Transformers

Quite coincidentally, I watched Michael Bay’s “Transformers” while on the trip to Al Udeid Air Force Base. If you’ve seen the movie, then you know it opens at a “forward operating base” in Qatar and is the scene of a giant robot attack. Al Udeid looks nothing like the FOB in the movie (for one thing, I didn’t see any F-117 Nighthawks parked openly on the runway). Still, I thought watching the opening scene on the C-17 and then landing there was a cool coincidence.

I was surprised I liked the movie; this despite the fact that 1) most of Michael Bay’s oeuvres are so cheesy and over the top that I can hardly sit through them, and 2) that the movie pays overt homage to the Air Force. Transformers was still an exception; it brought a surprisingly human, and at times, funny, story to life with a cast dominated by CGI robots. With respect to being funny, at one point a kid with a video camera running towards the smoldering impact site of one of the Autobots cries, “This is a hundred times cooler than Armageddon!” The smokingly hot Meagan Fox, who plays the girl with a troubled past who is a master car mechanic, doesn’t hurt the movie (at all).

But yes, there are cheesy, slow-motion shots of Air Force pilots slowly getting into A-10 Warthogs (or, Thunderbolt IIs, if you’re a purist) and F-22 Raptors. There is even some kind of Air Force special forces team that heroically escapes the the forward operating base after the attack by the evil Decepticons and manages to perform mechanical forensics on a piece of one of the robots while flying in a C-17. At one point, one of those Air Force special commandos says, “We can’t make a stand without the Air Force!” Clearly, Michael Bay’s production company cut some deal for Air Force participation that effectively turns the movie into a recruiting commercial.

Still, I enjoyed the movie mostly because I found myself actually caring for the plight of the Autobots. I can see why some critics called it “ one of the best movie you haven’t seen of 2007.”