A Paramount release of a DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures presentation, in association with Hasbro, of a di Bonaventura Pictures production. Produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Tom DeSanto, Don Murphy, Ian Bryce. Executive producers, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Brian Goldner, Mark Vahradian. Co-producers, Allegra Clegg, Ken Bates. Directed by Michael Bay. Screenplay, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci; story, Kurtzman, Orci, John Rogers.
Sam Witwicky - Shia LaBeouf
Sgt. Epps - Tyrese Gibson
Capt. Lennox - Josh Duhamel
Glen Whitmann - Anthony Anderson
Mikaela Banes - Megan Fox
Maggie Madsen - Rachael Taylor
Agent Simmons - John Turturro
John Keller - Jon Voight


If it's true that there's an 8-year-old boy inside every man, "Transformers" is just the ticket to bring the kid out. Big, loud and full of testosterone-fueled car fantasies, Michael Bay's actioner hits a new peak for CGI work, showcasing spectacular chases and animated transformation sequences seamlessly blended into live-action surroundings. There's no longer any question whether special effects can be made more realistic: The issue is whether disposable actors can be trained to play better with bluescreens. Paramount/DreamWorks' summer tentpole is certain to do gangbusters biz, while the sequel-screaming ending and the usual spinoffs should send ancillary through the roof.

Toy giant Hasbro will see its coffers full to overflowing after the July 4 release, perfectly timed for a consumer run on already popular Transformers figures, comic books, videogames and cartoons. "Transformers" is the apotheosis of product placement, using tried-and-true formulas in the story department as a showcase for the toys (already featured in the 1986 toon "The Transformers: The Movie"). Best of all for anyone who put coin into the production, pic builds off multiple generations of fans, from the kids obsessed with the robots at their launch in 1984 to those collecting the latest incarnations today.

Adult dweebs still enthralled by the figurines' facile mythology have flooded the Web with complaints that the franchise has been tampered with to form a (relatively) cohesive plot, but most viewers either won't notice or won't care. At the center of the tale is Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), an average 11th grader psyched about getting his first car -- a mysterious, beat-up yellow Camaro that lot owner Bobby Bolivia (Bernie Mac, in a brief role) has never seen before.



Sam's attempts to impress cool girl Mikaela (Megan Fox) are falling flat, and the car's habit of playing the right song ("Sexual Healing," "Baby Come Back") at the right moment only increases the initial tension. The machine really freaks Sam out when it drives away at night and transforms into a giant robot that communicates via light beam with a UFO.



Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers in Qatar have been attacked by a helicopter that transforms itself into one nasty robot, destroying everything in its path while an offshoot downloads top-secret files from the computers. Secretary of Defense John Keller (Jon Voight, doing a Southern version of Donald Rumsfeld) calls an emergency conference to analyze the data ("This is way too smart for the Iranians"), but one of the small robots has already hacked into Air Force One's computer.

The evil robots are after Sam -- or rather, a discovery made by Sam's ancestor, an Arctic explorer. Thanks to introductory narration by good Transformer Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), auds know what's going on before Sam does: The planet Cybertron was ravaged by a civil war between the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons. In their search for an all-powerful cube called the Allspark, both sides learn that super-evil Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving) crashed in the Arctic a millennia ago, and with him the Allspark. Sam's great-great-grandfather's cracked glasses hold the key to its location.





It's all very easy to follow. Sam's car is one of the good guys, Bumblebee. He and his fellow Autobots bond (not literally, though that could be for the sequel) with the teenager, who pledges to help them out, fighting not only the Decepticons but also the uptight feds led by Agent Simmons (John Turturro).

Scripters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, together with John Rogers, had to keep the basic Transformers stories intact while placing them in a human environment, turning to plot elements from a number of successful pics including "King Kong," "War Games" and "The Love Bug." Pic also follows the early Steven Spielberg formula (he's on board as an exec producer): Take a likeable young Joe with an ordinary upper-middle-class family and have him champion some aliens.


More than any of Bay's earlier blockbusters, including "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon," "Transformers" has an oddly Reagan-era feel, at times resembling an Air Force recruitment commercial. Soldiers, led by Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson), are as much heroes as Sam, fighting to rid the world not only of authoritarian regimes -- there's frequent speculation that Russia or China is involved, proving the Cold War hasn't ended -- but also secret government programs. Ethnic stereotypes abound, and there's a none-too-subtle jab at the Spanish-as-an-equal-language lobby. "Freedom is the right of all sentient human beings," intones Optimus, sounding more appropriately President Bush circa 2007.



LaBeouf is pleasantly sympathetic, but this is hardly the role to test his acting chops -- or, for that matter, anyone else's. Fox is little more than eye candy, while Bay has put together a nicely multiracial cast to broaden the pic's appeal. Among the thesps, Turturro is so over-the-top that he provides a welcome acknowledgment of the pic's cartoon origins.

But everyone involved knows the actors are mere props for Industrial Light & Magic's CGI team, which has put together an impressive show of the latest tech advances -- not only transforming cars and helicopters into enormous robots within a few thoroughly believable seconds, but also setting them in real spaces and having them interact with real objects. The premise for these fights hasn't moved beyond 1925's "The Lost World," but the digital animation has never been better.

