By Mike DiGiorgio

            I’ve always been too old for the whole Transformers thing, but I remember thinking the Hasbro action figures were kind of a neat idea for a toy.  Cars that turn into robots?  If I hadn’t been too old to be playing with toys, I would have wanted one of those.

            Transformers became a phenomenon, spawning a cartoon series, a comic book and 2007’s live action movie.  But how do you take a simple idea – cars that turn into robots – and get enough material for a movie?  For my first Transformers experience – the sequel Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen, I discovered they had to come up with a convoluted back-story about an alien race that takes the form of machines.  

Or maybe they were machines in the first place?  I don’t know.  It didn’t make a bit of sense to me, and with all the noise of machines fighting each other, I didn’t have time to figure it out.  Looking back, that’s hard to believe since the movie runs to overkill length of nearly 2 ½ hours.

The basic idea is that an evil robot called “The Fallen” has decided now is the time for his fellow evil Transformers – called “Decepticons” – to rise up and take over the planet.  Why now?  I don’t know.  If they were living among us all along, what took ‘em so long?

I’m not opposed to having fun with a movie about cars that turn into robots that fight each other.  And it is fun to look at the fantastic Michael Bay-directed action scenes.  When a giant robot gets knocked into one of the Great Pyramids, it’s way cool to see chunks of pyramid fly every which way.  But the question is:  which Transformer fell into the pyramid?  When the mechanical arms start flying and the roar of machines blare through the speakers, I’ll be damned if I can figure out which one is the Autobot and which one is the Decepticon.  I thought Terminator Salvation was the noisiest movie of the summer about robots fighting, but I was wrong.

And the live people in this movie say words like “Autobot” and “Decepticon” in seriousness.  Someone on screen needs to represent the audience and just acknowledge that this war between ancient mechanistic aliens is ridiculous.  Why would an ancient and proud alien race call themselves names that sound like what a toy company would name an action figure?  Would you take something that calls itself an “Autobot” seriously?  Even the robot’s voices sound ridiculous and don’t fit in with the live action.  If the movie had even a little camp, it might have been more fun.  But the generation that grew up watching Transformers takes their toys very seriously and doesn’t want to be made fun of.

That audience would be teenage boys and those who remember what it was like to be a teenage boy – and this is their movie.  Young star Shia LaBeouf represents them all, and is living out their fantasies.  His very own car is a Transformer and is his best friend.  He gets to be in on all the action and save the world. 

Oh, and his girlfriend is Megan Fox, who is getting more magazine covers than the Transformers themselves.  She should – she’s incredibly hot, and let’s face it, she’s a big reason guys will want to see this movie.  In fact, she’s one of several hot chicks in the movie.  In the subplot that gets thrown away once the action starts, LaBeouf’s Sam is beginning college, and he’s managed to enroll in a university where every single girl is an ultra-babe.  The only female not portrayed as a babe is his mother, who gets some good laughs but is portrayed as an idiot  (at the end, we’re supposed to take Sam’s parents seriously, but by then it’s too late).

I knew one Transformer name before I saw the movie:  Optimus Prime.  I learned that from the fans, who back in 2007 told me they were stoked to get to see Optimus come to life.  They’ll be disappointed we don’t see much of Optimus in this.  In fact, I think he came off as a wimp.

Yeah, I said it.  Optimus Prime is a wimp.

See, in my day – the action figures came after the movie.  We let the people who know how to create stories do their jobs, and then the toy people did theirs. 

Q:  Is the new way the way things will stay?

A:  Coming to theaters this summer:  G.I. Joe:  The Rise of Cobra!