Adam’s Crawl Space: Transmorphers: Fall of Man

Jun 012010

This review is for all of you out there that can‚Äôt spell or are just blatantly unobservant human beings. ¬†From the willfully ignorant to the unsuspecting simpletons, this is for you.

Transmorphers: Fall of Man is part of a family of copycat films, or ‚Äòmockbusters.‚Äô¬† These films are designed in hopes of catching the one or the one million morons who will pick up a DVD box, see the letters TRANS, and just assume they are renting or purchasing the new Michael Bay Transformers movie. ¬†Initially, I was kind of put off by this tactic and this shady business practice. ¬†But as I was saying, all this is really doing is rounding up the idiots and putting them in a pen. ¬†If you rent or buy Transmorphers and didn‚Äôt have the sense or care to read the box properly, then you deserve every bit of pain and suffering that this movie will inflict upon you. ¬†You think Transformers 2 was a pile of shit? ¬†Well buckle up, motherfuckers.

Those of us that are a part of the Breach and it‚Äôs loyal base of readers would probably say, ‚ÄúHow does this happen? ¬†Are people just retarded?‚Äù ¬† We can‚Äôt really understand how these mix-ups take place because we‚Äôre a savvy, switched-on bunch of people. ¬†It does indeed happen though, quite often. ¬†I can remember the mother of a friend of mine mistakenly renting AIP Studios classic, Alien Space Avenger when she was asked to rent Aliens back when I was in high school. ¬† Alien Space Avenger turned out to be one of the most unintentionally funny b-movies I‚Äôve ever seen, but that‚Äôs another story.

So when watching Transmorphers: Fall of Man, I knew exactly what I had done. ¬†This, unfortunately, makes me worse than whatever asshole confused the movie with Bay‚Äôs glorified b-movie, because I know what the hell I‚Äôm doing. ¬†I have no regard for my own well-being when it comes to what I am willing to subject myself to. ¬†I mean hell, I watched Sex and the City 2 this weekend, in the theater, with my hard-earned dollars. ¬†I‚Äôm the biggest shithead I know for all I can tell.

Let me sum up for you what Transmorphers is about in several sentences. ¬†Please feel free to skip this paragraph. ¬†Alright so Transmorphers:¬† Fall of Man is a sequel actually. ¬†It relies just a bit on whatever went on in that original cinematic atrocity, so I‚Äôm a bit clueless but here goes: ¬†There are evil alien life forms controlling various machinery on Earth. ¬†It‚Äôs a little bit of Transformers and a little bit of Terminator. ¬†The alien robots want to take over Earth. ¬†Why? ¬†Fuck if I know. ¬† Because Earth is pretty rad, I‚Äôm assuming. ¬†Aliens are always all up in our shit, they love us. ¬†Ok, so, the evil robots are taking over and we have to stop them. ¬†That‚Äôs it. ¬†There‚Äôs an ex-military dude named Jake, who used to fuck this girl Madison but now they‚Äôre broken up. ¬†Then there‚Äôs this sheriff named Hadley (Bruce Boxleitner) who is clueless and is doing his best Clint Eastwood impression complete with gravely voice. ¬†Throw in the token scientist and BAM you have an action thriller!

The movie opens with this long Helicopter shot over a city. ¬†Presumably this is to assure us that the movie is legit and not some low-budget cash-in on stupidity. ¬†The camera slowly lowers and we end up following the car of a girl, the daughter of a diplomat (which one I don‚Äôt know) cruising around a small town in California. ¬†She‚Äôs bitching on her cell phone to her boyfriend, and eventually the cell-phone ‚Äòtransmorphs‚Äô into a robotic spider, attaches itself to her face and burns a hole in her head. ¬†On paper, that sounds like it could be pretty wicked but when you see it unfold on the screen, there‚Äôs no way you‚Äôll be able to contain your laughter.

