Tons of Fun, Favorite of the "series"

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2011)

If you're a fan of the cartoons, you'd probably enjoy this one. It took the story right out of the show with some modifications to work with the semi-continuity of the "movie series." (season one - see "The Ultimate Doom - Parts 1,2,3). And honestly, anyone who looks at these films as a true trilogy probably isn't going to enjoy them. If you look at them as 3 different movies using the same universe and characters, it's a lot more fun. There were also some cool homages. (A scene where laser beak plays a part of the transformers song, a comment about "this must be Japanese," introducing Carly, using more G1 characters, even the plot itself etc.) And despite all the cheesy comic relief (some of it wasn't all that bad and partly funny) and over-the-top typical Michael Bay shenanigans, the story and characters had more depth than I'm used to seeing from him. It actually felt like the film focused on the transformers and the autobot/decepticon conflict rather than the human stories, which was my biggest complaint with the first two films. (Transformers was never about Spike/Sam, but the robots themselves.) Of course the visuals were stunning and action sequences top-notch (we can always count on that from Bay).
I've read through about half the reviews here and am increasingly surprised at how ridiculous they are. First off - most of them seem to be written by people who AREN'T fans of the original cartoons. I've seen many nit-picking complaints about utterly and completely unimportant things. For instance - "Optimus uses an axe? *RAGE* How retarded!!" Umm, kid, I don't think you understand how warfare and weapons work. First of all, he had it in the show and it was BA. Secondly, different weapons have different purposes... that's right. Missiles and cannons and bombs are long range weapons meant to do damage to multiple targets. Melee weapons are for close quarters one-on-one (or in Optimus's case, one-on-six). And it doesn't matter how advanced your race is. The Autobots are outnumbered and have resorted to hit-and-run tactics, surprise attacks, etc. Their primary weapons should be melee weapons to quickly and quietly kill the opposition. But I digress. And the popular "defying laws of gravity" argument is trash. Who cares?! It really has no effect on the story. It was a super cool action sequence. And you can make complaints like that about virtually every action/sci-fi movie ever made! "The acting is bad!" Well, it is an action film based on toy robots... what were you expecting? Grammy-winning performances? Be realistic here. It's really not that terrible. The way these reviews are written, you'd think it was the 'cool, anti-culture thing to do' to bash this film and M. Bay. I really have no idea why they're so bad. It seems most people aren't even a little familiar with the source material as they describe "these weird/bad-looking robots" and summarize plot points. You should probably disregard most of them...