A Review of "Transformers" (2007)

"I am Optimus Prime, and I send this blog post to any bored toilet dweller taking refuge from their
jobs and daily lives. We are here... we are waiting..."
♫ Whaaaaaaaat I've doooooooone, I'll faaace myseeelf... to cross out what IIIIII've beeeeeeecome ♫

Happy Friday. Well, we finished ripping apart the last of the Terminator films. We're officially all caught up there. What is next for us? Well... I had a discussion with friends recently, and I deduced that there's another series of films near-and-dear to me... well, one entry is... that I'd love to tear apart. Coming to us from Japan in the early 80's and enduring to this day, it's the Transformers!

I know this is basically how Megan Fox was supposed
to get her sex appeal in... but does anyone care about what
is happening to Bumblebee right now?!

Transformers started as a line of toys in the early 1980s that was then adapted into a animated series called The Transformers. It told the story of a civil war for a race of transforming (go figure) robots from the planet Cybertron. The side that stands for good, known as the "Autobots", fight to preserve peace against the warring, power-hungry bad robots, so-named the "Decepticons". While most of the Autobots transform into cars and trucks, the Decepticons transform into all manner of things like planes, dragons; even a gun. Like many things I grew up with decades after it was relevant, it became a staple of 80s pop culture and is a cornerstone for the decade. In the middle of the series, after season two, there was a motion picture that was released for the series called The Transformers: The Movie. We're going to skip this one for now, but I got a hunch in the future, we'll return to it. No what we're here to talk about today is with the first major motion picture, live-action, that was released in 2007. Coming to us during our most formative years; getting bullied in Jr. High School, getting bullied on MySpace, bullying people who read Twilight if you thought you were too macho for it even though you really weren't; ahhh, what a time to be alive.

It was directed by Michael Bay, known for his blockbusters that play fast and loose with history and racial relations (i.e. Pearl Harbor) or with basic science and physics (i.e. Armageddon). That's right, they left the franchise's first live-action foray in the hands of the Bad Boys guy, and it is looking questionable. Does the first movie in this now popular and very high-grossing franchise get us off to a good start? Starring renowned internet meme and Indiana Jones punchline Shia LaBeouf and former hottie turned hottie-wack-a-doodle-Mrs-Machine-Gun-Kelly Megan Fox, we should be in for a treat! Let's take a step back to that special time, the year of the iPhone, 2007 and talk about Transformers!

When your parallel-parked Transformer accidentally transforms

The movie opens up with a familiar voice telling us the story of the planet Cybertron and how it was consumed by a civil war between the two Transformer factions, the Autobots led by Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) and the Decepticons led by Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), for the AllSpark, a cube-like object that is the source of all Cybertronian life. The Autobots want to find the AllSpark so they can use it to rebuild Cybertron and end the war, while the Decepticons want to use it to defeat the Autobots and conquer the universe. Typical 80s endgame for bad guys, I love it. Megatron found the AllSpark on Earth, but crash-landed in the Arctic Circle and was frozen in the ice. Captain Archibald Witwicky (W. Morgan Sheppard) and his crew of explorers stumbled upon Megatron in 1897. Captain Witwicky accidentally activates Megatron's navigational system, causing his eyeglasses to be imprinted with the coordinates of the AllSpark's location. Sector 7, a secret United States government organization, discovers the AllSpark in the Colorado River and builds the Hoover Dam around it to mask its energy emissions. The still-frozen Megatron is moved into this facility and is reverse engineered to advance human technology.

That's all well and good, but what about our human (or hopefully human-ish) protagonist that can carry us through the story, giving us someone to relate to in this world of warring robots? Well, we flash-forward from the history-lesson to the present. In the present day, the Decepticons—Blackout (doesn't speak), Scorponok (doesn't speak), Frenzy (Reno Wilson), Barricade (Jess Harnell), Starscream (Charlie Adler), Bonecrusher (Jim Wood) and Brawl (doesn't speak)—have landed on Earth and assumed the disguise of Earth vehicles. In the start of the movie, Blackout and Scorponok attack the U.S. SOCCENT military base in Qatar and try to hack into the U.S. military network to find the location of Megatron and the AllSpark. Their mission is thwarted when the base staff severs the network cable connections. While Blackout destroys the rest of the base, Scorponok chases a small group of survivors who have photographic evidence of the robots, but he is eventually repelled. During this battle, the military discovers its only effective weapons against the Transformers' armor are high-heat sabot rounds. After Blackout's failure, Frenzy infiltrates Air Force One to try again to hack into the military network, and in doing so plants a virus. He finds the map imprinted on Captain Witwicky's glasses, whose descendant, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), intends to sell on eBay. Frenzy and Barricade begin tracking Sam's location.

