Dean Nelson

I loved Transformers as a kid. I had a few of the toys and watched the ‘toon when I could, though I was pretty young; it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, and I really don’t remember it well now. I remember Optimus Prime, Grimlock, and Bumblebee, but I couldn’t tell you too much about any of the other characters. I do remember thinking that giant alien robots that turn into cars are awesome – in theory, anyway.

I reserved a lot of skepticism and doubt about the new live-action iteration of Transformers. My biggest fear was, simply, that Transformers would not translate well from their 1980′s comic/cartoon/action figure roots to present day life. It’s one thing to see robots turn into cars, guns, and dinosaurs when they’re in a kids’ cartoon, but it’s something else altogether to make that believable in a live environment. My other reservations were aimed at the level of commercialism in the movie; I feared that the Transformers franchise may turn into an oversized commercial for GM or the US Army. Additional worries of a terrible story, bad acting, and the usual components that go into any movie were also considered.

Optimus Prime is, of course, bad-ass.

Thankfully, my fears did not come to light (much). Though there was certainly a fair share of commercial product placement, pro-military attitude, and some questions about the Transformers still left unanswered, none of this was done in a way that detracted from the movie.

Of course, the movie was a feast for the eyes. Robots who stand thirty feet tall and battle in the middle of a city need to be done well for a movie like this to succeed, but to say that they were done “well” would be an understatement. They looked awesome, when fighting both themselves and humans. My one complaint in this department is that some of the action was happening so quickly, you couldn’t tell what was happening insofar that two robots duking it out just looks like a bunch of scrap metal rolling around. Luckily, this is the exception and not the rule; most of the special effects are fun and believable, and always entertaining.

Bumblebee talks to Sam about the dangers of doing drugs. Not really.

An element that I didn’t expect was comedy. The movie was actually funny. The best part about the humor in Transformers is that it didn’t seem to go out of its way to make jokes, especially thanks to Shia LaBeouf who is a great natural comedian and, in some ways, made the movie. One might expect a funny action movie to be in the vein of Rush Hour, but that isn’t so with Transformers. While other action/comedies often ride the line between genres, Transformers is definitely an action movie first. There are no notable one-liners that I can think of, which is probably a good thing as such would’ve only fed into the phoniness and corniness of giant robots who transform into human machines.

Parts of the movie made me laugh out loud, especially thanks to Shia LaBeouf.

One of my biggest concerns, as I said earlier, was that the Transformers would simply not do well in coming into a live-action medium. I was concerned about the way the Transformers would come to know certain things on Earth, specifically the English language and Human vehicles. Optimus Prime reveals that they’ve learned English through the World Wide Web, which is cool and makes sense. Though it was explained that Transformers have the ability to scan electronic devices and change the makeup of their bodies to look like the aforementioned scanned items, I still have some questions about how this works. How do they get custom paint jobs? How does the metal form? When they turn into their transformed mode (a car, for instance), where does the rest of their body go? If they’re from another planet, where did they get tires? Ah, the mysteries of the universe… perhaps we’ll know in the sequel (not-so-subtly hinted to during the ending credits when [slight spoiler] one of the Decepticons jets out of Earth’s atmosphere).

Explosions are always fun.

A lot of people complain about Michael Bay, the film’s director, when speaking about his career of “bad directing”. I don’t understand why. I thought the direction throughout Transformers was right on track. The movie never dropped pace, and I didn’t feel like there were any scenes that didn’t belong. There were some non-critical scenes, sure, but not to the point that they detracted from the rest of the film. After seeing this movie, anyone who says that Bay is a “bad” director would seem to be disrespecting him based on spite alone.

Giant robots flipping over cars FTW.

I’m glad to say that my pre-conceived notions about Transformers were proven wrong, and the film turned out to be exactly what it should have been – a movie about fighting robots with awesome CGI and a good story. This is definitely the “summer blockbuster” many have been waiting for, and could even be called the best comic/cartoon/toy-to-movie adaptation ever.

Even Christina liked it – now that’s saying something.

Just because.

A fair warning: This movie isn’t necessarily for kids. There’s a sizable count of shits, bitches, and mothers (though no F-bombs, to keep in line with the PG-13 rating), as well as mature subject matter like relationships and masturbating. Yes, masturbating is discussed in Transformers. I don’t remember the cartoon very well, but I know they never talked about that.

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