Transformers
Year:
2007
Directed by:
Michael Bay
Rated:
PG-13
Country:
United States
Runtime:
2 hrs. 23 min.
Production Company:
Dreamworks
Written by:
Robert Orci
Alex Kurtzman
John Rogers
Starring:
Shia LaBeouf
Megan Fox
Peter Cullen
Josh Duhamel
Similar Films:
This one has it all.
Director Michael Bay is not someone who is generally well thought-of in the world of cinema. This is a guy whose résumé consists of too many explosions, too much sentimentality, and too little substance, films like Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. With Transformers, though, Bay found just the setup he needed to make an awesome movie and provide characters we care about. While he's clearly banking on the action for appeal, Bay manages to go beyond giant-robot smashing and into more relevant humanitarian territory in a film where each element complements the next. This movie has everything.
Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a hapless high school student, has found himself in quite the situation. Due to his ancestry, he is caught in the middle of a battle between shape-shifting robot aliens -- the Autobots and the Decepticons -- fighting for a cosmically powerful cube that has landed on Earth. If the Decepticons get it, they will take over the universe. The Autobots are here to make sure that doesn't happen and to protect all humans while doing so.
The film succeeds on every level, beginning with the action and special effects. The Transformers look as real as the vehicles they morph into. Even the act of morphing itself, while too fast for one to catch all the details, appears to preserve all the mechanical components involved, unlike the 1980s cartoon, in which the robots gain and lose mass at will (a full-sized pterodactyl robot can change into a cassette tape). The action utilizes this realism in scenes that must have been tremendously complicated to create, with the metal behemoths pummeling each other and leaping around like ten-ton acrobats. For some directors this realism would limit what the movie is able to show, but leave it to Bay to assume the risk. Backed by a superb special effects team, Bay displays in full detail prolonged battles involving, at times, multiple Transformers of each side, along with the military. Never once is the verisimilitude cracked.
Vehicles that turn out to be robots are what the Transformers franchise is all about, and in this film, that basic concept -- the surprises that can be hidden beneath the outer layer -- is taken to the thematic level. All the main characters hide attributes that would not be expected based on their appearance. Sam, through the course of the film, finds an immense bravery inside of himself despite his tendency to get picked on by his peers. Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), a smokin' hot classmate who winds up accompanying Sam on his adventures, turns out to be what one would least expect -- an expert on cars and their workings. Another young, attractive female, Maggie Madsen (Rachael Taylor), is a top-notch signals analyst who helps the government decode signals and identify cyber attacks, which, unbeknownst to them at the time, are being carried out by the Decepticons. Madsen's "advisor," who she claims is the best there is, appears even more unlikely: a donut-devouring young man (played by Anthony Anderson) who lives with his grandma and spends all day playing video games. In the end, the film is focused mostly not on what the Transformers can turn into but what the humans reveal themselves to be capable of. Even Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, is impressed by our species. At the end of the film he sends out a message to other Autobots roaming the universe, saying, "I have witnessed [the humans'] capacity for courage. And, though we are worlds apart, like us, there's more to them than meets the eye."
On another level, this is a film about virtue, demonstrated chiefly by Optimus. In Transformers he is the ultimate hero, never even hinting at a moral misstep. When the humans capture one of the Autobots, and the others ask Optimus why they shouldn't fight to save him, his response is that Autobots don't harm humans and that the captured comrade is "a brave solider" who would want it this way, not so much as considering any type of revenge. When Ironhide expresses his concern that the human race is so violent that it may not be worth saving, a thought that perhaps many viewers can empathize with, Optimus responds with complete sympathy towards our race: "Were we so different? They're a young species. They have much to learn. But I've seen goodness in them. Freedom is the light of all sentient beings." What really makes lines like these work is the voice-acting behind Prime, performed by Peter Cullen, the same Peter Cullen who did the character's voice in the original television cartoon. The tone is gentle yet strong, low yet articulate. It fits the character perfectly. Optimus Prime is a guardian not only of Sam but of the moral code of the good.
