Transformers: The Greatest Movie of the Decade

I had no idea it was going to be this good. Seriously. I mean what did we have? Giant robots that looked vaguely like some plastic toys I had from about '84 to '88 that had a tie-in comic book and cartoon series? Alright- so there was some nostalgic value there much like the upcoming G.I.Joe, I bit. Then Mike Bay comes along, fair enough he's already cemented himself as one of the greatest motion picture directors of of the past 20 years, if not all time. But even I was sceptical, even of the wondrous talent of Bay that he could pull this off. The Island did not achieve the status of The Rock, Armageddon or Con Air and Bad Boys 2 was pale in comparison to it's predecessor so I'll admit that I was beginning to think that Mr. Bay may have started to loose it.

Never in my entire life have I been so wrong.

I said it in the title: Transformers is the Greatest Movie of the Decade, I offer Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible 2, 300, Underworld, Gladiator and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King as examples of previous movies which I would assume would be contenders for that title (there are others but not many) certainly there are not as many between 2000 and 2007 as there were between 1990 and 1997, but for now Transformers is king.

Michael Bay returns to Armageddon form (he even ingeniously includes a character line "This is better than Armageddon" as the Autobots land on earth). There is more military hardware on show here than Pearl Harbor, Bay runs the camera almost sexually over aircraft, artillery and modern weapons that gave me an instant hard-on. His obligatory silhouetted Black helicopters in slow-motion and his almost homo-erotic framing of a group of military-types walking towards the camera in slo-mo as well made their welcome return. I think there was more military tech-geek-talk in this movie than any of his previous projects a credit to the advisers I posted about earlier.

The Comic-Book had Buster, and the TV show had Spike so when Shia LeBeouf was cast I wasn't as concerned as others as it was plainly obvious that the producers were following the adventure of young Sam Witwiky which was more in keeping with the source material than just following the military response to the Transformers, not that we had a shortage of that however. LeBeouf had a good part in Constantine and after seeing how good he was in Transformers, I have no problem with his appearance in Indy 4.

Josh Duhamel (Danny in Las Vegas) who reminds me as a sort of cross between Johnny Knoxville and Timothy Olyphant is Captain Lennox, our human "Hero" character who is pivotal in the human's fight against that which they thought impossible. Other juicy parts are dished out to John Voight, Kevin Dunn, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson and even the excellent Glenn (Aaron Pierce in 24) Morshower gets to play a Marine Colonel :) However even though the movie has all these well known names/faces, I'm compelled by some strange force to post only this picture of the aptly named Megan Fox.

But enough about the "fleshlings", what about the giant, transformin' fuckin' robots???! Well if you remember that advertisement for... was it a Citroen?- who gives a shit? You know the one I'm on about with the transforming car. Well the transformations in this film are pretty much like that, but in a larger scale and much faster but with guns and weapons. They don't hold hand-weapons like they did in other incarnations, now the weapons are built in and like pop out of their arms or their arms transform into weapons which makes a lot of sense. Voice acting was top notch with the much hyped appearence of both Peter Cullen - the original voice for Optimus Prime and Hugo Weaving himself as the evil Megatron. Explaining anything else would lessen the impact of what you will see on screen but safe to say that these guys ain't those toys you had as kids. In many ways they're better.

The script was a gem, the perfect pace, balance of humour, action and drama, a credit to writers Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman, their faithfulness to the "essence" of Transformers while updating it for the 21st century has filled me with hope for their next effort - Star Trek. Steve The Island Jablonsky, through his magnificent music makes no secret that he's one of Hans Zimmer's trained composers and it's as if he channelled the Prince of Film Music himself to create a rich, multi-textured musical adventure of his own behind the action, yet accompanying it perfectly. The pyrotechnics on show here are pretty much what you'd expect from the director of The Rock, Armageddon, The Island, Bad Boys, Pearl Harbor etc. and it surprises most folk that Bay's budget was only $147m compared with $210m for the woeful X-Men: The Last Stand or even an insane $258m for the piece of shit Spider-Man 3, considering the flawless quality of and the sheer amount of CGI!! It just goes to show what you can do without an A-list actor inflating the budget beyond insanity.

The only possible problem I've scraped from the bottom of the barrel from this movie is that Voight as SECDEF Keller tries to use a mobile in the National Military Command Center. I can guarantee that mobiles are prohibited (even to the likes of me and even the SECDEF) inside such a facility. That aside, the analyst smuggling a memory card out of the NMCC was a bit far-fetched but I'll forgive it as a) it advanced the plot and b) The theft was discovered and an appropriate response was issued.

Finally, if you see only one movie this decade - I order you to go now and witness a true masterwork of motion picture presentation, and join Michael Bay on a virtual roller coaster ride the like of which you have never experienced.

Colonel Creedon Rating: STARS ARE MEANINGLESS IF A MOVIE REACHES THIS LEVEL!

Special Note: Star Wars Revenge of the Sith is deliberatly omitted from the lists that appear here as it's not a film, it's a religion.