Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 8

Transformers, the live action movie. The very idea had gave me a roller coaster of emotions. On the one hand, this was the movie I had wanted to see since before I could walk, on the other hand, this was the movie I had wanted to see since before I could walk. It was a movie that could go very very well or a movie that could go very very bad.

It ended up somewhere in between. It was surprisingly good, but it could have been better.

The movie is about the Transformers quest to find the Allspark, a power source which can give life to random machines (Vector Sigma in a handy cube form, for fans of the original). The Autobots want to use it to restore their dying home world, Cybertron, the Decepticons want to form an army to conquer the Universe. A fairly typical Transformers type plot.

The film starts with a sceen showing some army guys talking and straight away the crucial error is made. The focus of the movie lies far too much with people. Regular guys.

Almost imediately this sceen is followed by a Decepticon attack, which is incredibly cool to watch, but no detail is ever followed up as to the Decepticon’s background.

*Spoilers*

Apart from Bumblebee, who despite not saying anything still manages to be cool, the other Autobots do not arrive until an hour into the film. They are then given a few sceens, but nothing major. Only Optimus Prime and, to a lesser degree, Ironhide come across as having any character at all. When Jazz is brutally murdered, it’s very difficult to care. His character is not even slightly developed and he’s different enough from the original cartoons so that not even hardcore fans will feel connected.

The Decepticons are recieve even less character development. Megatron and Starscream don’t appear until almost two hours into the film, Megatron spending the entire time in a giant freezer. The whole Megatron – Starscream love hate relationship, a very key feature of the original cartoons, is given only one line, when Megatron announces Starscream has failed him “Once again.”

Presumably, when doing a live action, it’s just alot easier to focus on real people than imaginary robots. But it’s the imaginary robots we came to see. No one cares about some girl working for some computer type people and her friend the hacker.

On the positive side, the transformers are incredibly cool to watch and certain moments will make real fans incredibly happy, no matter how much they want to hate it. For example, anyone with any claim to being a fan could not help themselves at bubbling up with glee when Optimus Prime announces,

“One shall stand, one shall fall.”