Speaking of Transformers, what were your thoughts on the 1980s animated series & the 1986 film? One interesting note about the film was that Orson Welles' final acting role was in this film. Take a look at this and you'll see why fans consider this better than the recent Michael Bay films. By the way, this video was made before the first Transformers film was released to theaters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Ss4voCwzI

You see! It's their whole platform!

"Their decision to attack Chicago seems inexplicable, until you take into consideration the generous tax credits offered by the Illinois Film Office."

Brilliant.

Though may I be the first to say that only the good Transformers are called Autobots. The bad ones are called Decepticons.

Awful awful film series though. Despairing for the future of humankind and the clearly imminent apocolypse awful.

Reading this i cant help but think that there is no reason to bring ID into a discussion when talking about this movie. Apart from the fact it will annoy a bunch of creationists which is rather like shooting fish in a barrel it just seems like a large stretch to join the 2 seemingly non related topics. Unless of course there is some new wave within the ID community to use this film as some form of validation of ID but even if there was such a movement it would be easily scuppered by even a modicum of intelligent analysis.

As far as I'm aware this is a kids toy which Hollywood has turned into a big budget no-brainer movie, is it really worth bringing it into any form of religious debate? Surely not.

But if they were assembled by hand, why would their form not follow function. Now you are going to have to disprove Sullivan. Architecture is apparently a lie.

Mr. Ebert, I have the utmost respect for you, and I understand why you don't like Transformers, and I also understand that this post is (partly) tongue-in-cheek. But you have so many errors in your understanding of the story, I wonder how closely you watched the movie(s). Many of your points of complaint are in fact explained quite clearly in the films.

And o, those anything-but Decepticons. What a name.

Then again, perhaps I missed a level of irony here. If you're really impersonating an ID supporter, then the lack of factual knowledge about the subject fits right into the character. :)

Ebert: Exactly. Everyone lecturing me about Transformers details is, I believe, missing the point.

This is a satire. I suppose if I need to say so, I failed. On the other hand, whenever I post an Onion video some people believe it.

Megatron is what the Cybertronians look like on Cybertron. In the first film he does not take an Earth-based form but retains his Cybertronian aeronautic form as well as a BRIEF shot of him as a cannon (a reference to his original transformation into a gun in the toyline and original animated series). Also, the concept of metallic life is not unheard of in science fiction, I'd assume the process of reproduction is much like sharing energy with a significant other and then producing a small mass of intelligent metal which takes shape and upon maturity can transform into various objects. So, on Cybertron they'd look like alien vehicles and once on earth, in order to blend, they'd take the shape of Earth-based vehicles. Whether your design is locked-in (those that could be aerial vehicles on cybertron can only be aerial-based on earth etc.) is unknown, but characters like Ravage and Megatron have several transformations. Did the people making the movie think of this? No, but there is a 20+ year history of comics, shows, books and of course toys to draw backstory from; and we do-thanks to the comics-know quite a bit about Cybertron and Cybertronian culture.

I trust you won't be surprised when people call you out for "thinking too much" about this one, and I would have to agree. I don't blame you though - the film's wildly uneven tone - from kid's movie to war epic - invites us to wonder about such absurd things as you mention.

In the wake of The Dark Knight, everyone of course is under this impression that audience want "dark" and "gritty" and "adult" re-imaginings of their "silly childhood heroes". But I can't imagine how anything ever thought with a straight face that we want an epic, emotional, socially relevant take Transformers. If you treat this material "with respect", as I'm sure some people would urge, you invite us to think too much about its plausibility.

These films could easily work if they maintained a more even self-aware tone, and if they run for about an hour shorter than they have. Michael Bay (who I maintain is a capable film maker, given some restraint) seems to think he's making the Dark Knight of the Transformers series...and it just doesn't work that way. Not everything can be given the epic, lofty treatment...and definitely NOT a movie about cars that turn into jive-talking robots!

Their earlier incarnations - in cartoons, and in Marvel comics - were much, much more interesting than what Bay's done with them, and they were also based on a line of Hasbro toys. Oh, don't get me wrong - both were incredibly silly and cheesy, but they were at least a great deal more *interesting*.

In both versions, they were indeed the product of intelligent designers. In the comics, they had an actual creator deity who dwelt within their homeworld. In the cartoon, they were two lines of products (the Autobots were consumer goods, and the Decepticons military hardware) built and sold by another race of aliens. (This latter origin induces its fair share of snickers, given their real-world origin as a line of toys.)

That was actually a very compelling article lol

It would make a very interesting Transformers movie(s).

An interesting read, Roger. I recall reading a similar (satirical?) piece likening Pixar's Cars to Intelligent Design propaganda. The ID people are quick to say that anything beyond our explanation is evidence of the hand of a creator, but they should recall Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Perhaps Cars and Transformers were intelligently designed, not by the invisible man in the sky, but by a technologically advanced civilization that they have long outlived. Maybe Pixar should start working on a dystopian prequel, Rise of the Planet of the Cars?

As a Transformer fan, I gotta say...

RIGHT ON!

I would say that you were kinda reaching way out into left field on this theory, but in the original 'story' (Marvel's Jim Shooter coming up with the backstory for the toy line), Cybertron and its inhabitants had been fighting for millions of years. The Autobots & other guys crash landed on earth 4 million years ago. They just resumed fighting and to everyone back on Cybertron, four million years, absolutely nothing changed. In the first movie, it had only been 10,000 years (or something like that). I always wondered why they changed that, to appease Creationists?

Thanks for the awesome review. I didn't hate the movie as much as you did (though I hated Revenge Of The Fallen far more than most people), but it was pretty stupid.

I guess I could point out that they have some ability to morph into various vehicles, but that would be like explaining every bit of every character's backstory from a comic book movie that isn't explained in the movie. What fun is that? Who cares?

How did Sentinel Prime know to fly to Earth in the first place? That's the same damn place that Megatron had been frozen (in the first film). Hey, it's the same damn place that the Primes fought the Fallen in the 2nd film! A pretty popular destination. So, Megatron crashes on Earth looking for The Allspark, is frozen, but is able to plan with Sentinel Prime (before leaving the war to look for the AllSpark thingy) to plan to bring Cybertron to Earth? And in the meantime, the Fallen is just sitting on a moon on Saturn, waiting for someone to kill the last Prime so he can resume blowing up the sun?

(Blowing up the sun is a frequent plot point in the 80's Transformers cartoon. Because it's awesome.)

They can't even beat up a Camero. How did they have so many contingency plans? "Okay, so, if you DON'T get the AllSpark, and if I get lost on my way to that brownish blue planet, call The Fallen guy, because he can't do anything until all of us Prime guys are dead. Okay? And if THAT doesn't work, then look for me, and we'll just crush the Earth by bringing our old planet back here. Sound good?"

Hey, Cybertron is a Saturn-sized planet of METAL. If Venus had a different orbit, we'd be experiencing much more violent ocean waves. If Cybertron even came close to Earth like it did in the movie, its gravity would seriously affect ours. They wouldn't NEED to smash the planet into ours or whatever it was they'd be doing, Earth'd be so screwed up, it'd be something out of 2012.

The astronauts and the secret government peeps (in the 3rd movie) act like the robot spaceship on the moon is like nothing they've ever seen before, but DUDES, you have Megatron stored away in the Hoover Dam! You've had him there for, like, decades! (in the first movie, the ones that you all put together, remember? NO?) No one in this clandestine little group says, "Hey, we got one just like that at home! Maybe this is the same kinda thing!"

You'd think they'd remember something like that.

I do, and that's the thanks I get for paying attention.

Is being a bipedal organism the tip top of the evolutionary peak of perfection? Opposable thumbs? Maybe having four limbs and walking upright is just their way of making us comfortable, maybe they transformed from their true forms so that we don't freak out. Or identify with them. I can't defend it because...who cares.

They're robots and they fight each other and they turn into cars. If they turned into military machines instead of Cameros and Mercedes Benz, they wouldn't need to keep risking the always available army guys who keep showing up.

ALSO, buddy: Rosie Huntingon-Whatever is kidnapped, wearing that sparkly blue dress, right? Next time we see her, she's brought to Chicago as a hostage. The bad guys had a change of clothes for her?

Did you completely forget about the scenes in the first movie where the "blanks" scan vehicles as they arrive on earth to blend in?

Hurry for Original Thinking!

I think this is one of your funniest blog posts; I'm not sure why it's categorised as 'supposedly' funny!

On a side note...

For me, the worst crime of the Transformers movies is that they, and the Transformers in them, are a great deal less intelligently designed than the toys on which they are based. The toys, of which I had several, were ingenious and charming. Changing them from a four-wheeled car into a bipedal robot was like pulling a conjuring trick. It produced similar results from grandparents who saw it, too: seeing me switch an innocuous toy truck into an action figure of Optimus Prime was sure to provoke a shake of a head and an exclamation of 'Marvellous, how they do it!'

I kept my Optimus Prime on a shelf above my bed for years - in truck mode, of course. I loved glancing at it and being reminded of its secret potential.

The essence of the Transformers toys was the elegance of their design, and the skill the designers showed in working within such limited technology (every wheel had to function in different positions, every spare bit had to fold out of view when your Transformer transformed into one mode from the other). The essence of the Transformers movies is the opposite of this. They exist in a creativity vacuum in which any transformation that can be imagined can be shown, and something that is the size of family car one moment is the size of a skyscraper the next.

The beauty of the toys was that they existed within the laws of physics. The ugliness of the films is that they exist outside it. As silly as it sounds, the films betray the toys. And it's not marvellous, how they do it.

Funny stuff. Thanks for making me smile today.

What I like to know is why do the autobots call themselves autobots and the decepticons 'decepticons'? I mean, what's the difference when one's a transformer?

This article is big fun, highly creative, and obviously designed by an intelligent creator.

I would quibble with your statement of the definition of Intelligent Design, which to me is: if you can detect design, you can infer a designer. A camaro is certainly a "purposeful arrangement of parts", no? We can detect design in artifacts like autobots, even animated ones. It's a little trickier in us organic critters.

Or perhaps you were talking about Dembski's Explanatory Filter? But that doesn't say that if you can't explain it by Darwin it's proof of ID. It says that if you can't explain it by chance (probability) or necessity (the laws of physics and chemistry) you can consider design.

I applaud that you didn't conflate Young Earth Creationism - and it's 10,000 year old earth - so closely with ID this time. Are there any YEC's outside of the Creation Musuem in 2011? I don't hear many.

Mainly, I would point out this: I haven't seen any of the three Transformers movies. Why? Because I fortunately don't have to.

Fun article!

i am all for making fun of transformers, but if you've at all watched any of the transformers shows, or even the first movie, you'd know they scan the first "life forms" they contact, I do believe. They were essentially "naked" robots prior to landing on earth.

Haha! Everytime I read something of yours, I like you more and more. Keep up the good work, Roger.

P.S. Don't listen to the masses. Michael Bay does, in fact, suck mega.

What's the point of this article? Don't get me wrong, I admire you and I usually love your blog posts, but what's the point of this? It looks to me like an outright jab at creationists, with the purpose of being offensive. I thought you were above unprovoked offensiveness.

Also, see URL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLTz_A2YuyM Written and 'performed' months before the first movie. I think I may have written it!

Speaking of Transformers, have you seen the 1980's animated series and the 1986 movie? If not, give the film a watch because fans consider this film better made than the recent Michael Bay films. Also (in case you didn't notice), this was Orson Welles' last film he ever did before he died. This is a review of the 1986 film by James Rolfe (better know to fans as the Angry Video Game Nerd): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Ss4voCwzI

I'm surprised you've lent so much thought to Michael Bay's Transformers. I'm a Transformers fan, but I really hate what Michael Bay has done with the license. I don't know if you're familiar with the original 1980s cartoon. It's far from perfect, and chock full of the mandatory Aesop lessons typical of cartoons from that time (And so Bumblebee learned that it is just as brave to ask for help from your friends as it is to try and go it alone), but at least you could follow the action on the screen without going cross-eyed. Plus the focus was squarely on the Transformers, with no unwanted plotlines following an army unit or Spike Witwicky's girlfriend.

Like many cartoon or comic series, the "origin story' of the Transformers changes from time to time. In essence, however, Cybertron is a 'factory planet' created by an ancient alien race called the Quintessons. They created two types of robots to work on Cybertron - "workers" and "soldiers". The workers went on to become the good Autobots, and the soldiers became the evil Decepticons. The Decepticons had a thing for rebellion, and first booted their Quintesson creators from Cybertron, then lashed out at the peaceful Autobots.

By the way, while watching the movie, I wondered what could happen if two planets were so close to each other.

This is a great case for taking a lemon (in this case a movie franchise) and making lemonade. I love lemonade and I love this blog entry.

I am really not sure why some people enjoy reading the ramblings of a has-been. This was the most nonsensical rambling I have read in quite some time, and I wish I could get my time refunded.

Actually, according to the comics they published way back in the 80s at the beginning of the franchise, Transformers evolved on Cybertron out of naturally-occurring levers, cogs, bolts and gears.

If I recall the original cartoon correctly, the transformers were indeed created by an older alien race, who built Cybertron as a factory, with the autobots as worker slaves and the decepticons as the overseer/soldiers.

The slaves revolted and chased off the creator alien race (hence the autobots love of freedom)

I know none of this matters in context to this article, but I just think that (in addition to the myriad of other problems with the movies) its a shame they stripped so much of the backstory and personality from the robots and made them so much more nonsensicall and dull than they had to be.

Oh well....maybe Kenneth Branaugh will take over after Bay and we will get a study of the Autobot god/creators and the nature of free will....its possible? ;-)

Roger, I think you've been struck with the movie equivalent of an earworm, an annoying song you can't get out of your head. You don't like the Transformers movies (well, you kind of liked the first one), but you can't stop thinking about them. It's unhealthy; you need to find something else to think about or you'll drive yourself crazy. :-)

Having said that (with all the affection in the world, mind), you may want to go on a little archaeological dig. That is, the original 1980s animated series is available on YouTube. That was the Transformers I watched and loved as a kid. It's cheesy, it's ridiculous, and I'm embarrassed I ever took it so seriously, but it at least made some sense.

Just for shits and giggles, give it a try. I'll be emailing you a link to a user whose videos are pretty easy to navigate. (I don't feel right publicly posting a link that could bring the YT user unwanted attention.)

According to the pre-existing Transformers continuity (i.e., cartoons and comic books), Transformers were, in fact, intelligently designed. In the cartoon, the Transformers were manufactured by an organic species called the Quintessons to be sold as intelligent worker robots (Autobots generally for civil purposes, Decepticons for military purposes, which is why the good guys are cars and trucks and the bad guys are jets and guns). In the comics, they were created as defenders of the universe by a being called Primus, a god-like robot created by the sentience of the Universe itself.

I prefer the original, non-mystical origin, myself.

From what you write, it surely seems like you haven't watched the movies or researched the transformers franchise.
Transformers run on Energon, which (depending on the configuration) can work as food, drinks and ammunition. Their soul (spark) is also made from pure Energon. The movies clearly point out that this is the fuel source of the transformers.
Furthermore, their transformation ability isn't there to specifically look like human machinery, but to be able to re-purpose body parts (grow tools, weapons or survival equipment as needed) or as a method of stealth (look like local machines and no one bothers you). Both abilities need a blueprint from actual equipment or machinery, which is why they scan thinks before turning into them in the movies.
And Transformers aren't super-intellects. They have human level intelligence and thanks to their war, most of them haven't received an education, which is why they're so technologically incapable in the movies. They can pilot ships, use weapons and repair each other. And all but Optimus and Megatron, are uneducated.

I'm not a fan and i know these things. I've never seen any of the series, read any comics or even owned any of the toys. I just spend 1 hour on research back when the first movie came out, so i knew the basics before i went to the theater.

Ebert: I think my point was:

The author of this entry knows as little about Transformers as ID believers know about evolution.

See, it was satirical.

If the autobots are still dependent on foreign oil, they might be a symbol of unintelligent design.

Ok Roger, this is my favorite piece you've written in the last few months. I'm glad to see a more cynical and humorous tone than in your "Thor" post.

What is amazing to me, is that you managed to be accomplish so much in one article. You managed to criticize Transformers, intelligent design, and creationism while educating about evolution.

Also, i agree with all of your opinions on these topics.

