When Toys Go Bad: Transformers is Invading a Movie Theater Near You!

If you love science fiction, you're better off going to the library because nine times out of ten, Hollywood will break your heart.

Oh, you don't believe me, huh? How about Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers?

See? Told ya.

As Woody Allen said, "No matter how cynical you get, you can't keep up." After seeing profitable movie adaptations of comic books, video games, and amusement park theme rides, why should I be surprised that Hollywood is doing a movie based on a silly Japanese toy?

Transformers looks like a dumb movie.

No, I mean it, it's really, really dumb.

It's stupid, moronic, "Dumb and Dumber" dumb. Did I mention that it's dumb?

I'm sure in this empty skull cavity of a movie, there's a brain cell dying of loneliness.

Did I see it? Christ, no! I'm not that dumb. But I did see the trailer for Michael Bay's new headache-inducing sci-fi thriller , and that's bad enough.

Sure, science fiction is a treasure chest full of ideas, But Bay is a successful hack who hasn't found an idea he couldn't blow up. As George Lucas did with Star Wars, Bay ruthlessly drags the genre into a back alley and shoots it in the head.

Fortunately, the science-fiction genre is harder to kill than Rasputin. For example, The Departed won an Oscar for "Best Picture", but I think the prize should have gone to Children of Men.

Directed by Alfonso Cauron (Y Tu Mama¡ Tambien, The Little Princess and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), it's a brilliant, thought-provoking and terrifying film.

Adapted from the novel by P.D. James, the film takes us to London in the year 2027. Things ain't looking too good. Bombs explode in coffee shops. There are more guns than food. Rotting garbage fills the streets. No jobs. Illegal immigrants are herded into internment camps. And when you think things can't get any worse, no child has been born in the world for eighteen years. It's as though all those inconvenient truths we've ignored finally got tired of knocking and kicked the door in.

It's a bleak and intriguing "what if?", and Cauron extrapolates from it ingeniously, taking us to a future that isn't here yet but is waiting ominously just around the corner.

Children of Men is a broken mirror reflecting the bloodied face of our society, and in it we can see foul images of Abu Ghraib, the Salem witch trials, Wounded Knee, and the Holocaust. We can't blame aliens for this mess either. "We have met the enemy," Walt Kelly's Pogo said. "And it is us."

No, Children of Men didn't get an Oscar but it sure deserves a Hugo. It's a masterpiece.

Michael Bay, however, doesn't want to make that type of science-fiction movie, especially if you can't scribble the plot on the back of a beer-soaked napkin.

So, it's likely Transformers is going to be dumb, sci-fi junk. The usual. Uh-huh, lots of fireballs, exploding buildings, "Ooooh Pretty!" special effects, and Soldier of Fortune centerfolds fighting those Big Ugly Nasty Lego Guys. I can already hear Crow and Tom Servo snickering in the background.

I mean, after Pearl Harbor,Bad Boys I&II, and The Island, why should I expect anything different?

Oh well.

Hey, has Neal Stephenson's new book come out yet?