Film review: ‘Transformers 5: The Last Knight’

Michael Bay films are now mostly about the experience of watching a Michael Bay film. His latest is “Transformers: The Last Knight,” the fifth installment of a franchise that increasingly serves as a pyre on which their director burns money — in this case, $217M.

Like the great silent films of the past, Bay’s movies ought to be almost wordless — the corny jokes are as relentless as the fireballs. The heart of “Transformers” is vast orchestrations of CGI, actors against green screens stretching their necks back to look wonderingly around at objects in a sky they’ll never see.

This “Transformers” screenplay actually impresses, if you believe the writers were forced to plot the entire film in one night while shooting tequila every time a new Transformer was introduced (there are more than 30). The complete narrative summary must be Googled to be believed but it begins, as you would expect, with the knights of the Round Table.

Arthur and co. are losing a muddy battle while waiting on Merlin (Stanley Tucci!). The sozzled wizard is supposed to visit a crashed alien ship, convince an ancient Autobot to give him a staff of great power and conjure a three-headed dragon Transformer to save the day. Happily he does, and the Autobots go on doing favors for humans down the ages — we learn, for instance, that they also helped out with the Underground Railroad, which was nice of them.

But Earth has enjoyed the staff long enough. Quintessa, a purple space sorceress trailing squid tentacles, is going to bring it back to the Transformers’ home planet, Cybertron. To do so, she enlists the always duplicitous Decepticons and hoodwinks good guy Optimus Prime into doing her bidding — his eyes turn from true blue to a lustful violet color.

This is a real downer for Prime’s human chum Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg, occasionally donning glasses because he’s playing a genius inventor) and Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins) the last in a line of an English royal house that protects the secret of the Transformers. Amid the bombast, it’s a small pleasure to watch Hopkins call Wahlberg, “duuuuuude.”

Bay’s gender politics remain mind-blowingly retrograde, as exemplified by Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock), a polo playing descendant of Merlin with a doctorate in English lit and proclivity for skin tight attire. Burton conscripts her to track down the staff, but she’s sexualized every second in spite of her qualifications as a doctor.

Nevertheless, Bay’s view of posh England is tremendous, like the most basic tourist brochure: Big Ben, Stonehenge, the white cliffs of Dover.

The contrast to America is useful as Yeager and the Autobots are chased across South Dakota by Decepticons and Colonel Lennox (Josh Duhamel) of the Transformers Reaction Force. Bay’s Badlands, unlike Terrence Malick’s, are ruin porn par excellence: broken windows, dirty puddles in which we see the reflections of flying things, tumbleweeds. As one Decepticon mutters, “This planet is hell.” But he hasn’t been to England yet!

Michael Bay — the man with “Bayhem” stitched on his custom sneakers — generates a bewildering but consistent amalgam of fiery crashes and rainbow lens flares and tears in the eyes of beautiful people. There have been five “Transformers” films and a less vulgar auteur would have left the direction of the later installments to a younger man.

New theory over origin of Andy’s dad in Toy Story sparks debate after alleged report

Pixar and Disney are no stranger to fan theories about canonical anomalies found within their films’ universes, but the newest is causing a bit of controversy online.

It all started with a YouTube video. Mike Mozart, an artist and longtime toy reviewer, conducted a two-and-a-half-hour livestream where he spoke about his friend, the late Joe Ranft. Ranft is best known for being one of the writers on Toy Story, earning him an Academy Award. Ranft is also, according to Mozart, the only one who could answer a decades-old fan question: What happened to Andy's dad?

The story, according to Mozart, is pretty sad. Mozart sat down with the Super Carlin Brothers, a YouTube channel dedicated to theories about different movies, and detailed the untold story. The simple explanation Mozart gave, based on what Ranft allegedly told him, was that Andy’s dad had polio when he was a child. As a result, all of his toys had to be burned in order to protect himself and others, but before his family and doctors had a chance to kill Woody, a toy given to him by a cereal company, Andy Sr. managed to save Woody from being destroyed.

Andy Sr. eventually got better, enough to lead a full life and have a beautiful family — introducing us to Andy Jr., the young boy we know from the films. As time wore on, however, Andy Sr. developed post-polio disease. The family had to move into Andy Jr.’s grandparents house so Andy Sr. could be taken care of, according to Mozart.

Throughout all of this hardship, however, Woody never left the family’s side. While on his deathbed, Andy Sr. gives his son a key to a chest being kept in an attic. In the chest are a few of his favorite toys, including Woody, who now continues to live on through Andy Jr. They don’t realize that Andy Jr. isn’t the same boy they grew up with, now dying in the room next door, but they do get to love and cherish the human child they now sit in the arms of.

It’s a heartbreaking story, which is on par for Pixar movies, but there has been some debate as to whether or not this is actually true. After the video was published and the story gained traction online, Andrew Stanton, another writer on Toy Story, called it utter bullshit.

This leads to a couple of important questions: Was Mozart lying? Did Ranft tell Mozart but keep it a secret from the rest of the team? Was this all just a concept that Ranft came up with after the movie was finished?

Unfortunately, none of these questions will be answered. It’s a classic case of he said, she said that we’ve seen time and time again in Hollywood.

