Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Transformers'

Written by Scott Edwards

There have always been questions about where exactly we come from and how long our race has been at the top of the food chain. I love watching shows about aliens that discuss their possible visitation to our world and how they potentially helped us grow as a species or possibly enslaved some of mankind. As nobody can give a firm answer on this whether or not this happened, since alien landings may or may not have been covered up by the government, or they never happened, or it was a prototype, it would be nice to know what is really happening outside of our planet. With so many unanswered questions, there may never be answers in our life time, unless of course the aliens come back and make us finally take note of their existence.

Sam Witwicky wants nothing more than to be noticed in his classes, but not by everyone, just by one special lady, Mikaela. Being able to meet his father’s criteria to get a car, Sam finds an old clunker that has an appeal to him, since it may help catch Mikaela's eye, but little does he know that the car has chosen him. Watching as the car takes off, Sam sees that it is more than meets the eye as it transforms into a large robot. Not knowing what this means, or who might be behind it, Sam is introduced into the Autobot family being led by Optimus Prime who needs something that Sam actually possesses.

Captain Lennox and his team are returning from combat and looking for some well-deserved down time, but find that he and his group are up against something new. When a ghost helicopter makes its way to the base, it turns into a large robot that single handily destroys the base, but it is looking for more than bloodshed. Being able to hack the defense grid in seconds, it is looking for something in the files, but nobody knows what it is looking for. Calling in all of the brightest young minds to take a look at the signal, Defense Secretary Keller finds that he has someone that might be able to track the signal as Maggie is able to detect a hack taking place on Air Force One. But not knowing everything about what is going on, Maggie has to turn to her good friend Glen to help decipher who or what is behind this security threat.

Being able to find out that Sam is in possession of a pair of glasses that house the coordinates of the All Spark, a device that the Cybertronian race needs to rebuild their civilization, the Autobots and Decepticons are in a race against time to locate the boy and his treasure. With the leader of the Decepticons being frozen on Earth for many years now, his minions have a clue to where the All Spark is, and quickly work to bring their leader back to life. With information bouncing throughout the internet, everything is fair game, but after seeing one of their own being taken prisoner, the Autobots are on a mission to gather the All Spark before Megatron can be awakened and wreak havoc on the planet.

This is just an action packed thrill ride for the ages and I never thought that one of my favorite cartoons growing up would ever make it into a live action movie. The effects are just off the wall crazy and it is a great first movie that will prepare you for the ride of a lifetime with the Transformers. What I really enjoyed most about this movie however is the interactions between the characters, they were just fantastic, especially from the people that stole the show. That's important because one of the things that I think takes away from a lot of movies are the scene stealers that only get a couple of minutes of screen time, but these are the characters everyone is always talking about when the movie ends. Even though there are several of these in this movie, I don’t think it took away from anyone’s storyline, as there were several to keep track of throughout. Well, now that I have committed myself to watching this series once again, I guess I will have to keep the trek going, on to Revenge of the Fallen.

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