Dusty

Hallo! Growing up I watched the Transformers cartoon show and was skeptical when Bay was attached to the film adaptation. I'd like to note that in the Saturday morning cartoon, a sort not exactly known for high quality, actually does a far better job of explaining the Transformers' plight, how/why they left Cybertron/crashed on Earth, how/why they mock our vehicles and even explains their power source called "energon." Of course, details are still glossed over (a deeper fan of the show can tell you better) but at least as a child, there was enough to understand and enjoy the story. The films seem confused even bringing in elements of other popular-at-the-time films and sophomoric humor, whereas the cartoon, largely an underdog story with bold mythic elements, was straight-forward (perhaps too much so.) There certainly is a strong framework there that could form a decent film, but wasn't used. Hopefully this isn't too obvious but in a sci fi film adaptation, I would think to run with the concept of Technological Singularity as a basis for their creation and the Decepticons' motivation. That's almost what they do in these films, but is lost in lame characterizations and overwrought visual effects. Thanks!

Well, at least you're evincing a sense of humor about the whole thing. That gosh-mister-science and bishop-y reverence was getting a mite dusty.

Was gonna send you an excerpt of a thang from a scientist pal. This is where "evolution" is going, and it won't "evolve" there a la Darwin's creaky old random accidental mechanics... unless bumbling counts... oh, wait, I guess that does. But a baby's bumbling into how to walk isn't random either.

I never thought I'd be using the term "mechanistic universe" after freshman bull-session days. It's so 1850, when Fashionable Boys were so entranced with gears and gizmoes and chemicals (which formulizings proved soon to be wrong) that they thought they'd hit on the Answers to the Whole Universe and Why You Can Masturbate without Worrying about God Watching. But I guess based on the popularity of these Transformers flicks, droves of people remain that backward.

I guess it's not backward if you're a little kid. Robots, neaaaat! I'm indestructible! And mechanical! Vrooom! Boooom! Take that, Evil! What little boy didn't want to be a powerful robot? I certainly did.

Some grow up and out of that. For you, after your freshman bull session about the origins of the Universe the night before, you walk into, say, American Lit 101.

Here's these writers with these enormously complex thoughts, combed with blazing cognizance into the most beautiful, simplest possible fashions. These are so remote from random mechanical bumpings around, so laughably distant from the supposed snarl and snap of a consciousness supposedly grown accidentally from a rock that has accidentally grown teeth, all that shit about random chemicals appears, in comparison, incomprehendingly backward.

A little scary, like getting a flat tire in a hillbilly town where you'd better be as backward as they are, or there could be trouble. Howdy neighbor, yeah, boy, ain't that Darwin sump'n? Yassuh! Here, let's play Duelin' Banjo!

Even with the "laws" slapped on top of it to make it appear to explain things.

At the same time, you, Freshman Taking Things Seriously, have long seen through and Big Man in the Sky tales, or tales of voices in the heads of Bearded Men purporting to be the same. Yet to be explained is why a certain amount of it makes good sense anyhow, and why some doesn't.

But for most, the leaden pragmatisms of life's proposed insecurities settle into the bones and the questions are forgotten.

Usually, later on, the impulses of inner freedom these freshman things represented begin nagging again, so some finally force themselves to accept one of the two socially acceptable faux Answers to The Universe: God or Darwin said it, I believe it, and by gum that settles it. Unbelievers are a) poor lost souls deserving a good inquisition or b) stupid and ignorant and incapable of intelligently designing anything themselves. There is no c). All of life is a) Me and my beliefs b)threats to that.

Never mind the size of the universe. Why don't we peer behind these intellectual facades and regard the size of the box pre-allotted to accept what answers will even be considered?

I'm sure we'll find these a lot smaller than 14 billion light years across...

With all due respect, Roger: if you recall from the first film, they were not in vehicle form until they scanned Earth vehicles. Also: they don't exactly grow in size as the physics of the robots are fairly accurate, which can be seen in the diagram here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers_(film)#Design

While I do agree with your points you brought up in your reviews for all three movies, as an unabashed fan of the original series I felt obliged to bring this up. I would recommend that you Netflix the 20th Anniversary Edition of the original animated "Transformers" film and just listen to the commentary tracks of the director, the actors, and even the fan commentary to get a perspective of how much these "toy commercial movies" mean to some people.

I do appreciate you throwing a Cthulhu reference in your post, I might add.

Roger,
Have you ever had a chance to pick up one of the Transformer toys? Back in the 80's when my nephew was a pre teen he loved the awful Transformers television show and had a large collection of the toy cars and trucks. I thought that the toys themselves were actually quite a clever concept and the toy cars really could be unfolded into a toy robot. What boy could resist a car that could turn into a powerful robot? The trailers for the movies look dreadful tho.

These Autobots must have evolved from somewhere to get the age defining beards and saliva-filled mouths. Perhaps an Ent from Lord of the Rings mated with a lesser evolved version of an Autobot... does that defy ID?... its sort of like dog breeding

Hey Roger, you ever had that experience where somebody tells you a joke and you laugh because it's funny but they keep telling that same joke over and over again and it stopped being funny after the second or third time. So they keep telling it. Over and over and over. And then, finally, you just...snap. And for some surreal, transcendental reason, your mind just gives in. Perhaps out of necessity, you perceive the joke in a whole new light. Or maybe it is because of the unflagging determination of the joketeller. But in some inexplicable way, the joke becomes funny again. There is no reason why it should be, but it is. After seeing that dead horse beaten until it had been rendered into glue, it takes on a whole new life.

That was my impression of Transformers 3. I enjoyed the first one because it took the whole goofiness of its premise seriously. It had a lot of fun in the way that mankind began to realize that alien robots were living amongst them masquerading as various vehicles. Then about at the two hour mark of a two-and-a-half hour movie, my tolerance for Baysplosions reached its capacity. The joke stopped being funny. It ended much later than it should have, but on the whole, I enjoyed the movie.

The second Transformers was pure crap: that last interminable half hour of the first film stretched out into more than feature length. I have nothing good to say about it.

But yet, by about fifteen minutes into the Chicago sequence in the third one. My mind snapped. I cried "uncle". I surrendered to the relentless assault on the senses, the visceral barrage of unadulterated CGI action occupying every conceivable square inch on its three dimensional frame (parallelepiped?), it made me admire the movie in a whole new light. It plays like pure chaotic mess, and my sympathies lie with those who had a miserable experience watching it. But for myself, its diligence to mayhem cranked up to eleven times eleven, I just had to give the devil its due. Michael Bay has zero regard for spatial relationship and is brazen in his disregard for coherency. But darn it all if he don't know how to blow stuff up real good. And there are about a donen or so things being blowed up good in each frame. This movie set the bar for sheer, monstrous spectacle to a new heigth. And while that might not be an aspect many people would need (or want) from a movie, I couldn't help but admire its resolve to overwhelm.

I doubt I'll ever watch this movie again, and it's certainly not the moviegoing pleasure I normally seek as in something like, say, Midnight in Paris. But I'd be a liar if I say I didn't feel like I got my money's worth.

Ebert: Michael, where have you been? Welcome back.

It sounds to me as if you've talked yourself into liking a bad experience.

Quote...Roger;This is a satire. I suppose if I need to say so, I failed.

You didn't need to say so. I think most people are getting it, but perhaps I'm too optimistic.

Roger:

You have this all wrong. That Scientology guy who came down to earth and created mankind with ALIEN beings, came in a spacecraft. He already KNEW how to build stuff or otherwise they never would have made it here. Obviously, he just went to another planet that was rich in minerals and created autobots and some of them escaped and became opticonians. Then they were all audited and some of them escaped to planet earth to protect Scientologists from the threat of Megan Fox's shorts. I'm not sure if we are all supposed to know this.

"Therefore, this is proof that Autobots were not assembled on Cybertron by hurricanes or any other means envisioned by Darwin, and were Intelligently Designed. That makes the Transformers series a compelling parable for ID..."

Either that, or a designer with an inferiority complex witlessly overcompensating for his perceived shortcoming by living vicariously through BIG, STRONG, POWERFUL TOYS while displaying contempt for half the planet.

You are what you play with, Michael Bay.

I know I'm not the first to make these points, but...

1) There are two factions of Transformers: Autobots and Decepticons. They beat the hell out of one another.

2) The time taken to travel from Cybertron to Earth is never established. We only know that the Ark, and Megatron, left Cybertron a long time ago. Megatron left Cybertron some time after the Ark, and he eventually was found in the arctic in the 19th Century. We have no idea how long he had been there. So it's impossible to extract any kind of time line for the intergalactic travel. Without knowing how long it took, it's impossible to speculate how far the two planets are from one another.

3) They have no familiarity with Earth vehicles until they arrive on Earth. Think of them as shapeshifters who maintain two standard forms (robot and vehicle), but can change either. Nor are they restricted to becoming vehicles; as we see in this film one becomes a computer monitor and mouse as the situation necessitates.

4) The beards and such I see as an affectation. Where they got the idea, of course, is never answered. If beards throw you for a loop, go back to the original animated series or its 1986 movie, which feature female Autobots. Yeah, wrap your head around that.

The question ultimately becomes this: The Transformers are older than man. God made man in His own image. What implication, then, can be found in the resemblance between Transformer and man?

On another religious note, there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth among my friends who went to see Transformers 3 (along the lines of "what were we thinking?"). One friend even used King James language in her remorse (it "sucketh big-time", she spake). I have recommended seeing The Tree Of Life as a sort of cinematic penance.

I desperately, desperately wanted the toys when I was a child. Alas, I was a girl, and people don't give toys like that to girls.

And the reason some people believe we didn't land on the Moon is very closely tied to the reason they don't believe in evolution. I am well acquainted with both. They don't believe because they don't want to believe, and they latch onto something they don't understand which they think "proves" their point. I've just spend time arguing with someone who claimed that the explanation given as to why the astronauts didn't see stars "proves" that they were lying, and the fact that he couldn't think of an explanation for how any of the rest of it was faked didn't matter. An explanation in a popular science book that wasn't precise enough was all the evidence he needed, man!

As to Michael Bay . . . I saw the first one, because I make a point of seeing as many Oscar nominees before the ceremony as possible. I did not see the second one, because fool me once, Academy! (I spent large amounts of the movie identifying where various bits had been filmed. Not in Chicago, that one--in Altadena and Pasadena, California, where I grew up. You can see my old junior high in a few shots.) I have now decided that they can't make me watch nominees in technical categories at all. I suspect this means I will not get around to seeing this movie ever.

Mr. Ebert,

Was an unprovoked stab at ID supporters really called for in an article about summer blockbusters and Hasbro toys? People holding all sorts of worldviews (including intelligent design theories) frequent this site. You certainly have the right to post whatever you like, but maybe you ought to leave belittling other philosophical and scientific perspectives to a scientific or religious columnist.

Ebert: When most of the GOP candidates support teaching of ID in public schools, that's my business.

In the history of this blog, evolution and ID have consistently been my subjects. I feel it's an area in which it is responsible to have opinions.

In this day and age, is it really worth making fun of creationists/IDists anymore? They're pretty much a laughing stock, even in the U.S., the only developed nation that ever took them seriously.

While I'm not an ID supporter it's sad to me that the opinions of those educated individuals who do support ID for non-religious reasons it are invariably ridiculed. The scientific world is full of those who have obtained Ph.D's in evolutionary biology only to conclude that Darwinistic evolution is genetically impossible. People who subject themselves to public scorn in order to be true to what they see as the outcome of their research should be admired, even if most disagree. We don't have to be right to be noble.

Ebert: ID has been disproved time and again. Very few scientists support it who are not motivated by religious motives.

Hi, Roger. Do I understand correctly that you're saying a metallica-seeming creature able to take on the shape of a Camaro would require either intelligent design or evolution? Why should it require either.

If a man uses prosthetics to take on a shape he melds himself (or with the help of scientists and artists), does that need to be explained by some great theory?

If a woman gets a face lift, or a man gets liposuction, does that need either intelligent design or evolution?

If a baby gets part of his genitals wacked off in a ritual circumcision, making him different than his genetics would have made it, does that require intelligent design or evloution?

If a grown person decides to change major portions of their own body as an informed decision based on their own will, does that require intelligent design or evolution?

I don't get why being able to change your shape or appearance by will requires a major theory as explanation.

Can we give just a little credit to this film? Have we seen so much CGI that we can't appreciate it when it's truly amazing?

I think the attitude today about CGI is that all they have to do is throw money at the computer to make beautiful images come out. Do you think they scan in a picture of a car and a drawing of a robot and the computer figures out the rest? not to mention the work of amazing animators who are able to give the bots real weight and presence. And Bay gives the action a kind of wonderful kinetic energy that is missing from so many action scenes these days.

"Oh, well, pity the effects couldn't be in a better film." Whatever. Plenty of great ballets have lame plots, too.

Also, the 3D was amazing.

Did you notice that in robot form the transformers have all kinds of scratchs all over their paint, but in car mode their paint jobs are always immaculate? That's also proof of devine intervention!

"Have we seen so much CGI that we can't appreciate it when it's truly amazing?"

OK. Why not?

We've used the word "amazing" so many times, it has ceased to have any meaning.

"Plenty of great ballets have lame plots, too."

We've compared so many apples to oranges, so many times, thinking we've shared some insight, we've forgotten how dull fruit salad is if we leave out the grapes, pineapples, cherries, and little bits of melon.

Who do you think you're fooling?

One, TRANSFORMERS is ugly, loud, film garbage for stupid people.

Two, you've never seen a ballet.

I personally think, math should only be taught to autobots, who believe in it.

I'm currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. And I just passed the "Boeing 747" argument: "surely a Boeing 747 couldn't be created by a hurricane. So how can chance create mankind?" Of course it's a false argument as it's not pure chance but chance combined with natural selection.

But using Transformers in Darwins theory is an interesting idea. Why couldn't a form of life evolve that's metallic and gigantic in nature? It's possible.

Roger, I think you've chosen the wrong movie for your theory. If you really want to consider how automobiles fit into the origin of the universe, you should ponder [i]Cars 2[/i].

I tried to imagine that the transformers broke loose from that reality and came here. That's probably a better and more interesting premise then the one that's currently out there in [i]Dark of the Moon[/i].

I'm surprised you didn't mention Paley and his watch analogy; I bet the philosopher would've loved your article as much as I did.

The bots do not attack Chicago. They just collaterally damage it during their bot-on-bot onslaught. That is the run-up to enslaving six billion earthlings to reboot their dead planet after they beam it on to ours via a space bridge, because in all the universe we obviously have the best rep for planetary repair. And Chicago is where the big fix will begin. (In an earlier Transformers film, one of the bad bots disguised itself as a cop car with the motto "to punish and enslave.") Blame faulty bot recon for mistaking Michael Bay's handiwork as evidence of intelligent earthling designerness.tjhjt

Why can't the aliens look like hot women? I would totally advocate alien invasions if snu snu was involved.

Huh. Well the good news is, I spared 3 hours of my precious life by not seeing Transformers 3. The bad news is, I wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this completely pointless journal entry. All things considered, I guess I shouldn't complain.

Ebert:...." I feel it's an area in which it is responsible to have opinions."

I like that. Well said. That's certainly a good way to put it when people may feel offended or turned away from any discussion deeper than who's screwing who on celebrity A-Lists or what the Prince and Princess are wearing.

It's odd and slightly disturbing how common it is for people to proudly declare that they steer away from conversations about politics or religion or local politics or education system, etc, etc.
They justify it as attempting to keep the conversations "light" and "unoffensive".
But I ask, what better time to discuss meaningful topics? What happened to people sitting down at a dinner table and intelligently debating something of importance to their life?
Isn't is better to allow the possibility of controversial conversation than to avoid it and thus never truly discuss things outside your head and beyond what you read and watch on TV?

It's indeed responsible to have opinions and furthermore, to debate them and to hear other perspectives. Otherwise, you leave yourself isolated in your own head.

I'm OK with Chicago being the battle ground this time. I'm tired of NYC always getting beat up. It's just their turn, dammit.

Well, what about the girl? There is a piece of intelligent design if ever there was one. . .bear in mind, I said intelligent "design" and nothing else.

Roger I would highly recommend that you seek out and read (if you haven't already) James Morrow's short story "Spelling God With The Wrong Blocks" which explores in more depth the relevance of ID to alien robots.

It can be found in his collection titled "Bible Stories For Adults".

Enjoyed with your cool little Swiftian tale.

In terms of talking sense to these creationist/intelligent design bullet heads, good luck.

Figure you'll have about as much luck altering their thinking, as you would changing Cthulhu into Megan Fox.

There's a scene in one of the trailers wherein this tentacle-octopus-like mental monster is shown coiling around a tall building akin to a snake and crushing it, coupled with a sweeping wide-angle pan shot of a nearby helicopter with a comprehensive view of the surroundings street and buildings flanking either side.

I think it lasts 10 seconds and I could be reading too much into it, but I thought it was an ironic analogy for the entire franchise:

ie: movie goers are akin to employees trapped inside the tower and Michael Bay and Stephen Spielberg are the tentacles coiling round it and squeezing both wallets and brains until there's nothing left of either.

