It recently occurred to me that there are an awful lot of similarities between the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe extravaganza Avengers: Infinity War and the animated classic, Transformers: The Movie.
(No, not the Michael Bay dreck.)
While this might seem an insult to compare a gazillion dollar enterprise to a kids cartoon with an 80s sensibility, I don’t mean any particular offense. Moreover, I’ve come to believe that Transformers might well have done it better when you really start to look it.
Which, okay, you can read as an insult if you want to — but I still hold the deepest respect for the folks who spent countless hours building the Marvel monstrosity that is Thanos’ quest. I think it’s important to state that upfront.
This is really more about speaking up about the quality of the original animated Transformers, which if we’re being completely honest, wasn’t all that great of a television series … it was the movie that elevated the proceedings considerably. And all due credit on this realization to the fine folks (MovieBob!) who produced this video of awesome-sauce.
I mean, this is a really deep dive on why the movie has merit, and I get it if you don’t want to go there. To sum up the video, there are tons of reasons to come to the conclusion that yes, the movie is really that good.
That all having been stated, why do I make the Avengers comparison?
Well, it’s a cultural touchstone and is present on people’s minds right now. That’s definitely a part of it. But more relevantly, they really do have a lot of the same characteristics.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look.
You’re dropped in expecting to know these people and their stories.
From the outset of both movies, if you haven’t done your homework, you’re in trouble. Each movie demands some familiarity with the characters, their back stories, the overarching plot, and some of the basic “rules” of the universe. This has been levied as criticism or a strength depending on who you’re talking to (and which movie they’re referencing), but there’s no doubt neither movie will hold your hand if you’re a newbie.
So you’d better study beforehand, y’all.
A God-like villain.
Thanos, meet Unicron. Each of you is basically invulnerable, wants to destroy a large segment of the universe, and you both even have the ability to completely pull that feat off. God help all of us should the two of you team up.
(Hey Marvel, I’ve got this great crossover idea for you.)
A long amount of running time spent in space.
So Earth is great and all, but if you really want to set your creative-types loose, give them a blank canvas like “space,” and tell them to start imagining stuff. The end result is what you might expect: bold, bright, awe-inspiring worlds full of things we’d never seen before. All of which sets up…
Really cool action set pieces.
It’s not a coincidence that both flicks have an abundance of imaginative action set pieces given the settings. Additionally, each film’s creators have strong comic backgrounds, lending them to imaginative framing in a visual medium. The mixing and matching of different characters with different abilities and strengths adds to the creative mix, resulting in superb chase sequences, engaging hand-to-hand combat, and full-on insane-o cataclysmic battle scenarios.
Clearing the chess board.
How do you solve the problem of having too many characters to juggle? You kill a bunch of them off. This lets you focus more in-depth on a smaller subsection of people (or giant robots), but perhaps equally importantly, it gives you drama for your characters to deal with. Both movies swing for the fences in this regard, holding nothing back in terms of the amount of carnage inflicted on their own property. And randomly (or not so randomly?), each movie features a significant death of a main character who carried an object of import and subsequently loses his color, fading to gray. Optimus Prime, meet Vision.
(Marvel, I’ve got another crossover idea for you.)
Let’s sell toys.
The marketing play of the Transformers is well established by now, but for the uninitiated, their conception was as a toy first, wherein the back story and development of the characters came later. Clearly, the movie was an extension of the cartoon, meaning it was a callous effort to sell more toys.
But you’re not going to tell me Disney is the slightest bit different when it comes to the merchandising of one of its main properties in the Avengers. Regardless of how and when the stories came into being, in today’s world, the ability to sell merchandise factors into almost every intellectual property out there. The level of gross commercialism can be debated from entity to entity, but there’s no denying each of these properties are concerned with selling merch.
So yes, the movies are really similar. (There’s even a similar thread of some object being pursued by warring factions so as to establish a pecking order in the universe and/or attempt to save it.)
But how is Transformers better?
To understand that, I think a good reading of the merits of that movie is an excellent idea. As mentioned, the video above outlines IF the movie has merit and why (spoiler alert: it does).
Does it have more merit than Infinity War?
That’s up to each viewer, but I think you can break it down in the following way and come to a pretty similar conclusion that I have.
The music/score.
