More Than Meets the Eye

On a rare day off when the kids have daycare and neither one of them is sick, I got a chance to actually watch a movie with the volume up a bit. As I graded papers, I decided to watch the Transformers movie (live action, not animated, have both). Watching the beginning when we are first treated to the Autobot symbol on Bumblebee's steering wheel, I remembered the chills I felt when I first saw the preview and didn't know what it was until that symbol appeared. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I got chills. I get that same feeling throughout the movie. Why is this? I will admit that it's not the best movie and it has it's fair amount of cheese (Optimus saying, "My bad," comes to mind), but it captures something that this current generation of kids may not get to experience. Sure, the show was made to sell the toys, but it was still really cool. It was also never made into a movie, and I'm glad it wasn't until recently. Every franchise now is turned into a movie almost immediately. It might be straight to DVD, but it gets the movie treatment right away. It wasn't so with Transformers. There were plenty of series, but never a full movie (other than the animated). When the movie opens up and the Decepticon transforms from a helicopter, I think they nailed the coolness factor. That robot, was unstoppable (until they stopped it). The amount of effortless carnage, mobility, speed, and agility it embodied was awesome. That is a big giant robot to be proud of. With the sequel coming out this summer, I'm really excited and I'm seeing this one in the theater. The first movie was a lot of set up and not enough robots. I hope this will be remedied in the second. Time for a run.