Well, E talked me into seeing the Transformers movie, by Michael Bay. *I shudder at even typing that* when I heard about this movie, I flipped out and actually said I wouldn’t see it for my own selfish reasons. Slowly I was clubbed into accepting this movie by the sheer volume of advertising and exposure. It’s nice to see Transformers on store shelves, but I’d prefer the original Prime and Megatron, not these updated cheap shells of my childhood memories.
As to the actual movie… it was not as horrid as I thought it would be. It wasn’t great cinema either, not story wise. The movie does show that there’s such a thing as too much CGI in one film. While the transformers looked amazing, there were points where I wish they’d either stay robots or stay vehicles for more than a few minutes at a time, because yes we know that Hollywood can do AMAZING things with computer graphics and animation but we didn’t need to see the Autobots and Decepticons transform every few minutes to prove this.
I did appreciate the homage to certain aspects of the original animated film from the 80’s… including the lines from the Prime & Megatron showdown, as well as the lackey/boss relationship between Megatron and Starscream. Jazz dying at Megatron’s hands during the big battle, and with that being said here’s my gripes with the film:
- It’s not Sam Witwicky, its Spike Witwicky
- Megatron is not some humongous X Wing type fighter jet, even when he became Galvatron he was still a gun.
- Devastator is 5 seperate Decepticons, not one ginourmous one. If Megatron was huge, then Devastator should have been a few stories tall.
- Most of the transformers were named correctly, except the police car Decepticon… that came later
- Where does all that mass go when they become cars, planes, etc? Uber quantum mechanics
- Wasting John Turturro’s talents on this film
- Having Michael Bay make it in the first place
Other than the cutesy parts of the film, i.e: Prime and the others trying to hide from Sam’s parents, the bullying by the dumb jock and the routine parts of high school life for Sam.. its an OK film. Bay did not meet my expectations, and having John Turturro as a bumbling, strictly by the book shill for the government was a waste of his talent.
Overall, I’d say see it but don’t pay full price.