Acting with Autobots (and Decepticons)
IGN talks to the cast of Transformers.
by Scott Collura & Eric Moro
Last week we brought you the first part of our
Transformers set visit, where we spoke with director Michael Bay and the producers of the highly anticipated film, and today we continue our coverage with a chat with the cast of the Paramount/DreamWorks movie. But first, for those who don't know who or what the Transformers are, a quick refresher course
The concept of the Transformers began back in the early '80s with a series of toys from Hasbro that tied directly into a popular cartoon series. Basically, the Transformers are giant robots from outer space who have the ability to shape-shift into all different kinds of objects -- usually cars or planes or some type of technology. The concept has inspired many iterations over the years, both on TV and in the toy world, but visual effects technology has finally reached the point -- Paramount/DreamWorks believe -- where a live-action movie can realistically depict these famous "robots in disguise."
But a movie is different from a kids cartoon TV series, and it was clear to the makers of the film that human characters would be needed to keep all the robot action grounded in reality. Chief among those is Shia LaBeouf (
Disturbia, the upcoming
Indiana Jones 4) who plays Sam "Spike" Witwicky.
"He's the liaison between the robots, at least in our script, in a way," says LaBeouf of the character. "He is the liaison between the government and the robots. Because it's too outlandish for the government to cling on to, you know, this idea of this alien, and they're too closed-minded to latch on to it. So they use me as a liaison between the idea of what these things could be and what they actually are."
LaBeouf reveals that it is chiefly with the good guy robots, the Autobots, that he liaises. But his family has a history of robot contact, it would seem.
"They make first contact with me because of my great-great-grandfather, Captain Archibald Witwicky, who made first contact with Megatron in the 1800s and had
I don't know if I should be giving this all away!" laughs the actor, before continuing. "[He] had language and maps burned to his glasses through a laser and the glasses were passed on through lineage and they wind up with me and me trying to sell them on eBay as well as his other items, his compass and his sextant and other things a 19th century seaman would use. And they come after me to retrieve these glasses, which has the directions to where the Energon Cube is at."
Other cast members along for the ride include Megan Fox, Tyrese Gibson, Jon Voight, Anthony Anderson, John Turturro, and more. Fox, who has mostly done TV work up until now, is ready for her
transforming spotlight in the film as Mikaela, who she describes as being essentially the Carly character from the cartoon (for those who remember) -- Sam's love interest who gets pulled into the action and intrigue and winds up becoming a "little bit" of an action hero herself. And while the actress is the first to admit that neither Carly nor Mikaela are the first thing fanboys think of when they talk about
Transformers, she nonetheless felt some pressure walking into a franchise of this size and with such a big preexisting fanbase.
"[I didn't feel it much] on my character, because she was hardly ever in the animated series so it's not like I'm taking on something that people are attached to and expect me to perform in a specific way," says Fox. "But for me it's just the realization of how huge this movie is and how many people are going to see it. And I actually, because the script was on lockdown and you couldn't really read it the whole time I was auditioning for it, I wasn't aware how big my part actually is and how much I'm in this film and how much people are going to see of me. So that's what's nerve-racking."
Also nerve-racking for some would be the various stunts that the actors (and their stuntmen, of course) have had to participate in during the making of
Transformers. And making an action movie with Michael Bay of
Armageddon and
Pearl Harbor fame? That adds a whole new level to the experience.
"It's never been like this for me, especially not with Michael Bay," says LaBeouf. "Michael Bay's the fastest, most intense director I've ever worked with. The explosions are right here. They're not CGI. You know, the other day they had me on top of one of these buildings one-handed with wire, a wire here and a wire there and a cube here. It was insane, but that's stuff that you usually shoot CGI and Michael doesn't do CGI. He likes seeing the immediate, he likes being able to go into his trailer and go, 'You're never gonna believe what I just shot.' Rather than have to wait for the CGI to be put into greenscreen. He likes to see immediately, so things like explosions, I mean, it's all very real."
LaBeouf has done big-budget action films before (
Constantine,
I, Robot), but he says that Bay's reluctance to rely on CGI actually makes his job a lot easier (if scarier).
"I can't even list what we've had to do. I've never had to do anything like this," says the actor. "When we did
Constantine or
I, Robot it was very minimal. Of course, yes there was insane action. I had a shotgun, we were shooting demons, but these demons weren't there. They were ridiculous men in green suits with codpieces. It wasn't what this is which is you actually have a Bumblebee or it'll be a pole, but you'll see Megatron. You know, he's really there. And they really built it. It's just very real. My job is very easy here. It's very reactionary as opposed to me having to conjure up these fantasies of what I would think it would be. It's there."
Fox says that while her character is not a damsel in distress type, she does fill the romance quotient of the film via her character's relationship with LaBeouf's. And for her, playing those kinds of scenes -- just acting in general -- isn't all that easy when explosions are going off in the background and giant robots are hanging around and so on. This matter is complicated by the fact that the experience of seeing an effect conducted on set is far less convincing than how it will look in the final cut of the film, when all the postproduction polish has been added.
"You know, you sit and you think, 'This isn't realistic and people are going to hate this and I feel like a f--king *****ebag and I can't do it,'" laughs Fox. "But then you think nobody's even going to give a s--t. There's going to be so much happening around this that they have to tie you into the story somehow, because there are a lot of people who would just watch a movie that was nothing but robots fight[ing]. Sure, but the majority of people
I heard Shia say they want to see some sort of human interaction, human involvement, so those things have to, I think unfortunately they have to be thrown in there. And we're trying to steer away from -- we know the fans and they don't want any sappy bulls--t. We're trying to stay away from that and keep it as realistic as possible and as much about the Autobots and Decepticons as we can."
The actress -- who says that her favorite Transformer characters are Starscream from the animated series and Bumblebee from the movie (and she also likes Megatron because he's "really sick") -- laughs when asked about how scary it is to work with Bay himself, who has a bit of a reputation of being a yeller on set.
"Michael's great with me," she says. "I got really lucky. I don't know what I did in the beginning or what happened, but he is really great with me; he's great with Shia. And he yells. People always talk about how he yells, but he's not like malicious or scary when he yells. He's always half joking and he says things that if you don't have a thick skin might hurt your feelings, but if you don't have thick skin you should get out of this business anyway."
As for LaBeouf, he says he was always a fan of the
1986 theatrical animated film Transformers: The Movie (yes, the one with Orson Welles). And as for this new movie? The actor says he's finding it to be a very fulfilling experience on a number of levels.
"[It's] a completely different film, you know? My goal at the beginning [of my career] was to be as diversified as possible," he says. "This fits a part of filmmaking that I had never been a part of nor would I have ever thought of myself to be involved with in this way. You know, this was always Ben Affleck has that job, Josh Hartnett has that job, not some Gary Shandling look-alike. It's not something you would assume. I just didn't assume that I would be sitting with Turturro and Megatron. It's just not a thought that you could ever conjure up."
