More Than Meets the... well, you know

So, after about 19 years of waiting, I finally saw a live-action Transformers movie. Overall, it was entertaining. Now, I didn't really expect much from this movie from the beginning, I mean, come on, it's the Transformers. I thought the Transformers were badass when I was six. I'm 27 now. This is not an epic movie that will change my life. So, starting with low expectations, the movie actually turned out to be better than I expected. Of course, every line was canned, especially the beginning scene where they show a bunch of marines sitting around in a V-22. I think each line in that scene covered just about every war movie, ever.
Also, there were a couple cheese-ball scenes that dragged on a little longer than they should have. For example, we received a full dose of the ol', kid trying to hide his new alien friends from his parents ploy, which the movie could have done with out.

Other than those things though, it was decent and entertaining. I'm not too picky about movies though. Some are just dumb, like Congo, and of course Alexander, which had me rooting for the death of Alexander just so that the movie would end. But a lot of movies that people didn't seem to like, such as Water World and Armageddon, were perfectly good movies to me. Seriously people, What the hell are you whining about! Those were good movies!! Transformers, though, was not great like the two afore mentioned movies that picky people didn't seem to like, it was just entertaining and watch-able. Something that I might stop on if I'm flipping through the channels, but not something that I'd choose from my DVD selection to watch with dinner.

The other factor to the movie is, "how Transformers-ish is it?" Well, on a scale of one to twenty three, I wouldn't answer, because I hate those scales. My complaint would be that the Decepticons were too beast-like, as opposed to the soldier-like decepticons of the cartoons.
Also, I've heard complaints about the fact that Optimus Prime has lips instead of the classic mouth plate, but I thought Michael Bay had a pretty good solution to that, actually: give him a mouth for dialogue parts and a flip-up mouth plate for fighting parts.


Something I noticed was that the Autobot, Ratchet, seemed to have Ironhide's personality, whereas Ironhide was just your basic transforming alien robot. Jazz was still Jazz, however, which was nice.

Another thing that was pretty different about the movie was that it focused more on the human characters. The movie centered around teenager, Sam Wittwicky, apparently a rename of the character, Spike Wittwicky of the cartoon. The movie even included an incarnation of ol' Sparkplug, though I don't remember what his rename was or if it was even mentioned. He had a rather minor role, however, as in the movie he was never even acquainted with the transformers. Mother Wittwicky even made an appearance, something which never happened in the cartoon series. Plus, the film came complete with sex appeal, a busty blue eyed brunette who shows her teeth a lot ( I like that look, so that was a plus for the movie in my book). Anyways, this difference resulted in the appearance of normal sized humans and giant robots, as opposed to the cartoon which gave off the impression more of human sized robots and tiny people.

And Michael Bay was generous enough to include throwbacks such as the classic transformation sound, and a scene in which Megatron declares, "Once again you have failed me Starscream."

Now, for those of you who were seriously disappointed by how the movie turned out and are in need of consoling, I've got four words for you: Masters of the Universe.

In other words, it could have been worse. ;)