Monday, September 04, 2006

AICN.com Shia LaBeouf Interview


AICN.com and MTV.com had a sit down with Transformers star Shia "Sam Witwicky" LaBeouf to discuss the movie. The MTV.com article was just a fluff piece to keep TF on everyone's mind. AICN.com article is a bit more in depth and much longer.

- "Megatron’s crutch now is that he's frozen. But it's modernized. You can't have a toy gun. You've got 9 year olds watching this movie and yes, we're creating mythology, but you can't make a toy gun your antihero and then have Hasbro go out and sell toy guns with the little yellow cap on it, you know? It'll look [f'ing] ridiculous to have Megatron with a yellow nose, you know what I mean? It'd look retarded."

Can't say I disagree with that. The reason why is its now illegal to make a realistic toy gun. As a result Megs can never be re-released stateside in his original form. Still, Megs frozen for most of the movie? Can't really say that warms the cockles of my heart.

- "The fact that it's a Razor, a plane that nobody's seen before, that the military is giving us... that nobody has filmed or seen. I mean, CNN has not seen this plane and we're filming it. It's cool. It gives it that edgy shit. People have seen guns before, but to make Megatron something that nobody's ever seen and make it an edgy presence..."

Does that mean that Megatron's Earth form will be the Razor? A military secret jet turned into a toy, isn't politics and Hollywood grand.

- "The engine of Sam, for the film, essentially he is the liaison between the robots and the humans. ...the reason Sam is able to communicate with the robots... It's not because he knows some [f'ing] alien language. Sam Whitwicky comes from a lineage of explorers. Captain Archibald Whitwicky was his great, great grandfather, a 19th Century Seaman, who, during a search, an exploration of the arctic circle, fell upon an ice cave. Fell into the ice cave and into a hand; the hand of Megatron. What he saw when he turned was an eye which burned a laser into his eyeglasses, which was a map of where the Energon Cube is being stored."

Still not sold on the "Energon Cube" name. Still on sold on selling a family heirloom on eBay. Still no idea why Megs land on earth in the late 1800s (and even though evil smart bad guy, gets trapped in ice) and its takes a hundred plus years later for rest to follow. I hope they explain either in this film or the next why the time lapse and other questions that gets raised in that scenario.

- Shia later describes the film as being nonstop, "There is no let-up and the only let up there will be is the humor of it. Even the romance is action-driven."

I take that as a good sign. Transformers should be all action. If they can get some character in there, all the better, but if they freeze everything and then poorly shoehorn in character, then why bother (the mistake Bay has made on his previous films). I am not looking for a diatribe on the human condition, just a highly entertaining popcorn flick worth watching again and again.

- "If you're not confused, you're not paying attention."

I just liked the phrase. But the gist is the film is so massive that the cast etc loose track of what is happening.

Above is really where most of the Transformers info was. The rest of the interview was mostly an ode to Michael "General Patton" Bays and how much work is it to do the film of the Transformers size. All in all, an interesting read which you read in it entirety here.

1 comment:

  1. I'm pretty much ok with the changes of the Transformers made with this movie now. The fact is, things in the story have been changed in each continuity. The comic books had definite differences from the G1 cartoon. And with each continuity, there will continue to be differences; some minor, some major.

    The only thing I'm not happy with is the Matrix being called "the Energon Cube". But you know what? I'll get over it.

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