As a representative of a recent Scientology faction, I resent you making fun of my religion. I speak of the lesser known 'Autobot' faction. There was a dogmatic schism back in the early 21st Century. A few of us who attained 'Operating Thetan Levels' became aware through the ethernet that the original Thetans were if fact artificial intelligence. The Transformer mythology is actually a surfacing of buried memories from the sub-subconscious of the true form of the Marcab Confederacy.
Don't mess with us Mr Ebert. We don't have time for blathering fools such as you. As you will see in the next Transformers movie "The Marfab Capitulation Conspiracy!" Michael Bey was in fact a Nostradamus like genius,

This is just wonderful - it's one of your best!

Just a minor nitpick to your article. Transformers actually began life as two separate series of Japanese toys by Takara, later merged and re-branded by Hasbro for the western market.

Interestingly, the original series of toys clearly showed this merging of product lines as some cars were significantly out of scale from others, a hand gun and cassette deck were larger than several jet planes, etc.

For the record, while I owned the toys and read the comics, I have yet to see any of the Michael Bay films. Not all of us are so easily manipulated by nostalgia!

Roger,

It pains me to see you make these posts. No, not because I don't enjoy reading your writing or your great sense of humor. It's because when I read these comments, I can't help get depressed that there are actual people out in the world who actually get off in citing errors in someone's recollection of Michael Bay's "Transformers" series.

Perhaps, even worse, that people exist who read this and didn't get the satirical nature of the article.

*le sigh.

Back to my Red Label.

Perhaps a "Transformers" sensibility is the root of the surprisingly unfavorable and, at best, tepid reviews for Cars 2. Here is a copy of my "Cars 2" review from Amazon.com:

Pixar's "Transformers" Movie, June 28, 2011
By John Panagopoulos (Malden, MA)

This review is from: Cars 2
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

One prominent notion stood out in my mind after watching "Cars 2" - it was the Energizer Bunny on speed, steroids, and any other drug that gives you superhuman endurance. From the opening shot where a British spy operative is communicating oil rig coordinates to suave James Bondesque agent Finn McMissile (voice of the ubiquitous Michael Caine) to the last shot in Radiator Springs where Gomer Pylesque tow truck Mater is hailed as a hero, "Cars 2" hits the ground running (or rather, rolling) and almost never stops. Cars zipping around, racing, diving, skydiving, flying, the movie is seemingly an adrenaline junkie's dream. It was exciting, up to a point, then it eventually became too noisy and tiresome - like, some would say, a Transformers movie.

(PLOT SYNOPSIS: on a dare from the boastful Italian Formula One (I guess) race car Francesco Bernoulli (sp?) (John Turturro), superstar racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) challenges him to three races in Tokyo, Paris, and London. This secondary plot is just a pretext for McQueen to bring his "goofy goober" buddy and mechanic Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) along just so Mater can unwittingly blunder into a Bondian "Big Oil vs. Alternative Fuel" spy caper orchestrated by McMissile and his capable young assistant Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer).)

The races and the spy caper both move at Road Runner speed, sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting where a mysterious villain is eliminating race car participants with an electromagnetic field in a plot to blame their crashes on the alternative ethanol they must use and bolster Big Oil. Yes, I know, it's confusing. Besides the incessant action, you also get meticulously rendered depictions of all three cities and bright, splashy colors (if nothing else, "Cars 2" is visually enthralling). You also get a depiction of what the world would be like if sentient cars, buses, helicopters, and ships ran it (Example: Cars must remove their wheels to go through airport security). There's a lot to process in the movie. Maybe too much.

Again, I call "Cars 2" Pixar's "Transformers" movie because it is noisy, busy, stuffed with colorful characters, locations, weapons, and hardware, and sometimes needlessly complex and hard to follow. In spite of all the action and violence (which should have received a PG rating, at least),occasionally I found my attention drifting. When Mater eventually deduces that Axelrod (the alternative fuel mogul) and not the German mastermind (Professor Z) is responsible for the race car sabotages, and explains his reasoning, it seemed half-baked and vague. Some Scooby-Doo mysteries have more coherent explanations. If adults could get confused by all this, I would imagine that young children watching "Cars 2" would get bored and tune out completely.

So, did I like the movie? Generally, yes. "Cars 2" does maintain Pixar's record for producing ambitious, intelligent movies with important morals (in this case, stay true to yourself and never underestimate anyone, even a country bumpkin). However, the frenetic action and labyrinthine Bond plot unfortunately weigh it down. Nevertheless, there is more good stuff than bad stuff to make "Cars 2" a respectable, if not exceptional, addition to Pixar's canon.

P.S.: Actually, it would have been kind of cool to have one of the vehicles be a "Transformers"-type robot!

3.5 stars out of 5.

TRANSFORMERS AREN'T NATURAL, NOAH DIDN'T TAKE THEM ON THE ARK.

Pretty sure I'll be flames for eternity for posting in defense of Transformers, but that's all I've ever expected from the Internet.

Here it goes

Transformers were intelligently designed. There it is. Whether or not you can rightfully use a work of fiction to relate to any form of viable real world theory depends. I personally think it's a waste. But the transformer race was created to serve Primus, similar to the creation theories of several world religions.

Anyway your satire fell short. I like you Roger, you seem like a cool cat, you know how to lay down the law, but this article seemed poorly done. A sad miss. If you want to master some true comedic satire I'd look into the Onion Mews Network

ebert has got to be the most transformer-retarded person there is in the world. He's a film critic but can't even get the story straight in latest movie.

Well, where do we start with the bi-annual Roger Ebert Anti-Transformers Tantrum? :)
Guess we could start by cleaning up '09's: So, um, guess you'd found out by now that both the Golden Raspberries and its own fans voted TF2 the Worst Movie of 2009--Not so much for the "banging pots and pans", as for the sheer PHYSICAL PAIN of Michael Bay thinking he's a comedy-relief hoot....Some fans to this day are still eye-twitch traumatized by the words "Pot brownies". And in what is the clearest sign of the Apology Sequel(tm - that's a Glossary term I'd popularized on the Net years ago, ask me to explain it sometime), Bay had not only personally promised the fans that the racist-stereotype hip-hop Ghetto-Bots would not return in the third film, but even offered a public $10,000 reward for any fan who claimed they had. Would that Bay could have atoned for all of the sins of the second movie, but one good contrite act of public self-humiliation is always a good start.

But anyway...What was it, Origins? Okay:
The origins were in an unrelated, but considerably more classic, 1982 Japanese sci-fi anime series called "Space Defense Fortress Macross"...You sentimental Children of the 80's probably remember it as "Robotech". (You would probably know this, if you watched anime TV series instead of arthouse features.) That series followed the space-opera saga of a relic alien ship refitted for Earth's space-war use, and which could shift itself, TF-style, into a large anthropomorphic robot shape in the heat of dogfight. (Which was often the subject of drama and humor on the show--What happens if you're on the inside of a ship rearranging itself?) Similarly, the fighter pilots on board the galactic aircraft-carrier also flew jets that changed shape, from jets, to landing-pods, to anthropomorphic robot suits...Which turned out to be a necessary handicap in order to fight a giant alien species of relative size. (The dopey gags in the Jack Black "Gulliver's Travels" were a derived parody of the series, although it believed it was parodying TF.)
The show had a surprise cult following, which naturally caused some bright and opportunistic imitators to borrow the "Transforming jets" idea out of the show, widen the idea to include wheeled vehicles like trucks and police cars, sold "his" idea out of context to a toy deal, and....the rest is history. Or at least, it was by the time it reached the States. And by the time it did, "Robotech" was seen as a mere "imitator".

So, yes, we know, your nyah-nyah attempt at satirical-facetious Onionia went over with a plop...There wasn't enough of the joke to go over with a "thud". ;) But I've always found trivia factoids more interesting than snarkily insincere comedy, and Truth stranger than Vaudeville.
For the record, a sequel to the disgracefully persecuted '09 "GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra" is in the works for Aug. '12, and tell ya what, Raj, how about doing us a favor next year?: DON'T take all your misplaced frustration at TF2/3 on this one next time, like you and the majority of critics did with the last one? (Eg. "Why do we have loud movies based on toys anyway??") Michael Bay is a national menace, yes, but he didn't direct that one...Don't shoot the tangentially-unrelated piano player, he's doing the best he can.

Quote...Fern;... I would totally advocate alien invasions if snu snu was involved.

I looked up snu snu, and then I laughed. Must remember to use this in a sentence soon.

Well in the comic book series it is explained that the original transformers WERE indeed created. They were created by Primus who is a God, who is trapped in a metal planet, whereupon he is referred to as Vector Sigma...a sort of oracular being/ supercomputer. The back story and characters in the classic Transformers series were compelling and interesting at best and at the very least good campy fun with your favorite robot toys. The Bayformers seen in the movie do not represent the robots that Transformer fans know and love. They giant tin cans with big guns. In the series' that fans have loved since childhood the robots are fully fleshed out characters who go through interesting and even sometimes extremley compelling conflicts. It is such a shame that all of this wonderful canon was disregarded in the making of the movies.

Your seriousness towards Creationism is analogous to some people's seriousness towards Transformers.

Hilarious! That is a very funny analysis--and oddly thought provoking. I thought it might amuse you to know that when I saw THE TREE OF LIFE in Santa Monica, near the end of the movie in a quiet part, an old Edith Massey-type woman shouted as loud as she could, "I'm so confused! Who is Sean Penn's character? I don't understand this movie!" And an unkind hipster seated nearby screamed back at her "Go see TRANSFORMERS!" The whole audience roared with laughter.

Reply to: This is a satire. I suppose if I need to say so, I failed.- Ebert

Maybe the idea of a summer blockbuster... is to create the Best Imaginary Friend.

We're all going to line up for "Deathly Hallows 2" because Harry and Hermione are really cool friends, and we want to find out what kind of trouble that Ron Weasley is getting himself into.

As Imaginary Friends go, I like the idea of changing into a yellow Camaro. Prefersably a ZL1... and Sentinel Prime has the voice of Leonard Nimoy. I think we can agree the original "Star Trek" was successful because Mr. Spock was a really cool Imaginary Friend.

While I'm talking about cars, I want to mention the 2007 Porsche 911 GT3. German engineers lightened all the internal engine parts, so when you hit the gas, it would rev like crazy. It wasn't a "normal" car. It was a race car in a disguise. You could step on the gas, and be doing 110, and all of your senses would tell you that you were only doing 70.

It was the perfect car... for a man whose opinion of himself was much greater than the reality. It was also the worst possible car to drive home from a night of drinking.

Here's the thing about Imaginary Friends... losing one can cause as much grief as losing a real friend. That's why God and Jesus are still around. It would hurt to say good-bye. Michael Jackson had a song, "She's out of my life..." All about the hurt of saying good-bye to a friend. I used to wonder why religious folks would argue and argue for their beliefs... they're trying to avoid the pain of losing their Best Friend, albeit an Imaginary one.

I don't know. As a way to express your disdain for the Transformers series and ID (neither of which I give any consideration, as an atheist with good taste in movies), this blog post is fairly weak. As an exercise in snark, this isn't particularly clever. I am sure you'll get a lot of angry responses from defenders of both ID and Transformers. Maybe your intention is just to get a rise out of that crowd.

You've written much better than this. Better luck next time, I suppose.

The one illustration you have with the people becoming food would make a great tattoo.

I love it when you analyze bad science fiction on the same lofty speculative level as the fancy stuff that comes all gussied up with actual scientific knowledge and a bunch of literary gimmicks like internal logic and character development.

Unaware of the various conflicting versions of their back story created over the years, I had always assumed that the Transformers were originally created by a species of naturally-evolved organic beings like ourselves. Perhaps they were a race of really, really bad drivers who found it useful to create a personal vehicle that could replace any trees or telephone poles they destroyed on the way to the drug store and back. Maybe the robots were a way of preserving their consciousness when their original biological forms were doomed to extinction by some disaster – say a plague that had wiped out all the female members of the species. This scenario, an all guy species with no women around would explain some of the idiosyncrasies of Cybertronic technology – the vehicles too fast for their creators to operate, the apparent lack of interest in robots of less than fifty feet in height, and the creation of a gun the size of a bus that even a fifty foot tall robot could barely shoot.

Hmmm how about this:

The Transformers (human coined name) are actually an advanced alien race that once was made of flesh as we know it, but have overtime (kind of like humans) integrated more and more technology into their bodies and lives until the flesh all but disappeared.

Since their "brains" are hard drives they can just keep downloading "themselves" onto a new exterior, replacing parts and in a way living almost forever.

That solves the travel issue because time gauged in human terms is irrelevant to them.

But as their species progressed, some started to develop a sort of conscious awareness of what they were doing. They started wondering if their consumption of resources was worth the environmental price ("Repurpose, Rebuild, Retain the planet's original inhabitants", "We only have one galaxy", "Only YOU can prevent accidental black holes")

This is where they develop politics and divide into autobots and decepticons. The decepticons see no problem with using resources and wiping out native species (ie humans), but the autobots are the conscious fellows described above and have sworn to stop them.

Why are they so sharply divided you say? Because only the extremist on both sides are willing to travel to defend their cause. Kind of like how in the middle of the ocean, if there's a whaling boat and an anti-whaling boat, then it's more likely that they're surrounded by fish rather than other neutral boats because most other people are at home on land.

This also explains why they can transform; to fit in. Not just with humans. They do this with every species. The autobots transform to try to gain human trust. That's why they use shapes that usually are pleasing and iconic. The decepticons transform to strike fear in people, which is why they take forms that usually denote war or violence.

The problem with this though is that while they travel the light years it takes to reach their destinations, the constant copying and uploading of their "memories" produces anomalies in both the codes of the autobots and the decepticons.

Their original goals (mindless resource gathering vs conscious responsible resource use) get muddled and mutate into something else, but what remains is their rivalry because in their galactic plane of existence, the biggest threat to a Transformer is another Transformer. This rivalry also gives each side a sense of purpose in their lives because it gives them each a tangible goal other than continue to propagate their own existence.

_____

So there. I've tried as hard as I could to explain Transformers using my admittedly limited knowledge of evolution and human nature.

I know without a doubt that you can find flaws in this Mr. Ebert, but I've never really read anything that tried earnestly to explain the evolution of Transformers.

If anything else, I hope you have as much fun reading this (even if it's by laughing at my rudimentary explanation) as I had writing it. Best regards.

The actual evolution of Transformers: they were repackaged Japanese toys from several different lines, all of which were items that could be manipulated into robots, sold by Hasbro with a cartoon series acting as a weekly advertisment.
Those toy designs which could best be shoehorned into one of the two factions 'selected' to be marketed in Europe and North America, while the rest became extinct. Some of the toys, notably Dinobots, still have vestigial remnants of their earlier forms, including compartments for drivers to sit. These qualities do not contribute to their survival, but persist much as the Human appendix does. Perhaps in time, they will vanish.
Sadly, a mass extinction event occurred with the original Transformers Animated Movie, leaving the majority of the species dead. Only those marketable enough to survive this cinematic disaster have persisted to this day, appearing in altered forms which nonetheless bear elements of their now long-lost forebears.

I love this article. I commented to you months ago that I wished to someday be as great at ANYTHING as you are at what you do, and after some thought I decided this was a stupid thing to say. You're at the top of your field and of course anybody would hope to be at the top of their field, and seein' as how I'm kinda lazy, it's just not gonna happen.

I haven't seen Transformers 2 and probably won't see 3.

I really appreciate this article. As a product of the 80's, I was a huge fan of Transformers cartoons & toys. I have always had a problem with an advanced race of robots that never seemed to be smarter than I was. I was also taught that the earth was less than 10,000 years old; probably more like 6,000-8,000. As a young fan of astronomy, well, science easily won...

You have an excellent theory on the origin of Autobots. But what about Decepticons? Were they created by the same Intelligent Designer? Maybe his equal foe, the Unintelligent Designer wished the Decepticons into existence? You make no mention of the Decepticons in this article, and I'm sure they exist in the latest movie.

I dunno, it's 3AM, after a fun, drinky 4th and I gotta go to bed.

Hey, is it just me, or since I was a little kid, I've always thought the Transformers were stupid. I'm at that age when I was three-five years old, and I still didn't watch them 'cause I thought they were boring and didn't make any sense, even then. In fact, when I think about Transformers, I think about that scene in "Big," where Tom Hanks is in the meeting at the toy company where somebody's trying to pitch the robot that turns into a building, and Hanks talks about how he doesn't get it, and something to the effect of, "There's a lot of robots that turns into things, and this one's just a building?" He then recommends a robot that turns into a bug, which gets a long discussion started on the idea. What's funny is that it is a better idea than the Transformers. How come that toy hasn't been designed yet? Does anybody else think this way too? I'm curious 'cause I don't remember anybody my age who was an obsessive or even a casual fan of the cartoon. I've gotten into plenty of arguments that usually ended with me getting punched in the face when I said the magic words "Scooby-Doo sucks", and other similar instances involving everything from "Power Rangers," to "California Dreams," and even one strange person that was convinced "My Little Pony Tales" was better than "Peanuts," but "Transformers," never came up in these discussions. I just figured everybody agree with me and Tom Hanks in "Big". Now I'd like to know if anybody does.

