Mixed emotions about this movie

Rating: 6/10 (12 September 2007)

As a 34 year old I grew up watching the Transformers animated series together with my little brother. So when finally the movie came out I was there as one of the first in line. I sad in expectations waiting for the curtains to open and see the movie.
The movie starts in a blaze of action when American troops get attack in Oman. I was blown away by the stunning action and visual effects. The CGI is so great that at the end when you see Shia and Optimus prime in a close up together it still looks real and very vivid, the scratches in Optimus' paint job showing the bare metal, just brilliant textures. But unfortunately not all the CGI has been done that good to reveal transforming difficulties or high speed action shots of the robots are disguised using a lot of jerky camera work and cuts. At times the camera motion is so bad that I had to force my dinner down not to "leak fluids" on the person in front of me. Don't get me wrong the CGI is truly really good but just to jerky for my taste.
The story on the other hand was a massive disappointment. A lot more could've been done with the story, it now feels as if the story was made to show of all the advanced special effects and not the other way around.
I also had a bit of a problem with the fact that the Transformers didn't look anything like the animated series, except for Prime in some extend. The fact that Megatron gets defeated is a bit of a shank really. Because we all know a sequel is pending with this amount of turnover. So in the next movie we will see that Starscream (who I believe wasn't caught) drags up Megatron and mends him or it; a cheap way to run into a next sequel, which I think will be made, but I hope it's not.