Cynical Cinema

“More than meets the eye” 

Transformers:  Energon is the latest in a long line of Transformers TV series to be released on DVD.  It aired from 2003-2005, on the heels of Transformers:  Armada but before Transformers:  Cybertron and Transformers:  Animated.  Cybertron, which is already out on DVD, was a direct sequel to Energon, which was a direct sequel to Armada.  With me so far?  Armada, Energon, and Cybertron are all Japanese series that were adapted for American audiences with American voices (including David Kaye, the big-voice guy who says “CHEZ…106″).  Transformers:  Energon, The Ultimate Collection came out December 16th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

In this particular series, the plot revolves around a substance called “energon”, which is being mined on the moon, on Mars, and on Earth by the transformers and by humans.  The substance helps the transformers become more powerful, and it will hopefully help the humans end their dependance on foreign oil.  Wait…sorry.  I’ve been watching too much election coverage.  Energon will hopefully help humans power their world with clean technology and avoid a global catastrophe.  That’s it.  The leader of the Decepticons, Megatron, has disappeared, and without their totally-evil leader, the Decepticons are not such bad guys.  They have teamed up with the saintly Autobots to mine the energon and save the world.

But there is a group of other Transformers, perhaps even more evil than the Decepticons under Megatron, who are attempting to take over the world and obtain the energon for themselves.  These evil forces are under the control of something called Alpha-Q.  Alpha-Q creates “terrorcons” to attack the good guys around the solar system, and the Autobots must defend themselves.  With help from their tenuous allies, the Decepticons.  When Megatron is resurrected and once again leads the Decepticons, their are even more problems the Autobots face.  In this series, Energon, the biggest weapon, and skill, the Autobots possess (aside from energon) is the ability to combine themselves into a larger, meaner, fighting machine.

The Ultimate Collection of Transformers:  Energon is really “the complete series”.  So we get to see the energon drama take place from the very beginning right up until the end, through 52 episodes.  Like all other Transformers series, the heroic leader of the Autobots is Optimus Prime, and the evil leader of the Decepticons is Megatron.  The other characters are different from one incarnation to the next, and there is always a new kid to help out each series of Transformers.  This time the “cool” transformer is Hot Shot (playing the “cool robot” role played by Bumblebee in the movie and the original series and the Animated series).  And the kid is named Kicker.  He rides a motorcycle.

So, that’s a brief overview of the Energon series, and the rest of the Transformers universe.  Well, there’s a lot more, but I’m sick of thinking about it.  I finally realized, with Energon, what’s been bugging me most about these new Transformers series, in particular this one and Cybertron.  And it was the theme song that tipped me off.  You know “transformers, more than meets the eye, transformers, robots in disguise”.  This theme song is brought back for Energon (although it is funked up a little - modern kids, you know).  And all of a sudden, I realized that this theme song no longer made any sense at all!

You see, the charm of the original Transformers series was that the robots didn’t look like robots.  They were fire trucks, and sports cars, and so forth.  They lived quietly, among us, and we humans never suspected that the cars we drove or the helicopters that flew overhead or the ambulance that rescued us were in fact sleeper agents for a giant robot army - some evil and some good, but all surprising.  They were robots, in disguise.  But now, with series like Cybertron and Energon, this is no longer the case.  The Transformers exist, all the time, in robot form.  And now they turn into fire trucks and convertibles only to move around.  Now they are fire trucks in disguise.  Disguised as robots.  It doesn’t make any sense.

There is no longer any reason for them to transform into the vehicles.  They fight as robots, they talk as robots, they exist entirely in a robot-friendly world where they have no need to disguise themselves at all.  So really, this series could be about robots who don’t transform, and it would be exactly the same.  Therefore, the whole Trnasformers thing is unnecessary, and by extension the Transformers series are unnecessary.  I know that people who are still Transformers fanatics (and they are out there) will pick this up anyway.  Because they are nuts about all things with the Transformers name on them.  But that’s about all this Energon is.  A big box set with the Transformers name on it.

At first, it may seem incongrous. Alliance Films is releasing a box set of two classic Japanese monster movies from fifty years ago on October 14th. And I gave one of those movies, Rodan, three stars. And I gave the other, War Of The Gargantuas, one star. And yet the box set itself gets eight. I know what you’re thinking. That doesn’t make sense. Packaging two terrible movies together does not make for a great box set. It is merely a whole lot of garbage packaged together to make a slightly bigger heap of garbage. And you would be right. However, that garbage is absolutely glorious. And it really does deserve a positive rating, one that will likely be appreciated only by the few people who have a highly developed sense of irony, or the few people who are obsessive over Japanese monster movie history. Like me. First, the movies themselves.

Rodan (***3/10): The first major monster movie after Godzilla for Toho studios in Japan. The original director of Godzilla, Ishiro Honda, was at the helm for this one as well, and much like Godzilla, the movie is a fairly thinly-veiled political and social comment. Of course, there are nuclear experiments off the coast of Japan that harm the Earth. And the Earth responds to these attacks by releasing Rodan, a giant pterodactyl-like beast that besieges Tokyo. (There are also some giant man-eating bugs.) This is the standard Japanese monster movie set-up. The human impact on the environment creates a massive blowback that threatens to consume mankind. We human beings do violence to the Earth, (like a nuclear test), and the Earth returns the favour by creating a strange, unfamiliar menace. We don’t know how to react to that menace, and we respond to that with violence as well. The violent reaction of the human beings makes the situation worse, and we’re left to wonder at the end of the movie - who is the bad guy here, the monster or us?