Sincerely,
David B.

Your full of it, Roger. As any enlightened left winger knows, the X-Men movies have already long since proved man's evolution. Only fools worship an invisible man! (I wasn't talking about god btw, I meant an actual mutant who can turn invisible.)

For a future blog, Mr. Ebert, I would recommend analyzing the reason for the failure of the Theory of Evolution to produce, in the "Star Trek" universe, a greater diversity of aliens beyond that of the "humanoids with odd protuberances" variety.

Are you a fan of HP. Lovecraft and the Cthulu Mythos?

Hence, the addition of the infogram

"EBERT: ID has been disproved time and again. Very few scientists support it who are not motivated by religious motives."

Ebert, I respect you as both a person and as a critic. But I seriously think you should rethink this claim. Also, go and REALLY research evolution. I can give you explanation after explanation on how - if you erase all the aspects that have been disproved BY EVOLUTIONISTS THEMSELVES - there is nothing of importance or credibility left. The science of evolution is a dead theory, but because no one outside of religious individuals wish to believe in a designer, there isn't really an alternative.

I am not biased through religion. I have merely heavily researched both issues in my search for personal meaning. And in that search, I have found far more evidence in the ID platform than the evolution one. Evolution has far too many holes to still be considered the leading position on the origin of our existence. And there are actually secular scientists who have fully researched the issue and decided that creationist makes more sense.

But be that as it may, I do believe that there is no way of truly knowing one way or another. None of us were there, so we can't honestly say that we "know" the answer one way or another. Both positions require a faith in the unseen. Maybe that's another key problem I have with evolution. It is taught as more of a fact than a theory - when it fact it is just as much of a theory as creationist. I'm not a big believer in the whole "if you have a billion monkeys over a billion years with typewriters, eventually one of them will write the works of Shakespeare" idea of inevitable coincidence, which actually sounds far more ridiculous than the idea of a creator.

Apparently, the whole argument comes down to the one simple factor of how believable the idea of a creator is to an individual. That person's fundamental worldview. When a creator is looked at as impossible and completely removed from consideration, naturally one must find SOME alternative. Evolution is that alternative. But when a creator IS considered, the evidence that the world offers makes far more sense.

So my question for you, Mr. Ebert, is this: can you give me an example of when ID has been, without question, disproved? What were the impossible-to-deny arguments? And was it disproved by a key scientific figure who wasn't even willing to consider the possibility that his faith in this theory might not be the strongest of the two?

Ebert: Yes, it has been disproved that the eye, for example, was intelligently designed. Give me another example to disprove.

I applaud that you didn't conflate Young Earth Creationism - and it's 10,000 year old earth - so closely with ID this time. Are there any YEC's outside of the Creation Musuem in 2011? I don't hear many.

I happen to be a Christian Young Earth Creationist, and I think most of these kinds of references (Bay's et al., not yours) are hardly based on an appeal to YEC (or if they are, they're ignorant). A traditional literal reading of Genesis puts the age of the universe between 5700 years old (the modern Jewish year count) and 7000 years. If you pick the oldest dates out of the variant manuscripts (i.e. the ones everyone knows have trouble with number inflation), you can approach 10k years.

I suspect 10000 years is something much baser. "We need a number that sounds big, but isn't so big that it's not realistic." "A million's too high, a thousand's too low. How about 10000?" "Brilliant! Let's go get a beer."

10000 BC was a prime example of this: take a bunch of images that people think of as "very old", put them into the blender, and stick an old date on it. 7943 BC wouldn't impress anyone like (cue dramatic music) "10000 BC" does.

IMHO, if you want to mix religion and Transformers, go with total depravity. The fact that this movie could be made proves that mankind is incapable of reaching any form of salvation or advanced existence without God's help.

Oh man. If I did not know what the expression "stirring the pot" meant, I would have learned its definition today!

Roger,
i love your writing.
And yes, it was obviously a satirical article, you did not fail.
Those who don't see the satire, demonstrate the level to which they are taking *themselves* too seriously.

You ROCK.

Jesus !!! I can't believe how many key strokes have been wasted on this totally inane subject ! (Including mine).

Jesus !!! I can't believe how many key strokes have been wasted on this totally inane subject ! (Including mine).

Roger, that was hilarious. Very clever way to tie two eminently silly subjects into one notable satire!

"Could its parts have been assembled by a hurricane (or a trillion hurricanes) blowing through a junkyard?"

Someone's been reading some Dawkins, I see. I'm still impressed that Transformers provoked such a thought-experiment. I was under the impression that the movie existed in order to block mental processes.

On a more serious note, I know from personal experience that creationists can accept evolution without too much trouble if evolution can just be explained to them. It doesn't seem to lead to a complete upheaval of their belief system, either. Crisis averted. The whole ID thing in schools is ridiculous.

P.S. Early Church fathers (I'm thinking Augustine) didn't believe a literal account of 7-day creation. Whence cameth the crazy?

Why do you do this? You are an obviously gifted writer. Why do you choose to waste time and talent on antagonizing and picking fights? Are you that desperate for notoriety? If so, pick harder targets, at least it would be more interesting. I envision next week's entry as: "All reality television is horrible." A more daring attention-seeker might write: "Ten examples of how organized religion is ruining America."

Another Transformers thread?

I still have no interest in this particular franchise, but gosh-almighty-darn if all the posts and comments didn't call to mind a
Semi-Irrelevant Anecdote!:

Back around 1950 (give or take a year), the DuMont TV network began broadcasting the live daily adventures of Captain Video and his Video Rangers!

DuMont's live shows originated from their studios in the upper floors of Wanamaker's Department Store in Manhattan. Any and all props needed for the shows were obtained on-site.

When Captain Video was being launched, the producers went to Wanamaker's toy department to get spaceguns to use on the show. The toy department manager curtly told them that Wanamaker's did not deal in any such nonsense as "space toys".

Well, the producers had to do something, so they went to another part of the store: Auto Parts.

Within weeks, Captain Video was defending the space lanes, using weaponry cobbled together from mufflers, defrosters, windshield wipers, batteries, and whatever else they could find in the Auto Parts department.
And so Television History was made.

I have no idea if this story was known to the creators of Transformers when they were putting together their little opus, but you gotta admit it's a heckuva coincidence.

I suppose I could also mention the marching sparkplugs from Autolite's early '50s TV commercials - but I guess that'd be stretching it, huh?

Happy 5th of July.

I hate to disagree with you but it's clear that the Democrats will use the Transformers movie as their platform.

They already did.

The first Transformers was released in 2007.

And later that year, there was the future Democratic president announcing ""We will stand up in this election to bring about the change that won't just win an election, but will transform America."

Hmm... more than meets the eye, indeed...

I find it interesting that you feel that something like an Autobot must have had an intelligent designer but that something like the human eye (a thing with living cells trillions of times more complex than a Transformer) happened by accident. It is far more believable that a digital camera could evolve from it's surroundings than that a single leaf from a tree could have come into existence from a cosmic explosion of nothingness.

Ebert: Of course the argument than an eye must be intelligently designed has been refuted in exhaustive detail again and again and again.

The writers of the original cartoon had a difficult problem. They had to make a story out of a line of Japanese import toys. They all transformed into robots, but their starting point was in turn cars, airplanes, household devices (radios, cassettes, guns), construction equipment, and later insects and dinosaurs. And then Hasbro started licensing anything else that transformed into a robot adding all sorts of extra characters to the mix.

I thought the first movie actually did a reasonable job of rebooting the story. The transformers appear more like the watchmakers from The Mote In God's Eye. Able to transform into anything as need be. But, sadly they don't seem to have carried through on that idea in the later movies.

To reduce the writings of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis to that level of idiocy is off-putting. Good satire requires intelligent observations about that in which is being parodied. To me this seemed like a dimwitted stereotype of people with an opposing viewpoint.
In order to be funny satire, there needs to be some level of truth mixed with exaggeration. There seems to be no resounding truth on either Transformers or Intelligent Design. Disappointing...
[My viewpoint in case you're curious: To say that intelligent design is implausible is as ludicrous as saying intelligent design is proven to exist. The proof of evolution is equally as flawed, incomplete, and incomprehensible. For every scientific breakthrough explaining the plausibility of evolution exists more holes in the theory. Do not confuse the word "holes" with flaws. I am merely stating that whatever belief one has about the way humanity came into existence, it remains just that: a belief. Neither intelligent design nor evolution should be taught as fact.]

Over the weekend I was on flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Eavesdropping on others during the flight, and onto other passersby in San Fran (hotels, coffee shops, trolleys), people would be talking about "Transformers." It would go, "Have you seen "Transformers?" Typical response, "Oh my God, the special effects were amazing. But it just went on and on forever, it's like two and a half hours (da-da-da)... it's just really way-y-y long."

Conclusion, the said person still wants to go despite it being too long just because everybody else is seeing it. The selling point: the special effects are amazing, so I have to go. What bewilders my mind is that people go in droves to the third film to get essentially the exact same thing they've had two times before already. Plus, I can't believe we are at a point in the 21st century where "Transformers" is the CULTURAL ZEITGEIST movie that everybody has to see.

(Mass collective subconscious: "What is 'The Tree of Life' is too baffling for me? I feel stunted if I can't resolve the meaning of a movie in 15 seconds flat. I don't want to feel like I'm stupid if I can't figure something out in 15 seconds. I guess it's the safer bet to go with the "Transformers" herd instead.")

Roger,

Long-time lurker, first-time poster.

In regards to your earlier response, "This is a satire. I suppose if I need to say so, I failed." If you need to keep pointing out to commenters that this is satire, it is we who have failed - not you.

Thanks, as always for a great column.

Speaking of how those robots compress their bodies into seemingly smaller objects (which you ridicule) makes me wonder how humans fit a 28 foot gut inside their 6 foot bodies, not to mention all the other body parts :0 Must be proof of ID!

Richard Dawkins uses an apt term for creationism supporters: history-deniers. For creationism to be correct, biology, physics, history, geology, archeology and chemistry all have to be wrong. In order for creationism to work, you'd have to bend the rules of each of these fields to fit make true one religion's particular set of myths. That's a great deal of disbelief to suspend in order to make it true. No credible scientist believes creationism.

Most critics of Darwin either don't understand his work or want to understand it. I can think of few people whose work and character have been more unjustly slandered than Charles Darwin, a brilliant man who proved the fact of evolution.

I liked the piece, Roger. Creationists can believe what they want, but the rest of us have the right to mock their absurd notions and bankrupt pseudoscience.

Y'see, to understand the dichotomy, you have to put the Second movie in context with the First movie--
Now you, Rog, you're on one half of the audience: Those who can't tell all those loud geek-audience movies apart, wonder why we have loud stuff about CGI effects blowing up, and wring their hands that movies (all three summer months of them) are a sign of our declining society, and why didn't we all drive fifty miles to a college town to find out what a "Hurt Locker" was? That's fine. No one's censuring you for that. And those who didn't bother to analyze the first one would likely think the Second one was More of the Same, ground out on an assembly line, and whine about how to shut it down.
Now, the OTHER half of the audience reacted a little differently--Some of us liked the first film. I myself was dragged by friends, dreading that, like "Armageddon", we'd get more of Bay's rib-bruisingly "quirky" ABC-network comedy pasted on to a loud, overwrought Emmerich-esque belief that loud effects, blaring orchestra brass and corny supporting characters joining hands was what paying demographic-market audiences wanted to see. Surprisingly, I found myself enjoying The One Bay Film That Didn't Stink: If they had, say, stunt-cast Alec Baldwin's voice as Optimus Prime for Hollywood A-list value, the movie probably would've been a toy for studio dealmakers, and trampled over our 80's-toon memories....But no, Peter Cullen's 80's afternoon voice boomed out of the hero, and it gave the first movie a little retro integrity--We were watching dedicated old 80's heroes in the goofy quirk-schmaltz 00's Bay/Emmerich wonderland, and reminding us how it Used To Be Done.
You may excuse those fans if they felt a little....what's the word....betrayed by Bay's goofy Gotta-love-me-folks crowd-diving self-indulgence on the second film: #2 was EXACTLY the movie our imaginations were originally terrified #1 would be, and so, so much more. Those who were merely cluelessly annoyed by the First film looked at the Second and said, "Oh Harriet, more of the same 9_9..." Those fans who liked the First film looked at the Second, felt a murderous desire to hunt Bay down with a baseball bat and wanted him DEAD!--They wanted his family DEAD!--They wanted his house burned to the GROUND!--They wanted the ashes shot into outer...well, er, you get the general drift.

(Another Little EricJ Glossary item I used to popularize back in the day was the inevitability of "the Toybox Sequel": If a director has a surprise smash hit out of nowhere, and is given the full keys to the studio for his own sequel to make lightning strike twice, there is a 2 in 3 chance that he will grab the greenlit sequel, run out, throw the story canon out the window, and pile it with every moronic personal whim, vanity-blindered Twitter-page self-indulgence, and meaninglessly set-chummy in-joke that occurred to him that day of shooting.
Spielberg did it twice, with "Lost World" and "Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom". George Lucas fans have "The Phantom Menace". It happened twice with the 90's Batman series, once with Tim Burton slogging around sewers and whining about being misunderstood in "Batman Returns", and once with Joel Schumacher going camp-cartoony in "Batman & Robin". And I ask you to come up with any other earthly explanation for "Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End".
The Toybox Sequel is seen by the audience as a betrayal of trust between the director and the audience--"Taxation without representation" if you will, or "Spending an inheritance that wasn't his"--and if the audience has suspected you've made one, not only will your grosses be surprisingly less than expected in the second week, but you'd better get on the next plane to Argentina fast.

I have, understandably, not been in a rush to see TF3, since the one addendum to an Apology Sequel (Little EricJ Glossary #3) is to beware any movie converted to an Apology Sequel after the fact (eg. "Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer"). As the director may be making a great public show of trying to atone for the problems of the earlier movie, but as long as it was greenlit back when he was laboring under the impression it was popular, the story treatment is STILL likely to contain hot babes, robot heaven and goofy parents. "If you're not part of the solution", and all that.
But at least, not being Athie, I am confident enough in my belief in humanity that I don't blame Anything That Bothers Me on all those danged people out there, blame all those people out there for their dopey thinking, and then throw a big self-aggrandizing intellectual-showoff tantrum about how I've Figured Out What They Haven't. All of humanity isn't to blame for Michael Bay, only Michael Bay is....Let us strive together to work for a better world where our children can grow up without him. :)

I'm a big fan of the TF concept every since I was a kid back in the 80s. In 2007, I thought the Michael Bay reboot of the franchise was well enough done - and he actually managed to produce one of the best action movies of all time.

However, as Roger pointed out in his reviews, TF 2 (Fallen) was horrible and this latest disaster otherwise known as TF 3 (DOTM) is simply the worst movie I have ever seen - and I have seen many.

I remember Roger saying in his TF 2 movie (I'm paraphrasing here) that it was like listening to kids bang pots and pans together in the kitchen for two hours. Well, TF 3 is akin to loading a Maytag clothes dryer with a 5-gallon bucket of ball bearings, turning it on full blast and then sitting about two feet away from it for 200 minutes or so. Aside from the noise this would produce, it's a scientific fact that clothes dryers throw off negative ions, and being near one for a any length of time will make a person feel like crap. This movie put off more negative ions than any clothe dryer you'll find, believe me.

I could fill up this entire blog with hateful criticism of TF 3. But one issue in particular outright offended me, so much so that I'm going to write a letter to Hasbro, or someone, and it is this. The evil TFs, the Decepticons, murder people in cold blood - and in one scene it's insinuated that the stupid looking bird bot named Laserbeak even murdered a mother and daughter. Now, I know that violence and killing people is nothing new in movies. But a line is crossed here because of three reasons 1.) the pointlessness of the murders which seem to have nothing to do with the plot 2.) The callous way in which the other characters react to it and 3.) The target child audience that this franchise is marketed for... should not be subjected to this kind of naked brutality. Yeah, the Decepticons never cared much for humans and they did want to lay waste to Earth, but the humans were always pretty much treated with indifference to their plans. The outright murders crosses a line for me, and I considered it a raping of my 80s childhood to have had to endure this. Now, some of the kick-ass macho here will say that this kind of violence is a neat and maybe even necessary addition to a "more mature" movie - but even if there is merit in that argument, the scenes are handled so poorly and bizarrely that it simply adds nothing but more shame to a once proud franchise. And by the end of the movie, the ever-noble Optimus Prime seem to even fall victim to the honorless-ness of the movie as he executes fellow robots who can't defend themselves.

