El Chupacabra

A terrible movie in disguise...

I found this movie entertaining for its exquisite shortcomings in almost all areas, and yet I still shudder at the thought of it. A completely bastardized, low-budget amalgamation of Transformers, Terminator 2, and Fried Green Tomatoes. Okay, that last one was just to make sure you're still paying attention.

Transmorphers has the same humans versus machines in a post-apocalyptic Armageddon slant as Terminator 2. Humans were on the losing end in both movies, but at least in The Terminator it made sense.

I say Transformers because the movie is called Transmorphers, yet another classic, opportunistic cinematic release on the part of The Asylum with the goal of tricking infrequent renters, suckers for self-punishment, and people who read the box cover before they take the movie home. In other words, sheer genius! The list of knockoffs from those magnificent bastards is growing steadily and everyone is a target as the Asylum category demonstrates. I'm curious how they decide which Hollywood blockbusters to shamelessly rip-off when there are two or more Bruckheimeresque mega-productions slated for release. Whatever their method, the result is always low-budget cinematic gruel that, despite the upset stomach hours afterwards, can leave you with a guilty satisfaction. Like eating your own boogers or peeing on the toilet seat and leaving it. And didn't someone once say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? The Asylum can use that little gem in court if the big movie studios sue.

The premise behind transmorphers is that our efforts at making contact with other intelligences in neighboring galaxies turn out to be a very bad idea. We end up making an aggressive civilization of robots aware of Earth and they decide to "destroy all humans". Why they decided to do this was not in the exposition, but I think it had something to do with an artifact called the Allspark. What? Wrong movie? Damn, you win this round Asylum. My mind is already merging the two. Still, the premise is interesting; the SETI project may be the death of us all .

Sadly, thousands of huge, robotic killer attack drones laden with lasers, missiles, and spinning saw blades for hands are unable to extirpate the human race. In fact, humans manage to survive through 300 years of internecine war and they still manage to dress like extras in The Matrix. From what I could tell, the humans had machine guns, exploding Frisbees, some flying motorcycles, and a couple spaceships and yet managed to survive waves of flying robots, skyscraper sized robots, and robots with massive lasers and missile launchers sticking out of every orifice. How is this sort of protracted war possible? Well, for one thing, the robots moved at about the pace of a 90 year-old grandmother with arthritic knees. Secondly, guns on boths sides made noises, but didn't seem to be shooting anything. Third, in the most convenient and widely-used plot device for stopping an invading alien army, the robots are reliant on a single master robot. Of course, the master robot is destroyed in the finale and the black sky immediately turns a nice shade of blue as scores of humans crawl out of their holes. You'll want to scream and throw your $90 Optimus Prime statue at your TV when you see these pathetic wastes of tungsten.

As for the production values, Transmorphers was hit, miss, miss, and miss. On the plus side, it had quite a bit of computer animation and the very beginning was actually quite slick as thousands of robot containing pods moved ominously through space towards planet earth. That's where the hits end. On the miss side of things, it seems the special effects crew either ran out of budget or time or both and were unable to include all the weapon special effects. The result was numerous scenes in which humans pretended to fire guns while shaking them them at something off screen... Very entertaining.

There was also a curious political statement hidden among the sucky robots, a married, lesbian couple. Maybe that's why the robots invaded? They believe marriage should only be between two robots of the opposite polarity. Overall, I am forced to reccommend this movie as we still fondly remember and laugh about how bad it was. I probably enjoyed the real Transformers movie less!

El Chupacabra's Ratings
Entertainment: 85%	B-Movieness: 94%
Quality: 16%	Regret: 45%

Crap Bag

More crap than meets the eye

To capitalize on the summer blockbuster movie from Michael Bay Transformers Asylum Entertainment has come out with Transmorphers. Although it doesn’t have anything similar to Transformers other than it has giant robots in it. The story seems to combine elements from Terminator, Aliens, Demolition Man and The Matrix minus the special effects, the storyline, the acting and the sound effects. These poorly designed robots somehow managed to invade the earth and push the human race on to the brink of extinction. The movie takes place in the future after the earth has been occupied by giant robots for over 200 years. The remaining humans have been forced into underground cities that for some reason are patrolling with giant underground search lights. The robots seem to be immune to plasma rifles that don’t discharge any kind of energy, but they seem to be quite vulnerable to flying discuses and bright white lights pretending to be electromagnetic pulses. The resistance’s plan relied on defrosting a rebel leader who was frozen for disobeying the orders of the people in charge. He thaws out his team and formulates a planned with the human leader to defeat the robots. His former love interest turns out to be the human leader’s wife. This weird triangle puts him into awkward conflict with the leader and her wife throughout the movie. Fights also breakout between the rebel leader’s soldiers and other soldiers that are loyal to the army leaders. There are also other soldiers that refuse to help with the plan and think that the rebel leader is a loose cannon. This supposed toughest solider was sent out to capture a robot for the scientists to dissect and find away to stop the robots attack. The initial team that was sent was killed quite easily, after which they defrosted the rebel leader. The captured robot attracts other robots forcing them to flee after a giant robot steps on their indestructible cloth tent fortress. After that plan fails miserably, the scientist reveals that the rebel leader was their first attempt at creating an android similar to the invading robots. He manages to get in the enemy base, insert himself into the power core or something which somehow stops the entire robot army. Somehow the earth that had been blanketed with darkness for nearly 200 years disappears after the robots are destroyed.

Crap Bag's Ratings
Entertainment: 45%	B-Movieness: 100%
Quality: 75%	Regret: 56%

Charles Bronson

WHAT IN HELL IS A TRANSMORPHER?

Charles Bronson's Ratings
Entertainment: 100%	B-Movieness: 100%
Quality: 12%	Regret: 5%

Kibakichi's Final Word

Why robots so dumb and slow? They running Window 98 first edition?