In a summer of incessant, bloated and ineffective sequels, the comparably cheap $150 million ‘Transformers’ flick might qualify as the highest grossing sleeper ever.
The big-screen adaptation of the enormously popular Hasbro toy line about giant battling robots manages to please, despite imperfections, the 12-year old in all of us.
All the more surprising is how damn effective the CGI in this film is, especially compared to twice as expensive pics like ‘Spiderman 3’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: AWE’. The titular robots are marvels of technology as they occupy real space and battle and blow each other up with a samurai’s intensity.
It’s no mistake the ‘Transformers’ originated from Japan where specific designs of the robots are distinctly samurai-like along with the honor and ferocity that accompanies these legendary warriors.
Hand-picked by Steven Spielberg to contemplate taking on the adaptation, Michael Bay at first scoffed at the idea of making a “toy movie” (as if ‘Armageddon’ is so far removed?) but soon came to the realization that Spielberg obviously had…that his explosion-laced, epic action sensibilities would be perfect for the carnage that giant fighting robots would demand. And make no mistake, Bay fully delivers the ‘Bayhem’ expected with this flick – yet, what is surprising is how effective the film is a whole.
Easily Bay’s best work to date, he fashions a 144-minute paean to that adolescent need in all of us to see giant things go boom! While the concept hasn’t progressed much further than 1925s ‘The Lost World’ or 1933s ‘King Kong’ in the methods to entertain an audience, certainly the f/x has. An amalgam of Bay’s rock ‘em, sock ‘em shooting style combined with just a dash of exec producer Spielberg’s small-scale narrative flourishes (a much larger story revolves around a young boy befriending an alien) gives this pic just enough human character to draw audiences in.
That being said, the script is competent at best, but anyone expecting an Oscar-nominated screenplay about a line of thinly-sketched toys must obviously be ‘Go-Bot’ fans. The plot centers around the macguffin of the story, the Allspark Cube – the creator of life on Cybertron. Thought to be a living, sentient object, the Allspark I guess would be the equivalent of our God – if God was tangible. With introductory narration by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen returning from the cartoon), he explains of the civil war between good and evil, between the Autobots and Decepticons where the Allspark became lost to the ravages of space.
Searching for the all powerful cube, Megatron, leader of the Decepticons crash lands on Earth a millennia ago where an arctic explorer by the name of Witwicky manages to get the location of the cube burned into his glasses. The ancient glasses are handed down through the generations to arrive in the hands of Sam Witwicky (Shia La Beouf), your everyday nerd with a long gestating crush on local hottie Mikaela (Megan Fox) and the excitement of recently acquiring his first car.
The car being a beat-up 77’ Camaro that used car lot owner Bobby Bolivia (Bernie Mac) wondered aloud where it came from. With no small amount of jealousy and a fun homage for fans of the original cartoon, the Camaro beats up the Volkswagen Bug next to it when Bobby attempts to show Sam and his father the car after Sam’s dad deems the Camaro too expensive.
As these fun scenes of teen plight play out, including a Herbieish sequence where the Camaro (good Autobot Bumblebee in disguise) tries to set Sam up with Mikaela with just the right music playing on the radio (‘Sexual Healing’) and stalling at a key sunset moment, the evil Decepticons are proving a chore for our US government.
In Qatar, U.S. Soldiers are being ravaged by one mean sucker of a helicopter where its ultimate goal is to attain files for an “above top secret” project known as “Iceman”. As the helicopter, Blackout, and its smaller companion Skorponok keep the soldiers, including Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson) more than busy, a mini Decepticon - an annoying little Gremlin-like beast named Frenzy – works towards the same goal on the Air Force One as our Commander in Chief stuffs himself on Ding Dongs.
A completely superfluous subplot follows the Secretary of Defense John Keller (Jon Voight) calling an emergency meeting to analyze and pinpoint the data being hacked and by whom. Zeroing in on a few hackers, we meet the ridiculously cast Rachel Taylor as hack extraordinaire Maggie Madsen and the more tolerable Anthony Anderson as her hack bud Glen Whitmann. Anderson can be a funny guy but paired with Taylor’s stoic non-acting and a subplot that has no bearing on the plot, the film could have been improved by excising every scene these two characters were involved in.