What’s even more interesting than the possible answer Ranft has given, however, is just how many other theories seem to fall into place. Why doesn’t Woody remember the “popular” show he was on called Woody’s Roundup? It was cancelled right after he was created. Different handwriting examples on Buzz and Woody’s feet exist because they were written by two different people.

It’s even led to a theory that Up and Toy Story exist in the same universe. As fans have pointed out, what if Emma Jean, the wife from Up, was the secretary who sent Woody to Andy Sr.? The basis for the theory is pretty farfetched, but it does play into the universally understood theory that every movie in the Pixar universe is somehow connected.

The story of Andy’s dad my be an argued mystery — and theory — for the rest of time, but for those looking for a little bit of closure may find some in Mozart’s answer.

Barbie, are you ready for man-bun or Dad-bod Ken?

Last year when El Segundo-based Mattel unveiled a bumper crop of new Barbies, including curvier, taller and more petite versions of its flagship fashion doll, one social media commenter quipped, “But what about #dadbod Ken?” referring to the perfectly chiseled abs and molded plastic hair of Ken Carson, Barbie’s longtime arm candy companion.

The other very tiny shoe drops today as Mattel starts selling a cornucopia of new Kens that includes two new body types dubbed “slim” and “broad” (the latter of which, with its slightly thicker middle, invites Dad-bod comparisons), six new molded hairstyles, including cornrows and an on-trend man bun, and seven skin tones.

It’s certainly not the first time the 56-year-old boyfriend of Barbie has switched up his look. (Who could forget 1993’s Magic Earring Ken?) However, it does mark the most diverse Ken squad to date. Mattel frames it as a natural progression, coming the year after the Barbie diversity push, but this is just as much, if not more so, a business decision for the toy company that’s been trying to turn around its core Barbie business.

Mattel doesn’t break out sales of Ken dolls but includes them in its overall Barbie sales.

Last year, after the new Barbies were added, the Barbie line’s sales rose 7% from the previous year, to $972 million. That accounted for 18% of Mattel’s total worldwide net sales of $5.46 billion.

But in this year’s first quarter — as Margo Georgiadis, a former Google executive, took over as Mattel’s chief executive — sales of Barbie and other Mattel merchandise suffered as retailers cleared out excess inventory left from the holiday season. The Barbie line’s sales alone dropped 13% from a year earlier to $123.4 million.

Having the new crop of Ken dolls is “definitely going to help,” said Jim Silver, chief executive and editor in chief of TTPM.com, a toy-review website. “I’m not going to say it’s a game changer, but is it a piece of the puzzle? Yes. The play pattern is that for every six to eight Barbies [a child] has, they generally have one Ken. So if you have a Ken kids aren’t interested in, that could affect sales. What’s happening needed to be done. They needed to do this. It’s the next step.”

But some Wall Street analysts said the Ken redesign was unlikely to have a significant effect on the doll’s popularity.

“Is it going to drive more sales? I doubt it,” said Keith Snyder, a stock analyst with the investment firm CFRA Research. “It’s not going to have a big impact on their financials.”

Linda Bolton Weiser, an analyst with the investment firm DA Davidson, likewise said the change mostly was “a regular marketing progression to modify your line.”

Mattel’s broader problems include competing with toys that have tie-ins with blockbuster movies, such as Hasbro Corp.’s “Star Wars” franchise, and youngsters shifting from conventional toys to mobile devices, video games and other electronics, Snyder said.

Like the various permutations of Barbie old and new, the latest additions are still doll-like, with longer legs and bigger heads than a scaled-down human. And because the body tweaks are compared against the original Ken silhouette, these changes are most noticeable when the dolls are standing next to each other.

In addition to a slightly larger — but still not big — belly, “broad” Ken’s arms are wider at the pecs and wrist, while “slim” Ken is more petit in both those areas, with the fluctuations in waistline most obvious when Ken is less than fully dressed.

Apart from the skin tones, which range from pasty Goth teen pale to dark brown (with sprinkle of freckles along the way), the most instantly noticeable change comes by way of Ken’s coif. The smart side-part styles that defined decades of classic Ken have been joined by close-cropped hairdos: the shaggy-on-top/faded-on-the-sides styles, fashionable cornrows and the love-it-or-hate-it hipster hairstyle, the man bun, with a molded button of hair at the back of Ken’s crown.

For what it’s worth, giving the classically handsome Ken a man bun makes him look like a miniature David Beckham. Also, one version of Ken comes with a pair of silver sunglasses, while another wears spectacles.

Although there aren’t any bearded Kens, bald Kens or tattoo-sporting Kens, that doesn’t mean there won’t be more Kens to come. “We want to do beards,” said Robert Best, senior director of Barbie Design. “Facial hair is definitely a thing. There’s going to be changes that we keep pushing, but you have to launch with something. It’s progress, not perfection.”

A total of 15 new and diverse Kens debut today, enough to form three tiny basketball teams, which brings up one obvious omission from the Ken lineup.

“We wanted to add a taller dude,” Best said. “That’s one signifier where you’re really able to see a difference. Height adds variety in a very visual way.”