Side note about the ID versus evolution aspect of TF... I've read the Alan Dean Foster books and he makes it very plain that his vision for TF is from an evolutionist standpoint. Particularly in the book "Transformers - Ghosts of Yesterday" which came out prior to the 2007 movie and gives back-story on the TF saga, he devotes at least part of the introduction highlighting an evolutionary origin to the robots and fills the book with language like "bi-pedal mode" instead of the more intellectually neutral-sounding "robot mode."

Roger, you are naughty. And delightful. Swift would be proud.

Fail... Transformers make much more sense than ID.

A quick comment on the Casey Anthony verdict... the jury got it 100% right.

The only way it could have been better, would have been a complaint lodged at the prosecutors for wasting the court's time.

In a civilized society... and that's what our Legal System is supposed to be... you don't put a mother who lost a child in prison.

You don't put her through the agony that Casey Anthony went through. That kind of stress is as much an assault as a fist or a knife.

I don't think there was enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt... and, in my opinion, that means it shouldn't have been charged.

Ebert kills. Roger effing old-media Ebert wipes the floor with em.

The best part of this article is that picture... it's hilarious

Roger,

I saw the comment by Pete Sanders as well as your response to him. As someone with a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology I wanted to add my support to your response. I know of no one in this field that takes ID at all seriously. Evolution is a well documented fact backed up by a phenomenal amount of evidence. We may debate some of the specifics of exactly how certain things happened, but no serious researcher questions that it did.

ID's criticisms of evolution are largely based on what we did and did not know back in the 1960s and 1970s. If ID "researchers" were actually up to date on the current state of evolutionary biology research they'd be dumbfounded.

Anyway, as someone that "got" this article, I say thanks for the entertaining read!

Ebert: Yeah, somebody had to call him on that.

"Two, you've never seen a ballet."

I forgive your presumptions.

haha One argument that could be made is that the transformers are of such advanced intelligence that they themselves have taken over the course of their evolution, and their current metallic state as shown in the movies represents their own desires.

Today I watched 'Into Great Silence' (I'm not sure if you've seen it, it was a minor hit at Sundance several years ago.) It's a film about the Carthusian monks, and it follows them over the course of about two hours, through four months of their existence. It's one of the most beautiful and peaceful films I have ever seen. The reason I mention it, is in contrast to the ten minute preview I saw of the newest Transformers film. Based on that limited information I just wanted to say how much I loved your review on it, and this blog post with it's eminently reasonable and sound approach to issues that should concern us all.

Roger, you mentioned "the generous tax credits offered by the Illinois Film Office." There is much debate going on here in Memphis because many projects that should have filmed here went elsewhere for better tax situations. (Memphis Beat shoots in New Orleans, for example.)

So my question is, do the tax breaks pay off? Do the films hire enough locals and spend enough money to make it worthwhile? I know Chicago doesn't need the rub from a big movie, but Memphis could use it. Does that really work?

Oh, and to stay on topic: Where the hell does Optimus Prime's trailer come from?!?

Roger, "Intelligent Design" may indeed someday find a place in the realm of real science. The vastness and harshness of interstellar space travel simply isn't suited for such delicate creatures like humans. Space almost demands exploration by robots, a theme that has a been explored extensively in science-fiction ("real" science fiction along the lines of Asimov, Clark, and so on). I've come to view the creation of intelligent machines our human destiny. Such beings would survive as our offspring long after we are gone. I see no logical barrier to creating machines that can improve themselves too, although natural selection will effectively be replaced by some robot equivalent of sexual selection. Indeed robot society may end up being absolutely harsh and cruel by our standards of ethics and morality.

In regards to trying to ground Transformer more in "reality", it's not too implausible to believe that the original robots would have been created by organic beings. The Transformers themselves are made of some type of "living metal" that can change and adapt. ("Virtuosity" starring Russel Crowe gave a somewhat believable version of how liquid metal of the type first seen in Terminator 2 might work.) In the original Transformers cartoon, which I was of the right age to watch, the Transformers did indeed adapt their external appearance to modern human society. So they did not evolve to look like Camaros which would be absurd. Of course, if intelligent beings create intelligent machines to explore the galaxy for them, this version of Intelligent Design is a level above the level of discourse that today's misguided proponents of the idea have demonstrated an ability to understand.

Micheal Bay, at this point, is so dedicated to mindless schlock that it's almost admirable. It is totally lost on him that audiences could be prompted to think by science fiction at the same time they are entertained. I suspect that he's guided by appealing to the lowest common denominator simply to maximize profit, and his real "genius" is simply that he's willing to stoop lower than others in this pursuit.

I think the beauty of transformers (the toys, not the movies) is that they allowed the imagination to, in a way, think in two places.

Like every kid, I made little stories, clanked the toys together, made the "whooses" and the "Pazows". They battled and fought and sometimes lost, in my head, I was making movies in a round about way.

And I like to think, in a backwards sense, Transformers channels that sort of childish imagination. Does everything make sense? God No? Are things blowing up and fighting and being exciting? Yeah!

When I was clanking my toys together, I had to make all the sound effects, move the parts myself, and try and figure why *exactly* that Godzilla doll I had was doing fighting Optimus prime.

Michael Bay did it for me, about as well as I could when I was 6 or 7.

It really it is a child's imagination come alive in a very weird, basic sense.

Poe's Law suggests that you will know your satire has succeeded when you get a request to write the next Transformers movie.

This movie is another example why evolution (as defined by Chuck Darwin) doesn't exist.

"The author of this entry knows as little about Transformers as ID believers know about evolution."

One has to wonder, if Darwin was never born, would evolution still exist?

Perhaps Satan would've found another dupe to peddle the evolution myth...

I know you hate the Transformers movies, and that is fine, but do you actually hate that people enjoy them?

as to the origins of the transformers Douglass Adams answered that question in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. in an infinite universe there is going to exist and infinite variety of life. So you have planets where mattresses are the dominate life form, and another that is all ball point pens. clearly the transformers are from the planet of stupid movie ideas. that being said there is something to be said for a stupid and loud summer movie, as long as you are stoned enough.

Ebert writes this mocking Creationists, knowing full well there will be a Republican Creationist in the White House in 2013.

Speaking of the cosmos.. too bad NASA is now a Muslim outreach program. The Obama regime needs to create a Christian outreach program for all the Christians its alienated.

Ebert: Of course the argument than an eye must be intelligently designed has been refuted in exhaustive detail again and again and again.

Refuted? Really? Where?

You might recall that I picked up and read the book 'Why Evolution is True" by Jerry Coyne back on the Stein threads. It was the proffered slam dunk proof of evolution back at that time.

It started with a "light-sensitive" spot. Then said "We can imagine an evolutionary pathway..."

Imagining is not refuting. It is merely asserting. Frequently the case in evolutionary "proofs". They're very good at imagining a pathway. Hardly "exhaustive detail again and again", unless you are predisposed to accept that imagining.

Mr Ebert,

You simply don't get the point of Transformers. IT'S FUN!!! This is make believe. This is about our imaginations. Our cartoons stretched the imaginations of us just as the cartoons did for yours. These 3 movies do what the cartoons couldn't come close to achieving.

Its a habit in our society to mock what you don't understand, but we're not coming after you sir.

As a child of the 80's, I watched many cartoons, with the Transformers being my favorite. Back in '86 I was 9 years old when the animated movie came to theaters -- I marveled at how much better the cartoon quality and story was, but then I vividly remember crying when Optimus was killed. I never watched another episode again. But when Michael Bay brought MY Autobots back to life in 2007 I was taken back to my childhood. 21 years is a long time for anyone.

We in the Transformers blogs may have our problems with Bay's trilogy and with your attacks on OUR movies, but we are united in our love of the Transformers.

You Mr Ebert may have a megaphone to speak with on your TV shows and columns, but we sir have our wallets -- and our wallets are speaking as records have been made by this movie franchise.

Sorry, I dislike posting comments that merely respond to other comments, but I have to speak up on this one point. I'm not going to defend the movies as a whole; they're kitch poorly executed. Kitch well executed is delightful, but kitch poorly executed is the worst form of art).

I am going to defend the computer effects team though, who did some very impressive work that's not properly credited. Fans of the old toy line often complain about the film series with something along the lines of:
"The old toy line was fun because it was cool how you could unfold a truck into a robot and all the pieces were still there. The movies are stupid because they transform from trucks to huge robots with no regard for physical or geometric possibility"

This is a completely unfair and woefully ill-informed complaint. The chief goal of the computer effects team was to ENSURE that the car and robot forms were geometrically consistent. The computer models of the robots, unlike the toys, have up to 1000 moving parts, but like the toys, they go through transformations that are plausible, "plausible" here meaning that mass is conserved and all the parts are accounted for. It's a shame that Michael Bay's epileptic editing makes all this really clever design unappreciable, but it is there.

I mean, think about it. An SUV is 16 feet long. That's already nearly 2 stories. If you're going to accept that it unfolds into a robot somehow, of course that robot would be taller than a house.

Not only is this movie raking in the dough.. check this:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/07/obama-white-house-salaries-soar.html

All this talk of redistribution of wealth, CEO fat cats, the culture of corruption... YOU CAN TAKE THE POLITICIAN OUT OF CHICAGO, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE CHICAGO OUT OF THE POLITICIAN.

The problem with Transformers (all of it from the last 30 years), is that the best parts are obscure.

I promise you Roger, there is Transformers fiction made with love and care by real artists and writers who strove for a higher caliber of work. The problem is, these pieces aren't stand alone. You either have to be a kid or an adult, well-acquainted with the not-so-perfect parts to appreciate them. But, it's true. There really are well written stories out there. They are fantastic bits of space opera.

People should stop lecturing you on the story. There's no one movie, TV episode, or comic to point to that would make you say, "Oh, this isn't all shit." But it isn't all shit. It really isn't.

Michael Bay said he hates Transformers. And not that Transformers and an Austen novel are equivalent, but if someone just utterly despised Jane Austen and everything she ever produced without even reading any of it and had no interest in appreciating her work, how could that person be expected to adapt Sense and Sensibility in a way which would communicate to the viewer why it is a classic piece of literature?

I realize, though, that your main point was to engage in a discussion of intelligent design and to entertain. Personally, I'm firmly on the evolution side of things and, at the moment, I have nothing further to contribute on that front. I just felt compelled to pipe up.

Maybe it was in your TF3 review when you said you'd never care for Optimus Prime. In the good fiction, he is a compelling father figure, in the vein of John Wayne or Superman. As a kid, I thought of him like that. It just makes me sad that Michael Bay failed so completely to even attempt to get that across, that the viewer would never even know it was there.

"Transformers" review by Roger Ebert, 2007:
"Everything comes down to an epic battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons, and that's when my attention began to wander, and the movie lost a potential fourth star. First let me say that the robots, created by Industrial Light and Magic, are indeed delightful creatures; you can look hard and see the truck windshields, hubcaps and junkyard stuff they're made of. And their movements are ingenious, especially a scorpionlike robot in the desert."

Roger Ebert's blog, 2011:
"These are the grotesque pinheaded robots named Autobots, who pound the hell out of each other in Michael Bay's 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon,' a film setting box office records. They're arguably the least interesting aliens in the history of science fiction, but how much can you expect from an intelligent race that began as a line of Hasbro toys?"

These statements seem to be in conflict with each other, but I completely agree. Somehow, these creatures which were so visually exciting four years ago are now the least interesting aspect of the new film.

I enjoyed "Transformers 3," but it had very little to do with the robots -- Chicago looked amazing, even in ruin, and the skydiving footage was awesome in the true sense of the word. And I got a kick out of watching McDormand, Turturro and Malkovich making fools of themselves for large sums of money. (At least someone looked like they had fun; LaBeouf and Dempsey sure didn't seem to be having any.)

There is not a single intellectual argument I can make in the film's favor, of course, but the arguments against it sure have been entertaining. (Not to mention correct.)

Mr Ebert, you are a schmuck!

It's like you spew random dumb things without even thinking. How old are you again?

Please, stick to Citizen Kane. Because you are not relevant in the 21st Century.

Dark of The Moon, is a fine simple story. Only I think you're too stupid to work that out.

The movie fits seamlessly into the rest of the Transformers pantheon and universe.

Ebert, you're a dumb ass.!

I like Roger and I hope he responds to this post.
P.s. Thanks for the great chicago burrito advice!

This is something I liked better about the Go-bots or better about how I understood them. (Gobots are similar transforming toys that are virtually forgotten now) As I recall the Go-bots were humanoids who became something like cyborgs to survive some catastrophe or something. The cyborgs could transform into planes and cars and things because hey why not? If you're going to have to live as a cyborg why not try to make it fun.

I played with these toys as a kid, but I didn't have much interest in the movies.

Just for the record, there is no permanent dark side of the moon. The moon rotates on its axis once every 30 days, so if a ship crashed on the (more accurate) far side, it would eventually be on the "bright side".

I have to wonder how many of the comments explaining Transformers to you were themselves works of satire?

This is a fun read, Comrade Ebert. However (and I'm sure I'm not the first one to suggest this), given the way we've wrecked the planet, could Homo sapiens be a product of unintelligent design?

And btw, with reference to your comment -- "On the other hand, whenever I post an Onion video some people believe it," I once had a student who, without irony, cited an Onion article as a valid source in support of her thesis. Sigh.

After I realized you were being satirical, I laughed. I at first thought it was another attack on a story I have loved since I was a child (though I admit the Bay version is less than flattering for a Transformers fan)

However, The creationism comment is accidentally hilarious only because I know the story so well. In earlier versions of the lore, The Transformers were created by a God like being that after turning himself into Cybertron, made these robots to battle of the Satan-esque character of Unicron (the big baddie from the animated movie)

I am pretty sure you couldn't care less about what i have told you, but the Intelligent design comments were surprisingly spot on!! At least in the case of this franchise.

Y’know something, Rog, I gotta say frankly I don’t see much intelligence in the design. Was it George Carlin who already asked would men have nipples? Would the pits in the avocados be that large? And this is the tip of the iceberg.
If the design were intelligent, why does each human have to re-learn everything from scratch? Wouldn’t cumulative learning have been much more useful? Ants and bees have this. They are born with all the accumulated knowledge of prior generations. Of course, there’s not much they have to pass along, but isn’t that the point?! We have 37 plays of Shakespeare, for god’s sake! I had to read most of it, and now my kids have to waste their time learning it all over again! I can almost sympathize with their complaint about “why do I have to read this?” They’d be so much more useful if they knew what we already had learned as a species, and could move progressively forward to figure out more intransigent problems like energy and food.
If the design were intelligent, would we have to devote as much time to governing ourselves as we do? Think about that one. We spend more time governing ourselves than we do in any other activity, including sports, eating or sex! Federal, state, local, school board, condo association, church, corporate, you name it all we do is debate and make rules for ourselves. If the design were intelligent, we’d already know the damn rules!
If the design were intelligent, would we spend so much time fighting ourselves? Would we squander our resources on plastic vomit? Would Fox “news” be the most popular? Would Transformers make the money it made in its opening weekend?
Hey, if the design were intelligent, wouldn’t we have come equipped with the knowledge that we were intelligently designed? Every manufacturer puts its own label in the product. If we were made specially, wouldn’t there be a definitive indication about it?
And don’t get me started on the traffic situation on Friday afternoon!

I'm not sure if this should be considered a Transformers entry or an ID entry, but you sure squeeze the juice out of the franquise for all its worth, Roger, maybe even more than Bay.
I fell for it initially, until you mentioned the Middle East. *slap* Good entry.
Cheers!

As a Christian, this topic has always intrigued me. I certainly lean more towards an ID stance, but I currently am at the position of believing that God had a hand in the development of life and that's it. I also believe that it's less important discussing the origin of species as it is discussing the fact that we're here now and can make a difference in this depraved world. I'm much, much less concerned about where my species came from than I am about the current status of the human race and the potential it has. When it comes to discussing ID vs. evolution, I often say, "It doesn't matter. We're here now, that's what counts."

I find it interesting that you feel that something like an Autobot must have had an intelligent designer but that something like the human eye (a thing with living cells trillions of times more complex than a Transformer) happened by accident. It is far more believable that a digital camera could evolve from its surroundings than that a single leaf from a tree could have come into existence from a cosmic explosion of nothingness.

Ebert: Of course the argument than an eye must be intelligently designed has been refuted in exhaustive detail again and again and again.