That being said, this is not a very good movie. In that old guy-in-a-monster-suit destroying a miniature city tradition of Japanese cinema, there are a lot of obvious blue screen shots and some hilarious smashing of toy tanks and helicopters and boats. For it’s time, 1956, the special effects are pretty good, especially the amazingly detailed miniature cities. But that was the entire point of the movie. After the special effects, the story is weak at best, featuring human beings running away from the creature, the army going after the creature, more people running, more army intervention, and then the big finish. The narration and the dialogue are ludicrous. The dubbing into English is hilarious. The final narration, when the whole movie is done, must be seen to be believed. It is one of the most cheesy, nonsensical speeches delivered on film this side of Ed Wood. And yet, it manages to somehow achieve a sort of poignancy. Bizarre!

War of the Gargantuas (*1/10): Again, Ishiro Honda took the helm for this one, which is far worse than Rodan. First of all, there is no social comment in the film whatsoever. There is an attempt, toward the end, to create in the audience a bond with one of the giant destructive creatures, in the vein of King Kong. It doesn’t work. The movie opens with a weird, froggy looking octopus in the sea attacking a ship. But at the last second the crew of that ship is saved by a monstrous green giant who rises from the sea and kills the octopus. Then HE sinks the ship. And that sets the tone for the entire movie. A guy in a green gorilla suit capsizing toy ships and flipping over houses and throwing tiny trees at another guy in a brown gorilla suit. These are not, technically, gorillas, because that had been done in King Kong. Instead, these are “gargantuas”, a term that appears to be arbitrarily chosen to describe two giant hairy humanoids that are destroying Tokyo.

The dialogue in this movie is weak, even for badly-dubbed Japanese monster movies. The plot contrivances are terrible, even for badly-thought-out Japanese monster movies. You see, the good, kind gargantua escaped from his cage where he lived with humans, caught his flesh on a rock, that flesh floated out to the sea where it bonded with plankton and created the new, sea-dwelling, evil gargantua. The military plan to trap that evil one by luring it into a trap, where they can shine lights on it and make it run away. Ummm….what kind of trap is that? The bad gargantua growls a lot, and it sounds a LOT like a jet engine. But here’s what makes this movie entirely enjoyable for those with a highly developed sense of irony:

This movie looks, a lot, like it was written, produced, directed and acted by seven-year-olds. That explains the bizarre plot contrivances and unintentional red herrings. There are laser guns, and electricity being shot at these giant creatures in the form of lightning bolts. But the real idiocy (or, genius, if you will) comes from the creatures themselves. Both of them move around as though there are un-coordinated four year olds in the suits. They shamble around like very, very small children who are still not fully accustomed to walking. The final showdown between the two gargantuas begins with them both posing AT each other, like two eight-year-olds doing “I know karate” moves. It is simply bizarre, but watched a certain way, it is amazing.

Bringing Godzilla Down To Size (*******7/10): This is a 70-minute documentary included in the box, on the Rodan disc. The history of Japanese monster movies, from Gojira (Godzilla) in 1954 until today. The documentary focuses on the craftsmen who created these movie worlds in the 1950s and 1960s. They speak passionately about the tradition of their monsters and their movies. The guy-in-a-rubber-suit style that so many North Americans make fun of today is essential to the ethos of the Japanese. And that’s exactly what I love about it. Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, it’s OBVIOUS that it’s a guy in a rubber suit. But the craftsmanship that went into that suit, and into the little city that was incredibly rendered over many months only so it could be destroyed in a few hours, is unbelievable. The love these artists have for their creations is wonderful. And the tradition is magnificent.

The tradition arises from the context of World War II, the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan, and the American nuclear tests that took place near Japan in the 1950s. The tradition also arose from the American film King Kong in 1933. The Japanese did not have the time or the budget to do the stop-motion animation that created King Kong, so they were forced to create the man-in-a-beast-suit effects. Which some would suggest are far cooler. Then there was the politics and social environment. In the early 50s, there was a real-life nuclear scare. After an American nuclear test, the crew of a Japanese fishing boat developed radiation poisoning. There were tuna boycotts across Japan, and many demonstrations against war and against the bomb. Ishiro Honda, the original Gojira director, was an avowed pacifist, who saw Godzilla as a great way to put his anti-war, anti-bomb protest up there on the screen. If we do this to the Earth, it’s only a matter of time before the Earth does this to us.

There is one scene in this documentary that brings together three guys who have played Godzilla, that is, have been the guys inside the rubber suits in different movies. Listening to them recall the mishaps that took place on the sets, when they couldn’t see in the suits and fell over and wrecked the sets before it was time, or when they almost drowned in the water scenes, is priceless. These guys absolutely love the fact that THEY have been Godzilla. Not CGI, not stop-motion animation, they have been THAT guy in THAT suit. Their love for this creature and this tradition is palpable, and this entire box set might be worth it for that scene alone.

The Japanese monster tradition goes far beyond Godzilla, beyond Mothra and King Ghidorah and Gigan. All of it is worthwhile, for one reason or another, and this box set is an excellent place to start.