Let me start by saying I’m no expert on the Transformers. As a kid growing up, because of my filmmaker father’s views on the “idiot box,” we didn’t have our own TV set at home. I used to have to go to my Lola’s house on Friday nights and weekends to get my fix of Night Rider, The A-team or cartoons. And somewhere in my memories, in the haze of Saturday Fun Machine, Star Blazers, and the Thudercats are the Transformers.
I just watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the other night with my father (yes, Kidlat Tahimik does occasionally watch Hollywood films in the malls). Early into the film I started feeling a bit discombobulated, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I thought it might be the fact that we were seated in the first row (because those were the only seats left) and with the number of cuts in the first 10 minutes alone probably rivaling that of the entire Hitchcock collection, I thought that might be it. But I watched Bad Boys and The Rock on the big screen before and the fast cuts never really bothered me. Then it slowly crept up on me: it wasn’t the cuts or the pace, but it had to do with the content.
As I said I’m no expert on the Transformers, but the memory I have of Optimus Prime is of the archetype of the good, the just, the fair. Combined with his reassuring authoritative deep voice, with him on our side, all would be good. I think the dissonance between this vague memory in my head, and this giant macho robot I was seeing on screen was what was bothering me. They had turned Optimus Prime into this mercenary-soldier type of testosterone-filled robot jock. I think the scene that really did it for me was after they chase down the unicycle robot in Shanghai, and he’s down on the ground, POV shot of the fallen robot, Prime stands above him, says some words, then raises his gun and executes him, bullet right between the eyes.
It’s not so much the fact that they were killing other robots that bothered me—it’s a war, even in the cartoons, some robots had to die—rather it’s the way they were being killed, and the enjoyment Prime seemed to take in his kills. At several other points in the film, it’s almost like he was relishing the way he was killing his opponents. In the forest when he suddenly had the blazing swords and seemed to be going juramentado slicing and dicing his foes, maybe it’s just me, but it seemed like he was enjoying the battle and the kills way too much. And at the final battle, where he finally kills the Fallen, again executioner style, he rips his face off just to make sure he’s dead.
Had it been a full live action flick, I think the violence in some of the scenes would have been toned down, or the film would have gotten a higher rating than the PG-13 it got. But because it was CG robots that were doing all the killing (and enjoying it), it seems it’s all ok. And even with a PG-13 rating, with all the hype around the film I’m sure almost every kid with access to VCDs or DVDs or the Internet will end up watching the film. And so this subtle—or not-so-subtle—glorification of violence will find its way into young kids’ heads all across the planet from Manila to China to America to Africa. And will this affect them in any way? Who knows? I think it may be like all these GM products we’re eating, nobody knows if there are any side effects, the cumulative effects may only show up in years.
In the end, some may say it’s just a movie. I think if the older people who watch the film do a bit of debriefing with their kids after the film all may be well. But if they just plop the kids in front of the TV or theater, letting them watch the film thinking its only giant CGI robots, who knows what the end effect will be? Maybe its just that my memories of Prime didn’t seem to fit the Optimus on the screen, but I guess for most kids watching the film today this is the only Optimus Prime they’ll ever know. The Transformers have now transformed.
- Kidlat de Guia