I've always loved this line from JFK:
"Theoretical physics can prove an elephant can hang from a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy. But use your eyes, your common sense."

Scientists can "prove" anything they want if they try hard enough. I just can't subscribe to the whole "Oops... the Universe" theory.

Presented without comment:

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Image:Pulleys.jpg

Ebert: Now I understand.

The fact of evolution is firmly anchored in physical reality. It is cemented by the melding of multiple science disciplines converging into one binding truth. The main problem with ID is it's fundamental belief in a self aware, omniscient creator. I love how Williams Burroughs extrapolates on the dilemma of such a sorry deity.
"A One God Universe
Consider the impasse of a one God universe.
He is all-knowing and all-powerful.
He can't go anywhere since He is already everywhere.
He can't do anything since the act of doing presupposes opposition.
His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death,
To keep his dying show on the road."
Well, we do live in a universe filled with suffering and violence. I choose to believe it is the natural order of a no god universe. Its existence remains undefinable. Its silly human tenets will one day slip back into its embrace.

OK, Roger - I just figured it out.

The real reason you don't like the Transformers movies.

All Michael Bay has to do in the next one is have an Autobot that folds up into a Studebaker Golden Hawk.

That ought to get at least two and a half stars from you, easy.

Yours for the heuristic approach.

Mr. Ebert,

I'd like to thank you for the best laugh I've had all week--not at the satire, though it was well received, but at the Cthulhu insert. Upon seeing that image, I instantly thought of the premise for Michael Bay's next film: Transformers vs. Cthulhu.

I also believe it is quite simple to disprove ID and evolution, through the use of one obvious example: natural selection would never allow the continued existence of exposed testicles, nor would God--unless of course, He created the world to become Heaven's version of America's Funniest Home Videos.

(Since disclaimers are apparently required, the above was meant as a joke and nothing more. For the record, I do believe in intelligent design, though I believe there is far more to the concept than just "poof! humans circa 2800 BCE!" It is, however, by no means a scientific fact.)

Intelligent Design appears to be a futile "deus ex machina", "Creationism Lite" cop-out, like ascribing magic to a currently unfathomable scientific process.

In contrast, the Theory of Evolution seems more random, non-linear, and meandering. However, it has a "chaotic purposefulness" in ensuring that certain living species successfully adapt to changing environments and survive. The Theory of Evolution cannot be dispositively, absolutely proven. However, it has been almost impregnably reinforced by indirect preponderance of evidence. In other words, it is the best explanation we have, and may ever have, to explain life's diversity and our existence.

As for Transformers, I am thoroughly aware you are blithely applying the kinder, gentler, but no less acerbic "snarkasm" you wish you had applied to your "Thor denouncement" blog (Still, it may not be too late to apply this current analysis to Asgard's and Jotunheim's denizens). But returning to Transformers, the self-perpetuating brilliance of this merchandising ploy is undeniable. It seduced even your pragmatism in the first movie, Mr. Ebert. However, Transformers are a victim of the "77th cupcake rule". The first cupcake goes down easy and may even seem delicious. Yet the 77th cupcake, although the same as the preceding 76, tastes bitter. Transformers, a robotic counterpart of G.I. Joe's endless, silly battles, is a novelty that succumbs to overkill. It's comparable to the "Pokemon phenomenon".

Nonetheless, the metallic toothpaste is out of the tube. I know, Mr. Ebert, it's regrettable.

Reply to: Apparently, the whole argument comes down to the one simple factor of how believable the idea of a creator is to an individual. When a creator is looked at as impossible and completely removed from consideration, naturally one must find SOME alternative. Evolution is that alternative.

Joe, your statement is simply wrong.

The authors of the Bible (ie, Christianity) were laboring under the mistaken belief that the universe was less than 10,000 years old, based on what they considered was good evidence. Starting from that premise, Creation makes sense.

But if you chart out the proper time line, Evolution is the BEST possible explanation.

Four billion years. We can trace microscopic organisms back to 3.6 billion years ago.

But... when did animals appear? After how many billions of years?

If there was an Intelligent Design to life on earth, why did it take billions of years for animals to appear?

The idea that a Designer pushed atoms around to form proteins that wouldn't have formed any other way (the core of Meyer's ID book) would mean that animals could have appeared at any time. That DNA could have been changed at ANY time.

The eividence... shows thare was no supernatural, outside influence that made us into "us." It happened by a very slow, natural process. Dripping ketchup slow. Glacier slow. Billions of years slow.

Once you actually look at the facts... instead of just reading the literature... the FACTS demonstrate a slow evolution. It has absolutely nothing to do with a lack of "God."

Ok,
I know I'm kinda late to this discussion but, Roger, you need to know that just as you used "Tranformers" to belittle ID supporters, someone else could have EASILY used "X-MEN: First Class" to satirize the claims of evolution. You can shoot darts at either argument.

Also, can you explain to me how the eye example for ID was disproved? Who disproved it? How was it done?

Here in the UK we have a theory that the majority of Americans don't understand 'irony'.

Unfortunately some of the comments in this thread are doing nothing to dispel those thoughts :)

An excellent piece Roger.

Mr. Ebert. Transformers mythos,which Bay and company did a thorough bungle of indicates that Transformers are Robots who were built for a reason and with a purpose in mind.
In reference to the aforementioned,if you'll look on the Transformers Wiki you'll see that People like Flint Dille,Simon Furman, Bob Budiansky do a much better and more coherent job of telling Transformers stories.

I just want to assure you Mr. Ebert that good Transformers stories do exist. I don't expect you to seek them out (why would you after seeing the Bay films) but just know that they do exist. Any story can be done well in the hands of someone with skill.

Also, Intelligent Design is ridiculous and unscientific. Just had to throw that in.

A more difficult question is: How did intelligent beings evolve from base metals in a non-organic process? What Autobots look like on Cybertron we cannot know,

In the first episode of the first cartoon series, the transformers morphed into hovercrafts and T-fighter esque space ships. The cybertron equivalent to cars and jet fighters.

Which brings in an even more puzzling delimma, called the "autobots all the way down" problem.

Ebert: Michael, where have you been? Welcome back.

I was working for way to long at a job that piled on the overtime with very little benefit that ended up going nowhere, no matter how much I was promised it was going somewhere. Left me drained with little time for blog surfing. In hindsight, I feel like I wasted a year-and-a-half of my life. Looking at the big picture, I was lucky to have a job.

Glad to be back.

It sounds to me as if you've talked yourself into liking a bad experience.

Heh. Re-reading my post, it does seem like Stockholm Syndrome kicked in.

Hi Roger,

It's amazing how much bacterial flagellum look like machines when magnified. And with all of their moving parts, Transformers does seem to indeed fit with the notion of "Irreducible complexity".

And remember, we did see a Transformers "Heaven" in the last movie.

You just may be on to something here...

I will admit that there's a lot to be considered regarding sequelitive [sequellous? I know it should probably be sequential but it downplays the new connotation that "sequel" has evolved] evolution of various space creatures, particularly these and the xenomorphs in the "Alien" franchise.

That said, I've always felt there was something kind of beautiful about imagning how Geiger's original creature would have biologically evolved to its form in the first film since it always seemed among those few extra terrestrials approaching the asymptotic edge of movie creature plausibility.

As for the Autobots and Decepticons, the films are definitely the product of Intelligent Design although that intelligence only comes from the studio's marketing department.

+50 for the Cthulhu reference.

-50 for the 'dark side of the moon' error.

And thus is the balance of the universe maintained.

Ok, sorry again, I seem determined to nitpick. Someone just said there's no dark side of the moon, that it rotates on its axis and as such the dark side would eventually be the light side. That's just wrong. It does rotate on its axis, but at the same rate as it orbits the earth, so we always see one side. It's called tidal locking. I am one of those insufferable people who insists that people criticize stupid things only for the right reasons.

I know your point was satire, but seeing all the comments on ID prompted me to respond.

1. Antony Flew, a life-long atheist, reconsidered his position based on what has been discovered about the cell in the last few years, and came to believe in a Deity. You can read it yourself in the book he wrote - "There Is A God".

2. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer - Cambridge University trained Philosopher of Science;degrees in physics and earth science;a geophysicist with ARCO; peer reviewed author of an article in "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington; author of "Signature in the Cell", which every evolutionist needs to read.

3. Michael Behe - He got his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 for his dissertation research on sickle-cell disease. From 1978 to 1982, he did postdoctoral work on DNA structure at the National Institutes of Health. From 1982 to 1985, he was assistant professor of chemistry at Queens College in New York City and is best known for his argument for irreducible complexity.

4. William Dembski - Dembski ultimately completed an undergraduate degree in psychology (1981, University of Illinois at Chicago) and masters degrees in statistics, mathematics, and philosophy (1983, University of Illinois at Chicago; 1985, University of Chicago; 1993, University of Illinois at Chicago respectively), two PhDs, one in mathematics and one in philosophy (1988, University of Chicago; 1996, University of Illinois at Chicago respectively), and a Master of Divinity in theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary (1996).

Agree or disagree with ID, but the argument cannot be made that it is not supported by highly educated, qualified and intelligent people.

Ebert: These are the usual believers who are trotted out. Their arguments have been disproved time and again.

Reply to: 2. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer - Cambridge University trained Philosopher of Science;; author of "Signature in the Cell", which every evolutionist needs to read....Agree or disagree with ID, but the argument cannot be made that it is not supported by highly educated, qualified and intelligent people.

But, are they trying to scam the religious folks, to line their own pockets?

I went to a lecture given by Dr. Meyer and the Discovery Institute at Biola (Bible Institute of Los Angeles.)

After his talk, he answered questions from the audience.

Many of the questions were idiotic. Many of the questions were based on a Sunday School knowledge of Genesis... and no matter how idiotic the question, Dr. Meyer praised the speaker for his insight and told him to support ID when it came time to elect school board members.

Don't be taken in by the nonsense in "Signature in the Cell"... if you go through it, his ONLY substantial argument is that proteins don't form without some help... and in the relevant historical time period, the earth was hot, struck by meterorites... his book simply doesn't consider enough possible explanations to be able to say he's proved them wrong.

I got the feeling... sitting there in the auditorium, listening to the people who showed up for the lecture... that the only thing they were intelligent enough to figure out was "If it's in the Bible, I believe it." And that's been proven wrong so many times...

It was interesting to hear him explain what "philosophy of science" means... it means he doesn't have to know any science, just that he approaches it as a philospher rather than a scientist.

Mr. Ebert, I must admit to some considerable incredulity at reading this satirical review of Transformers as pro-ID, when, just two weeks I posted my own satirical review of Pixar's Cars as pro-ID, a piece I know you read, because you tweeted it shortly after it was posted. I could also point out that a comment on that post jokingly proposed that the Cars universe was a precursor to the Transformers world of Cybertron.

http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/cars-pixar-falls-for-intelligent-design/28328/

Granted, such ideas are often in the collective social ether, especially in light of recent GOP candidates' statements. But I would at least hope for a nod of recognition/commiseration by way of a mention/link, even if you happen to like Cars and its sequel.

Just sayin'.

Ebert: I wonder if the notion lodged in my head?

I like Sarcastic Roger, perhaps just as much as Childhood Reminiscing Roger.

As for knee-jerk sophists and Defenders of Irrelevant Trivia -- I love you guys. No, really, I do! May Saint Stan Lee bless your spotless, shiny, bait-biting, spontaneous comedy-spewing hearts.

Amen.

Before we were born, we existed in a perfect world where we knew everything. We were free Souls in the next stage of life. We walked in the cosmos, not imprisoned by bodies of flesh, but free, in pure bodies of light. There were no questions, only answers, no weaknesses, only strengths, We were light, We were truth, We were spiritual beings, We were Gods. But then our parents had to FUCK and bring us down to HELL on earth.

You're ridiculing of Intelligent Design is what makes me want to believe it ( as a form of torlling. )

Its the same reason a lot of friends of mine, who have never ever made Muslim jokes before are now making them. Its trolling. Not at all for serious. Its to get people who are easily offended, offended.

Intelligent design is, in my mind, a flawed theory, but its no less factual then any other theory. Evolution, no matter how much you or I may believe in it, is still a theory. Does it make more sense to me? Hell yeah. But it doesn't piss me off so much that others believe in it. Would I want my kid being taught it in school? Hell no. But then again they won't be subjected to it will they? Will children in Texas or Tennessee or other states be subjected to it in public school? I doubt it. Furthermore, you aren't ridiculing the notion of it being taught in schools, you're ridiculing the belief itself.

I think you want it to be a very real possibility so you can parade your smart satire and pretend its for a meaningly full reason. Well this isn't Serling satire, I can tell you that. Serling satire was against the intentions of your piece. The reducible in it. The arrogant, attitude that makes me want to pretend I'm all for this theory.

I respect you Roger, a lot. I just disagree with you, a lot.

A lot was missing in my first comment, because I hate yet to read the comments. Honestly, this is what makes me so angry. I hate seeing peoples beliefs ridiculed and ran through the mud. I see a lot of arrogance and a lot of belittling. Years ago this is what happened to people who believed in evolution, and it was terrible that they had to be subjected to such mockery. Now its happening again, only this time to those who believe in intelligent design. Its not right either way. Just so I'm not told I'm crazy or I'm not defending my case, I'd like to make clear that I'm not arguing for Intelligent Design (I believe in evolution) but rather for it to have a respectable chance. That doesn't even mean respect it. It means respect the people who believe in it, at the very least. Please.

hehe I liked the transformer movie I saw

Roger, you write, "These are the usual believers (in God) who are trotted out. Their arguments have been disproved time and again". Isn't the contrary true? Wouldn't it be impossible to prove God doesn't exist?

Ebert: I was referring to the original believers in ID. The existence of God is a subject outside of science. It can neither be proved nor disproved.

Actually, Roger's alleged theft of Josh B's idea works pretty well as an analogy for the various reconciliations of ID and evolution that I have heard. First there was a creator (G-d or Josh B) who created the basic type (families or genuses of organisms or stories comparing cartoons about mechanical beings to ID). Then the creation underwent minor change (evolution or rewriting) and the fittest line (able to reproduce the most or attract the most readers) survived/was remembered while the weakest line died out or was forgotten. However, there remains a record (fossils or Josh B's original article coupled with the allegedly incrimination tweet).

As an educator, I am shocked that the Kansas School Board and FSMism has yet to enter the fray. Perhaps too many years have passed. The open letter is a required reading for any participant in an ID discussion:

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

When I was a child I loved Transformers, both the TV show and the toys. Sure it was cool that a vehicle could change into a robot, but to me, I was getting twice the toy for my money... Even three times the toy for my money as I actually still own a couple triple changers as they were called.

I'm not sure if these have shown up in the movies yet.

I had a tank that turned into a plane and also into a robot, and also a train that turned into a space shuttle and then into a robot.

My argument for intelligent design on this would be that another race on some other planet created some original transformers that then spawned the entire race on Cybertron.

If a toaster, a microwave, a computer, and a refrigerator blow around in a whirlwind you're not going to get anything intelligent out of it. You need an architect and designer at some point...

Unless there is some kind of organic structure to the metals these beings are created from...

I think it's kind of comical Mr. Ebert that you would create this kind of discussion around movies you really don't like that much and find pretty silly. Comical in a good way though.

On a side note, do you think a movie directed by Peter Jackson or perhaps Del Toro focusing on the biblical end of days would do well? I mean Jesus comes back and there are massive battles and really invigorate the whole idea. I think if we gave Jesus some "balls" so to speak it could perhaps be an amazing film. There is obviously an audience, just look at Passion of the Christ. I would just like to see something other than the tired old stories of what has already happened, or animated fables... focus on what is to come, war, judgement, heaven, hell... those could be some pretty intense images to leave people with.

Your thoughts Sir?

"Ebert: When most of the GOP candidates support teaching of ID in public schools, that's my business.

In the history of this blog, evolution and ID have consistently been my subjects. I feel it's an area in which it is responsible to have opinions."

Okay Roger. We get it. You have banged the evolution drum long enough--your "opinions" on ID and evolution are duly noted. Focusing your continued energies on this topic (particularly mocking satire) no longer add anything substantive to the discussion, but more resemble beating the proverbial dead horse (and I can hear an ax grinding in the distance).

Ebert: I believe the subject is very relevant right now:

http://bit.ly/qpisz1

I saw this movie last Saturday, and felt the entire experience was sensory overload. I can't imagine how awful it would have been had I seen it in 3-D. I was so bored at some points that I thought to myself, "How was Optimus Prime born? What was his childhood like? Who were his parents?" In a two-and-a-half-hour movie that is the last installment of a trilogy, it seems like there could be a few moments spent on those questions. However, filling in questions like these leads to characterization, and this movie is clearly not interested in characterization, just spectacle. I, too, was turned off by the silliness of the goo oozing from Decepticon beaks and teeth amongst other things, and the complete waste of John Malkovich, whose character could have been played by anyone willing to take the part. I do not understand why people eat this sort of thing up, and I fear it is a reflection on where our interests really lie as a society.