Let’s get this out of the way upfront. Any movie that features the Rubberband Man gets high marks with me. And I defy you to find a better cheer-out-loud “hero” moment than Captain America’s first appearance in Infinity War as the Avengers theme swells. As evidence:
However.
The metal and synth masterpiece that is the Transformers soundtrack may never be topped in our lifetimes. Yes, I am being completely serious. This soundtrack is absolutely incredible, and weirdly enough, it still holds up despite its 1980’s sensibilities. I mean, LISTEN to this:
It’s the best. (This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.)
Do the good guys win?
In Transformers, the good guys win.
Should that be a requirement? Of course not. There’s a long list of classic films (a list that pretty much begins with The Empire Strikes Back) that don’t end on the highest of notes for our heroes.
But if you’re going to go the route of putting the bad guys on top, you’d sure as hell better execute it flawlessly, and Infinity War doesn’t do itself any favors by giving us a negative ending … with a super easy out.
Yeah, we can probably safely assume that certain characters are going to die for keeps in this narrative eventually, but taken alone, this film makes plain that the deaths here can safely be reversed. The nature of the Infinity Gauntlet and Doctor Strange’s proclamations leave little doubt, actually. So what does the ending really mean?
Contrast that with a pretty by-the-numbers good guys win scenario in Transformers. Yeah, it’s predictable. But it feels good.
“Feels good” is definitely better than “Eh, now what?”
Who they chose to eliminate.
Oh man. Transformers straight up murders each of the main characters previously established, and does so relentlessly. Think of the original lineup, the O.G.’s, and they’re all gone. That’s certainly impactful as hell (and traumatizing for little kids), and regardless of the implications for the drama at stake throughout the rest of the story (which we’ll get to in a moment), it means characters who have narrative weight — having previously been established through countless hours of television programming — are dead. Our emotions have been fully engaged (and wrecked).
In Infinity War, the original characters, the ones we’ve been with the longest, all survive. It’s the add-on characters who come along later in the narrative who are eliminated here. That’s just not as emotionally powerful.
And yes, Peter Parker being “dusted” is a gut-wrenching experience … but it’s not nearly as impactful as Tony getting stabbed through the chest and NOT surviving (which would have basically ended ME along with him).
They had storytelling reasons to go this route, but the end result is less investment on our part = less drama.
When they chose to eliminate them.
Remember that video I embedded up there? The one you didn’t watch? Well, watch from this point for a minute or two to get a read on why I really like how Transformers elects to handle its massive roster of characters.
I talked of both movies “clearing the chessboard,” and this gets into why that’s such a compelling story-telling device. In short, it basically puts the survivors into a new space (having to survive/thrive without important people in their lives) and that makes for good drama.
Transformers has the good sense to do this at the beginning of the movie, while Avengers does it at the end. All that interesting stuff about where the characters are going to go now … that’s being kicked down the road another year.
Speaking of that…
A complete movie.
I don’t really blame Marvel here. And when it comes to weighing different stories you want to tell and trying to figure out, you know, what you actually want to film, the quest of Thanos to grab all the stones and wipe out half of the universe sounds like a good one. So once you decide you like that story, you’re instantly painted in a corner of needing some time to tell that story properly.
And it’s a fine story.
But it’s not exactly complete, at least not in any satisfying way, because all of that good drama they elected to set up still hasn’t been told. Again, I don’t really blame them for that. You’ve got Downey and co. for one more movie, and you may not get another crack at using these characters/actors again, so you work with that, try to give them a good movie to co-star in this one, then give them an even bigger stage in Part 4. It makes sense, not only from a storytelling perspective, but also from a dollar and cents one.
But it still leaves you with an unsatisfying conclusion in Part 3. And not only that, it took them nearly 3 hours to get there (actual runtime: 2 hours, 29 minutes).
Half a movie. In two and a half hours.
Transformers, even with a couple of bizarre detours, still runs at an economical 1 hour, 24 minutes.
“Let’s blow some stuff up and get weird, move our characters into an interesting new place, and wrap in time for lunch.”
At the end of the day, that’s a story I can get behind. I think Infinity War has a good chance at being given more weight by its direct sequel, and that’s a good thing. As it is, it’s a marvelous spectacle, a true big movie experience.
But Transformers did it first, and what’s more, Transformers did it better.