Transformers Reactions

Saw "Transformers" last night (Sunday) w/ Shal. Like most people from my generation that were weaned on the cartoon in the mid-'80s, I think our memories of the show are likely more fond than the actual quality of story - if we went back and watched the cartoons today, we'd probably be appalled at the overall cheesiness. As my ex-coworker put it, "I've placed all of my Transformer cartoon memories in a sealed box in my brain, and thrown away the key - they're precious and I'm not going to screw with them." So, I was willing to go into this new blockbuster movie with an open mind, knowing that it would most likely be a movie influenced by Transformers rather than a Transformers movie. A couple of observations, thoughts, and comments (spoiler warning, highlight over the invisible text to read):

- An All-Spark? Was that in the cartoon? I guess they had to utilize some super-important artifact as the MacGuffin that all the robots are trying to get their hands on. Read an interesting article saying that the original cartoon's resource conflict, energon cubes, was directly related to the energy shortage of the late 1970s.

- They did a nice job developing Shia Lebeouf's character, he did come across as a relatable character for the audience and relatively important to the story. Plus, he displayed a nice sense of comic timing, and there was a decent amount of non-cheesy humor written into the script.

- On the other hand, they spent a looooooong time with the American military, giving a lot of face time to folks like Jon Voight's Secretary of Defense, a couple of systems analysts, and one of Shal's favorite eye-candies, Josh Duhamel.

- I guess even Jon Turturro is entitled to slum it a bit in action flicks like this one.

- Now, the robots. The transformations looked genuinely cool - I can only imagine the computing power that was devoted to render all those moving parts in the photo-realistic way director Michael Bay was apparently demanding from the visual effects team. Plus, the transformations from vehicle mode to robot mode and back again in the midst of action sequences were pretty seamless.

- However, I wasn't as big of a fan of the looks of the robot bodies, with the exception of Optimus. Every other Transformer became too hard to identify, with all the spikes, diagonal lines, and busy designs. Being able to identify them in the midst of a hand-to-hand clash in battle was completely impossible.

- Nice in-film wink to the old fans at the beginning where the dealer tries to sell Sam and his dad an old VW Bug (Gen 1 Bumblebee) rather than the Camaro Bumblebee.

- Bumblebee isn't given a voice for most of the movie (due to a story in a prequel comic book where his voice box is ripped out by Megatron), but is able to convey enough with his loyalty to Sam and his impeccable choice of radio tunes to win over the audience. When he got captured by the agents of Sector 7, even Shally leaned over and whispered, "I really hate humans right now."

- Annoying: the Decepticon Frenzy, a spy capable of disguising itself as a boombox or cell phone, looked and sounded like a Gremlin. Reportedly, Soundwave is supposed to be in the sequel - hopefully they can pull him off.

- Also annoying: the continued references to current pop culture technology, like ebay, which will probably sound really dated within a few years.

- Improvement I'd like to see: more character development for Megatron and Starscream. They pretty much just serve as cardboard cutout super-bad-guys, but we barely get to see much of Megatron (he's frozen in stasis until the last 30 mins or so of this 2 hr, 20 min movie) and the only hint we get of their famously antagonistic relationship in the cartoon is one line from Megatron - "Starscream, you fail me again."

- On the good side, Optimus and Bumblebee are decently well-developed and look pretty good. Optimus even looks pretty authentic compared to the classic version. The other Autobots could have used character development as well; we don't really see Jazz do anything, and Ratchet is called the "medical officer" but doesn't do any fixing. But even then, the introduction of Prime and the rest of the Autobots to Sam and Mikaela is a great fanboy scene.

- The scene where Megatron rips Jazz in half drew gasps from the audience. There goes Optimus' second-in-command...

- One of my common complaints about Michael Bay action movies is the frequency of really-close up camera shots that make it impossible to determine what is going on in the fight - who is firing what weapon, who is punching what body part, etc. It's quite kinetic, but ultimately just degenerates into chaos. In my fight scenes, I like to see what's going on.

- That being said, Optimus' battle with Bonecrusher, ending with him chopping the Decepticon's head off with a blade from his arm, was probably the highlight of the closing battle.

- For some reason they didn't show very much of Megatron vs. Optimus on-screen, although hearing the quote "One shall stand, one shall fall" sent a small thrill through me.

- Things to do better in the inevitable sequel: simplify the robot models a bit so they're less busy-looking, focus more on the robots and less on the human military, keep Shia around, come up with a better plot device than the All-Spark.

- Previews: intriguing unnamed one from JJ Abrams that looks like a disaster flick from the point of view of a handheld camera, and the Simpsons movie trailer. I was cracking up all the way through the trailer, so I think they'll do a good job.