As a fan of Transformers, I can’t refuse an opportunity to attend the Los Angeles premiere of Transformers. It was a red carpet event with stars abound. There was a life-size model of Bumblebee on the side of the red carpet.

After the Transformers premiere at the Mann Village Theater, they closed off sections of Westwood for an awesome Transformers block party that included free drinks and free food. And there were plenty of bar stands around with bartenders serving up free drinks all night long. Each bar stand had an actual Transformer vehicle behind them as a background. So you have Optimus as a flaming truck, Jazz as a Solstice, Ratchet as a Hummer, and Iron Hide as a GMC pickup truck just chilling in the background.

I saw Michael Bay nearby with Tyrese and decided to take a picture with him. After the picture was taken, Michael Bay said, “Those are going to cost you 10 bucks.” Haha, the man’s a crackup.

The coolest thing about the event was of course, getting to watch the movie before release. We got a different theater from the main one, but it was still packed and with a lot of excited audience members. I wasn’t sure if they were fans, but they were all dressed in formal glamorous attire. It is a movie premiere after all.

Yes, I’m a fanboy, so of course I didn’t like what Michael Bay was doing to the designs of the Transformers at first. I understand that the old school design of the robots needed to be updated. But they didn’t look iconic in the concepts. And Michael Bay doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to making good movies. The only movie I really liked from him was The Rock. Somewhere down the line, things went to shit with Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, and Bad Boys 2. Like every hardcore fan, we’re protective of the properties we love. I was excited and afraid for the movie at the same time.

I enjoyed the movie for the most part. The story is pretty close to the mythos of Transformers with an added human element. The Autobots and Decepticons have been at war for a long time. To turn the tide of the war, both sides have been fighting over “the cube”, a special object that gives life to transforming robots. Well, the original was about energon cubes, but close enough. The cube lands on Earth and their battle wages on our soil. Their tagline for the movie was, “Their War, Our World.” Yeah, they bit that from AVP’s tagline, “It’s our planet….It’s their war,” but I still like it.

It seems that Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, was able to find the cube, but was frozen in ice decades ago. Captain Witwicky, an explorer, was able to locate Megatron’s frozen body. During the discovery, he accidentally activated Megatron’s coordination of the cube into his glasses. Now we’re in the present time with Sam Witwicky, grandson of Captain Witwicky, selling the same glasses on EBay without knowing how valuable those glasses are, and that’s the reason why the Autobots came down to befriend Sam.

Spoilers Ahead

The movie starts out with a big bang. The US base of Qatar gets a surprise attack from Blackout, a Decepticon helicopter. This scene shows you how powerful these guys are. Blackout was annihilating everything in his path and left the base in ruins. Only a few soldiers survived that includes two of our main characters, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese.

Michael Bay’s love for the military is so apparent, as you can see during the middle and end of the movie when the military starts to kick ass. On the plus side, it’s cool to see our guys do their thing and kick the bad guy’s ass. On the bad side, it makes the Transformers look weak compared to human technology. When I’m watching a Transformers movie, I want to see the Autobots kick the Decepticon’s ass. We didn’t get that in this movie. Most of the baddies were defeated by humans. You have Starscream flying away from F22s, Blackout defeated by Josh Duhamel, and Megatron defeated by Shia.

There’s a lot to like about this movie. Big fucking robots transforming and doing shit they do best. Optimus Prime, the heroic leader of the Autobots, always sends me happy chills down my spine whenever he’s on screen. I hated Shia Lebeaouf in Constantine and I Robot, but in this movie, he was a likable dork. I love the scenes when he was trying to impress Megan Fox’s character and his embarrassing moments with his parents. The Autobots had more lines than I expected. The car chase sequence with Bumblebee and Barricade was exhilarating and Bumblebee upgrading to an 09 Camaro had the audience excited.

It took me a while to get used to the design of the robots, but it grew on me. There were some useless subplots in the movie, including the scenes with Anthony Anderson and the hackers, but overall, this movie is an entertaining summer blockbuster that will bring the geek out in everyone and I will definitely be watching this movie again when it’s released nationwide.

Grade: B+

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