No I'm not going to spoil anything so don't worry.
Instead of going home on my half-day today I went to the cinemas...by myself...in work clothes. Before you laugh, it was the middle of a working day in the middle of a working week when everyone else is working! (or at uni). At least that's what I tell myself to ease the pain of being a loner and help me sleep at night. :P So anyway, with the cinemas being 200m away from where I had to be in Glen Waverley this morning, I thought...why not? Convenience is a nice word in the dictionary.
So I ended up watching Transformers. Oh yes, that's right. It was time to nourish the nerd within yet again, and what better way than to feed it generous helpings of big F-ing robots in digital graphics, shooting up anything remotely resembling an object. And how sweeter it is when those robots are the very same ones that you loved to watch back before you even knew how to do math. I think I shot myself in the foot a little by watching all the trailers for this movie beforehand. Nonetheless I will confess to shaking in anticipation as I sat there watching the first transformer, well... transform, and then again when Optimus Prime rolled up en queue for his first appearance, and then once more during the climactic battle. At least I kept my mouth shut in that early-afternoon quarter-filled cinema, unlike the other nerds in the cinema that were audibly gasping as Prime transformed for the first time. If you have no idea who or what the hell I'm talking about, then you're most likely NOT a nerd. Congratulations. I had some dude sitting to my left. He was pumping his fists in the air a few times during the movie because he was so excited. I wanted to slap him like something chronic. Regardless, he didn't wreck what was otherwise a pretty sweet movie experience.
Like 300, this movie delivers where it needs to deliver. Acting was good but nothing spectacular and the human characters were mere props in the end. In terms of storyline, whilst it was essentially nothing more than what you'd expect it did surprise a little. Whilst by no means will this ever appear on an English class syllabus, it did have its little complexities. The developing relationship between the boy and Bumblebee was brilliantly put together. The real stars however were the dudes in the graphics studios rendering the Transformers themselves. You know the digital graphics are good when halfway through the movie you totally forget that the robots are basically just a bunch of pixels, albeit LOTS of pixels. That's what happened with this. This movie pretty much rewrites the book on how to seamlessly blend artificial graphics with real-life objects, environments and actors. And then there's the sound...yikes. When the smashing and bruising occurs, you'll know about it, and you won't look away.
A couple of tiny little gripes. More just me being a tightarse than anything else. It took a little while for it to get going, though that was probably just 'coz I wanted the smashing and shooting to begin asap. The movie certainly didn't feel like it dragged. And with the storyline, there was very little closure. But you'd expect nothing else from a movie that already has the second and third sequels signed up. I guess the only real gripe about the movie was that it was another case of "America is the World!" Meh, Hollywood... at least the Aussie actress got to keep her accent in the movie.
So long as you get over the implausibilities of some of the things that happened (look ma! I'm a giant robot that can tower over the neighbourhood so quietly that not a single soul is stirring) and the odd bits of humour that was mixed in (I can see die-hard fans writing death letters to the director yelling "how dare you try to put humour in our beloved robots")... then sit back and enjoy being a kid all over again :D
Out of 10...give it an 8.5. Can't wait for the sequel... apparently they might make an entire aircraft carrier transform :0
