DVD Review: Transformers

I grew up watching Transformers as a kid. I had the toys, sheets, even costumes to be a number of different Transformers. Watching the movie, I was both very skeptical and extremely excited. In fact, the only thing I was truly weary of was that it was a Michael Bay movie.

Fortunately, Transformers rocked my face off. For those who live under a rock, the Transformers movie is about a boy who has some special information, only he isn’t aware of that fact. The Autobots are sent to protect the boy and the information from the evil Decepticons. The movie follows the obstacles, victories, and some killer action sequences in just what this information is and why it is so important.

Transformers is the movie that will bring out the inner child in all of us. If it doesn’t, I’d argue you have no soul. Even if Michael Bay isn’t one of the more well-liked directors out there, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Rachael Taylor, Anthony Anderson, Jon Voight, and several others truly worked together to bring this story to life. Transformers isn’t meant to be some deep movie with a lot of meaning, so if that is what you want, look elsewhere. But Transformers is a fun and exciting story with a great soundtrack. The CGI was well done and didn’t distract from the movie, as sometimes is the case.

The DVD is a two-disc special edition. The first disc contains the film in widescreen format enhanced for 16:9 televisions. The sound is Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 available in English, French, and Spanish with subtitles available in the same three languages. The first disc also contains a commentary track by Michael Bay.

The second disc has three special features. The first is titled “Our World” and is a series of “behind the scenes” looks at how Transformers was created: the process of hiring teams and creating the script, how the casting was done, the special effects, and the locations of the shoot. The next featurette is called “Their War” which looks at the history of Transformers in all its incarnations and how that influenced the creation of the robots in the movie. The final featurette is “More Than Meets The Eye” and has three parts. The first details the desert fight scene’s development. The next part deals with concepts the filmmakers wanted to fit into the movie. Finally there are trailers with the first teaser and two of the theatrical trailers for Transformers. Really, the only thing missing that I expected to be included was a series of deleted scenes. The features alluded to them so it made their absence more disappointing.

However, as a whole, Transformers is more than worth buying. It is also available in HD DVD.