Well here it is, 20 years, thousands of toys, and seven cartoon series later Transformers returns to the big screen. The movie has sparked curiosity among longtime fans and resentment from the hardcore fan-base who for some reason think that the barely recognizable track of Orson Wells in the 1986 animated feature was close to the voice of God. Director Michael Bay even received death threats, which he brushed off without much concern.
That said after a thorough review of the film, I can say that the entire hardcore “the movie must be X, Y and Z otherwise it is worthless” can kiss my ENTIRE ass.
This movie, which the uninitiated regard as the most expensive toy commercial ever, is a true summer blockbuster in both typical and yet atypical ways. The film begins with this near biblical reading
“Before time itself, there was the cube”
This phrase spoken by Optimus Prime (reprised by veteran voice actor Peter Cullen) sets the mood for the film. The whole time you get the feeling that there is something big going on that you can only just barely grasp.
After this opening narration we cut to Qatar and the SOCCNET base there. Heartthrob and former gay porn actor Josh Dhumal is speaking with his team in a helicopter about what they would like to do when their tours are over. Dhumal laments over the fact that he has yet to see his baby girl, to which his teammates poke fun of him, in a very real military style. While this team lands and enjoys some time alone the base picks up a bogey, and the first dramatic scene opens. A Military helicopter refusing to identify itself lands on base, and interrupt’s a sweet moment between father and newborn daughter on the internet. This helicopter has USA markings but the registry was shot down months prior, leading to confusion. I think the first real indication that something bad was happening was when the chopper changed its shape in a loud and elaborate way to become a bipedal monstrosity.
The action in this sequence is well done; we do not see much of Blackout, the Decepticon attacking the base. Whenever we do get something like full body shots it is for a very brief time. The chaos of the fight, and the fact that NOTHING is taking this beast down is well reflected by the chaos of solider running away and these nifty Pulse bombs flying everywhere.
After the base gets obliterated and our human heroes run like hell we are introduced to a kid giving a presentation in his high school history class. He is showing off his family heirlooms to his class as part of a genealogy project. At the same time he is trying to sell them. Sam Witwickty (played by up and comer Shia Labouf) is portrayed as a teenage outcast surrounded by good looking jocks and hot girls. He and his briefly seen friend are all too geeky and do not fit the mold. What he lacks in muscle he makes up for in intelligence and wit, and even some charm.
The real story begins when Sam buys his first car with the help of his cheap ass father, and as it turns out the yellow 1974 Camero is a robot. Like a super advanced transforming Robot. It is probably Japanese.
While the plotline of the movie is holey and mediocre, I walked into the film expecting not much more then that. Summer Blockbusters by their nature are not cerebral entertainment. That said it does follow the formula of any story. You have protaganists, and antagonist, in a crisis situation.
The film even contains a surprising amount of humor. Bad customer service moments, awkward sex talk from mom (Sam’s Happy Time), and even showing how a bunch of inpatient Autobots made a situation WORSE.
The Visuals of the movie were extremely impressive. The filmmakers lived up to their promise of transforming at 80 Miles an hour. These robots were not just big hulking boxes of plastic either. They had agility and once things got going moved with a type of mechanical grace I would expect from a Battlemech. Prime shows off the agility by literally hanging from a bridge, his hands the toes holding him to suppourts. Even big old Ironhide does something impressive, using the recoil of his cannons to propel him into a spinning arc of doom.
For what little characterizations there were among the cybertronians they did a very good job relating to the old school counter parts. Optimus was little pushy, but that was because of the circumstances. Ironhide was trigger happy (maybe a little too so). Optimus even berates Ironhide when our gunslinger suggested blasting Mr and Mrs Witwicky to keep them from interfering. Jazz defiantly got the smooth player thing going, particularly in his first transformation when he did a little break dancing,
There was also a ton of G1 homage’s throughout the movie. Remember the Energy Axe from “More Then Meets the Eye?” It sort of comes back, only now it is a sword built into primes fore arm, and it is more like a power blade then a light saber. And then there is the tank Devastator, who takes the combined effort of a platoon of specially equipped soldiers, Ironhide, Ratchet, Bumblebee and an air strike from an F 22 to take down. Another great homage was Megatron, after falling off a building, flicking a human being while uttering “disgusting fleshlings” Oh yeah, and Spike (and later frenzy) crying out “ohhh s7nkpil3!”
Ok I have sung the praises enough, so let me get to the stuff that was truly disappointing about the movie. Where were the freaking Decepticons? Seriously Megatron and Barricade were the only two that had any significant speaking role that was not cybertronian. I could have done with at least one bad guy huddle.
Secondly as a minor aside, why did Bay object to mass shifting only to have a 1000 foot cube be reduced to the size of a bowling ball?
Now all that said here are my official predictions for the sequel. We see Starscream in the credits leave earth. I know he is going to call for reinforcements. Soundwave and Shockwave would be nice, as would be the Combaticons (since Devastator already appeared). Barricade and Skorpinok are MIA so that allows you to develop a nice harassment for the autobots.
As for Megatron, let us look at what happens when Megatron in the past has come into contact with some all powerful force. Unicron turned him to Galvatron (G1), absorbing another Megatron’s spark turned him into a Galvatron like figure (Beast Wars), The Key to Vector Sigma turned him into Galvatron (Robots in Disguise), and the essence of the Minicons turned him into Galvatron (Armada). So what can e say would possibly happen with Megatron’s Spark combining with the All Spark?
As for future Autobots, sure we would all love to see the Dinobots come in, but more realistically I think that aside from our survivors, Prowl, Warpath, Silverbolt, and Wheeljack should make appearances. I choose warpath to specifically counter another Devastator like Decepticon, and Silverbolt to counter Starscream. Erstwhile Prowl and Wheeljack are two classic Autobots that many are fond of.
All in all Transformers is a very worthwhile film to see, at least in the eye candy factor. If you go in expecting it to be some great amount of writing, go se Evening. I give Transformers a solid Four and a half out of Five Energon Cubes
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