I grew up with Transformers and after Starwars they were probably the childhood brand that I could identity with the most. Most Saturday mornings featured Transformers and G.I.Joe back to back but the Transformers were much better at merchandising their cartoon and I ended up with many of the toys. So needless to say I was excited to be going to see the new Transformers movie 15 years later.

The movie starts off well with the Decepticons attacking a base in Qatar. With the element of surprise its not really clear why the Decepticons would choose Qatar as their primary target with its well established military presence but it did provide an excellent opportunity to advertise/promote the US forces in the middle east and all major services, Army, Navy and Airforce go some create coverage. After the main attack the movie kinda fell apart for me. For some reason the movie seemed to focus more on the development of human characters like an Army Captain stationed in Qatar and the relationship between Sam and Mikeala. The movie is very long and the scene with the Autobots climbing around Sam’s house was brutal and should been left on the cutting floor. Throughout the movie the Transformers are left looking shallow and without character, which made it hard to connect with them.

There was also several characters portrayals in the movie that didn’t sit well with me and bordered on racism. For example the used car salesman and scene with the computer hacker screaming at his grandmother. I’m also not really sure what value these scenes added to the movie and further confused me about what I was watching. Overall the movie was fairly entertaining but didn’t all connect with the Transformers themes and its not something I would recommend.