The challenge , Best said, wasn’t vertical-height bias but merchandising. “It’s actually a stupid packaging/manufacturing limitation. Currently, we have to fit into store shelving, and shelving limits how tall we can go. That’s a real thing.”

Did you know there is a toy and model car museum in Ipoh?

For those of us who were once little boys, there’s a memory which is inextricable from our first experience of playing with a toy car. We’d likely have seen the real thing before the miniature version, so, that tactile sensation of feeling its contours, opening doors (where possible) and gauging the authenticity of its detail, remain life-long imagery.

Elvin Chew believes in constantly reliving that moment. But, in his case, his purchases eventually amounted to the installation of a museum.

Dream Big World houses a curious collection of toy/model cars, model aviation and miniature replica cities. It is located on one of Ipoh’s most fabled roads, Concubine Lane. Amidst the tourist attractions there, somewhere in the middle of the lane, a brand new sign catches the eye … Toy Car Museum, fetchingly juxtaposed against a backdrop of pre-war buildings.

Chew’s original plan for Dream Big World was a conventional one – selling model kits and toy cars, just retail merchandising … something sustainable.

“Then I thought of turning it into a museum, and also selling models, a two-in-one sort of place. With the magazines and books I’ve collected, I’ve succeeded in introducing an educational element as well,” explained the founder and manager of the museum.

By Klang Valley standards, Perak’s capital may have been viewed as a sleepy hollow in the last few decades. However, interest in the once-rich tin-mining hub has been reignited recently, courtesy of the many colonial buildings in the old town area getting face-lifts and repurposing jobs.

“This whole area has been revamped and is now a tourist attraction,” concurred the 40-year-old.

The lot was once a bookstore, and the wallet-friendly rent spurred him to do something for his home state by starting this SME, which opened last December.

The toys housed in Dream Big World are all part of Chew’s own collection, amassed from the time he was a kid, purchases made possible by savings from pocket money.

“I used money I got as birthday presents and ang pow,” he intimated. His mum may not have been elated he was spending money on toys, but she was at least pleased he was a good kid (an only child) who didn’t mix with bad company, stayed at home, and the worst he got up to was building model kits.

Back in the 1980s, when a number of emporiums (they weren’t called malls or shopping complexes then) stood tall, the likes of Beauty, Crescendo, Angel, Ipoh Garden Plaza, and of course, the venerable duo of Super Kinta and Yik Foong, all serving Ipoh’s community, Chew poked his head into the toy sections of all these places to get his eager mitts on the wares of the day.

With online retail and auction sites now in full bloom, purchasing methods have evolved, with Chew reaching out to hobby stores in Japan for his fix. He still travels to buy toys, making at least two trips to Hong Kong yearly.

At Dream Big World, his prized possessions include models from the makers of Ferrari, Mercedes, BMW, Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Lamborghini. The museum comprises a cornucopia of the best of the auto industry, and what is quickly apparent is Chew’s attention to detail in having as many models as possible within each car make.

“I have almost the entire fleet of Lamborghini cars. I’ve always prioritised two things: historical value, which amounts to the significance of a car; and, aesthetic value, meaning its popularity. I’ve always targeted completing each range of a car brand.”

Authenticity is key, and Chew is always meticulous: “I focus on toy cars that look as real as possible … stuff with a museum feel.”

The cars in the museum are immaculate, looking like they rolled off the assembly line yesterday, hence, no restoration work has been necessary.

“I used to play with the toys when I was younger, but as I got older, I built model kits and placed them on display thereafter, which is how I’ve kept them in great condition,” Chew explained.

More than 500 cars, worth around RM500,000, are contained in this fascinating museum, and while he loves them all, some stand out.

For instance, his RM10,000 resin model La Ferrari is the apple of his eye. Only 30 were made, and his is serial numbered at No.11. At the time of this interview, he was expecting the imminent arrival of a Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6×6, the German car maker’s largest SUV to date.

Anyone wishing to traverse this road of a make-believe world should arm themselves with the right knowledge, he cautions. “You have to have a basic interest in cars. Start by reading up and knowing the history, models and evolution. Find out more with every purchase,” he said, sharing his accrued wisdom.

He was also forthcoming with some simple do’s and don’ts: “Look for something you like and don’t be too ambitious. Don’t go for something too high-end. Start with a current series, because you’ll only need to pay market price. That gets your collection going at least, then later, by all means, go for older models.”

Automotive obsessions aside, Dream Big World also has an aviation section, with a variety of airliners on display, from the Boeing and Airbus stables, among others. There’s also a section with miniature cities, all of which contribute to the educational element, which Chew is actively promoting, especially being the child of teacher parents. A trip to the museum caters to a visitor learning about car engine operation, physics, history, geography and his own special area of interest – rotary engines.

The mechanical engineer may have the greatest fascination for coveted automobiles, but when it comes to his personal choice of wheels, a Perodua Kenari and an old Mazda 323 do just fine.

“I’m a Point A to Point B kind of guy,” he said, beaming.

And with a RM5 price of admission for adults and RM3 for kids (three to 12 years old), Dream Big World has made itself quite a must-see attraction in Ipoh.