Sam Witwicky: Hero or Colossal Douche?
- Thread starter Turd Ferguson
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Colossal douche. I have nothing against Shia, but Sam Witwicky is a turd sandwich.
A turd sandwich with a side of dickhead fries.
Is that a Crappy Meal?
I don't know. I actually found his performances refreshing because they seemed real.
In the first he was a soon to be graduating high school kid who only cared about getting a car to impress the ladies. He had no thoughts toward the future or any idea what he was going to do with his life, then bam. He gets thrown right into the middle of an alien civil war with both sides trying to get hold of him. I doubt any kid would be calm and collected in such a series of events.
In the second he is a fresh in college, newly on his own, guy looking to party and live his life. Bam, he gets the database of the cube downloaded into his brain. Now, not only are the baddies gunning for him, but he has the fate of his home world at rest upon his shoulders. A stressful situation that could cause heightened emotional outbursts.
In the third he is now a college grad, out looking for a job. But not only are there no jobs coming his way forcing him to be supported by his hot and successful girlfriend, he has had a taste of the adrenalin of saving the world. A nine to five working in the mail room is not only beneath his college degree self, it pales when compared to living the life of an international man of mystery. He's lost all patience with stupidity and the normal bs of daily life. He craves the action and high stress he's had to live with in the previous two films.
That is the problem. He isn't an action hero. He's a normal kid turned young man through a series of life altering high adrenalin events. I think that he's probably the most realistic "normal guy action hero" in modern cinema.
In the first he was a soon to be graduating high school kid who only cared about getting a car to impress the ladies. He had no thoughts toward the future or any idea what he was going to do with his life, then bam. He gets thrown right into the middle of an alien civil war with both sides trying to get hold of him. I doubt any kid would be calm and collected in such a series of events.
In the second he is a fresh in college, newly on his own, guy looking to party and live his life. Bam, he gets the database of the cube downloaded into his brain. Now, not only are the baddies gunning for him, but he has the fate of his home world at rest upon his shoulders. A stressful situation that could cause heightened emotional outbursts.
In the third he is now a college grad, out looking for a job. But not only are there no jobs coming his way forcing him to be supported by his hot and successful girlfriend, he has had a taste of the adrenalin of saving the world. A nine to five working in the mail room is not only beneath his college degree self, it pales when compared to living the life of an international man of mystery. He's lost all patience with stupidity and the normal bs of daily life. He craves the action and high stress he's had to live with in the previous two films.
That is the problem. He isn't an action hero. He's a normal kid turned young man through a series of life altering high adrenalin events. I think that he's probably the most realistic "normal guy action hero" in modern cinema.
The character "arc" -if we can call it that- makes sense, sure. But, frankly, I don't think Shia had the acting chops to pull it off and more-so Bay the directorial skills to pull the arc off.
Okay, sure he's a college-grad, someone who has helped save the world twice already, his awesome robot-car is always off on a job and he has a girlfriend who is at least 3 three attractiveness factors higher than him, thus he's going to always question why she's with him -a loser without a job- when she's always around more handsome and more successful men.
The movie does not pull this off. His hot, scantly clad, girlfriend comes up to him and he goes into a rant/bitchfest about things. Sam, you're living in a down economy certainly you're smart enough to realize that you're not going to get a job right away and the secret things you did for the government aren't going to go your resume.
There's little we see of Sam in the third movie that shows why the girl is interested in him as he's constantly a giant douche around her. Then it's hard to like or sympathize with him when flips out and enters full douche-mode at the drop of a hat. (See: Him attacking his car when it won't start and how he behaves at the entrance to the military base.)
His character may have been having something of an "arc" here but it didn't come across that way. Instead he just acts like a giant, ranting, douchebag the entire time and given how easily he flips out and goes to full-on douche mode he should probably be on medication.
Okay, sure he's a college-grad, someone who has helped save the world twice already, his awesome robot-car is always off on a job and he has a girlfriend who is at least 3 three attractiveness factors higher than him, thus he's going to always question why she's with him -a loser without a job- when she's always around more handsome and more successful men.
The movie does not pull this off. His hot, scantly clad, girlfriend comes up to him and he goes into a rant/bitchfest about things. Sam, you're living in a down economy certainly you're smart enough to realize that you're not going to get a job right away and the secret things you did for the government aren't going to go your resume.