I’m sure you’re dying to know just how poorly done the robots are in the movie.¬† Well, they’re as bad as you would expect them to be.¬† You know how sometimes you’re playing a clearly rushed videogame and there’s a cutscene where the textures pop-in after about 5 seconds?¬† It’s kind of like that, except the textures never really load.¬† There’s a sheen to the animation that, of course, makes it look rather cartoonish and well below what even an amateur artist could pull off.¬† The designs of the robots themselves are also fairly uninspired and most of the time I didn’t really know what in the fucking hell I was looking at.¬† Some of them look like mutated Volkswagen angels while others appeared to be bad copies of those old Go-Bots.¬† Remember the Go-Bots?¬† NOBODY liked those.

Aside from all of the predictably bad CGI robots in the flick, there‚Äôs also a lot of funny continuity error bullshit going on. ¬†One in particular, had me laughing hysterically and, when I retell it, may not seem quite as funny. ¬†There‚Äôs a scene in which Jake (our ex-military guy remember) is brandishing a 9 millimeter, and all the while, the magazine for this weapon is not properly seated. ¬†It‚Äôs just hanging out, about a third of the way. ¬†I kept thinking, well that‚Äôs just silly, I mean this is supposed to be an ex-army veteran and he thinks he‚Äôs going to kill shit when he can‚Äôt even load a fucking sidearm correctly? ¬†That‚Äôs funny enough, but when we cut to a few scenes later, Sheriff Hadley asks Jake to turn his weapon over to him, you see Hadley take the gun, look at it for a second and then properly seat the magazine! ¬†It‚Äôs hard to really explain how silly this is without actually seeing it, but the reason it‚Äôs so funny to me is clearly Bruce Boxleitner, the guy who plays Hadley, just noticed in that second that the thing was hanging out and decides to be Johnny on the spot and fix it. ¬†It‚Äôs not a character decision at all. ¬†For all Boxleitner knew that part of him doing that would end up on the cutting room floor. ¬†Brilliance.

Jake is also allergic to car doors. ¬†Allow me to explain. ¬†There‚Äôs a shot in a scene where Jake is reaching to open the rear door of Hadley‚Äôs squad car. ¬†As soon as he grabs the handle and pulls up, you can easily tell the door is locked and he has this ‚Äúoh COME ON!‚Äù look on his face for a split second. ¬†They cut immediately after this, but I fucking saw it and little things like this were keeping me from taking a razor to my fucking arm. ¬†Another classic Jake car door scene was one in which our heroes are making a getaway in an ‚Äò89 Chrysler mini-van, which is already funny enough, but when he hops in and closes the sliding door, it won‚Äôt shut. ¬†He continues trying to shut it as the van speeds off and the camera eventually cuts. ¬†It‚Äôs fucking comedy, people. ¬†It was all I had that was keeping me conscious, give me a break here.

Aside from Jake‚Äôs car door antics, there are a couple of other unintentionally chuckle-worthy scenes that make me want to go ahead and recommend this movie. ¬†I can only recommend this if you‚Äôre drunk though, please do not attempt to watch this movie if you‚Äôre sober. ¬†If you want to see a pacemaker pop out of a girl‚Äôs chest, and then watch her get the most ridiculous mercy killing ever put to film, then this is your movie. ¬†Seriously, the guy that puts her out of her misery fills her full of holes, man. ¬†At least 10 god damn gunshots into her torso. ¬†Mercy killings by handgun should only be like one or two shots MAXIMUM, ¬†guys. ¬†Fucking brutal. ¬†And awesome.

There‚Äôs also a delightful little scene in which the differences between ‚Äòextra-terrestrials‚Äô and ‚Äòaliens‚Äô are discussed. ¬†Yes, to these assholes in the movie, there is a difference. ¬†By the time they got to this, I was clearly a fucking space-cadet myself and I lost my damn mind with laughter. ¬†Again, I have to recommend a viewing of this, but only if you‚Äôre drunk, or drunk with friends over.

Oh, and a homeland security dude gets stomped on by a horribly textured CGI alien robot foot.

I‚Äôm gone.

Here’s the trailer for Alien Space Avenger too. You need to see it. There are boobs in here, so I suppose it’s not safe for work.