Respect Authority

Ever since last year, when I made my first attempt at watching Shia LaBeouf flirt with women way out of his league in Transformers, I have had a vehement hatred for the movie which was, among other things, poorly acted and exceedingly melodramatic.

I’ve always understood that there’s an element of superhero tales, and Transformers in particular, that I will never understand or appreciate – I was, after all, never a 13-year-old boy. And even though the social issues brought up by X-Men, or the chiseled abs highlighted in Batman, had enough universal appeal to cross gender lines, Transformers was a distinctly male show. (This is the point at which indignant females will insist that they watched, and loved Transformers. To which I say, shut up and stop lying). The concept, after all, is a veritable orgy of adolescent male favorites – good guys and bad guys, cars, trucks and giant robots. Throw in a cowboy and some astronauts and the sheer perfection would emotionally stunt boys the world over.

So it was with trepidation that I even approached the film in the first place. After all, I have no real nostalgia for Transformers and until Optimus Prime t-shirts re-entered pop culture as go-to apparel for endearingly nerdy 20-somethings, I barely had any idea what to expect, save a lot of metal and…gears and stuff.

Yet despite my initial rejection of the movie – and subsequent refusal to accept anyone else’s opinion on the matter – I took it upon myself to give the whole thing another go this week. Last night I sat down with some warm soup, cold beer and a bowl of …“Cheerios,” turned the lights off and settled in for some intense robot-on-robot action. (I’m talking about fighting, jeez). After all, my neighbors have been playing an ancient Mary J. Blige CD on repeat for weeks, at an absurd volume, so two hours of gunshots and screeching steel seemed a fair auditory rebuttal.
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Transformers was part of many people’s youths. I’m not sure if the show had any real artistic merit outside of being a cartoon about gigantic fighting robots that can turn into cars, or what exactly the Transformers represented… outside of being gigantic fighting robots that can turn into cars, but they were nonetheless pretty awesome.

And they knew how to have a good time! In fact, I’ve based the majority of my substance use on an episode of this quality children’s program when all the Decepticons get maaaad tore up on some energon cubes. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’ve been chasing the energon dragon ever since.

Apparently, so has Swiss/French artist Guillaume Reymond. The artist, who previously won a 2007 YouTube Video Award for his Human Tetris, is taking his concept to a much larger scale with his incredible Transformers project. Read More ›