I was fortunate enough to see The Tree of Life on the 4th, a movie I desperately needed after seeing Transformers, and a movie that about five people walked out of before the end in a very small theatre. Why is that so? Why are we not drawn to the most compelling and beautiful things? Why is actual awe and wonder not enough to enthrall us? Again, I fear that we are far too interested in shallow entertainment and spectacle. Distraction is probably the better word. We don't want to be challenged, and we don't want to see much grounded in reality and truth. I get that there are times where seeing a movie like Transformers is kind of fun, so long as we know it's kind of silly and stupid, and meant to do its job as a form of shallow entertainment, but I don't feel like that's the consensus of the vast majority of moviegoers. It's a shame.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I've been a longtime admirer of your work, and while I disagree with your review of DOTM, it was interesting to read this essay. You're actually dead-on about the origin of the Transformers in that they were created by a god called Primus:

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Primus

Hope you enjoy the read.

Very good article. But I have a question:

Did these letters, words, punctuation marks and thoughts somehow assemble themselves into a coherent essay that employs humor, wit and sarcasm, or did they have a creator?

Discuss.

"Agree or disagree with ID, but the argument cannot be made that it is not supported by highly educated, qualified and intelligent people."

Nobody would argue it's not made by intelligent people. All sides have these qualities. Including the creators of Transformers. But, I don't think Transformers works for ID. Transformers are a more traditional creation, brought into being from nothingness through the mystery of the Allspark. The Allspark is more of an enlightment timekeeper, puts time in motion and sits back.

I don't think it'd be possible given what we know of the universe (which is still very little) for inorganic life to be spontaneously created. The more plausible explanation is akin to the old cartoon show explanation that someone else, someone organic, created the Transformers. Perhaps as simple machines that like SkyNet in the "Terminator" movies became self-aware and evolved in their own fashion.

It's smacks of irony that the best case for evolution is the perceived stupidity of it's opponents. It's even consumed Roger.

This sort of article is a painful reminder that one becomes what one hates. The self righteous disgust for the ID believer (Transformers 3, really?) is only matched by the self righteous judgement of the worst sort of evangelical. I truly hope eternity finds the two forced to argue with each other in never-ending perpetuity.

My god, the internet is a terrifying place. How are there so many grown men who care so very deeply about passionately about Transformers?

I think there are more comments here defending Optimus Prime than God. What does this say.

"Sardonicism." Isn't the word everybody ought to be looking for "sardonicism"?

Now, here is a good sardonicism. I shall now prove that Roger Ebert believes in Darwinian evolution because he is even worse than stupid. He is, in fact, thtoopid, Here is my evidence:

As a admirer of Darwin's Theory of Evolution...

"A ADMIRER." Let it be recorded on this date and hour that Roger Ebert is "a admirer" of Darwin's theory. He says so. It is the very first sentence of his essay.

"a admirer."

Thtoopid. We win. And there is a good sardonicism for you. A sarcasm would be "Boy, can that Ebert ever spell."

Thank you.

I sense.... a victory for Michele Bachmann in a state caucas or primary, followed by an eruption of sarcasm and ridicule... and I'm anxious to be part of it.

Reply to: I hate seeing peoples beliefs ridiculed and ran through the mud. I see a lot of arrogance and a lot of belittling. ... It means respect the people who believe in (Intelligent Design) Please.

Well, you said please. And I'm saying No.

Giving respect to idiots, liars, con men, terrorists and fascists has gotten us in a lot of trouble in the past.

Ridicule is a perfectly good weapon to use against those who support Creationism.

Intelligent Design is a scam. That's where the Correct Answer starts. A group of Christians wants to teach "Bible" in public schools. They want to find a loophole, and they call their alternative to Evolution a "wedge" that will open the door to teaching Jesus as God and Savior again.

My first point would be, let's explain why Michele Bachmann is wrong. Maybe we can prevent her from winning votes... but, the more likely scenario, any attack on a Christian will bring out more supporters who didn't realize the game was afoot, Watson. So, it's tempting just to be silent.

However, that's not my way. The best way to get rid of bad ideas is to ridicule them, denounce them, and explain why they are bad.

Christianity should not be taught in public schools because it is false. However, legally, it isn't taught because the US government can't take an official stand on religion.

It's ridiculous to have a school system... where you can't say that dishonest people made up a story about a man coming back to life in otder to create an End of the World cult and trick people into donating property and life savings. An End of the World cult... we KNOW the world didn't end, so we KNOW Christianity is false. We know it was a scam. Why can't we look Michele Bachmann right in the face and say, "An intelligent person would not have your view on Creationism." But... are there enough dumb people in America to elect a dumb President?

I wonder why ID people focus on the eye as the example of 'too complex to evolve' when the brain is the true marvel of biological sophistication. Wait, perhaps they forgot to use theirs.

I didn't have time to watch the video, but did they point out that what we regard as the visible spectrum corresponds to the radiation emitted by objects with a temperature equivalent to the surface of the sun? A mighty strong argument to indicate those that didn't see that spectrum were soon eaten by their predators.

Looks like the idea for this article was lifted directly from another article I read before - http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/cars-pixar-falls-for-intelligent-design/28328/

Hmmm.

Ebert: See my exchange with Josh Berta, above.

I tweeted his article.

Sorry, I have to nitpick this statement:

"Ebert: I was referring to the original believers in ID. The existence of God is a subject outside of science. It can neither be proved nor disproved."

I certainly agree that the original and current believers in ID have made invalid arguments which have been proved wrong (e.g., Behe's claims of "irreducible complexity" - every example he gave has been shown in fact not to be irreducible at all: blood clotting, the flagellum, the Keb's Cycle, and even the mousetrap itself.).

Whether the existence of a god is outside science or not is an arguable point, depending on what kind of god you have in mind. A god who answers prayer in other than a random fashion could be detected by science - and has not been.

The larger point is that science does not deal in proof, but in evidence. Science cannot prove that General Relativity is the final answer as to how gravity works, but it sure beats the heck out of whatever is in second place. Tomorrow, new evidence might conflict with GR, and science would happily adapt.

Currently, as far as I know, there is no good, peer-review-publishable evidence for anybody's god. If tomorrow Jehovah shows up and makes a speech in every capitol of every country in the world in all languages simultaneously, I would have to accord the God Hypothesis more respect. (I almost said "God Theory", but it doesn't have the weight of reproducible evidence which it takes to claim the status of a theory in science.)

As to your question about transformers, it reminds of a question a creationist once asked me (in his case, without tongue in cheek). Pointing to a car parked next to a tree he said, "See that car and that tree? Isn't it obvious that they both were designed?" To which I answered, "No, they both evolved. I have seen cars evolve over my lifetime." Transformers, if they existed, would have evolved also. In 38 years as a mechanical designer, I have never seen any complex machine that was spontaneously created without huge room for improvement. The first off-track motorized land vehicle which I know of (a farm vehicle circa 1855) did not have a steering wheel.

Thank you, Roger Ebert, for posting this entry in your journal. I appreciate your clever satirical account of the origin of the Transformers. As for the supposed actual account, I'd just like to use this opportunity to set the record straight with some of the other Transformers fans out there who have been trying to tell you that the Autobots and Decepticons were made by creatures called "Quintessons." That's a lie, and I can explain why!

The truth is that the Quintessons are a race of weird aliens encountered once and only once by the Autobots during the 1986 animated film, written by Ron Friedman. It's only in the third season of the TV series, which came right after the release of the film, that the hack writers there felt the overwhelming need to explain the back story of the Quintessons and integrate them into the overall storyline, making them the so-called creators of the Transformers. A twist like that might have worked out okay, except that it was so poorly executed that it turned everything into one big mess. In my not-so-humble opinion, it was this debacle that led to the series' demise, not the death of Optimus Prime, which occurred in the film and has always been so controversial. Because of all of this, as far as I'm concerned, the Transformers series ended with the second season, and the 1986 film marks the end of the canonical storyline, meaning that the origin of the Transformers has never been explained, and never will be. (The third and fourth seasons can basically be regarded as low-grade fan fiction. So says I.)

In the commentary for the Transformers movie, Flint Dille, who wrote the ridiculous origin story for the TV series, has also gone on to say that they probably shouldn't have killed off Optimus Prime! By saying that, he's essentially trying to pass the buck for his own failure to capture interest in the third season of the series. Killing the iconic Autobot leader was certainly a risky thing to do, but it added a lot of drama to the film and is certainly part of the reason why people still remember it today (unlike the animated G.I.Joe movie, where they chickened out on killing Duke). So clearly, Dille is a schmuck who has no business making major creative decisions where giant alien robots are concerned. His take on the origin of the Transformers is therefore best ignored. History, as voiced by this one post, has spoken. Quintessons be damned!

This concludes my very important message about the origin of the Transformers. I'm sure your lives have all been enriched by it. Thank you and good night.

I don't want to turn this into a Michele Bachmann Admiration and Appreciation Thread... but she did get her start in politics by running for a school board in order to add Creationism to the curriculum.

And she does have a law degree from of the O.W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University. I think everyone knows that I couldn't hold Oral Roberts in any higher regard... I mean, literally, I couldn't

While running for Congress, during a debate in November 2005.

Moderator: Given the recent rioting in France that is the result of a sub-culture that has not assimilated, what would you do to make sure that a similar situation does not take place in America?

(the other candidate spoke, then)

Michele Bachmann: I just want to say only in France, only in France could you have suburban youth rioting because the welfare benefits aren't generous enough. And that's... That's what they're telling us now is happening there. And only in France could that happen. And what we're seeing is just the fruits of leftism. It's suburbanites, the kids, that are watching cable TV, Did you know that? In a lot of these high rises where a lot of the suburban youth are doing writing or doing they have cable TV in their apartments. They're listening to al Jazeera, and they're being encouraged and prompted to go ahead and start these riots all over France. (end)

So, I'm expecting her to win big in some of the early primaries, and looking forward to a one-sided publicity blitz for Creationism in public schools. Lucky for us, America doesn't have the problem with cable TV that exists in France and causes all those riots...

I have been reading some of your movie reviews and you are just a hater on actual good movies. I mean you are that guy who will trash a comedy, one that is actually funny, just because you want to be the opposite of what everyone else likes to seem different. Adam Sandler is a great comedian and although the plot to the movie Just Go With it wasn't the greatest I still laughed my ass off, so dis the story all you want but to say it wasn't funny at all should ruin your movie reviewing career. And to top that all off you give an one star to Transformers Dark of the Moon, now it wasn't as good as the first two but it definitely deserved a better rating. Start getting good taste in comedies instead of movies like Kun Fu Panda 2. So get that stick out of your ass and loosen up.

[b]Ebert: I was referring to the original believers in ID. The existence of God is a subject outside of science. It can neither be proved nor disproved. [/b]

Not exactly. God doesn't have special status here.You also can't prove that purple unicorns don't exist. It's not that God's "out of science," it's just that we can't disprove any existence scientifically, as the scientific method requires observation to call something fact.

Anyway, point is that God's existence (theoretically) [i]could[/i] be proved by simple observation. That this will probably never happen is another story.

There is little that is "self righteous" about a scientifically minded person being disgusted by the threat of ID being taught in public schools - it is a defensive reaction.

It is a logical error to use a lack of evidence as proof of something else. While we don't have all the answers yet, we know more about the mechanics of evolution than we do about gravity. Given our lack of understanding about a force that we feel every moment of our earth bound existence, we can not assume that a divine power is pushing us towards the ground.

While nobody can prove or disprove ID, it is clearly faith based and has no buisness being taught in public schools. When Kansas tries to sneak a popular religious belief into its public schools, only the scientists (and objective folk) come out to defend our country. If a public school were to ask that students read a page from the Koran, the same defenders of ID would soil themselves.

As none of the arguments can be scientifically proven on any absolute basis, it always comes down to faith - what one chooses to believe based on facts, personal experiences and biases. That said, you won't catch me belittling your faith simply because my faith differs from yours.

Uh... straight up, Roger, you're getting into some weird territory lately. This. The review for Cars 2, Zookeeper and the X Men. I'm finding you difficult to follow. And equally difficult to trust. Take care of yourself, but I'm sorry, I'm breaking up with you.

I was laughing at ur article. I go and enjoy the transformers movies with my nephews, and the prob with transformers has always been that the story is complete b.s. and not even believable in science fiction. It works better as a cartoon.

Roger, your hatred of Transformers is lazy and boring. You went in hating it and left acheiving your wish. You claim there was no story and your "satirical" post above prooves you paid no active attention to any of the three films.

you mentioned in your review that you do not care about Optimus Prime. O.K. thats fine, but that statement makes your view unobjective as a critic. Why didn't you recuse yourself?

Instead I find you using a myth you do not understand as an analogy? Lazy at best. Cynical at worst because you knew the word transformers would get people to read you blog.

Why would a metal planet (that in itself is a transformer!) need to orbit a sun? Your whole paragraph ignores this plot hole and then you excuse your laziness as satire.

Anyway, as for the film, the first hour was a little boring. The second hour was everything I want from a transformers movie.

Of course you're fascinated by Transformers since you two are both here to make big buck for corporations. The only difference is that they were created for it while you were drafted to praise those mainstream garbage movies some of which are "Super 8", "Avatar", "Revenge of the Sith" and so on. Of course in cases when the movie is really offensively bad, like "Transformers 3", where it would be to obvious for you to praise it then you write a separate article to do your share of promoting it. I mean that check didn't come in vain.
No wonder John Carpenter portrayed you the way he did in "They Live".

I have one thing to say about this article: Transformers 1 established the origin of the Transformers clearly: the allspark, an artifact of unknown origin, gave life to their world and could create transformers out of almost anything.

My main point is this:

I'm not a big fan of these movies, but Mr Ebert needs to start getting the movie facts straight. A lot of things that he says are unexplained are actually pretty clearly stated, and this is just one example.

Another one, for convenience picked out of transformers 2: Mr Ebert stated that Mr and Mrs Witwicky, Sam's parents, appeared out of nowhere in Egypt, for no explained reason. This is false. They were shown to have been captured by the Decepticons, and at one point one of the bad guys even says "spring the trap" or something, at which point they are disgorged from a robot car or something, as bait for Sam.

This makes little difference to the quality of the movie itself. However, if Mr Ebert wants to continue being a credible critic, he will have to eliminate false statements based on a lack of attention from his review; it does not matter if these are "nerdy summer flicks" for otaku or Sci-Fi or comic book enthusiasts that he does not care for, he should pay equal attention to every movie. Frankly, this hurting his reputation and I feel bad about having to state all this; I don't want to tell him how to do his job, but neither do I want to see his credibility as a critic wane among the younger, nerdy audiences. There are few critics of his calibre left.

Somebody wrote: "what's the point of this? It looks to me like an outright jab at creationists, with the purpose of being offensive."

Wow - that's what I liked about it. In my view, we should do everything we can to bring the creationists and ID nitwits to battle and thump them again and again and again. Make fun of them every chance you can, Roger.

I actually thought that as long as Mr. Bay was exploring the backstory of the transformers, he missed an opportunity to make them a more interesting species by revealing that they had in fact been designed by organic creatures, and that they had turned on their creators and destroyed them: an act of genocide and patricide for which Optimus Prime and the Autobots feel eternal shame and guilt, hence their remarkably selfless determination to protect the humans on Earth.

After all, while Mr. Ebert jokes about creationism, he does make the legitimate point that metals are not nearly as chemically reactive as organics (which are so reactive that explosives such as TNT are in fact based on organic compounds), hence they are not likely to spontaneously react with each other to create life. Ergo, unlike organic life, the metallic transformers really did need some kind of intelligent designer.

Mind you, the transformers didn't always have to be transformers. In order to have evolution, you need only self-replication and variation. Once the transformers' ill-fated creators made machines smart enough to replicate themselves, they could have evolved over time to become something very different from what their creators had envisioned. Their highly developed capabilities for deception would also make sense in this history, since they could have used them to deceive their creators before turning on them.

But perhaps I apply more thought to this concept than Mr. Bay did.

It is nice to know that after Paramount Studios spent so much money making a rubbish movie that some folks enjoyed it enough to defend it (and in doing so, completely missing the point of the post).
To the defenders of Transformers, I ask this: do you enjoy grown-up movies as well?

Obviously the Transformers were designed by an intelligent life form (similar to the human race, perhaps they had pointy ears like Vulcans.)

Transformers started out as ordinary robots, albeit with built in artificial life software and hardware (the ability to learn and improve.)

