The Transformers

Its no surprise to anyone thats read my work or that knows me, that I am a huge fan of The Transformers. Its been a mainstay in my life going all the way back to its first release on US at Christmas time 1983. I am a collector of the toys, I am a keeper of a vast wealth of knowlage related to every series to date, and most of all, I am a fan who believes in the truest belief that the line has always stold for, the belief that one day, in the global since, we shall all be one. And though, like many I had a fairly large amount of reserves about what would happen when the most hyped movie of 2007 was released, I decided that unlike a large contingant of "Transfans" as we're called, I didn't feel the need to voice these concerns as loudly, so loud infact, it made us as a whole look worse then Star Wars and Star Trek fanatics combined. I just did what I've always done, emailed Don Murphy calling him a douchebag from 30 different gmail accounts and holding onto my faith that Steven Speilberg and George Lucus would not let us out to hang on the gallows, which was very hard to do with a man like Micheal Bay involved, seriously most of his work is crap. But I, like many of my friends (www.thetfrealm.com holla at a homie!) kept the faith even though some of the worst of it... But I must say, that faith was still intact when the end credits rolled and the ending music kicked in.

Now, to be fair, I will not proclaim this the greatest movie ever made, I had my problems with it, but nothing enough to doom it to cable tv weekend afternoon fodder, and I will not damn it to hell for the things they changed. All in all it seemed to even out, for everything that was done wrong or I didn't really like, there was something mind blowingly amazing waiting around the next corner to make up for it, and as I've said over and over these years, if you can walk away from a movie atleast 50/50 or so, then its a great movie. So lets get down into the actual meat of this review, after all that is what you've come here for isn't it?

The good news is, if nothing else, this movie is definately worth the almost $10 a movie ticket costs these days. Its funny, its action packed, you find yourself lost in just how visually awesome this movie really is by the end, plus its even a good date movie, because last I heard chicks dig giant robots. The movie itself splinters into about three storylines that all mix together, the story of a loser boy and his first car that turns into a robot who speaks mostly in tv and radio signals and how he tries so hard to impress the hottest girl in school, the story of a military unit in the middle eastern theater who are all thats left of a base that was otherwise completely wiped out trying to get to some form of help before the giant killer robots find and destroy them, and a super top secret way above X-files like Black Ops group called "Sector Seven" and all that they do, admittedly of the three main plots Sector Seven is the weakest.

The movie starts with an awesome voice over narration by Optimus Prime, he speaks of the Allspark, the decimation of Cybertron and the great war, voiced once again by the amazing Peter Cullen, the originator of the role. Peter is able to do the voice still after 24 years, though he does sound abit gruffer and tired, but that makes the character have more depth, he's ment to be old and tired from eons of war. My only real complaint is that though its normal for Prime to be willing to put his life on the line for others, in the movie, he seemed almost martyr like in his drive to protect, he states many times he will give his life to save others if needed, and though this is normal Prime reteric, it seemed abit over the top even for Optimus, almost as if he wanted to die.

The movie cuts to a remote location in the middle east, a black military helicopter flying into a base full of US Army operatives, the chopper lands, it transforms and then starts to wipe out the entire base, we don't know at this point his name is Blackout, or that the giant metal scorpion he launchs is named Scorpinok, infact Scorpinok isn't even named at all in the movie. The scene is typical Bay related action, fast, furious, confusionally blurry, not always a really good explaination of whats going on other then "he's blowing up everything because he's robot that came here as a helicopter and he can do whatever he likes" at this point.

The next part you see is when you meet Sam Witwicky, hapless 11th grade loser who is the great grandson of a famous explorer who was known for reaching the south pole and spending his life after his return from the south pole ranting about a "large metal man" and drawing symbols all over the place. Sam can't seem to get a break, and is doing all that he can to keep up good grades so his father will go halfs on buying a car for him. the scene were you meet Sam is funny and ends with a hilariously delivered "Ask yourself, what would Jesus do?" line. Sam is played by former child actor Shia LaBeouf who gives the character of Sam Witwicky a completely new depth and feel to him, you like Sam, you want him to do good and you want him to save the world, because after all, thats what jesus would do. I have no actual problems with Shia's performance if anything he gave the classic charactor we used to know only as Spike Witwicky a new life.

