Transformers 2 to Be a Big Car Commercial, And Why That’s Not a Bad Thing

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 23, 2008

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it necessary to say that I was a huge supporter of the first Transformers film. My loyalty to director Michael Bay runs deep, so deep that I will contend to this day that The Island was a decent film. Nothing I can do about Pearl Harbor, but The Island had its merits. In the case of Transformers, I was willing to trade off the commercialized nature of having all of the robots change into GM vehicles in order to get a big, badass film that featured some of my childhood’s most cherished characters. In a sense, I was the poor Russian boy during the Cold War, who willingly gave up his free speech under communist rule for the simple fact that he knew he would be fed — it was a trade off.

And while I realized that many others out there were not willing to make said trade off, I wasn’t aware that it was cause for such disdain for Mr. Bay’s film. It didn’t hit me until I received an email last night from a reader named Terry, who dropped me a link to a story over on Slashfilm that broke down all of the known Transformers models in the upcoming sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Terry wrote simply, “Have you seen this? This is absolute bull sh*t. I will not see this movie if it is going to be one big car commercial.”

As much as I would like to be able to say that I can understand where Terry is coming from on this issue, I can’t say that I do. I suppose that I was softened to the idea of an all-GM sponsored Transformers film while watching the behind the scenes footage of the first film, upon which Michael Bay mentions at one point how the film probably would not have been possible without some of the sponsorships. You see, Transformers wasn’t always a high priority project, certainly not one that Paramount would be willing to sink $300+ million dollars of production monies into. Therefore, the sponsorships from companies like GM helped keep the production budget down under $150 million, a figure that is unbelievably low when compared to that of Spider-Man 3, which cost upwards of $260 million.

So as it stands, Transformers fans really have a choice — would you rather have a Transformers movie where the vehicles are the new Chevy Beat, the Chevy Trax, the Saab Aero-X (pictured below) and the new, upgraded Chevy Camaro (pictured above, courtesy of Jalopnik), or would you like to have no Transformers movie at all?

Personally, I am of the belief that the commercialization of big-budget films such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is ok as long as it doesn’t detract from the film. And at least with the first film, it did not detract from the film one bit — and I have a feeling that round two will follow suit.

What do you think, is it okay for Transformers 2 to be a big car commercial if that means that the film will get more money to invest in better, bigger special effects and whatnot?

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