Eventually, Sam becomes aware of Bumblebee as a sentient being and Bumblebee contacts his fellow Autobots, including their iconic leader Optimus Prime, where they come crashing to Earth as meteors and quickly become disguised as product placement – various sects of the GMC empire. Introductions quickly give way to action as the Autobots must not only defend Sam and tagalong Mikaela against the Decepticons but also the mysterious wing of the government known only as Sector Seven, headed up by the eccentric Agent Simmons (John Turturro).
The fast-paced last hour of the pic has the subplots converge around the Hoover Dam where the action moves to Mission City aka downtown L.A. where people’s patience are rewarded with an impressive number of robot battle showdowns and the coup de grace of Optimus Prime vs. Megatron.
Scripters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci did what they could to remain mostly faithful to the G1 Transformers mythology with more than a few lines of dialogue and key moments of action lifted directly from the 80s era cartoon and 86’ film. The internet was abuzz with bad press early in the process of the pic with the infamous and ultimately inconsequential decisions of putting flames on Optimus Prime and changing Bumblebee from a Bug to a Camaro. Being a fan of the toy line in the 80s, these changes never inspired more than a shrug from me. 20 years on, a few changes were bound to take place and these decisions could easily be considered the lesser of the more extreme evils that might have happened.
I think the filmmakers remained suprisingly reverent to the source material, where this is no more than evident in the casting of Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime. It would’ve been nice to see Frank Welker return as Megatron but I can concede that his voice was less fitting. In the Special Features, they do a side by side shot with Welker voicing Megatron as he exists in this film vs. Hugo Weaving (who eventually voiced him in the film) and I think a geek would be hard-pressed to go with Welker despite the nostalgia. I did find issue that the Decepticons are shortchanged in the personality department. Despite a token reference to the hostility between Megatron and Starscream, very little attempt is given at establishing these hiss-worthy villains as anything other than gleaming pieces of sharp metal.
The cast is mostly well-suited to the pic with Shia LaBeouf proving particularly adept at conveying the requirements needed for his role – a role that the whole film essentially hinges on. His early scenes have a genuinely funny spirit to them, where, like his role in ‘Disturbia’, come off as effortless. There’s no doubt the future son of Indiana Jones has a nebbish charisma to him, a nice grasp of improv, that will make him suited for a broad range of roles for years to come.
Megan Fox isn’t much more than eye candy but her acting doesn’t distract and Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Jon Voight all prove capable if not exciting. John Turturro is obviously just having fun with the role. Yet everyone’s aware that no one came for the acting, this is ILM’s show (and a quarter belonging to Digital Domain apparently) and this is the new reference point for digital animation. This pic seems to be a few years ahead of it’s nearest competitor.
The film does have its flaws, numerous flaws to be sure, but unlike Bay’s previous pics, what needs to work – believable giant robots – works and works well. There are plot holes in the story that Optimus Prime could drive through and any unnecessary scrutiny at all will dampen the effect i.e. cars that keep driving on a highway dominated by 50-foot battling robots, people continuing to hightail out of the scene of the downtown climax twenty minutes in, etc.
And there’s no escaping the contrived Bay moment or two that immediately takes me out of the pic. In an otherwise completely badass scene where Optimus Prime battles Barricade on a highway, we’re taken out of the action to focus on a goofy little kid that exclaims “Oh, cool!”….the slo-mo shot of a screaming woman as a Transformer tumbles over her…who thought these momentary lapses from the action was a good idea? The aforementioned hack subplot as a whole - menial details that for me lessened a great film, potentially a classic, into merely a good one.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen and using an MPEG-4AVC codec, the video engineers over at Paramount has created a near flawless representation of the film- a new reference that all future HD transfers will be compared to. There is a slight grain to the pic, faithful to the source, but otherwise the definition and crispness of the image will leave home theater enthusiasts salivating. The colors and detail of the robots and their transformations are particularly noticeable. A transfer that makes one amazed so much detail can be attained in the relatively short amount of time it takes to make the film.
