Warring alien robots disrupted our commute on Friday, and that was just the beginning. Making our way to Michigan Avenue from a remote parking lot crowded with cars displaced from their regular metered spots, we were shepherded to the door of the Tribune Tower by security guards deployed to keep pedestrians behind metal barricades.
We stopped to stare at the piles of smoking debris tossed across six lanes normally choked with traffic. We snapped a cell-phone shot of the charred vehicles piled at the foot of the Michigan Avenue bridge. Then we went upstairs to watch the intergalactic battle unfold outside our window.
Looking for the inside scoop on “Transformers 3,” filming in Chicago? Let’s just say there’s no need for a spoiler alert here.
We’d already been warned not to expect Optimus Prime, the Autobot commander who’s basically photo-shopped into his scenes. But the teases at the Chicago Film Office had all but promised fireballs and flipping cars, and we’ve heard rumors about NASCARbots and skyscrapers toppled by Decepticons. We were hoping to see a taxi, a bus — an L car! — morph into a marauding mayhembot, or at the very least to get a glimpse of next year’s Happy Meal toy.
Instead we watched Shia LaBeouf and what’s-her-name, the Victoria’s Secret model, dash from obelisk to concrete junk mound, over and over, for about an hour. After that there were no actors on the set at all, just stage crews setting random fires and a couple of guys stomping around waving 2-D robot heads on long poles — to mark where the digital images go, we suppose. The pyrotechnics, it turned out, were planned for the weekend, when we’re not on the clock. Guess we’ll wait for the movie.
The take-away is that if spacebots ever rock Michigan Avenue on a weekday, we’re going to have a pretty good view. The down side is that it’s going to be awfully hard to get to Starbucks.
