SCIENCE FICTION mirrors science reality, with the key difference that sci-fi can make its metaphysical claims openly, without fear of losing tenure. So it is that Hasbro’s Transformers franchise has been transferred to film by executive producer Steven Spielberg and director Michael Bay as an alternate telling of the angelic war in the heavenlies.

I really didn’t want to like the movie, probably because it seemed like a childish concept. Giant shape-shifting robots as the premise for a major mass-market release? Really?

But it works. The script, while obviously aimed at teens, is intelligent, the direction is taut, the effects are startlingly good, and the performances are compelling. Shia LaBeouf is a fine young actor who has that Harrison Ford/Bruce Willis quality of carrying an action film appearing to hang from a thread.

So with all of that state of the art slam-bang action exploding from the screen, it’s easy to miss the meme.

For years, science fiction films have fed the public alternate prophecies of the end times presented as engaging tales of aliens from outer space who want to save us or destroy us. In Transformers, the eternal war between the forces loyal to God and the rebels who followed Lucifer is depicted as a battle between the remnants of of a society of giant morphing robots.

The leader of the enemy faction, Megatron, looks like a mechanical version of Peter Jackson’s balrog, the demonic beast sent down into the pit by Gandalf. His followers are similarly menacing, all dark colors and sharp edges. The good autobots, led by Optimus Prime, are a likable collection of gleaming, brightly colored ‘bots, displaying all the characteristics we value in angels action heroes: bravery, self-sacrifice, and funny one-liners.

The conflict is an epic struggle for the very survival of humanity. As always, victory is achieved by the hands of man — with some help from the good angels aliens.

This theme is so common in science fiction over the last 25 years that the conspiracy-minded, like me, has to wonder whether the world is being psychologically prepared to greet Jesus Christ and his heavenly army with advanced weaponry supplied by our helpful gray-skinned space brothers. By the time of our Lord’s triumphant return “with the clouds”, so that “every eye will see him”, a couple generations of media-savvy Earthlings at least will have the imagery of movies like Independence Day firmly planted in our collective consciousness. We’ll be as likely to shoot as shout “Hallelujah!”

All in all, Transformers is an enjoyable film that manages to deliver tension and breath-taking action sequences with a minimum of gore. John Turturro and Jon Voigt lead an excellent supporting cast, and there are enough laughs sprinkled throughout the movie to keep it from the oppressive feeling of films like War of the Worlds (yet another Steven Spielberg alien film with obvious supernatural overtones — remember seeing the Martian pods “fall like lightning from heaven”?).

And lest you think I’m going overboard in seeing theology in an action film based on kids’ toys, consider the sequel, Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen, which is in theaters now. The very phrase “the fallen” has clear biblical connotations, and it’s no coincidence that the fallen angel Transformer is buried in the Middle East. Beneath the Great Pyramid.

Popularity: 31% [?]

NOTE: The music featured in Knowing is the second movement from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony–a personal favorite. The music is dark and funereal–a perfect fit to the film.

APOCALYPTIC movies are all the rage, providing Hollywood directors with a perfect excuse to employ the big budget magic of CGI to destroy world cities–usually New York–while preaching a non-Biblical message–usually ‘save the Earth from humans’. Director Alex Proyas’ Knowing goes beyond blowing up cities to blowing up the entire planet.

John Koestler (Nicholas Cage, shown left, checking the numbers on Lucinda’s list) is an MIT professor whose outlook on life is dismal at best. The accidental death of his wife in a hotel fire has left Koestler jaded and convinced that the world is chaotic, and that nothing matters. The son of a preacher, Koestler has turned his back on both his father and the church. He disdains those with faith (dismissing his sister’s offer of prayer as irrelevant and useless).

Koestler has one son, Caleb, who possesses a unique ability to ‘hear’ what others do not–a gift similar to Lucinda Embry, a child from fifty years earlier, who has left a mysterious message hidden in her school’s time capsule. Caleb is the recipient of the coded page of numbers, but it is his father, John (like John the ‘Revelator’), who decodes the ‘prophecy’ held within the numbers. (more…)

Popularity: 53% [?]

Reviews of Mutant Chronicles and The Devil’s Tomb

The Mutant Chronicles

A COUPLE of weekends ago, entirely by accident, we took in a pair of recent films featuring the excellent Ron Perlman (Hellboy).  In both films, Perlman engages in quests to vanquish an ancient evil that had been buried and sealed beneath insanely huge alloy steel hatches that were never to be opened under any circumstances.

Of course, the hatches are opened, an analogue of the release of Satan and his minions at the end of the 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ. Hell literally breaks loose, and the plots are off and running.

Mutant Chronicles, a 2008 release, is based on a 15 year-old role-playing game, and the movie has the feel of an RPG.  The production design has the ambiance of a high-quality video game; lighting cues had me looking for important objects the team needed to collect for the game’s next level. In fact, the production elements were a bit distracting at times, as though setting the steampunk-like mood took precedence over the plot.

That said, Mutant Chronicles is interesting enough to fill a couple of hours.  The subterranean evil is a machine that fell from space and has been buried in the Earth for 10,000 years.  Perlman plays a monk from an order that’s preserved an ancient prophecy of what happens when the hatch opens — and, most important, instructions for destroying the machine.  Which is rather a necessity; the machine has created an army of crazed, deadly mutants with wicked claw-things where their right arms should be (like the Reavers from Joss Whedon’s Firefly, only deadlier), and the Earth has pretty much been evacuated. (more…)

Popularity: 15% [?]

SCOTT Derickson’s The Day the Earth Stood Still isn’t so much a remake as a re-imagining of Robert Wise’s 1951 classic. The original 1951 screenplay, written by Edmund North and Henry Bates, is an indictment on mankind’s warlike nature. By contrast, David Scarpa’s revamp screenplay is an indictment of man’s war on nature.

Once again, we see Keanu Reeves playing the hero of the Earth, this type as Klaatu, a human-alien hybrid ‘clone’ constructed from a sample of human DNA (extracted in the opening scene). Jennifer Connelly ably plays ‘Klaatu’s’ female companion Helen Benson, but unlike Patricia Neal’s character of the same name in 1951, this Benson is a PhD genius rather than a mundane secretary. Benson’s 1951 version son, an inquisitive but loving boy named Bobby (Billy Gray) is replaced by a soured and sullen stepson named Jacob, who provides convenient plotting devices that I won’t get into here (it might spoil it for those who’ve not seen it). (more…)

Popularity: 9% [?]