Transformers One

I am not going to spend a lot of time pouring over the details of Transformers One. Why? Because it's Transformers One. This isn't a movie made with mass appeal in mind. The Michael Bay movies were trying to capture that summer blockbuster crowd and anybody who likes mass destruction in their movies. Transformers One is absolutely not trying to do that. It's trying to appeal to one audience: Gen 1 fans. If you stopped and asked yourself "what is Gen 1?", then this movie isn't for you. But for all the kids who grew up watching Gen 1 ... whose moms almost got in fistfights in Toys R Us trying to secure them a Dinobot ... who sat there either weeping uncontrollably or paralyzed with shock when Optimus Prime died in the 80's animated movie ... or for the later generations who've picked up watching Gen 1 ... This one is for you. It's loud, it's simple to understand, it has enough Easter eggs to make you smile without feeling like it's pandering or reliant on nostalgia ("Go-bot" being an insult here had me smiling, and so did "you have neither the touch nor the power!".), and it gives you everything you want in an animated Transformers movie. It's crazy, it's filled with robot carnage, and has a surprising amount of depth. You're not going to find some profound exploration of themes resonant to our times or anything, but T1 goes harder than it needs to, and pulls it off. Even its flaws (an all-too-obvious twist, and the over-use of Bumblebee in a comic relief role) can be waived away. This is Transformers One, not Vertigo. You'll know if you're the audience for this just by looking at the poster. If you're not, I can't see how this would be the movie to sway you. But if you were a young'n who got their mom to take you to the original movie 40 years ago, and you sat in a theater horrified that they could kill Optimus Prime ... this one's for you.