A war on their own world has brought the noble Autobots and the antagonistic Decepticons into the Earth in search of the Allspark, an alien cube that is the Transformers' only hope to rebuild their devastated world. The Decepticons, Blackout and Scorponok, attacked a military base in Qatar while the insidious Frenzy sneaked into the Air Force One, all just to tap into the military secret files in search of information about Project Iceman. Project Iceman would lead the Decepticons to the whereabouts of their leader, Megatron, who in turn will lead them to the location of the Allspark.
The deceased ship captain involved in the events leading to Project Iceman turned out to be the grandfather of our lead role, Sam Witwicky. Sam holds the key to the location of the Allspark (engraved on his grandfather's eyeglasses). In some turn of events, Sam will own Bumblebee and later on learned about the nature of the Transformers. In an attempt to find the Allspark, they stumbled upon the secret government agency, Sector 7, which holds the secret to the location of both Megatron and the alien cube.
Unbeknownst to them, Frenzy the MVP was able to skitter his way towards the secret location by stalking Sam's hot girlfriend, Mikaela (yeah I really have to insert "hot" there). Frenzy contacted the Decepticons to converge on his location and freed Megatron from his cryo-freeze slumber. All the while, the rest of the Autobots are on their way to make their stand against the Decepticons on a nearby town. It was a battle royale when both factions clashed for the Allspark. I have to break it to you that Jazz was decapitated by Megatron. But in the end, Sam was able to dump the Allspark to Megatron's chest to destroy both the artifact and the monolithic robot.
Don't leave the cinema yet when the credit rolls since along with it, there will be teaser scenes that made a sequel imminent.
Most people anticipated the movie to be crap, and you can't blame em. First, the previews din't much give a clue on what does the robots look like and on the short moments that they did, they seemed very far from what the animated series presented. So the first thing that will hit you was that this will just be another kiddie movie with an unrealistic crap for a plot. There were also the rumours that outright deviated with what we generally know about Transformers... biggest of them was Bumblebee being a Camaro and not the lovable bug (Volkswagen Pendong Pagong) that we all knew. Another was that it's on a present-day settings. Transformers the cartoon series was set on the 80's and thinking of that alone would lead you to conclude that the script writers would recede to ridiculous ideas just to tie-in the whole concept into a more modern timeset.
What's awesome about it was that much of these were true - the robots din't much represent their original transformations (Prime, even when a truck, is not the original boxy hauler from the cartoon series) and the modernized concept is waaay different from the 80's Transformers that we remembered BUT despite it all, the overall impact of the movie is surprisingly well!
I believe that what contributed with this much appreciation was the fact that the movie was able to compensate a LOT of cool graphical goodies for what it lacks from the cartoon series. For most, the CG is outright wicked! The transformation is smoothly done and the robots' interactions with the humans are seamless that they really looked like coexisting simultaneously. It also has tons of fan services the likes of the original transformation sound and cheesy one-liners from the cartoons like Optimus Prime's "one shall stand and one shall fall" and "Autobots, transform and roll out!". It's just frustrating that they never played the original Transformer musical score!
The plot line is well simple. Your typical good versus bad thing. It's not what the movie would like to showcase anyway. It threaded away from the cartoon series' storyline but it still has some adherence to the basic concepts like how they characterized the Autobots' personalities (although Bumblebee was an exception in that he was not wimpy in the film). The Decepticons' Frenzy was surprisingly the MVP of the plot since singlehandedly it was responsible for the hacking of the government networks, uploading a virus into it, finding the location of Sam and freeing Megatron! The story basically was there because of Frenzy.
Most of the casts are pretty decent. Shia LaBeouf (Sam) was really reminiscent of the cartoon series' Spike. I can find the similiarities on their personality. I find the US Army squad led by Josh Duhamel (Captain Lennox) a bit overplaying their role. They din't strike me as grizzled war veterans and more of the stereotype heroic soldier we commonly see on films. Megan Fox (Mikaela) is hot when she's on her grimy look, nuff said. Also, it was nice to hear the original voice of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). If only Megatron and Starscream's original voice talents were there too, it will be total awesome-ness.
The bad thing is if you're a diehard fan of the 80's series and won't appreciate much of the deviations done on the movie, you would probably walk out underwhelmed. To enjoy the film, you have to set your mind up before seeing it that this will not be much of the cartoon series we loved back then. No problem for the later generations, they'll sure enjoy watching it. Watch out for the humours too. There were scenes that would make a good laugh.
The goodies will sure outweight the bad and I would like to see either Bumblebee or Frenzy nominated for the Oscars. 9 gulamans worth.
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