I saw Transformers on my birthday last Friday (as I’ve mentioned… I’m on holiday and it’s out here in Norway, unlike the fucking UK where we’re STILL waiting) and while it didn’t disappoint on many levels, there was a lot of shit that really bugged me.

First the good…

As stupid as it is that robots come to earth, disguise themselves as tanks/camaro’s and other machines and electronic devices it was kind of presented in the film with the right amount of glossing-over-the-facts, exposition, flashbacks and actual plot progression. I suspended belief enough to not be sat there thinking “holy shit this is stupid”. Sure I wanted to buy it all because I grew up with the cartoon but i’m just saying Bay handled it well. Shia laBeouf is really likeable, as i’ve said before he’s the young Tom Hanks, rambling, nerdy and precocious in the right mixture and he does a good job as the lead. Quite a feat considering he only just turned 21.

The Transformers themselves are very cool, I was worried about some of the design choices initially, Optimus Prime with flames all over him, Megatron as a walking scrap heap etc, but they all looked so cool on screen I couldn’t really fault it… Bay obviously knew what he was doing. I’ve saved the best for last… the action. If there was ever any doubt that Michael Bay could direct an action sequence, this film smashes apart that doubt with a giant Optimus Prime robot sword. When an action sequence hits it you know about it. The scale of the Transformers is epic, they look and behave ..like… well.. giant robots but for something that’s 99.9% cgi it’s really impressive to see on screen.

All the action scenes are immense but I was close to squealing at two separate points (but obviously I didn’t because i’m tough and shit); 1. Optimus Prime fighting ummm.. I think it was devastator…the fight is really pulse racing and when he takes him out with a sword through the chin it’s coupled with a classic Michael bay-music-video-shot panning in a circle around the action as it happens. It gave me the same kind of chills I got watching Jurassic Park on my 13th birthday, a sure sign it was doing something right. 2. The final battle. You know a summer blockbuster has got to have an impressive final battle, like the conclusion to a computer game the pinnacle of the film trumps anything that’s come before it, and dials it all up to 11. I won’t say anything more that that. I’ve hyped it enough.

Ok so to the bad.

So this is probably a small part of the overall film but I’ve seen it before in films and it bugged me then, but to see it compounded in this film just drove me fucking nuts. Computer Hackers or rather the myth of computer hackers. The computer hackers in this film are basically a McGuffin to explain away certain plot points and drive the story forward…that I can deal with, but when I get presented with a well dressed blonde WAAAAAAY-to-hot-to-be-nerdy (some chick from Home & Away I think) her two sidekick nerds, and the “there’s only one guy who can crack this code” comedy black guy I wanted to hurt someone in Bay’s writing team. It was Retarded. 90% of the script is in-fact garbage, but Bay’s direction, Shia’s charm and a good supporting cast pull it through most of the time.

The Human Element. There’s just way too fucking much of it, as much as I like Shia this film is about giant robots. Instead of spending anytime seeing the Transformers smart-mouth each other or getting to know the robots personalities we get a predictable and lame hot-girl-likes-football-players-falls-in-love-with-nerd-after-they-triumph-over-adversity-together plot. The humans were barely in the cartoon but for some reason they’ve been shoehorned heavily into this film… i’m guessing to keep the budget down, but I wanted to hear transformers say more than their names as they’re introduced.

- too much stupid computer hackers
- too much comedy parents
- too much many humans full stop

Soundwave. Instead of making Soundwave into a great character they went the Jar Jar Binks route and made him small, squeaky and annoying as fuck. He didn’t bug me as much throughout the film as I thought he would when I first saw him on screen, but I would have much preferred it if they’d made him as cool as he was in the cartoons.

Oh and it also seemed to be really pro-military, which was kind of weird. sure the military are helping fight the Decepticons but there was lot’s of “these guys don’t like to lose” style propaganda, it all got a bit too “JOIN THE ARMY!!!!” at some points for me.

Reading back through this review I think I might sound quite negative, don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of small niggles but Transformers is the best summer blockbuster i’ve seen in years I really really enjoyed it. It gave me a lot of what I wanted from a transformers movie but added a couple of things I didn’t. It’s all set up for sequels (that are already confirmed.. pshhh.. but what summer blockbusters don’t have at least 2 cash in sequels nowadays) which I will undoubtedly see on opening night I’m just hoping Bay sticks around and lifts the script up like he did with this one.