movie review
Transformers
Alien Robot War Spills Onto Earth
If you had kids – or were a kid – in the 1980s, you might remember the Transformers cartoon show about two dueling groups of robots — the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons. These huge hunks of metal had the power to transform into cars, jets, helicopters, and motorcycles.
The story centers on Sam “Spike” Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a smarty-pants teenager who’s psyched about getting his first car – a beat-up yellow Camaro that lot owner Bobby Bolivia (Bernie Mac) has never seen before. Hmmm…very mysterious. Not only that, the car has a habit of playing just the right song at the right time, as Sam tries to impress cool girl Mikaela (Megan Fox).
Still, that’s nothing compared to the night the car drives away, morphs into a giant robot, and uses a light beam to communicate with a UFO. That really freaks Sam out!
Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers in Qatar, an emerite in the Persian Gulf, have been attacked by a helicopter that transforms itself into one ruthless robot. It destroys everything in its path while an offshoot downloads super-secret files from computers. Secretary of Defense John Keller (Jon Voight) calls an emergency meeting to analyze the data, but one of the small bots has already hacked into Air Force One’s computer.
Turns out the evil robots are after Sam—or rather, a discovery made by Sam’s ancestor, an Arctic explorer. Thanks to an introductory narration by good Transformer Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), we know that the two factions of robots – the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons – battled it out on the planet Cybertron.
While searching for an all-powerful cube called the Allspark, both sides learn that the uber-evil Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving) crashed in the Arctic a thousand years ago, taking the Allspark with him. Sam’s great-great-grandfather held the key to its location.
Sam’s car – the yellow Camero—is Bumblebee, one of the good guys. He and fellow Autobots get chummy with Sam, who vows to help them out. Also in the good-guy camp are a group of soldiers led by Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson). John Turturro plays Agent Simmons, an over-the-top fed who might have ulterior motives in the good-vs-evil fight.
This movie is Robocop on steroids. Few things are as terrifying as giant robots in hand-to-hand combat, especially when accompanied by ear-splitting sound effects. While it would be nice if this movie was appropriate for grade-schoolers – since most of the accompanying action figures, comic books, videogames and other products are aimed at this age group – that’s not the case. The storyline includes lots of action violence, weapons, fight sequences, massive explosions, flying wreckage, and a few sexual innuendoes.
A lighter option for grade-schoolers is 2005’s Robots, about a young robot named Rodney Copperbottom who saves an entire generation of bots from extinction. Also check out: 1) Megas XLR, a cartoon about a giant robot and a teen hero; 2) Transformers Cybertron, a 2005 series based on the original from the 1980s; and 3) The Jetsons, that classic cartoon about a beloved space family. All of these shows are currently airing on the Boomerang network.
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Japanese designer Shei Kohara was responsible for creating the earliest character models for the Transformers cast, greatly humanising the toy designs to create more approachable robot characters for the comic and cartoon. His designs were subsequently simplified by Floro Dery, who went on to become the lead designer for the series, creating many more concepts and designs in the future.
Posted by grand canyon helicopter tours on Feb 28, 2008
The Times series of articles on this topic won a Pulitzer Prize. The source of the disclosure of this NSA program has been investigated by the United States Justice Department.
Posted by grand canyon helicopter tours on Feb 29, 2008
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