My review on Transformers the live action movie

After watching Transformers the movie, I had to deliberate a few days to properly conform my thoughts. The movie is awesome and its perfectly one of the biggest block busters of the year. Case in point, my workmate asked me how to spell Transformers and I spelt it out for him. He said it was wrong. Transformers is spelt 'a-w-e-s-o-m-e' and for the most part, I agreed with him. Never will you see an action movie that blends detailed CGI robots with live action environments and actors so believable than in Transformers.

The robots themselves are designed specifically for detail and realism. How else can you explain bipedal robots transforming into vehicles or other objects without designing the robots to have detailed transforming parts that conform with the object? In addition to that, the CGI is so photo realistic that never once will you be thinking that the robots were not part of the scene. Starscream flying in the sky overhead, then swooping low and then transforming into robot mode and firing his cannons into the crowd in one smooth transition would make your jaw hang open in awe. Don't take my word for it, just go ahead and watch it if you haven't. This*is*the movie to die for this year.

Now that is out of the way, we move on to the cons of the movie. Yes, there are cons to the movie and it will be so apparent to the fans of Transformers the cartoon. No where in sight did I see any familiar faces except for Optimus Prime. The fact that they blatantly disregarded to design any of the robots in the live action movie to at least conform to things that make them our lovable autobots/ decepticons aren't there. The closest that they succeeded (other than Prime) was Bumblebee. His cheerful demeanour was nicely translated into the movie and also his yellow colour scheme. However, it was totally destroyed when you hear him speak for the first time at the end of the movie in perfect British accent.

Prime looked quite magnificent, if he had his visor on all the time like in the cartoon series but for some reason or other they had to design lips and it was the worst looking lips ever. To give you a mental picture on how ludicrous the lips were, try pinching your mouth from the sides with your hands ... thats exactly how they look. Ironhide looks like an ape whereas Jazz and Ratchet were quite unmemorable to me. Other than their faces, the robots looked incredible. Unfortunately it didn't suit the whole Transformers theme. If they followed the colour schemes of the robots to appeal to us fans would be ok. Heck, they should have followed the faces of all the robots to make them more appealing and identifiable. Unfortunately, because you can't properly identify the robots, the battle scenes although were rocking, appeared hectic and quite chaotic when the camera likes to take close shots and all you see is detailed wires and metal and not 'two robots bringing the pain on'.

Another rant of mine is the way the whole movie seems to revolve more on humans rather than the Transformers. I didn't know the movie was called 'Humans'. However, the human cast was quite commendable. Especially Spike who was portrayed true to his cartoon persona. The heroine (Mikaela if I'm not mistaken her name was) seems more like eye candy than anything else although she did 'lend a hand' to Bumblebee. Despite all that though, we will be seeing 2 more sequels to the movie as the actors have signed contracts for two more Transformer movies.

I conclude by saying that this movie rocks, I kid you not. This is the best movie I have seen, period. Unfortunately, its not Transformers. Transforming robots does not equate to Transformers. Oh well, I'm catching Die Hard 4.0 later and then perhaps a round of Transformers the animated movie.