The audio, a controversial subject on this release for those following HD, should not worry. Paramount decided not to include a Dolby TrueHD track, a lossless audio, for the curiously admitted reason that there’s not enough room (Blu-ray fans and HD-DVD pundits pounced on this bit of info as if it was the location of Atlantis). That being said, I’ve never experienced a major discernible difference between a TrueHD track and the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 that’s included here and I venture to guess that most viewers wouldn’t be able to discern either way. The Plus 5.1 soundtrack is pounding with a room-shaking bass and remarkable clarity. Could the TrueHD have improved? Maybe, but it’s hard to nitpick.
Now onto the intimidating special features, all presented in HD, and including a ground-breaking number of HD exclusives that revolve around web downloads. Let’s start with the features on disc one, with the HD exclusive features being noted. The first feature on disc one is the audio commentary by Michael Bay.
The man has an enormous amount of venom directed at him from film geeks the world over but he makes for an entertaining host. With plenty of anecdotes that range from that first call from Spielberg to his issue with LaBeouf’s “nappy” hair, he comes across as entertaining, direct and almost to a fault, honest.
The remaining features are HD exclusives. What HD-DVD aficionados will immediately recognize as the equivalent of WB’s ‘In-Movie Experience’ is the ‘Transformers H.U.D.’, the ‘Heads Up Display’ that essentially plays like a trivia track. Most notable is that unlike WB’s IME, all the content on the H.U.D. is unique – no redundant info here. Next is the ‘Paramount HD Connect’ - web-enabled features that might completely change your concept of DVD-ROM features. With your HD-DVD player on-line, your are able to download a variety of very cool features.
As of this writing, there are only two that are online, but Paramount pledges to have the rest online fairly quickly. The major feature available right now is ‘Intelligence Mode’, a playback mode that features on-screen widgets that track the action of the film. Somewhat hard to explain if you’re not looking it at it, you download the feature and play – the feature resizes for the presentation while a graphical interface frames the screen with real-time information that includes detailed information about the robots, what their forms are on screen, their health, a GPS locator with longitude and latitude information and a facts bar that pops up from the bottom.
Fans of videogames would feel right at home with this feature - quite entertaining. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I did have issues with it i.e. if you stop or pause the film, you might lose certain aspects but overall, it’s an impressive addition to the exclusive features all by itself.
Also included is the ‘Sector 7’ section that contain short videos that will not be available anywhere else. A new video will presented at timed intervals, a fun inclusion but nothing noteworthy. Other features that are not available right now are downloadable menu bar options which basically changes the look of your menu bar to suit a particular transformer, another movie playback feature that serves as an in-movie guide to cast, crew, locations, etc. as well as a ‘My Clips’ feature that allows the user to mark favorite clips, re-order them into custom playlists and then share them with other connected HD DVD users. Bravo to Paramount for really stepping up to the plate to deliver features that can only happen with HD-DVD.
Disc Two is divided into three sections: ‘Our World’ which looks at the human characters, ‘Their World’ which looks at the robots and ‘More Than Meets the Eye’ which covers the odds and ends. The first two sections cover about two hours of footage and could be thought of as one long documentary. I recommend the play all option at the beginning of each. Almost all aspects of production are covered here with an enormous amount of info being presented within these eight separate featurettes all focusing on varying aspects of the production.
An HD-exclusive feature and a treat for those that never got a close enough look at the detail of the transformers in the movie is the ‘Transformers Tech Inspector’. A feature that lets you examine the computer models that ILM used for six of the robots. ‘From Script to Sand – the Skorponok Desert Attack’ is a nine-minute look at just this specific scene, an odd scene to highlight but interesting nonetheless. ‘Concepts’ includes about two minutes of conceptual art and the features are finished off with the HD ‘Trailers’. There are also several easter eggs spread throughout the two discs that I won’t spoil though if you’re the type that like to use codes to finish a videogame, let me know in the comments and I’ll reveal the locations.
Whew! Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers’ was one of the most successful films of this year, a breath of freah air in a summer dominated by three’s. A picture that is dominated by state of the art visual effects, it’s no surprise that this is the must-own HD-DVD of the year offering both reference quality picture and audio but an extremely generous amount of special features all presented in HD with HD exclusive features that provide a benchmark for what HD is capable of.
While the film would rate a good three and a half stars, I gotta consider the package as a whole which I think is an absolutely essential purchase for anyone with HD-DVD player – “More than meets the eye” indeed.
Transformers (Two-Disc Special Edition) [HD DVD] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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