"Hello! I am Megatron, the city watcher! Please take care
driving... do not speed... and sir, I see you littering over
there. Please find the nearest waste receptacle
this INSTANT!"

One of the Autobots, Bumblebee, is also on Earth, disguised as a 1976 Chevrolet Camaro, and is bought by Sam while shopping for his first car. Bumblebee helps him woo his crush, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). Bumblebee leaves at night to transmit a homing signal to the rest of the Autobots and Sam sees him in robot mode. Barricade confronts Sam and demands Archibald's spectacles, but Bumblebee rescues him and Mikaela. After Bumblebee upgrades his vehicle form by scanning a 2007 Chevrolet Camaro, which this movie was used to promote as that was a returning model at the time, they leave to rendezvous with the rest of the Autobots: Optimus Prime, Jazz (Darius McCrary), Ironhide (also Jess Harnell), and Ratchet (Robert Foxworth)—who have landed on Earth and taken the forms of Earth vehicles as well. Sam, Mikaela, and the Autobots return to Sam's home and obtain the glasses. Soon, agents from Sector 7 arrive to arrest Sam and Mikaela, and they capture Bumblebee. Which was a depressing scene, not going to lie. Also I thought it was ridiculous Optimus kind of just let Bumblebee go and lamented that Bumblebee "would die in vain if they don't accomplish their mission". I don't know, seemed out of character for the semi-truck laden leader.

Frenzy, disguised as a mobile phone, secretly accompanies the group to the Hoover Dam and releases Megatron. Locating the AllSpark, Frenzy sends an alert to the other Decepticons, allowing them to mobilize and hone in on Hoover Dam's position. Sam convinces the Sector 7 agents to release Bumblebee so that he can get the AllSpark to Optimus Prime. Frenzy's virus has shut down government communications, but a pair of hackers manage to establish a signal to the Air Force. The Autobot-human convoy goes to Mission City, Nevada to obtain a radio that will guide the Air Force and secure an extraction for the AllSpark as the Decepticons forces attack the convoy. During the ensuing battle, Brawl, Bonecrusher, Frenzy, Jazz, and Blackout are all killed, and after a harrowing one-on-one battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron, the be-all, end-all toy battle all us nerds and neckbeards have been dying to see... which to be honest, did not disappoint, Sam manages to ram the AllSpark into Megatron's chest, killing him and destroying the AllSpark all at the same time. Optimus takes a fragment of the AllSpark from Megatron's corpse but realizes that with its destruction, their home world Cybertron cannot be restored. The U.S. government decommissions Sector 7 and dumps the corpses of the defeated Decepticons into the Laurentian Abyss. Sam and Mikaela begin a relationship, and Optimus sends a signal to other surviving Autobots directing them to Earth... hopefully just Autobots right? No way Decepticons can intercept that message and make their way to Earth right? Wink wink.

"Kid I don't want to alarm you but you have that every-dad-ever
character actor standing right behind you."
"Wow... thanks Uncle-Bobby-B-who-everyone-who-ever-watches
this-movie-wil-simply-call Bernie Mac."

That was the first Transformers movie, from 2007. I remember seeing it that Fourth of July before heading to fireworks in my TOWN OF ORIGIN, but I was and still am all these sixteen years later rather pleased when watching this movie. You'd think because it was Michael Bay that'd be a two-hundred million dollar popcorn fart, and in many ways it looks like it, but it's still mostly a coherent, fun, and action-packed toy movie. Granted, Michael Bay himself didn't want to direct the movie initially as he thought it was nothing more than a "big, dumb, toy movie"... but what hooked him was his love for cars and military hardware. That's why we get some pretty cool alternate forms for the Transformers in this one. Instead of Bumblebee being his trademark Volkswagen Beetle, he gets turned into a kick-ass (albeit beat-up in the movie) mid 70s Camaro, and then later the 2007-08 Camaro concept car. Optimus Prime went from the flat-nosed Freightliner to the Peterbilt 379 with the long nose and bitchin' flame job. You can tell how Bay's love of cars really influenced the design of the movie.

