The Los Angeles Film Festival 2007 – Day 7: Transformers

The US premiere of Transformers was a star-studded highlight to the Los Angeles Film Festival – with cast members including Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox all turning up to walk the blue carpet with director Michael Bay. But the action didn’t stop at the cinema... An entire street was taken over for the premiere’s after party, where vehicles from the movie – including the truck that becomes Optimus Prime – were strategically placed in the middle of huge, open bars serving free booze to the hundreds of lucky attendees.

LA Flim Festival Day Seven: Transformers [UK release date: 27 July]

So what’s the film like? If you’ve been looking forward to a ridiculously awesome spectacle – you won’t be disappointed. The action is superb, the special effects are eye-poppingly flawless and the entire cinema resonates like a giant boom box as the colossal robots thunder on screen.

The transformations are slick, the comic touches are funny and if there’s any problem I can see in the film, it’s only that at times it’s difficult to tell which robots are fighting because some of the battles are shot too close up. OK, so the story takes a back seat to the action – but it’s action that we want to see and Michael Bay doesn’t let us down.

Transformers is a jaw-dropping blockbuster and does exactly what it sets out to do. Some die-hard fans might be upset that Optimus Prime didn’t have flames painted on him in the original cartoon – but who really cares? Bay has done a remarkable job at bringing the animation to the big screen.

“You have to respect the guys who created these phenomenal toys,” explains the director. “But I was set on taking them into a real world where they’d have to be more intricate to fit in. The Generation One robots were very blocky which would have been like using the unarticulated marshmallow man from Ghostbusters. Our Optimus Prime has 10,108 parts, each of which move.”

“It was a big leap of faith for me to sign on to a movie like this because I only wanted to make something that was as photorealistic as possible,” he continues. “These robots are the most complex modules ILM has ever made. We couldn’t have accomplished this two years ago. I guess that’s my answer to people who complain that the robots will look a bit different from the originals. But you know what? Sometimes it’s best not to answer your critics and just let the work stand for itself.”

If you’re after a gritty thriller or a quirky independent film, you’re in the wrong megaplex. But to the audience this is aimed at – this is gonna knock your socks off. Go see!

Related Links:
Transformers Review