The Transformers - Movie Review

Being a major Transformers fan of the cartoon since I was a kid, I had high expectations of this movie. I finally realized one of my dreams today by watching this movie. The movie did have it's ups and downs, but overall the movie was just sensational.

The bad part of the movie was the first 1/3rd movie. I mean, the movie basically starts off without much of an intro, and the first scene has a decepticon already in battle. However, after the first scene, you don't see much of the robots until almost half of the movie. However, this did build up anticipation, and set the movie up for the fanastic second half.

But later, we come to understand why this is so. It's a story that gives humanity too much credit, that despite our tendencies for great destruction, we're also very capable of great heroism. Right. And in the absolute worst moments of the film, it takes shots at the Iranians, the Chinese and the Russians, and goes for Bush-friendly lines like "Freedom is the right of every sentient being" or something to that effect.

At this point I must quote John Boorman, who coined the term "new brutalism" to contrast the new kind of action sequences that we now see much too often, consisting of fast cuts and action going out of frame, with the more classical style of action. In fact, I think if you were to time the action sequences in Transformers, each cut probably doesn't last more than 1.5 seconds.

The good part of the movie was the second half, with all the battle action sequences. I must say, Michael Bay did a fantastic job making all the robots look real and life like. The only gripe I had was that they didn't have much character. What I mean specifically is that the robots didn't talk a lot, mostly the humans. I which we could have gotten more personality from the Autobots. The Decepticons barely talked themselves. Starscream is suppose to be Megatron's rivals, but you can't even tell that in the movie. They barely have interaction with one another.

Anyways, the movie is set up for the next 2 sequels. I don't want to give many spoilers, but yes, an Autobot does die (not saying which one), and the ending leads you up to more sequels (I hope they have the dinobots!). This was a fantastic movie with fantastic graphics, and I know it'll leave you mesmerized like myself.