Movie Review: Transformers

I loved the Transformers as a kid. I watched the cartoon - I played with the toys - I went and saw the original Transformers movie in the theater in 1986. That being said, I initially wasn't looking forward to this movie - in fact I wasn't even sure I was going to go see it. I don't like Michael Bay for the most part and from everything I had heard about the production of the film, he was destroying the history of the franchise I loved.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I loved this movie. After seeing trailer after trailer for Transformers over the first part of the Summer I realized that I really couldn't avoid seeing the movie as I had originally planned - it was going to be too big for that. Transformers was everything the Summer blockbuster action film should be - I mean really, it is huge robots beating the crap out of each other - who wouldn't like that? The premise of the movie is that the evil Decepticons, led by the maniacal Megatron want something that Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) has so they can use it to destroy Earth. Meanwhile, the heroic Autobots, led by the noble Optimus Prime need that same item, but for reasons of good. Besides the obvious large robots, there are car chases and some pretty decent acting to be honest. I appreciated the performances of Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel among others.

However, the biggest star to me, a longtime TransFan, was Peter Cullen. I know, most of you ask, "Peter Cullen, who the heck is Peter Cullen?" Peter Cullen is the original voice of Optimus Prime from the 1980s Transformers cartoon and he reprises that role in this film. The movie starts off with narration from Cullen and from that moment I was hooked.

The creators of the movie had plenty of little nods to the old-school Transformers fans. While Autobot Bumblebee was originally a VW Bug, he ended up being a Chevy Camaro in this film due to licensing issues. However, during one scene in the movie, Bumblebee destroys an old yellow VW Bug so Sam will take him home rather than choosing the Bug. It was little things like this that made this movie fun for fans like me.

I will go on record to say that there WILL BE a sequel to this film - it has made far too much money and was left far too wide open at the end for there not to be. There are literally hundreds of characters for them use in future films. I give Transformers 5 out of 5 stars.