There's little we see of Sam in the third movie that shows why the girl is interested in him as he's constantly a giant douche around her. Then it's hard to like or sympathize with him when flips out and enters full douche-mode at the drop of a hat. (See: Him attacking his car when it won't start and how he behaves at the entrance to the military base.)
His character may have been having something of an "arc" here but it didn't come across that way. Instead he just acts like a giant, ranting, douchebag the entire time and given how easily he flips out and goes to full-on douche mode he should probably be on medication.
I'd have to call him a hero, Sam was a normal sort of kind he was interested in the best looking gorl in the school, had embarassing parents and only wanted to live a normal life. But in the end he was thrust into extraordinary events that meant that he had to say the world.
I'll agree with this. There are moments however where Sam came off as very genuine in DotM, mostly when expressing frustration at the fact that he had saved the world TWICE already and he was still having to interview for crappy jobs. I felt for the character in those moments, but other parts were downright silly, I agree.
The problem is that he shouldn't have had a trying to have a normal life arc. Once he met the Transformers the direction of his life was irrevocably changed.
Spike's original character arc ended with him gaining control of a multiple-kilometer-tall giant robot/city/space battleship. Going to college and hunting for a job is kind of a step down from becomming the head of the most powerful war machine in the known universe.
The whole try to be normal arc is trite, cliche, and it doesn't work in a movie trilogy with limited running time.
I can accept that, however this isn't the age when the government would accept a kid running the human side of the show. Intrusive and inept government is another theme of the movies.
Who said anything about running the human side of the show? By Dark of the Moon he should have officially been an Autobot. The Decipticons have a corporate mogul running their stuff. The Autobots also need a human face to help them interact with the public and the government. It's hard to fit a semi truck in the White House, after all.
They weren't public yet. They were represented by the colonel and the N.E.S.T. Team leaders to the international community. They were classified and their human interaction limited to specific military and highly placed government officers.
They wouldn't need a human auto bot until after the public disclosure of their presence in the events of DotM.
The NEST team doesn't work for the Autobots. They work for the Pentagon. They don't represent the Autobots' interests, they represent America's (and the United Kingdom's, apparently). The Autobots really need a trustworthy person to represent their interests and their interests alone, preferably someone small enough to walk through standard-sized doors.
There is also the issue of his religious significance. The guy has the two most important Cybertronian religious artifacts downloaded into his brain. I think that at least qualifies him for sainthood.
Well, it's obviously possible, Bill Clinton never would've been impeached if Ms. Lewinsky couldn't get into the Whitehouse
and in the IDW G1 based ongoing he's a badass Army Major who killed a Constructicon ON FOOT!
I though the public became aware of them in Revenge of the Fallen seeing as the Decepticons showed up and TV demanding Sam Witwicky's head on a platter.
^ Not to mention that huge battle in the city with all the 'splosions in Transformers 1. Maybe those were just weather balloons.
The second movie suggested they operated in secret. Sam's roommate ran some-sort-of operation in their dorm room (with a Mt. Dew machine in it) that dealt in trying to reveal these things happening.
Things that at that point in the movie involved a battle between two factions of stories high robots in downtown L.A. (the first movie) and a very high-profile "covert" operation in a foreign country.
I'm guessing that by the end of the second movie the existence of the Transformers was much more established fact and thus a bit more debatable topic. You could probably argue that that universe's President Obama revealed it to everyone, but in-movie dialogue tells us that the government even had equipment set-up to thwart the Decepticons. Perhaps the measure that needed to be taken to curb the Decepticon activity became more than the government could conceal and thus they went public with everything.
Things that at that point in the movie involved a battle between two factions of stories high robots in downtown L.A. (the first movie) and a very high-profile "covert" operation in a foreign country.
I'm guessing that by the end of the second movie the existence of the Transformers was much more established fact and thus a bit more debatable topic. You could probably argue that that universe's President Obama revealed it to everyone, but in-movie dialogue tells us that the government even had equipment set-up to thwart the Decepticons. Perhaps the measure that needed to be taken to curb the Decepticon activity became more than the government could conceal and thus they went public with everything.
