Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci talk on Transformers
Transformers co-writer Alex Kurtzman remembers the first time he and writing partner Roberto Orci discovered they could work together - and he has an ex-girlfriend to thank for it!
“We went to high school together in Santa Monica,” the Los Angeles-based Kurtzman recalls, “we had an immediate connection in terms of things that interested us. Then I came home from college and was breaking up with my girlfriend and wrote her a letter and said to Bob, `will you take a look at this?' and he suggested I move a few paragraphs around.
“So literally we started off correcting each other's love letters until one day I said, `maybe we should see what we could write together!'” Kurtzman laughs. Orci adds with a chuckle, “we're obviously not ashamed to show each other the most embarrassing, horrifying things you could ever write so three days later we had 75 pages written!”
Needless to say, it paid off and led to TV shows such as Alias and films such as The Island, The Legend of Zorro and Mission: Impossible III. Now the pair have become one of the most highly sought-after teams in Hollywood and were hired by producer Steven Spielberg to adapt the beloved cartoon series Transformers for the big screen in a special effects-laden live action blockbuster directed by Michael Bay.
“We met with Steven and he gave us the first kernel that got us inspired and excited,” Kurtzman elaborates. “His idea was to make it a movie about a boy getting his first car, because we all knew the action scenes would be cool if the technology was there but it was not immediately clear what the character stories would be because humans didn't really feature in the cartoon.”
From that beginning, Kurtzman and Orci came up with the character of their reluctant hero, nerdy high school student Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf), who discovers that his first car, a Camero, is actually the transformer robot Bumblebee. Bumblebee is an Autobot who needs Sam's help to locate an artifact that could save his entire alien race. Sam and his high school crush Mikaela (Megan Fox) reluctantly get involved in the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons, the two alien races who bring their war to earth as they desperately search for this key to their survival. As the survival of the human race also hangs in the balance, a soldier in Iraq (Josh Duhamel) and his unit become involved when the Decepticons descend on their desert base looking for classified information that may lead to the mysterious artifact.
Kurtzman and Orci admit they initially approached the material with some reverence. “We used to rush home from school to watch the TV show,” Kurtzman recalls, “so we both know what it's like to feel passionate about Transformers. We felt that we had a compass of what would and wouldn't work in terms of tone.”
“The challenge for us,” Orci adds, “is that it has such a deep mythology in cartoon form. The first question people asked us when we told them we were doing the movie was, `is it a cartoon?' In one sense we thought that was wonderful because if they couldn't imagine it as live action then we were doing something they'd never seen before, but it also represented the challenge of coming up with the right tone to represent this world in a real and visceral way.”
Kurtzman says the pair reviewed all of the original material before starting work on the script but ultimately added a whole new chapter to the story. “If you look at what existed in Transformers mythology, we knew there was a sentient alien race on a planet; that they had a civil war that divided their race; that their planet was destroyed and that they went off looking for an artifact that had great power. So we knew we had to keep true to that because it was a great back story for the robots,” he continues. “But then you start thinking about what it would be like if aliens actually came to earth and chose a boy to be the vessel of communication and suddenly it becomes its own movie. There was nothing in the original material or in the toys about the human element so we had to invent that ourselves.”
The writers credit both Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg with also bringing their unique talents to the story. “Steven was there for every draft, every sentence and he made notes on everything,” Kurtzman says excitedly. “We sat down and just worked really closely with him and he was an incredibly brilliant, guiding force for us. Working with him has been a dream of ours since childhood so to be doing it now was very surreal.”
Orci says of director Michael Bay; “We worked on The Island with Michael so we have a very trusting relationship with each other. We were on the set as much as we could be and we were often running changes by Michael on the day of the shoot based on the realities of the location or other things that came up. We both know what the other brings to the table,” he adds, “and so we're all comfortable sitting in a room and hashing out the best version of the movie.”
The writing duo was equally impressed with the actors assembled to bring their script to life. “Shia and Megan brought a tremendous amount of humor and heart,” Kurtzman enthuses. “We designed their story to be the anchor of the movie and they really delivered on that. We designed Josh Duhamel's character as a guy trapped behind enemy lines but he is really just a soldier who wants to go home to meet his new daughter - so he brought a lot of emotion to the film too.”
The biggest shift in tone from the cartoon, the writers admit, is the humor they injected into the film. “We forgot they were robots when we were writing them and so we wrote them like humans,” Kurtzman explains. “Once they learn our language you find out they have personalities just like everybody else and that's what makes them so relatable and endearing and unique in the world of science fiction. They are also trying to adjust to our planet and that's where a lot of the humor comes from,” he adds. “They don't understand what power lines are and they want to touch them. They learn our language but not the nuances of what it can mean, so watching them make these discoveries makes you really care about them.”
As for how fans will embrace the film, the pair is optimistic. Orci says; “We knew that if we maintained the spirit and core of what the transformers were, most of the fans would come around once they saw it. But in a way we made two movies - one for people who know what Transformers used to be and can see the movie from that perspective and the other for people who are new to it, and we get to introduce them to that world.”
Kurtzman adds; “We spent a lot of time on-line talking to fans that had a hard time accepting the decisions we made to change things while we were making this movie. The way we look at it is that we are not just making this movie for us but for everybody out there who ever loved Transformers. In the end we hope we will satisfy the fans but we also hope to make a movie with heart and humor so that everybody else really wants to go on this great ride.”
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