While we all know the Transformers steal the show (you know they kind of have to, it's their movie)... the human characters, I hate to say it, are hit or miss. MOSTLY hit, I will say that. Which we can all agree is surprising for a Bay movie. Trust me, though; in the sequels that ratio of hit or miss is going to drastically swing the other way. Shia LaBeouf isn't as goofy as he'd come off in the sequels or in other movies (*cough* Indiana Jones *cough*). Megan Fox kind of just... floats around like Megan Fox would, saying Megan Fox dialogue in a Megan Fox way. Jon Voight is a badass as the Secretary of Defense John Keller. Josh Duhamel is a quippy action-hero-y kind of performance for his team of U.S. Army Rangers out of Qatar, especially with Tyrese Gibson being his sidekick... then there's John Turturro as Sector 7's Seymour Simmons, who initially arrests Sam and Mikaela but then joins them and the Autobots in the fight against the Decepticons. He overacts the hell out of this role, but I'll be lying if I said I didn't eat it up every time he was on screen. The comedy stylings of Rachael Taylor and Anthony Anderson also somehow steal the show. This movie just... somehow has a brilliant cast of supporting characters who all feed well off each other, all play an important role, and all really make great quips and keep the flow of dialogue and story going. It's really shocking how fluid they seem. Especially in a movie about sentient transforming cars and trucks that blow shit, and each other, up.

"Excuse me, which set are you guys looking for? The Hurt
Locker or Thirteen Hours?" "Uhh... Transformers?"

Speaking of the Transformers, the effects are pretty great. Knowing how much work went into animating and rendering each and every frame, with each and every piece of each and every Transformers is something not to be taken lightly. The documentaries attached to the two-disc DVD from way back when show the amount of work and time went into animating the Autobots and Decepticons. They had actual vehicles brought in, digitally scanned and rendered, and then they had to figure out which piece of which Transformer could fit where in the vehicle modes. Like "Ok an arm, that can fit here. Their leg can twist and bend, but unfold here." Radical stuff, and I find it fascinating how they did it.

However, I will say being a Bay movie means there is a lot of stuff kind of just... "glanced over" in the plot. As I opened with, Michael Bay is a guy who loves to play fast and loose with his narratives, just again, look at Armageddon. I want to review that big, sweaty turd sometime... but back to this movie... during the Freeway chase, Decepticons Bonecrusher and Barricade together are in pursuit of the Autobots. Bonecrusher pulls ahead to battle Prime, tearing up the roadway by dispatching hapless motorists. Barricade, however, disappears and does not reappear nor is he mentioned again for the rest of the film. Where did he go? Did he stop off for a burger and fries? Did he have to fake pulling over for roadside assistance during the freeway battle? What about when Frenzy has his body restored by the AllSpark by merely coming into close proximity of it while it's in its hangar at the dam. The cube is also present when Bumblebee's legs get mangled so why doesn't it magically regenerate him the same way? Just a couple of glaring omissions that stick out in my mind... but in typical Michael Bay fashion he does a real good job of distracting you with EXPLOSIONS! BOOMS! UTTER CHAOS! What about when Ironhide mistakes Sam's dog Mojo for a rodent even though right before this, Optimus Prime had explained that they searched the World Wide Web and therefore, they should know what a chihuahua is? WHO CARES?! LOOK AT US BLOW SHIT UP FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT! KA-BOOOM!!!!

"I am Ironhide! I have two big cannons that are about as
effective as BB guns, but I'm going to use them, dammit!"

All in all, to sum up; whatever stock phrase I usually use, Transformers is a pretty solid first-entry in the now very-high grossing Transformers movie franchise. The action keeps you paying attention, the story actually flows rather well (despite the above plot holes) and the characters are interesting! Something, again, you'd thought you wouldn't get in a Transformers movie, and again, considering what we get in the sequels, this movie is a total blessing. It's still the grittiest, smartest, and most down-to-Earth Transformers movie out there, and I give it a rewatch every now and then. Not even as part of a series rewatch, I'll just pop this one in and then leave it at that... and again, considering what we get in the sequels which I am definitely going to share with you in the coming weeks, you'll be able to see why this one still stands tall above the rest that follow. Give Transformers a try! It'll tickle an nostalgic 80's bone you didn't think you had and at the very least, in my opinion, entertain the heck out of you!

Shout out to "Uncle Bobby B"... my favorite character, Bernie Mac. (1957-2008).