I think for anyone growing up with (and enjoying) the transformers you should at least go watch it. I was pleasantly surprised as I went into the movie expecting to be let down. I'm not sure I'd hail it as the crown jewel of one of my favorite cartoon franchises while growing up, but I wasn't overly disappointed.
The idea of badass chicks is pretty sexy, but they fumbled a bit here. At one point, when Sam tells here she's "more than meets the eye" I started laughing to myself at how they dropped the line in the way they did, which elicited some strange looks from my neighbors. I have to say getting dragged along to see it with people who just wanted to see an action movie was a bit detracting as I'd have to explain stuff to them and put up with "oh he's crippled but they're letting him fight!" This isn't fucking Autobot affirmative action - they're just that badass.
Oh, and before we went in to see the movie, the obnoxious girl (that apparently doesn't think very highly of Bumblebee, and spent the movie shouting in semi-climatic scenes and otherwise being generally disruptive) informed me that I was not to spoil the movie as there was someone in attendance who was oblivious to the "robots in disguise" plotline. M. Night Shyamalan isn't the fucking director here folks... The transforming robot premise isn't some sort of spoiler the way of 6th Sense. Though I did get a bit of a kick out of imagining what would happen if that were the case. I just couldn't get this image of some guy standing up in the last 5 minutes of the movie proclaiming "I GET IT! THEY'RE ROBOTS...IN DISGUISE. BRILLIANT!"
Sorry for the rant there, but my companions and the fact that they decided to see Transformers over Die Hard at the last moment left me feeling sort of razzled.
My friend and I were confused as hell when Starscream disappeared but at least the credits showed where he went off to.
Unfortunately I missed this, due largely in part to the people I attended the movie with. Please enlighten me.
And Steve, I watch a lot of anime; but I can definitely relate to a dislike of mecha. The entire premise of man sized robots as vehicles of war just strikes me as nonsensical. However, this isn't really the same thing at all. I think if you enjoyed the series when you were young, it's worth plopping down a few bucks for nostalgia's sake at very least. I'd recommend seeing it in a theater though, as being in a theater automatically makes just about every movie better unless you have 1 or 2 friends over and drink heavily while watching a rented movie.
Man, that makes me sound like such a lush.
Edit: I'm sure most of you have seen
this, but it's basically the expectations I had when going into the theater.
