Monday, May 21, 2007

They're coming,....to transform my summer.


I'll admit it.
I caved. I tried to hold out as long as I could. I said all the right things that a film-educated artisan of the movie industry was supposed to say. Michael Bay will just glitz it up,...it'll be all frosting and no cake, the dialogue will be trite and schmaltzy, the "humor" will be weak,...the designs are largely preposterous, Bumblebee is not a classic VW Beetle, what the f**k is up with Megatron? Why isn't he a gun? Or at the very least, a plasma cannon or something?
But then,......then I saw the new trailer,....and it had more shots of the robots, like Starscream transforming in mid-air and stomping onto a pile of cars.....and I got an eye twitch.
And then Bumblebee transformed and stood up into scene and my eyebrows, (well, eyebrow, really), went straight up, and finally,....Optimus Prime showed up and as he transformed from eighteen wheeler to battle robot mode, they hooked every one of the little boys residing inside the men watching this trailer in that theatre right in our hearts.
Because when Prime transformed,.....he made,..."the sound".
The SOUND.
And by sound I mean the one I don't have to explain to the fans out there but for the un-initiated, it's that glorious richly modulated series of ratchetings and clickings that accompanies an Autobot or a Decepticon when they're doing their thing.
It's a call to battle, a warning bell, and an "I am coming to kick the energon out of your tailpipe" all rolled into one!
The Choo-choo-chaaah-chaaah-choo! sound that accompanied any one of us with a Jazz or Wheeljack or soundwave in our hands as we desperately rushed to finish transforming the thing before we stopped making the sound.
With that one sound, it told me that Michael Bay knows everything he needs to know about making this film a hit. He's putting in all the little things that he knows are so big to our generation exactly where they should be and he knows what they are and when to hit you with em'.
That's why when I saw that,.....the little twelve year old me came shuffling in, right shoe untied and with a box of Lemonheads in his back pocket, and he kicked that cinematic soapbox right out from under me.
I came crashing to the ground and landed painfully on my shoulder but before I could pick myself up or regain composure, he grabbed me by the ears and simply said, "Opening day, July fourth." (except fourth sounded like fawth because the twelve year old me still has a Lynn/Boston accent), and he wandered off to make Megatron out of Legos.

So, my wiser me has shown me the light and apparently I have resigned myself to going to see this movie and loving every minute of it,....warts and all.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"-Optimus Prime; leader of the Autobots. :)