Next is a funny scene about Sam and his father Ron Witwicky going to pick out his first car, Ron pulls his mint condition british racing green Triumph into a Porsche dealership, Sam exclaims "A PORSCHE? You're getting me a Porsche? No way.. you're kidding me" to which is father actually looks at him and says "yeah, I am kidding, you're not getting a porsche." they drove from there too a used car dealership, owned by a man named Bobby Bolivia, played to perfection by Bernie Mac. Bobby seems to have this almost magical way about him and his cars, he also has a mexican wearing a clown suit who scares away white people with his complaining about his clown make up being hot, but thats a whole other thing. Bobby and Sam go strolling about the lot, Bobby's grandmother gives them the middle finger, as is the style of the time, and next, next you see a junky old 1974 Camaro pull up with out a driver and park next to a 1979 VW Beatle. Long time fans know that this camaro is long time fan favorite Bumblebee in his new form, and that the VW Beatle next to him is ment to represent his old form from the cartoon. After a very funny scene that involves Bobby saying "yes though cars pick their drivers, sometimes they pick drives with cheap ass fathers." Sam leaves with the 1974 camaro.

Sam next uses his new found car to try and impress people, most notedly Mikaela Banes, played by new comor Megan Fox, a hot girl thats way out of Sam's league who leaves her boyfriend, an annoying ignorant jock at a lake party. Sam's car starts up on his own and starts to play "Who's Gonna Drive You Home" by The Cars, as if to tell him to go after her. I remember thinking to myself "wow, I wished my first car helped me try to get laid in high school." but alas, my old merc did no such thing. Sam drives up and picks Mikaela up and he drives her home after a small stop where bumblebee all of a sudden "has engine failure", this leads to a scene where we basically aren't ment to do anything but check out Megan Fox wile laughing at how baddly Sam is doing trying to impress her "I don't mind woman that work on cars, infact, I prefer women working on my cars.." and "Wait no, it will start again, i'd love to ride you home... umm... I mean give you a ride home..." among his funnyer lines in this scene. The scene ends outside of Mikaela's home where Sam delivers the most cheesy work in of a transformers related line ever put on film "No, I don't think you're shallow at all, infact, I think you're more then meets the eye.." sure its forced but I don't care, its still funny.

From there we shift to a defence department meeting with all these gathered hackers/PC Analists who are brought together to analise the one sound recovered from the earlyer attacked army base, you also see onboard Air Force One there is a small jambox that doesn't really seem to act much like a jambox at all. It is infact Frenzy, the awesomest of the decepticons through out the entire film, ok well second awesomest, but I'll get to that. Frenzy makes his way down into the data banks on Air Force One and continues the hacking job that Blackout started in the middle east but was unable to finish. Seriously Frenzy steals the show through most of the movie. Though I must admit, I'm abit confused as to why when the agents that do see him on Air Force One they didn't seem you know, surprised to find a human sized killer robot that can become a jambox or anything, you would think they would be after all you don't see that sort of thing every day of your life.

