Transformers 2 comes to Taiwan

Transformers 2 came to Taiwan this past week. It started on Thursday, I believe, but we didn’t get a chance to see it until yesterday, Saturday. We tried reserving a few tickets, but were repeatedly shot down by the theaters: they were sold out or weren’t selling tickets over the phone. Finally, we had a friend go purchase tickets for us at a smaller theater in Taichung so that we could watch the movie. This turned out to be a rather good idea, because apparently Taiwanese people love horrible movies with lots of explosions. The line at this smaller theater was quite long:

Anyway, we watched the movie. If you’re expecting an oscar performance, I’d recommend staying at home. If you want to see Transformers, horrible kiddy humor, and lots of explosions, by all means get in line.

Also, in Chinese, the name for Transformers is [hanzi]變形金剛[/hanzi] [pinyin](bian4xing2 jin1gang1)[/pinyin]. Biàn means “to transform or change” and xíng means shape. So biànxíng means “to transform.” JÄ«n is the world for gold or metal, and gāng means “hard, firm, or strong.” So jÄ«ngāng can be translated as hard metal. Put it all together and you’ve got Transforming Hard Metal or something to that effect.