Secondary Thoughts on Transformers

It’s Friday night and I have just finished watching The Transformers for the second time in three days. The way things are shaping up, I will probably see it a third time within the next week.

And I am perfectly fine with that.

The movie is quickly moving up on my list of favorites. It has action, it has humor, it has a struggle between good and evil, it even has a romance. Perhaps most important of all, it didn’t rape my childhood memories.

Hollywood has been getting it wrong for so many years, that we moviegoers are trained to expect adaptations of our favorite things growing up to be crappy. In recent years, a few brave directors have stood up to the onslaught of sewage that Tinseltown spews upon us and are struggling to close the sluice gates. Peter Jackson was one with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sam Raimi has done it with the Spider-Man trilogy, Bryan Singer did it with the first two X-Men movies before losing his way and crapping out the polished turd of Superman Returns, and Christopher Nolan delivered a shining example in Batman Begins.

I’m not going to spend time on all of the horrible television, movie, toy, and comic book adaptations that have moistened the silver screen with their waste (too much with the sewage references?)

Now, we have Michael Bay. He already proved himself in the action arena with Armageddon and The Rock (the movie, not the Dwayne “Look at my eyebrow!” Johnson,) among others. He has now proved himself high among the ranks of creators that have lovingly cradled childhood nostalgia, polished it carefully, cut off the detritus, and delivered it to the masses.

Bay didn’t play with no Go-Bots.

So, a couple of things that stood out to me this time. I noticed that Bumblebee seemed very feline in his transformations. He almost took on the appearance of a yellow panther crouching to spring before becoming the Camaro. I noticed a few more subtle placements of the autobot and decepticon symbols on the respective robots. Not as many on the decepticons, but they were still there. Frenzy actually talks. At first listen, he seems to just chitter, but if you know what he’s talking about, you can make out words, (such as “Witwicky, Witwicky,” or, “Megatron, Megatron, Megatron!”) As I watched Starscream transform in midair, I thought to myself,

Self?

Yeah?

It’s totally time for someone to make a Robotech live action movie.

Totally.

I’m glad we’re in agreement.

Yeah, now quit talking to me, people are going to think I’m crazy.

Oh, and the soundtrack and score for the movie were perfect as well. While the following was not in the movie, perhaps because it’s on the cheesy side, it is still kinda cool. Don’t know who did the song, but the footage seems to be a mix of scenes from the trailers. Trust me on this, as cool as some of these scenes are, the coolest were saved for the movie itself. Do yourself a favor and check this one out while it’s in the theaters. For my part, I’m eagerly waiting the sequel.