Optimus Prime Minister

Okay okay okay, so we're on the eve of the new Transformers movie coming out and I'm sure a lot of Gen Y kids, among others, are ecstatic right now. More so exciting is the fact that the director is Michael Bay, who's probably best fitted to direct this film because of his penchant for films with fast paced action sequences and great use of CGI. As of today, Monday, I've already heard 938471823712 recounts of the film from critics and the general populace BEFORE the film has even been released. Ah, America.

I have to admit though I'm not thoroughly excited to see this film, especially compared to a lot of the Transformers heads out there, my Optimus Prime truck was my favorite toy when I was a kid (I also had enough Transformers toys to have my own Autobots vs. Decepticon war in my living room) and I watched the cartoons avidly. So, I felt I should lace some Transformers knowledge for y'all but since I'm no Transformers know-it-all, I felt my focus should be on the differences that this film will have versus our beloved cartoon series wayyyyyy back then (my "feel old" portion of this blog entry).

1. In the cartoon, Bumblebee's car mode was a VW Beetle. In Michael Bay's film, he has been changed to a Camaro? Why? Because Mr. Bay didn't want the car being mistaken for Herbie the Love Bug.

2. There's an homage to Bumblebee's original VW Beetle-ism when Shia LaBeouf's character is going to buy the Camaro that is Bumblebee and Bernie Mac's character tries to sell he and his father a yellow VW Beetle.

3. Megatron's original alternate mode was a pistol but due to complications with Hasbro and their rights to the Transformers toys, Megatron was changed to an interstellar jet.

4. There is a song composed by Stan Bush in this film. He also composed two other songs in the 1986 Transformers movie.

5. Remember in the 1986 Transformers when Optimus Prime was going to take on Megatron and he says, "One shall stand, one shall fall"? The same line is used in the 2007 film as well. If that line doesn't give you chills and make you want to be a transforming robot, I don't know what will.

6. The promotional trailers for the film purposely showed as little of the Transformers as possible to make them more intriguing. This level of secrecy was so high that when photos of Megatron's battle mode leaked on the internet, producer Don Murphy created a new "crowned" battle mode for Megatron.

7. The Decepticon "Devastator" (the super Decepticon) is named "Bonecrusher" in the 2007 film.

Alright, all this nerd-iness is tiring me out. Enjoy your experience at the theaters tomorrow and come back and write us a comment on what you thought of the film.

-Rack of Lam