I went and saw the new Transformers film after work yesterday. Being a kid who grew up with the toys and the cartoons, I was incredibly keen on seeing a live-action interpretation. There are some good points and some bad points. This is my take.

There is a decent story being told. In story-board format, it does a great job. The build-up of the presence of the robots is well paced. At first, we’re shown some fast paced man vs machine action in the desert. There aren’t really clear shots of the sand robot, but we do get a good look at Blackout as it transforms from helicopter to bipedal form. Things are allowed to slow down from there. Until the Autobots present themselves to the humans directly, the use of robots is quite sparse. This is used to good effect. It lends a sense of tension along the way.

Of course, once the action starts, it’s beautiful. There is a bit of motion-blur, but not quite enough to start causing headaches. The level of detail in the fast scenes is pretty amazing, and I’m almost willing to bet that there was some motion capture guiding things. As Bonecrusher transforms in the highway chase and breaks into a run, he looks like a speed-skater. There were a couple bits that looked like power-slides, too. Any chance that someone on the production team is an aggressive skater? For me, it just added to the visual beauty.

The target market for this is actually a bit tricky to pin down. There are a lot of people in their 30s who are going to go see it. We were the kids when the toys first came out. There has been a trickle of attention ever since. I think, however, that this is largely aimed towards the younger market. The romantic sub-plot is a little adolescent. Confirmation of this comes when the mother says the M-word. You’ll know when you get there. Just pray you don’t have a kid behind you who’s taking a drink when it comes…

The downside of this is that the geeky bits of the movie are given a wash of stupidity by the script-writers. The whole bit about hacking signals is just crap¹. The Aussie chick is a muffin and her fat friend is completely implausible, not to mention annoying. They served up horribly-written babble and only slowed down the story. It’s truly a shame, since this could have been done quite well.

A few things came up that left me a bit unsettled:

• There is a really odd sense of physics going on. Where the hell does all that extra mass come from when transforming into bipedal? Similarly, where does it go when they’re hanging from the underside of a bridge?

• Are all our electronics angry at us? I mean, if my ipod were to transform, would it be so that it could kill me?

• Finally, why the hell to the innocent bystanders just stand around and watch? Big menacing robots threatening to kill everything nearby generally triggers the flight response.

• Oh, and one more: with all the really smart people that government rounded up for the signal hacking part, why are they all morons?

Summary: I loved the good bits. Enough, in fact, to see it again this weekend, knowing full well how horrible the first half of the script is¹. There are a few honestly funny bits along the way, but at heart, it’s just a good giant robot action movie.

¹ Hollywood, I’m talking to you on this one: you can’t write geeky stuff worth a damn. We, the people, generally know that if a Hollywood movie mentions “hackers” or “hacking”, the movie is going down the toilet. This is especially true here. Thank god the fast-paced ending recovers before the final flush.