Transformers shoots a 150 million dollar money shot into my eye.

September 1984.

With a crisp five dollar bill in my hand, I ventured on a 2 mile walk with only one goal in mind. To purchase my very first Transformer. The only place for an 8 year old to buy toys in my hometown without parental supervision was a small drugstore that carried knock off items of popular toy lines as well as a couple real deals. I quickly scanned the toy shelf for my newest recruit in my mish mash of GI Joe, Star Wars, A-Team, and He Man figures. I had two packages to pick from, a real deal Bumblebee or his clone (he still was an official transformer, but he was red and lame), the newly created cartoon taught me that even though Bumblebee was small, he was an important part of the autobot team; so I quickly purchased him and made the long trek back to my house where he would bring a message of hope from the planet cybertron to all the toys in my arsenal.

As soon as I got to my room, I ripped the clear plastic that had separated me from his plastic touch. I then flipped the box over and began to follow the detailed directions in how to transform this car into a mighty robot. This is where I learned a valuable lesson, they may be powerful robots in disguise, but they still are made of cheap plastic. Long story short: Bumblebee lost his legs. They managed to stay part of him for a couple of weeks but they were bound to be lost in the abyss of the sofa. With a birthday coming up, he spread the word that Optimus Prime would soon land and help fight the evil forces of Cobra and Skeletor (and for x-mas the bad guys got the pep talk for megatron). Oh the adventures and crazy story lines a child can create! They were awesome and I wish I could remember them all to pawn off to some Hollywood douchebag for millions.

Jump to August 1986

I arrived at the movie theater with wide eyes, ready to watch my favorite toys battle it out on the big screen. Rumor was that one of the Autobots even uttered a cuss word. I even taped the tv special promoting the movie, and barely had an idea who Orson Wells was and it was much later in life I would sit and ponder that Transformers the Movie would be the last film to show his name in the credit list as the voice of Unicron. My face still bears the trail left from one single tear when the power of the Matrix was released to the Stan Bush Classic “You Got the Touch!”

July 2008

We arrived at the theater two hours early (hell, if they would have made it so I had to sit and wait 10 hours to see it, I probably would have. The Geek culture has taught me patience and the marvel of people watching at an event like this); I passed the time by drinking my larger soda and ignored my last article and started devouring a large bag of popcorn.

The lights at the Cinerama dimmed, and the audience began to cheer as trailers of the next big summer movies helped get the crowd amped for some Robot on Robot action. At this point I could sit here for many a paragraph picking apart the plot of the movie, but the plot was not meant for just fan boys. It is a summer family film at it’s best and contained all the formulaic fart jokes, cute pet, and bad puns that have been proven time and time again to draw a large audience. Sure, I rolled my eyes at some parts, but I really wouldn’t want it any other way. After all, it’s fucking based off of Transformers! If you are not prepared to be sold a product after Hasbro is listed right after the screenwriters in the opening sequence, then you should just crawl back to your moms basement and sort through your magic cards for tomorrows tournament. Tap that mannas ass! Tap it like you have never tapped before!

Daytime Emmy award winner Shia LaBeouf did an excellent job as the token dork turned hero. His step father Jon Voight must have been proud to work with him in this film. Megan Fox, oh delic- hold on while I check how old she is in real life- cool she’s legal, ohhhh delicious Megan Fox! I think I could watch her read from the yellow pages and be very entertained (as long as she took long deep breaths and was leaning over just a bit. DAROOOL).

The team that brought this movie to life did a wonderful job. They didn’t set out to make a movie for us fanboys (they already knew they had us at “Autobots roll out”). No, they made this one for the next generation of geek and dork needing an escape from real world bad guys. Good needs to win over Evil now more than ever in fiction, since reality of those archetypes has become so blurred and twisted.

-M.Hersted