At some point they evolved and became machines with feeling and thoughts, but they started out as machines without feeling and with a very specific purpose: to help their creators with boring and mundane tasks.

The technology they use in the present is not their technology (but of their makers). So they can’t adapt that technology or use it’s full potential. Analogy: I can use a microwave oven and a cell phone, but I can’t adapt them or develop similar machines based on the same technology. I didn’t invent them, I just know how to operate them.

Likewise the behavior of transformers (both Autobots and Decepticons) is constricted by their original design. They will not always behave in the most efficient or logical way because they are limited by the original blue print of their hardwired emotional response system.

From an evolutionary point of view human behavior is also restricted in this way. We often act irrational because of some biological hardwiring that harks back to our humble beginning as a rat like monkey.

If you think the above explanation is a waist of time, then you weren’t a kid in the 80’s.

Roger,

I recently came across this comic that seems (to me, at least) to concisely explain evolution in an entertaining and informative way. Hope you like it:

http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolution.html

John

Ebert you need to just never speak of transformers again, they are not the most boring aliens in sci-fi history, your just being a typical Star Trek fan dissing on Transformers

I can appreciate that you HAVE to review Transformers as part of your job, so we can forgive your lack of interest, accuracy and attention to detail. But this was entirely voluntary, so any flack is well-deserved.

I guess my real question is, why waste the ink satirizing something you don't care even about? (Unless of course the Republicans were meant to be the target, though in that case the question would still stand.)

Horror story scarier than any and all Transformers - this news item from CNN today: "Radioactive meat circulating in Japan."

Roger, do me a favor and DON'T watch the '86 Transformers cartoon movie. It's cheaply made, deeply derivative, and utterly lacking in invention and/or wonder. The only thing one could glean from that picture is that A) Orson Welles would do anything for money (we knew that) and B) my generation was reared on crap commercials masquerading as narrative.

I'll be sending you a Youtube link to a locked-camera shot of a peaceful, shady summer field instead.

PS, when you say "hey, welcome back, where have you been" to one reader, you make everyone else (at least me) feel unloved. I remember the days I used to see you little bold black letters at the footers of my submissions all the time. (This is only intended satire if it otherwise comes off as embarrassing)

That was definitely insulting. It wasn't necessary to transition from "Transformers is stupid" to "Intelligent Design advocates are stupid." Uncalled-for.

Ebert: Well, they are..,unintelligent.

Keith Carrizosa, Mr. Ebert is right to put "intelligent design" theory in quotes because it is NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY. It does not meet even the most fundamental criteria for a scientific theory: it fails to define the properties of its central element (the intelligent designer), in any way other than to give him a name. This is just the first of its many failings, but in a way, it's the most critical by far, because it means that it does not really exist as a scientific theory at all.

You say it's bad to do so because it is prejudicial, but it would be misleading NOT to do so. It is NOT a real scientific theory. It doesn't even reach the point where it could be evaluated as a good or bad theory; it is literally undefined.

I hate to say it, but your comments about oil dependence and various other ideas about the transformers show your lack of knowledge about the Transformers universe. The all metal bodies you refer to can be surmised to be billions of nano machines, as seen in Transformers 1 and 2 where mention is made of self healing. As large cybernetic parts cannot heal as they are inorganic, nano machines must make up the structure of the transformers. Ale, in the 3rdd movie, a bot is killed and his entire body turns to rusted dust. This also reinforces the idea of nano machines experiencing individual death. Furthermore, cybertronians, whether transformers or other native cybernetic life form the planet, all use an energy source called Energon. It has existed on Earth in the continuity of the story since prehistory and if you remember form the 2nd movie, the pyramid disguised sun harvester was supposed to produce a mass of energon that was to be used to create a decepticon army. In the G1 series, many of the battles revolved around this notion of gathering energon as well. The Autobots are in the Middle East so much because movies in general like to use real world enemies of America as the audience can relate to having negative feelings toward them. During the World War era, it was the Germans, during the Cold War era, it was the Russians ect. Today it is terrorists popularly believed to come from the Middle East. I will not take the time to dissect every misstatement, however, I thought that these glaring points should be examined. If you have only seen the movies, this may be information you missed or didn't know. Yes, I know I am revealing my fanboydom. I'm sure you'll get over it. :-p

It is nothing more than a unsatisfied cosmic love.

Could you spare me a.............um,....I'm embarrassed to ask anyone
else, since we're living in hard times; nothing since the depression,
with all this mediocrity that I've been seeing here lately, I was
wondering if there is a spot for.......................................

How's the wither chief at where you are.........sorry; I mean how's the
weather.......you see what I mean; one does not go out in the cold without
checking the weather out first then putting on something comfy, that's how
one should go about; expose themselves to mother nature; absorb and learn,
then one can decide if they might need some boots and mittens, there
are plenty of dark forces out there that are starving to clinch on you so that
they could expand, evolve and stabilize for reinforcement.

Ohhh man....., I'm bleeding here...sweating bullets, this mercury leakage with
the heat friction is putting holes in me, giving those dimwits without much of
an imagination something to gossip about......, do you know anybody who's
looking for someone who can hang themselves upside down inside out for twenty
mil.; I think that's a reasonable price, I've heard people getting paid much more
than that for crap, ........ohhhhhh the tediousness is excruciating.
..........I'm just pulling your leg man; this is just me when I want to release
some steam; cool off my keel, no biggy.


-------------------------------------------

A cocktail of assorted facetious factious and fastidious facts to go;
for a factitious clan........order up.

That's what I like about you chief; you don't "schmooze",
it's the core of a great critic and all true arts, an aspect that I've been
paying close attention to; and few Americans are aware about, when
a major studio is releasing a bunch of one hundred million dollar plus
movie to the market (I don't think the most could comprehend how many
zeros that is next to the one), they're willing to do whatever it takes
to sell them tickets, even if it means bribing "some" critics into saying
whatever they want to say...............and...the mold is broken.
By the way the greatest "film" critics in the world are from the west,
mainly the United States, UK, France, Germany and Russia; they don't
have that baggage that they bring with them to the film, oppose to the east;
"tradition first art second"?!
I mean if it wasn't for yourself and some critics I grew up learning and
studying from; like Richard Schickel, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell,
Vincent Canby, David Denby, Pauline Kael, Janet Maslin and Kenneth
Turan. I don't think I would've continued pursuing this medium.

To Karl Heinz:
Did you mean "Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino";
oh.....I see where you're coming from, nevermind.

Apparently those who went to see this dump; are either non-Americans,
anti-Americans, youngsters who are looking for remorse for the eight years
they've been raped by the government then left out to dry; with no work,
school or dignity to compensate for, or just your old fashion terrorists
who missed out on nine eleven and wanted to witness the reenactment
of that event on the silver screen with a crowd to cheer with.

I don't know what the fret is all about; Hollywood executives complaining
how big budget movies aren't making the profit that they should and smaller
much smaller movies like True Grit, The Kids are Alright, The Fighter,
The King's Speech, The Black Swan and The Social Network excelled,
isn't what this establishment is all about?......................nahhhhhhhhhh!

We are living in the most exciting age for movies.
We're experiencing for the first time in the history of American films
how vulnerable this art form truly is; and it is beautiful, somehow we
are catching up with the Europeans with their understanding that one
does not meddle with the medium by producing over costly motion
pictures; which would eventually jeopardize the value of the medium itself.

You do the math; seventy to seventy five percent of Hollywood (big budget)
pictures are dumb, versus seventy to seventy five percent of European
motion pictures; the least to say are wonderful.

Probably this is Hollywood's way of tempting the Europeans by saying:
I beat you're euro couldn't finance a large scale motion picture like we do;
something we are clinching hard to; no matter what the outcome is
financially domestically.

A word of advice to those who haven't seen
the tree of life on a large screen yet.
Don't; it will give you goosebumps, unless you're senses are toast;
then never mind you're OK.......... lucky you.
(You don't want to walk around with goosebumps on your skin,
imagine what people going to say about that; "ewww ("goosebumps"?!)
how childish); you don't want that, stick with the norm or the hype,
there are plenty of them coming your way; no worries.

There's the rise of the machines they've been talking about, when a
filmgoer prefers the company of a computer generated image over
a human being, when eight out of ten every summer movie in the
past decade or so is ninety percent fake..........is that really how a
wolf growl or move so...., long gone the days of the legendary
artist of dynamation Ray Harryhausen (in which one would question
the actions of those models).....take this wry irony; in the far future
when machines take over and all we have left to do is sit back on our
couches with a remote controlling every aspect of our lives while the
machines doing our jobs, they will stumble upon our fond memories
and ridicule our kinship towards false imitation over being and rebel.

I would love to comment on this so called 3D baloney, since I'm not
a critic; don't get paid for this crap.... and by the way I didn't invest my
time, money and effort into this medium to give it away to a bunch of
lame, laid back tinkering assholes who don't know jack from shit, men
is what's interesting to talk to... not boys; those who know how to
differentiate between a double D and a triple D when they see one
from a yard away.
Speaking of men; whatever happened to those swarm of men who
invaded our state/s nine then five years ago with their machismo; I
guess they didn't know what or who is a man; ...touche............
there is always seconds if you hurry.
-But I can say this though for the dimwits who are so lazy and cheap
to even take a course in art:
2D; one is absorbing the element, whereas to
3D; you are the element; you are in your wonderland.
An example:
Pick yourself up; walk yourself out from your house or apartment and
stand in front of it, what do you see?
You see your house or apartment; you see everything that's going on
to it, you are the eyes and ears to this establishment; your a guard,
you can see if there's something entering your chimney, you can
see if there is somebody who's about to break in, you can see if there
is somebody looking in through the window, you can see the animals
and/or creatures, sprinklers, cars, mailbox and so on and so forth.
Now walk yourself back to your compound and take a seat; that's OK
take your time,..................you are no different than that refrigerator,
or that couch or that stand in the corner or even your next door neighbor,
you are in ...and someone or somebody is looking out for you.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying 3D is a bad thing, it's a gimmick
for this medium in particular; that's all there is to it, it's been around since man.
I remember the first lesson that I was taught as a pupil in fine arts was
to draw a cube; then replicate it to understand its mass and space,
trust me when I say this; it was a great base for an actor than my later
studies in film, I'm just saying that it serves only two purposes:
1-A ploy for Hollywood executives; and
2-For documentarians......, say for the UN, to explore uncharted dimensions
in space which would be impossible for the naked eye to conceive.

I'm not saying all movies should be dramatic or that I don't believe in
remakes or sequels, I can't wait for the next installment of District 9
(I hope Peter Jackson and his crew do an equal or better job to his
Lord of the Rings), or the sequel to The Golden Compass or the next
chapter of Mongol; Sergey Bodrov is a marvelous and extraordinary
filmmaker, somewhat in the leagues of the great Terrence Malick or
Anthony Minghella (RIP).

I remember this actor (excuse me "star"; everybody can be an actor
these days,....ohhh how the thin line is drawing in) forgot his name;
he means nothing to me, was holding a conference promoting his first
motion capture computer-animated film (which I liked), but it was what
he said afterwards that got me saying "Oh no he di'n't"; you definitely
got yourself another thing coming...................................................
"This is how movies are going to be from now; there will be no need for
actors to act out their parts when we could motion capture them"!
For a star who has secured a place for himself in Hollywood; that's
quite of an exposer I'd say; with a fine tether in hand, a bit dorky
though, or was a dork but with age and clout managed to refine himself.
Basically ((An actor can do his/her lines from the basement or even the
kitchen of their homes)) and (they don't have to worry about "lines").

.....................in regards of that spot, you're list of the greatest
motion pictures is among the best & legit in the medium, I was
wondering if you've ever considered a place for Mr. Greenway;
he has made a string of powerful motion pictures in the eighties,
from his sublime pentimento pensive draught (one of my greatest
pictures of that decade) to close it with a suitable feast to end all
feasts, I believe he is to British motion pictures for the eighties;
what Nicolas Roeg was for the seventies.

Y'all know there is a difference between characteristic, charachter and
character; we Americans understand the first one, somewhat the second
one and no were near the third one, why do you ask; well;............I can
give you literally a hundred reason, but then that would ruin your way of
learning and perceiving life on your own, the least that I could say is this:
"With all this heap going on; there isn't much room anymore for expression"

In regards of your views of the caribbean with some pirates wondering
around, if you like characterization you should check out Bill Nighy in
Dead Man's Chest; just for the sake of his amazing creation of this
charachter (you where being hospitalized when it came out, they released
it just a year apart from it's sequel to compensate for the first one),
he didn't get the recognition he deserved like Andy Serkis did.
I remember the rave that came out within students of certain circles
how amazed they where with his creation, what the some didn't know
is that he wasn't in any makeup or prosthetics.
(A notion very important for y'all geeks to delve in vs David Cronenberg's
take on the matter; for which I stand by, check out the documentary for
which he defends the creation of The Fly to understand what I mean),
after all... there is no substitute for the flesh; I mean all it took is a six
inch... give or take; piece of meat that's having the world go bananas.

And chief; if you managed to put yourself through two plus hours of
excruciating pain with Throe.......,sorry I mean Troy; what's the matter
with me..........Thor is what I meant, I wish it was Troy; that film makes
it look like Hamlet,.....you should check out The Black Freighter; with a
running time of less than thirty minutes, it has more wits than all comic
books movies combined this year, or instead just check out the ultimate
cut of the comic book movie heaven.

By the way; that was a nice gesture from Hugo Weaving condoling his
former peer (I'm sure he satisfied them Hollywood moguls with that take),
I've always liked Hugo Weaving (somewhat reminds me of the American
Christopher Walken; when it comes to versatility in villainy), he gave
The Matrix that proper edge that it needed, just like Bill Nighy did.
One of the very first films that I've ever seen was the underrated Proof
opposite Russell Crowe, and another more recent underrated turn from him
(an interesting take on a particular charachter for him and Mr. Neill; I've
underestimated the man) was in Little Fish; with Cate Blanchett and
Sam Neill in a trio of astonishing performances; their is enough testosterone
her to cover for all the sham we've witnessed so far this summer season.


*****************************************

*Note for fan's of the Batman franchise:
Some years ago a couple of talented artists with the support of their
colleagues helped bring about a distinctive character to the silver
screen that goes by the name of "The Joker".
There is a powerful backbone (that I'm very aware of "God is my witness")
to this character yet to be established, the late Heath Ledger; may he
rest in peace, gave us a powerful interpretation of how he perceives this
character, yet a character this complex and demented should have a
history that has not seen the light of day and I mean "the light of day".
I've read most novels that depicted this character including Alan Moore's,
in which he merely hints in the possible outcome of such character;
nothing more, the man did more justice, prevailed and closed the lid
with such astonishing characters as Rorschach, The Comedian and
Dr. Manhattan in a single powerful novel, the elite novel for comic books;
it did not just serve as a storyboard for the movie; it was the movie:)

Ebert: This is a heck of a good comment. Actually, a blog entry.

Thanks for the tweet tip, Roger. Forget Transformers. I put out the word immediately to my rich relatives that this humanoid wanted a Swarmanoid for Christmas. Been getting a rush of emails back. They are all interested. There is talk of a family Swarmanoid. Yet no one knows where to order. I am clueless. Thought maybe you might help out. Figured the only other humanoid I know who might be buying a Swarmanoid would be the Ebertoid.

Ebert: I dunno. Don't they seem like high-rent Transformers?

http://bit.ly/qtmNJu

Haha oh, the evolution vs creationism debate.

That debate never is held politely, I have noticed.

Even when the inspiration for conversation is a clearly satirical peice about transformers.

mr. ebert

have you seen or watch the recent animated series "Transformers Prime" ? if you compare it to the films series, it has more story than all three films combined period.
i reccomned that you should see it

@robert Would love it if the next director took a new trilogy with elements of Transformer's Prime . . . much less on the kids involved, but the maybe the animation and storied history, or maybe a Tron Legacy look of live action. As for Michael Bay's take . . . I find it strange that people heap so much hate on his view considering the source material, when I can go back to the cartoons and find Autobots surfing on huge surfboards (The Ultimate Doom), Megatron who transforms into a much smaller gun but is leader of the Decepticons, who keeps a second in command who's always questioning his authority and sometimes trying to kill him, Dinobots created by smart Autobots but given very limited intelligence which leads to comic defiance and hilarity. Children's toys and children's stories that sometimes are hard to rewatch, dialogue and animations. Nostalgia. As for the series that followed, can't say. I do remember one incarnation where Optimus is a robot who transforms into an Ape set during prehistoric times . . .

You know as a Transformers fan I found this article very funny. If others in the fandom don't learn to laugh at themselves then they are indeed sad. It a children's toy line for Primus' sake...