No wonder Bay needed a team of editors, who succeed in making the fight sequences exciting spectacles, though toward the end they all tend to become just a mess of flying wreckage and random explosions -- the outcome is always predictable, if the movements themselves remain unexpected. Sound is cranked up to mega-decibels; if the action doesn't generate stomach tremors, the bass lines will. Overly grand music used halfway through, during Bumblebee's subjugation scene, seems to confuse it with the pic's climax.



Camera (color, widescreen), Mitchell Amundsen; editors, Paul Rubell, Glen Scantlebury, Thomas A. Muldoon; music, Steve Jablonsky; music supervisor, Dave Jordan; production designer, Jeff Mann; art directors, Sean Haworth, Beat Frutiger, Kevin Kavanaugh; costume designer, Deborah L. Scott; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Erik Aadahl; sound mixer, Peter J. Devlin; visual effects supervisor, Scott Farrar; visual effects, Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain; special effects supervisor, John Frazier; animation supervisor, Scott Benza; stunt coordinators, associate producers, Matthew Cohan, Michelle McGonagle; assistant director, Simon Warnock; second unit director, stunt coordinator, Ken Bates; casting, Janet Hirshenson, Jane Jenkins, Michelle Lewitt. Reviewed at Taormina Film Festival (Grande Cinema), June 21, 2007. (Also in Los Angeles Film Festival.) MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 140 MIN.

With: Kevin Dunn, Michael O'Neill, Julie White, Amaury Nolasco, Bernie Mac, Johnny Sanchez.
Voices: Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Mark Ryan, Jess Harnell, Robert Foxworth, Jimmie Wood, Darius McCrary, Charlie Adler, Reno Wilson.


And the Transformers Are :

Autobots:
Optimus Prime
Bumblebee
Jazz
Ratchet
Ironhide

Decepticons:
Megatron
Starscream
Brawl
Bonecrusher
Barricade
Scorponok
Frenzy
Blackout





News :

SCI FI Wire got a rare peek at the production of director Michael Bay's upcoming Transformers movie in downtown Los Angeles on Aug. 26, including the first up-close look at the disguised versions of four key Autobots: the chartreuse search-and-rescue vehicle Ratchet, the giant black GMC 4x4 Ironhide, the sleek silver Pontiac Solstice sports car that is Jazz and the muscle-y yellow-and-black Chevy Camaro that is the new Bumblebee—so new that the car in the movie is a prototype for a vehicle that hasn't even gone into production yet. Ironhide had an Autobot logo on his tailgate; Ratchet featured a fire department seal on its doors with the same logo in the design.

In interviews with cast and crew, SCI FI Wire also got a preview of the film and learned a few key spoilers:

•The film will offer background about the origin of the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. The plot will be set in motion when 18-year-old Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) discovers his grandfather's pair of century-old glasses, improbably laser-etched with a map and information about the location of a key artifact, the "Energon" cube, which he then tries to sell on eBay. The movie will follow five separate storylines, which will all converge with a final battle between the Autobots and Decepticons, starting at Hoover Dam and ending in an American city that looks a lot like Los Angeles.

•The film is seeking permission to be the first production to film the exterior of the Pentagon since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; the movie will also shoot in various cities, including L.A., Chicago, Detroit and Washington.

•The film will feature a top-secret military unit called Sector 7.



•Voice casting of the Transformer robots is being left until later in the production, except for Peter Cullen, who was previously named to reprise his role as Optimus Prime. In particular, producers wouldn't say whether Frank Welker, who voiced Megatron in the 1986 animated Transformers film, would voice the character in the movie.

•The movie will use a mix of computer animation and large-scale puppetry to depict the giant robots. Megatron will appear as a plane, not a giant gun, as he did in early versions of the franchise.

•The film's first full trailer will appear sometime during the holiday season this year.

Overall, director Bay told SCI FI Wire that the movie strives for realism, despite its cartoony origins. "I only wanted to do Transformers if I could do it realistic," Bay said in an interview. "And from what I've seen and what we've done with our digital studies, putting it in real-world stuff, that is lots of effects around that are real effects, that's how we make it realistic." When Bay got the first call from producer Steven Spielberg, he said, "My first thought was, 'Nah, I'm not interested.' And just because I thought, 'OK, how am I going to do a toy movie?' And then I realized, when I went to Hasbro, 'OK, start over and go for [a] realistic alien-invasion-robot movie on Earth.' And so, with that thinking in mind, that's how I went about it."

On a hot Saturday, Bay and his crew shot a scene on a blocked-off street in the heart of downtown L.A. The scene featured the four Autobots, accompanied by military crews led by co-stars Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel, and young stars LaBeouf and Megan Fox, who plays Mikaela, LaBeouf's love interest. In the scene, the commandoes see what they believe to be Air Force jets flying overhead, then realize that the coming flying machines are something else—Decepticons in disguise?—and throw smoke grenades to obscure their positions as dozens of civilians run screaming around them. Ironhide, the black truck in the lead of the column of Autobots, appears to collide with a delivery truck carrying Furbys (the talking furry animal toys that are also made by Transformers maker Hasbro). The truck is on a gimbal, which allows it to swing up and stand perpendicular to the street, as if knocked on its end. The idea is that the Furbys will be knocked from the truck, in flames, then activate when the Energon cube flies overhead. "We just wanted to have burning Furbys on the ground, you know?" Bay said with a laugh. "We're going to be blowing up a lot of little Furbys." Transformers is currently in production, with an eye to a July 4, 2007, release. —Patrick Lee, News Editor