From here the movie jumps between all three stories, Sam thinks his car is stolen when it starts up and leaves all by itself, he follows it and sees Bumblebee transform for the first time, as well as send a signal out to the other autobots. The signal is a big bright light, and I must admit, I was abit let down it wasn't a Batman-esque Autobot symbol in the sky. From that happening you soon meet Barricade, the bas ass evil cop car who just wants to blow up stuff. Frenzy likes to hang out with him and is rewarded for this by getting his head chopped off with a saws all, and then has his head puntkicked a really far distance by Sam who's all "not so tough with out your head are you?", because you know, the best way to impress the girl you wanna get with who had just left a football player is to act like a football player, because saving her from A GIANT KILLER ROBOT isn't enough I guess. I also find it weird that a saws all can sever the limb of a cybertronian being, but you need a special round of ammo to do damage from a gun or something for that nature. This also leads to the scene were Bumblebee changes to the brand new camaro, the scene is hilarious in its own away, Mikaela looks at Sam and is like "I have just one question, if your car can turn into a robot, and take any form he wants, why did he pick this peace of **** old car?" to this Bumblebee stops dead, orders them both out, then drives away, he gets up on two wheels for some odd reason, which was even odder that no other cars seemed to really notice or care, he tapscans a brand new camaro and returns.

You see a somewhat funny scene with the military unit in the middle east where one of them is trying to call the pentagon emergancy like and is on hold on a cellphone because he needs a credit card to make the call. Apparently telephone line workers in India don't really don't care if you call in the middle of a war or are just trying to reach a state away. This scene is saddly the last time you see Scorpinok in the whole movie, he disappears minus his tail into the ground, also thanks to this scene, I'll have the image of that ugly can't see and can't really act that well bastid Tyrese Gibson screaming "Left Cheek!" repeatedly in my nightmares for weeks. Oh yeah, you laugh it up now, but once you see it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

From there we're treated to a mix of action scenes, comedy moments, and vague story moving scenes, and then all breaks loose when Megatron is defrosted, there are bits of gold that are sprinkled through out, saddly with exception of afew really good stand out scenes the movie breaks down into typical Bay Fodder speed freak like action alot of stuff blowing up, drunk women defending little dogs named mojo with baseball bats and talking about working out codewords for masterbation with their sons, you know, the normal. And in the end, alot of awesome stuff happens, you watch Megatron go batcrap crazy and make stuff dead and explode, and sometimes at the same time! The movie ends in the way a normal Transformer tv series would end, a nice happy open ended final act where everyone good is happy and Optimus Prime sends out a transmission to any or all surviving transformers anywhere in the universe.

Over all, I did love the movie. And though I had afew big concerns, its a mostly human character based movie, and though thats not overly bad, come on, we wanna see giant robots blowing up stuff, there is very little character explanation or developement for the transformers themselves, and other then afew, you really only see them all in the last 20 or so minutes, infact their "hi, good bye, its my turn to die" appearances make me wonder why Brawl (called Devastator to keep up the whole misnaming tradition in Transformers) and Bonecrusher even showed up at all, they have a total of about 10 minutes on screen the both of them, and all we actually find out about Starscream is that he apparently fails Megatron alot. Hugo Weaving plays an AWESOME Megatron btw. Bonecrusher and Prime's fight on the highway is WAY to short and apparently in his later fight with Megatron, Prime forgets he has that blade in his arm. And there was way to little Ratchet, Ironhide and Jazz for my liking honestly, given that all three are as iconic to the fans as Prime and Bumblebee. The little bit they do appear is pretty entertaining for the most part though, watching them all hide in the Witwicky's yard is hilarious, though I'm not really sure how you can not notice giant robots in your backyard though I don't know. Prime looking at Ironhide and going "What is wrong with you?" when Ironhide offers to "get rid of.." Sam's parents was hilarious and almost as funny was a scene where Bumblebee "lubricated" on a secret agent was awesome too, as well as a scene with Ratchet commenting about sam wanting to have sex with mikeala, and also the seemingly not shocked reactions of the humans.

So I guess over all, though I did find alot wrong with the movie, I found just as much right with it too. And honestly, to me, thats all I wanted, and I hope that honestly, thats all you wanted too. Just remember everyone, someday, if we all strive for it, we all will be as one. So untill that day, tell the fanboys and whiners to shut the hell up and go back to your childhood if you were a fan, and if you weren't, go see Megan Fox showing off her "rear bumper" if you get my meaning, cuz damn, was that some fine viewing. So untill the next movie, or till all are one, holla...



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Laz