My Transformers Movie Review

As my post two days ago should show, I'm a huge transformers fan. Ever since the movie has been released all my friends keep asking me what I thought of it. I thought I'd post it here so that from now on I'll just direct them to my blog.

First off, I really had reservations about this movie because all the pictures I saw of the robot's designs looked terrible to me. They looked very different than the blocky forms I have grown so used to since my childhood. The only way I can describe my first impression of the pics I saw before the movie is "insect-like". In some ways they actually looked almost organic and I didn't like this very much.

However, as soon as I saw these figures moving on-screen I was put at ease. To tell the truth, I was so caught up in the story that I didn't think twice to criticize the robot's designs. And when Prime transforms to robot mode for the first time it nearly took my breath away. Here was my childhood hero brought to life! (I'm such a dork!)

I loved the voice acting! Peter Cullen was the original voice of Optimus Prime back in the 80's. And to me, anyone who has voiced the character in the later cartoons are poor imitations. It was great to have the "real" Optimus Prime in the movie. I also loved Hugo Weaving's work as the voice of Megatron.

Peter Cullen aka...

...Optimus Prime


Hugo Weaving aka...

...Megatron

As far as the storytelling goes, I generally liked it. There is lots of humor and I never thought I'd LOL at the theater as much as I did. Especially at a Transformers movie. I say that I "generally" liked the storytelling because sometimes the fight scenes were hard to follow. When the camera was pulled back for a medium or far shot everything was easily understandable, but several times when two bots were fighting, the camera was so close to the action that it was hard to tell one character from another, much less what they were actually doing. This is a minor gripe however and overall I thought the story was great.



I loved the movie score and immediately went in search of it. Unfortunately all that is available is the soundtrack. (Which I bought.) At the moment there are no plans to release the movies orchestral score which is a shame. But I'm sure that one will be released eventually.

I've been to see the film twice so far and have been invited by a friend to go see it again. (Finances permitting.)

There were two things I didn't like in the film however. First the language. While I don't consider myself a saint I was surprised by the Transformers themselves cursing in this movie. While I can understand it that people talk this way and easily accepted the human characters profanity, I was shocked to hear the bots curse. It's my feeling that if they were supposed to be so much more of a "mature" species than the humans they would have outgrown profanity long ago.

The second thing that bothered me about the movie was how much more powerful Megatron was than Optimus Prime. This really ticked me off, it seemed to me that it was all Optimus could do to survive for the few minutes they actually fought. At one point, before the battle begins Prime actually tries to cover the bases in case he gets killed in the battle by telling Sam to throw the Allspark Cube into his chest if it looks like he's gonna die!

This is completely out of character for the Optimus Prime of the cartoon. The Prime I know is able to go toe-to-toe with Megatron and fight him to a standstill. That was part of their dynamic as each other's nemesis. Megatron could basically trash any regular autobot he wanted, that was until Prime showed up. Optimus Prime was the one guy that could match Megatron in raw strength and thus stand up to him.

In general though I think that Transformers is the best movie to come out this year and I recommend that you go out and see it if you already haven't.