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Transformers Reviews

Spoiler-Free Review:
Excellent, excellent movie. If you're even vaguely considering seeing it, you should definitely go as soon as possible: otherwise, you're missing out on one of the coolest movies this year.

Spoiler-Filled Review (Long):

Spoiler-Filled Review (Long):
If you going into this movie wanting G1, Beast Wars, or any other version of Transformers so far, you're likely going to be disappointed. You'll have to put aside all of your fanboy-isms before seeing this. Otherwise, you're going to be too distracted by the new designs and new voices to realize that there's a really good movie here.

The movie starts out with an amazing attack scene set in Qatar, and doesn't let up, ever. The action switches between the soldiers fighting first Blackout and then Scorponok, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) meeting Bumblebee and then Mikaela (Megan Fox), and the Pentagon trying to figure out what happened to their base. So you get enough room to breathe, but never enough to get bored.

Bumblebee's introduction was handled particularly well, from his vandalism at a used car lot to making convenient stalls and music choices to help out Sam. Their interaction provided the best comedic moments of the film (Bumblebee stealing himself was note-perfect), and also provided the setup for a brief but intense car chase. The pursuer during the chase was Barricade, who got to have two great introductory sequences. The first was after Frenzy caused some trouble on Air Force One, and the second was to interrogate Sam about one of his eBay auctions.

A quick aside about product placement: yes, there was a lot of it. General Motors, XM Satellite Radio, eBay, Panasonic, Mountain Dew, and Nokia just to name a few. None of it felt forced, though. Take a look around, and the same level of product placement probably exists in your everyday life. Only a few were spoken, but always in context (i.e., Sam tells people to check his eBay auctions, which sounds a lot more natural than "check my online auctions" - "eBay" has become a proprietary eponym like "Xerox" or "Kleenex"). Remember how awkward it sounded in Home Alone when the mom told the bedwetter to "go easy on the Pepsi"? You don't get that in Transformers.

Back to the review: Frenzy got a lot more screen time than I was expecting, but was done very well. The character suits the name, too - babbling and cussing (in alien dialect) 90% of his time on-screen. He also used his disguise(s) well, and had a terrific scene casually walking across an airstrip. Overall he was much better and more important to the movie than I was expecting. It was his skills at subtefuge that succeeded in getting what Blackout's full frontal assault could not: a full hack into the government's database and the upload of a sentient virus. The Pentagon ends up pulling the plug before a full information download can be made, but not before the virus has taken hold. Maggie (Rachael Taylor), one of the hackers assigned to break the Decepticons' code, decides to breach protocol by taking a copy of the code to a friend.

This was actually the first of the very few things that fell flat for me. Glen (Anthony Anderson) didn't need to be in the movie at all, and his character served little more than as setup for a few bad jokes and some physical humor. Everything that he did in the movie could've been easily handled by Maggie, and it would've made more sense for her to do so. I also didn't care for Agent Simmons (John Turturro), whose manic performance seemed so at odds with both the movie and the concept of a Federal Agent that it just didn't work for me. I would've preferred a Tommy Lee Jones-esque Men In Black character: the humor is still there, but not as over the top. Speaking of humor, my final problem was the Autobots' introductions. The asteroid sequence was amazing, and finding appropriate disguises was perfect, but the character introductions were not handled as well as I would've liked. Each one had to deliver some form of one-liner after they were named, and Prime had a few of his own. It's as if the writers forgot that hese were giant robots: they don't need any help to appear cool. They're already there.

Fortunately, these were minor nitpicks compared to the sheer awesomeness of the rest of the movie. The reason for the Autobots' arrival is the same as Barricade's above-mentioned interrogation: Sam has in his posession a pair of glasses owned by his great-great-grandfather (William Morgan Sheppard), a captain leading one of the first teams north into the Arctic Circle. The captain was also the first human to encounter a Cybertronian, when he came across the frozen remains of Megatron buried deep in the ice. A map leading the the AllSpark was imprinted on his glasses, and the Autobos and Decepticons are in a race to get to it first.

Now knowing what's at stake, Sam and Mikaela head back to Sam's house (in a newly-reformatted Bumblebee) with the Autobots to retrieve the glasses. The Autobots have a bit of a problem with blending in, though they do their best with some genuinely amusing results. The Feds move in (including the above-mentioned Simmons), leading to a confrontation between the Autobots and the humans. Sam, Mikaela, and Bumblebee are captured, but the Autobots get the glasses, leading to the first of Prime's speeches. As in G1, Prime has a knack for long-winded and overly dramatic speeches. Also like in G1, Peter Cullen sounds so cool doing it that you won't really care.

The three primary storylines finally come together in a major showdown between the Autobots (now working with the US military) and the the Decepticons. The battle sequences are as incredible as one would expect thirty-foot robots waging all-out war to be. There are actually casualties on both sides, some expected and others not so much. You pretty much knew that Jazz was going down from the trailers, but I wasn't expecting Optimus to take down Bonecrusher with an arm blade.

Although the battle scenes were great, I would be remiss not to mention the smaller details that went into this. Every time one of the Transformers converted from one mode to the other, it was truly amazing. You also got a sense of how massive they were, something that few versions of the TF mythos bothered to mention. Sure, they were always big, but to see the effect on the surrounding landscape like this makes them take on a whole new dimension.

The movie ended exactly as it should have. The good guys win, Sam gets the girl, and the door to a sequel is left open without having to strain credibility too much. Predictable, yes, but a darn good time.

A final thought on the designs: as I've mentioned in the past, I have no problem with the redesigned characters. the original designs were great, but even the most hardcore fan has to admit that the original series had some pretty bad animation gaffes. Such crude work simply wouldn't cut it by today's standards, and there would be no way to make those old designs work without a major overhaul of some sort. I liked that the designers for this movie were trying something new, and trying to keep them as realistic as possible under the circumstances.

It has been mentioned several times that the designs would be acceptable if not for the seemingly featureless head designs. The counterpoint to that was that as soon as we all got a chance to see the characters moving, talking, and interacting with their environment, all ambiguity would be lost. I can assure you that is indeed the case: even Megatron, whose design seemed the hardest to pin down in stills, suddenly becomes instantly recognizable in motion.


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