Giant city-stomping, summer blockbuster robots ahoy! Ahead of a much-trumpeted worldwide release in a couple of weeks’ time, we lucky punters are being tantalised with six new stills from Michael Bay’s
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Three of the shots depict a dusty, battered Bumblebee looking like he’s coming under some serious strain in a Middle Eastern milieu, while there is also one of Optimus Prime, apparently poised to apply the clunking iron boot to the collective enemy backside. Though the composition tells of Bay’s customary clutter, the detail of the CGI on the Transformers themselves does at least provide indiscreet notification of where much of that estimated $200m production budget has been lavished.
With a story that is both globe and history-spanning, producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura has been dropping a few hints recently as to the nature of the titular Fallen, suggesting he/it is none other than the 13th Apostle. However that slightly
Da Vinci Code piece of plot-dressing is small beer for the fans – certainly when compared to the sixth of the shots, featuring Devastator, the new character who has prompted the most significant degree of online pre-release pulse-racing.
Whereas the movie Devastator is constituted of seven smaller Decepticons, and towers over the other already-not-inconsiderably-dimensioned Transformers, I recall his old cartoon/comic book incarnation, where he was put together out of the five Constructicons (is there anything more menacing than a malevolent cement mixer? I think not). Astonishingly irritatingly for completist British school kids, you couldn’t buy the Constructicons on these shores, and although there were always a few wiseacres who claimed to have them at home – purchased by their Dad on some fantastical business trip to America/Japan/delete as applicable – I never glimpsed any in the plastic. Still, that’s schoolboys for you. Filthy stinking liars, the lot of ’em.
December 03, 2008, 04:25:29 PM
