never have been a talented filmmaker less interested in humanity or nuance.  On some level, he is Megatron; he wants us under the dictatorial thumb of his overwhelming, unstoppable imagery.  And yet, take some comfort in this:  he can be defeated by as little as a busted 3D projector.