Transformers

Posted by Cynical Sarah on April 14, 2008

One of the biggest Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid was the Transformers. I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that I’d watched that cartoon as a kid too, but when I sat down to watch the movie the other night, I didn’t remember any of the salient details beyond the fact that one of the good transformers was named Megatron.

I guess Smurfs, Care Bears and Scooby Doo were more my kind of cartoon, and my vague memories of Transformers probably just come from my brother watching the cartoon and whatever related toys me might have got from it.

The result, however, was that I got to learn the story of Transformers fresh from the movie, and didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what it should be. (Like the voice of Starscream, which Helper Troy commented more than once about being not true to the cartoon.)

Even without much previous knowledge of the show, I was still afraid of what they would do to bring a popular 80s cartoon to the big screen. Take a look at what they did for Scooby Doo or the Brady Bunch movies. It seems like the only way to take a show people liked as kids and make it into a movie for them to enjoy as adults is to make it hokey and funny.

I needn’t have worried. The entire movie was done surprisingly well – good plot, good characters, good actors and even good CGI to bring the Transformers to life.

At the beginning of the film, the story develops along a couple different lines, following a couple different characters who seem to be completely disconnected. I enjoyed watching the storylines slowly converge into one as the plot developed and finally revealed what roles each character would eventually play in the climax of the movie. It’s like watching a tapestry being woven and seeing the entire picture come together thread by thread.

That might be a little bit too high-brow a way of putting it considering Transformers is also your basic action flick at heart. Director Michael Bay certainly knows how to make a top-notch action movie though. Had I known beforehand that he was the director with Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon and Pearl Harbor on his resume, I probably would have had higher initial expectations for the movie.

A great action director and a good plot line make for a winning combination for Transformers. It also helps that CGI has come far enough that the Transformers are realistic and work flawlessly into the movie.

This movie is worth renting, especially if you were a kid in the 80s because seeing the Transformers come to life will be a dream come true.

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Tags: movies, review, transformers

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