WARNING: Content may not be suitable for non-nerds.

It should not be news to the two or three people who read my blog that I am an avid fan of the Transformers.  In fact, “avid” may be a teensy bit of an understatement.  Transformers were, by far, my absolute favorite toys, cartoon, and comic books growing up.  About six years ago, I began revisiting my childhood love and found myself collecting the toys once again.  Today, my collection is housed in three display cabinets, and it continues to grow.   I own all of the DVDs of the original cartoon, I’ve actually attended two Transformers conventions in the past (a fact which I may very well deny in the future), and I stay current on all the latest happenings in the world of Transformers.

So I had to laugh every time someone said to me, “Have you heard that there’s going to be a live-action Transformers movie?”  Of course I knew.  I had read about it probably six months before anyone had even asked me that.  I’ve followed the evolution of this movie, first through blog posts, then concept art, photographs, and movie clips.  I’ll be seeing the movie in less than 24 hours, so I thought I’d take a little time to reflect on my expectations.

Honestly, I’m not expecting a whole lot.  It’s not that I think this movie will be bad, but rather there’s really only one thing that people expect out of a movie like this, and from what I’ve seen, I’m certain that I won’t be disappointed.  I’m not looking for acting worthy of an Academy Award, an intelligent script, or a gripping plot.  All I really expect to see is huge robots kicking each other’s asses, and I have no doubt that’s what I’ll get.

I would bet that all any Transformers fan wants is to see live-action Transformers up on the big screen.  We’ve never seen this before.  We’ve seen Transformers in cartoons and comic books, but never portrayed in a truly realistic way.  Sure, these may not resemble the Transformers we grew up with tweny years ago (save Optimus Prime), but the same basic premise is there.

I accepted a long time ago that this movie isn’t going to be what I would have hoped it to be.  For one thing, the Decepticons look far too alien-like, and all of the Transformers’ faces are a little bizarre.  The amount of detail these Transformers have is almost a little too organic-looking for my taste.  And apart from Optimus Prime, none of the characters resemble those whose names they’ve assumed.  (C’mon, Bumblebee is a Camaro!  WTF?  I know VW wants nothing to do with Transformers these days, but I say if Bumblebee can’t be a VW Beetle, then he shouldn’t be at all!)  But at least Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime, for the most part, and he’s voiced by the same guy who voiced him twenty years ago — that alone makes this movie worth seeing.

And it may be that all the deviations this movie has taken are actually necessary in order to represent the Transformers in live-action on the big screen.  Like I said, we’ve only ever seen them in cartoons and comic books.  Before the X-Men movie a few years ago, the X-Men had only ever been portrayed in cartoons and comic books as well.  When they jumped to the big screen, they didn’t keep their brightly-colored spandex costumes.  Instead, they donned a more realistic, common black uniform.  Cartoons and comic books need to be toned down just a little when they make the jump to live-action, and maybe that’s what has happened to the Transformers in preparation for their movie.

Regardless, I’m very excited about this movie.  I don’t think that my expectations are necessarily low, but that rather there’s not a whole lot that needs to go into this movie to make me enjoy it.  Like I said, as long as there are huge robots clobbering each other with lots of large-scale explosions and other destruction, I think I’ll be pretty content.