Jimbob's Transformers Review

Normally this isn't my area, but I thought I'd branch out a little today. I saw Transformers and I liked it. Plenty of action, robots, old memories, and an Easy Plot. Basically there's this Cube that can spawn life into machines. Both parties, Autobots and Decepticons want it for their own purposes, all they have to do is find it.

I was a huge Transformer fan as a kid and was a avid watcher of the cartoon series. Nowadays, they call it "First Generation." I can tell you that the First movie, at least as a kid, was a disaster for me. If you watched it by itself, without prior knowledge of the cartoon series, it's a decent movie. Good Robots, bad robots, slaughter on both sides, old leader dies, new leader arises, ultimate threat defeated, happy ending.




Autobots... Roll Out!

Now pretend that you spent hours and hours getting to know the slaughtered robots prior to the movie. You had action figures, favorite characters, etc. Now shoot every one of them in the face, and replace them with new people. As an adult, I can guess this was a wipe and reload of their action figure line as the market had probably reached saturation, as a kid, this was a disaster waiting to happen. Optimus Prime lay dead on he ground, Starscream had been disintegrated, and all I had left was a sports car pulling a 5th wheel. Game Over.

Never having seen the "Second Generation" enough to care. There were new faces for me in this recent movie. The sand thing from the trailer was new to me, as were a handful of the other Decepticons. Optimus Prime's original voice actor made a return. I thought the special effects were amazing. It was also neat to be able to say, that urban war zone is Detroit, and that car that represents Bumblebee was built in a auto plant I visited last month. Another interesting thing was the human cast. John Turturro cameoed as an asshole FBI guy just to name one.

The thing that stuck out to me the most? A Panasonic 2GB Flash Memory Chip. It jumped out of the screen so abruptly it knocked me out of the movie and back into my theater chair. What the hell is up with ads in movies nowadays? I mean, it used to be subtle, but anymore it seems like an assault on the story line. I mean, this flash chip got it's own glamour shot. I'm imagining the director Micheal Bay on that one. "Ok, pull it out of the drive.. tilt it up, let's see the label.. BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL!!! Cut! Print that one!" The damn thing should have been in the credits. Honestly, has the cost of creating and producing a movie reached the point where profits cannot be made from the people actually going to see it? I know I'm laboring on this example, but their were plenty of times where Logos and Slogans appeared to be force fed and unnessessarily centered in the frame.



A star is born
I thought the political jabs were funny. The Latino soldier that would break into a Spanish rant and the other solders would say, "We don't know SPANISH.. ENGLISH PLEASE!!!" He argued it was important to his culture, in spite of the fact no one could understand him. The President on his bed demanding Ho-Ho's during a national crisis I thought was a funny joke also. I'm glad these segments were short, too much would have been overkill. It was enough to give me a chuckle. At least the camera time on the Ho-Ho was integrated into the rest of the movie smoothly, unlike the Panasonic Chip.

Overall, I thought the movie was good. Plenty of action, simple plot, fight scenes, a car chase or two. A good sci-fi action movie that fell into my childhood. I'm looking forward to the sequel. Good game Dreamworks.