Directed by Michael Bay
Screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Story by John Rogers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Major Cast Members
Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky
Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes
Josh Duhamel as Captain Lennox
Tyrese Gibson as USAF Tech Sergeant Epps
Rachael Taylor as Maggie Madsen
Anthony Anderson as Glen Whitmann
Jon Voight as Defense Secretary John Keller
John Turturro as Agent Simmons
Michael O'Neill as Tom Banacheck
Kevin Dunn as Ron Witwicky
Julie White as Judy Witwicky
Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime (voice)
Mark Ryan as Bumblebee (voice)
Darius McCrary as Jazz (voice)
Robert Foxworth as Ratchet (voice)
Jess Harnell as Ironhide / Barricade (voice)
Hugo Weaving as Megatron (voice)
Jimmie Wood as Bonecrusher (voice)
Reno Wilson as Frenzy (voice)
Charles Adler as Starscream (voice)
Disclaimer 1: Much of this review will be written “in universe” style, meaning that I’m a cartoon geek who will assume a certain level of cartoon knowledge from the reader. I apologize in advance for “nerding-out” on most of you.
Disclaimer 2: If you don’t already have a vested interest in the Transformers characters born from the 80’s cartoon, STOP RIGHT HERE! DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM. IT IS NOT FOR YOU. Chalk it up as one of my “guilty pleasures” and just move on. Pretend you never saw me praise this film, and let’s not make eye-contact from here on.
Disclaimer 2a: Seriously, nothing good can come from watching this film without a completely geeked-out sense of nostalgia. If you’re not already a fan, it will be incredibly difficult to ignore the flimsy plot, the glaring plot holes, the clichéd one-dimensional characters, the ridiculously poor writing, the absurd sight-gags and cheesy puns, and the giant robots beating the crap out of one-another and blowing stuff up for no fathomable reason other than what amounts to an intergalactic gang-war.
Disclaimer 2b: Look, I’m not joking. If you rent this DVD looking for clever plot devices and character depth, go ahead and stab yourself in the scrotum right now. That will be less painful for you than sitting through this movie. If you rented this film after a video store clerk recommended it, please refrain from punching him in the face the next time you see him. He’s probably just a cartoon geek like me.
Disclaimer 2c: OK, I’ll level with you. Unless you have used your army of Hasbro toys to reenact the siege of Metroplex, the Autobot city… unless you have come to blows with your siblings or made a cousin cry for making the ironclad argument that Grimlock and the Dinobots are collectively a stronger group than the Constructicons, even when whey combine to form Devastator, you will want to skip this film.
Disclaimer 3: If you’re not a Transformers Nerd, but your love interest is, go ahead and watch the film with him. Watching him revert to a wide-eyed, pre-adolescent kid on Christmas morning will be worth sitting through what might appear to be an incomprehensibly dreadful film.
I don’t know much about Michael Bay, but I’ve read the press clippings about how he is viewed by many as a crummy director. I’ve read that his body of work is heavy on explosions, sight-gags and inside-jokes, but weak on substance, plot, and character development. So when Michael Bay directed a live film adaptation of one my favorite childhood action cartoons, the universe would be sucked into the singularity created by the catastrophic power of the film’s overall sucktitude, right?
Not so fast.
Transformers was not the festering stinkbomb that most die-hard cartoon geeks and Bay Bashers had envisioned. Could it have been done better? Absolutely. God, yes it could. As a first generation Transformers cartoon geek, was I disappointed with the finished product? Definitely. But the film established its primary objective; I was entertained for a little over two hours and I left the theatre without flipping off the ticket agent or demanding my money back. In fact, I paid to see this film a few more times, and I’m not on drugs or anything.
The overall theme can be summed up in a verse from the original series’ theme song; “Autobots wage their bat-tle to de-stroy the e-vil for-ces of… the Decepticons!” (Hearing that part always gives me goosebumps and makes me want to fight crime). The story centers on Sam Witwicky and his Camaro, which is actually his Autobot guardian, Bumblebee. Sam possesses an artifact, a seemingly worthless heirloom that holds the key to Earth’s survival as the centuries-old galactic conflict reaches the planet.
That’s pretty much it for the plot, but when a film’s main-draw are a collection of four-story rock-em sock-em robots hell-bent on pulverizing one another, the story pretty much writes itself. I was perfectly willing to believe that a race of hostile alien robots were willing to kill one another over a pair of glasses. Honest, I don’t even smoke marijuana. I just loved the cartoon as a kid. In a film that relies heavily on explosions, CGI, and other special effects, it seems perfectly reasonable that Michael Bay was tapped to direct it. He did a fairly decent job. I mean, all he had to do was say stuff like, “Starscream, blow sh*t up! Optimus, pontificate about good conquering evil!” Still, nicely done.
The pacing of the film was almost rapid enough to offset the weak plot, though there were a few too-many sight-gags, especially when the Autobots rescued Sam from Sector 7 (That part was so cheesy that I was actually embarrassed for the actors. You can almost see Shia Leabu wistfully hoping for that scene to hit the cutting room floor.)
As for the special effects, I can’t say enough about the graphics. In a sci-fi film of this nature, at best, I was hoping for some level of realism in the robots. At worst, I simply hoped that the robots wouldn’t come across as cheesy stand-ins, like a collection of two-ton, clunky, Jar-Jar Binks-type characters. I was astonished and legitimately excited when my expectations were exceeded just after the film began, when the Decepticon Blackout transformed and attacked the military base. The robots were incredibly detailed and the transformation sequences seemed incredibly realistic with thousands of moving parts. I expected the CGI elements to be good, but I was still blown away by the detail. Seeing Optimus Prime transform for the first time was a jaw-dropping experience. I was like a 60’s suburban housewife meeting Wayne Newton. OK, I might have been on pain meds, but that’s it!
(I have to be honest here. The graphics and effects were indeed jaw-dropping, but the lynchpin for this entire movie was not only casting Peter Cullen to reprise his role as the voice of heroic Autobot leader, Optimus Prime, but to have him utter the first lines of the film. When the theatre’s surround sound rumbled with, “Before time began…” every guy near my age pumped their fist, high-fived one another, or tried to share their nostalgic joy with their slightly less than enthused date. If Peter Cullen hadn’t been cast to reprise this character, Michael Bay would be roasting on a skewer at a comic con at this very moment and this review would be decidedly less-apologetic.)
I didn’t expect the film to stick closely to the original cartoon. I knew the writers and directors would try placing their own stamp on the movie. Some of the innovations were clever and ingenious, like making Optimus Prime’s faceplate battle mask retractable so he could emote and pontificate about freedom and sacrifice more effectively. But I hated not being able to recognize the Evil Decepticon leader, Megatron. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to transform into his original mode, a human-sized handgun. But I was hoping that his robot mode would retain some semblance of what I remembered instead of making him look like some nightmarish snow monster.
