Transformers: The Movie

Rating: 9.2

 

There hasn’t been too many successful movies that were originally based on a cartoon.  Transformers is not only based on a very successful show from the 80's, but is also based on a child’s toy - not too many movies can say that. 

 

Transformers blew my expectations out of the water.  Last year, when I first learned they were making a movie, I was skeptical - for good reasons too.  First, I heard that Bernie Mac was starring along with Dane Cook - so I thought they were going to make a cheesy, low-budget film.  Second, are they going to make it similar to the cartoon?  Or are they just going to go in a whole new direction while leaving the cartoon in the dust like most movies based on other media such as comic books, novels and cartoons.  I was relieved to see that Mr. Mac only had a small five minute part and comedian Dane Cook was nowhere to be seen. 

 

So did the movie stay true to the original cartoon?  Yes, it did... not entirely true, but true enough to keep the hardcore fan happy.  The main feature that sold me was the fact that a lot of the Transformers voices were played by the original actors from the cartoon.  And the ones that weren’t the original voices did a spectacular job at re-creating the roles that were made famous by the great actors who supplied their talent for the cartoon, but had unfortunately passed away since it aired years ago.  One surprising appearance was by Hugo Weaving, also known as Mr. Smith from the Matrix franchise.  Mr. Weaving replaced Frank Welker as the voice of Megatron because the producers didn’t think he sounded like Megatron anymore.

 

Adrenaline pumping, non-stop action filled with clever humor which came from great acting/writing and not from cheesy one-liners like you may expect.

 

But there’s also a few bad aspects that I wish they would have improved on.  First is Bumblebee.  For those of you who may not know Bumblebee let me describe him for you.  Bumblebee was a soft-spoken Autobot who looks like a Volkswagen Bug, not a Chevy Camaro.  His role in this movie was more like another Autobot named Hotrod.  I’m assuming that they didn’t get the rights to use a Volkswagen Beetle, so I will forgive them for this drastic change... plus Bumblebee looked amazing when in his robot form.   Second, the Decepticons just didn’t look like they should.  They made the Autobots (Optimus Prime, Jazz, and the rest of the good guys) look very similar to the show, but the Decepticons (Megatron, Starscream, etc.) looked very jagged and very sinister - maybe it was to make them look completely different from the good guys so the audience wouldn’t be confused, but who knows.

 

I hope this movie sparks more interest in making other successful movies based on 80's cartoons such as G.I. Joe, Thundercats and He-Man.  I hear a Thundercats movie is in production, I just hope they do as good of a job as Michael Bay and the rest of the team at DreamWorks.

 

See this movie.  Even people that know nothing of the Transformers will enjoy this for what it is - quite possibly the best movie in years.