Casting Call Issue 31 11.07.07: Transformers!
Posted by Jason Chamberlain on 11.07.2007
Jason Chamberlain returns with a brand new Casting Call, and talks about Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Megatron.... and all the robots in disguise!
So this is what it's like to have internet!
Forgive me, but I'd almost forgotten. I've been through quite the upheaval in the last few weeks. For starters, I've moved into my first apartment! It's nice, but for the first week it didn't have internet, hence my absence last week (sorry about that, by the way).
But now I do. Of course, my newfound bachelor freedom hasn't come without a price. I'm a little farther away from my friends than I'd like to be. And the street I've moved onto has just been thrown into the middle of a construction holocaust. Seriously. Half of the street is a dirt mountain; the rest is blocked off by trucks. Makes going to work, or the gym, or anywhere, a real adventure. So that's awesome.
But all in all, I can't complain about how things are going. It's nice to have a place of my own for once... I have a job that hardly feels like a job at times (tonight I got paid to watch a hockey game!) and now that I have internet access, I can give my work at 411 all the time and effort it deserves. Things are looking up!
So Casting Call returns today, and since the theme of my life of late seems to be change, it's only fitting to discuss characters that go through dramatic changes. Quick, alarming changes. Transformations, if you will.
I'm talking about characters that any child of the 80's like me will know and love. Characters that dominated at the box office this summer. Characters that are (forgive me) more than meets the eye.
Yep. This week I'm all about The Transformers,
Robots in disguise!
You've got the Autobots, the Decepticons, and the humans that get caught between them and their war. It's an interesting mix that produces some interesting characters!
You've got a wholly positive portrayal of the American war effort and some courageous soldiers to go along with it, guys who really put themselves on the line against these badass machines that are coming to kill everybody. There's a white guy and a black guy, and honestly I can't remember their names. They do have names, right? That's sad. I've watched this movie a ton, too. Anyway, these soldiers are the real deal. Brave, selfless, and heroic.
There are other human characters. And Jon Voight. Any movie featuring Jon Voight carrying a shotgun is awesome. But the two main humans are Sam and Mikayla.
Mikayla is really, really hot. And strong willed. She knows a lot about cars from her days helping her carjacking dad, and she's really hot. She's Sam's love interest, and is really hot. Did I mentions she's really hot?
Sam is basically the audience; he's the character you take the journey with. He's also a pretty relatable everyman. He's not the popular guy in school, he's the funny outcast who gets elastics thrown at him in the classroom and who can barely scrape together the cash to take a girl on a date. He's also got a heroic side in him as well, as he faces the various dangers in the film with surprising readiness and poise. Sure he can't make the football team, but he can save the human race!
He is basically the embodiment of Prime's respect for the human race. He tells his Autobot followers that though the humans are primitive, he also sees the goodness in them and their capacity for courage. Unlike Megatron, who only sees weakness, Prime sees the potential for strength.
But the movie is called Transformers, and it's only right that they be the main characters.
The Decepticons and their leader Megatron are the bad guys. You probably knew that much. As I've mentioned, Megatron and his followers are the ones who see only weakness in mankind. They sought to claim the power of the All Spark for themselves. As they say, power corrupts, and the Decepticons were corrupted. Their selfishness sparked a war that destroyed their planet and splintered their race across the universe. All because they couldn't play nice!
The Autobots, on the other hand, wanted to use the power for good, to create new worlds and keep their own safe.
When they arrive on Earth, they immediately seek to protect Sam, the human they know can lead them to the Cube. More than once, the Autobots, specifically Bumblebee and Optimus, risk their lives to keep Sam and his fellow humans safe. Prime mentions more than once that Autobots won't harm humans and Bumblebee develops what can accurately be described as a friendship with the boy he's been charged to protect.
Even when a group of humans, Sector Seven, abduct and torture Bumblebee, it doesn't shake Prime's belief in mankind. As he and his mortal enemy Megatron tussle in the streets during the films climax, Megatron taunts Prime for fighting for the weak. He tells him that humans don't deserve to live. It's your classic manifest destiny, top of the food chain thinking. The Decepticons think that because they are powerful, they have the right to decide who lives and who dies.
The Autobots, on the other hand, also have great power but they use it responsibly. Prime believes in freedom and the power of choice, and he believes humans have the right to make their own. He is even willing to sacrifice himself to destroy the Cube if he can't defeat Megatron, all to spare Earth from the horrors of an unleashed Decepticon army. He risks his life, and those of his followers, for his belief that humans can't be made to suffer for the mistakes of his race.
Luckily for the humans (and with considerable help from Sam) the Autobots triumph, Megatron is destroyed, and the world is safe. And then everybody rocks out to some Linkin Park.
