Transformers: Age of Extinction

Transformers: Age of Extinction

I saw the recent Transformers movie last night and it frustrated me. I’m not going into the engineering plausibility of cramming so much material into something the size of a car, that’s one of those points that an engineer has to look beyond.

I’m frustrated with Hollywood because I’m getting tired of their choice of ‘Bad Guys’. It is so easy for them to grab the stereotypical evil person from either some secret government agency or, in this case, a power hungry Aerospace Company.

I know ‘imagination’ costs money and they always take the ‘easy’ route, but it does get worn out after a while. I worked for a giant aerospace company and, at time or another, I was fortunate to work with every level of management in that company. Apparently I didn’t meet the one guy whose office door read ‘Power Hungry Aerospace Executive’.

Notice how you never see a movie about a power hungry studio executive that choses the stereotypical cop, or lawyer, or doctor, or black family, or oriental family, or gay person; based on their personal agenda, or sometimes their funding source. We never see the producer that says, ‘that’s not how it is in most of America.’

Unfortunately ‘it’s the easy way’ that propagates the stereotypes in the first place and a stereotype is the easiest way to portray anyone, so I guess Hollywood will continue doing it for a while.