Μύ Robots in disguise invade the Earth in Transformers, another excuse for director Michael Bay to blow stuff up in widescreen. It's a "clanging metalstorm" of a blockbuster, throwing off the kitschiness of the 80s cartoon series and Hasbro toy line, and making an unlikely hero out of Shia La Beouf.
Moving Parts
It all began with Steven Spielberg who, in the four-part documentary Our World, explains that he used to watch the cartoon "with the kids". He put the call in to Michael Bay who, quite surprisingly threw his hands up and said, "I'm not doing a toy movie!" Of course he eventually came around to the idea and the focus turns to casting. According to Bay, Shia La Beouf is "an everyday dude who's so good at improv." Behind the scenes footage confirms this, although co-star Megan Fox often wrecks the take by cracking up.
Another featurette takes a closer look at the evolution of the story and the visual aspects of the movie. The updated character design was a major factor in Bay agreeing to do the film even though he says he received death threats for slightly altering the face of Megatron. (Or maybe they'd just seen Pearl Harbor). Getting to play with a fleet of hi-tech cars was another big selling point. Bay got to collaborate with automobile giants Chevy on the design of Optimus Prime's battle convoy. And once again, he gets to show off all the military hardware that helped him to realise an array of very ambitious stunts.
More Than Meets The Eye
The Scorponok attack sequence is taken apart in Script To Sand. Apart from revealing the CGI components to create what the techno bods call this "bitchin' lookin' scorpion" cameras go on location to White Sands, where Bay has a fab time blowing up the desert and flinging stuntmen around on wires. There's also a deeper investigation into the digital effects work of ILM, who spent on average 38 hours to perfect just one frame of film, including over 10,000 moving parts per robot.
Bay talks more about the logistical challenges in his commentary for the film and boasts about having "a hotline to the Pentagon" which made his life a little easier. Once again he admits to initial uneasiness about the project, but explains how a visit to "Hasbro school", to learn the lore of Transformers, plus a crash course in Japanese anime finally turned him on to the idea.
This 2-disc set should keep the geeks and gearheads very happy, exposing all the nuts and bolts of crafting a big budget effects movie.
EXTRA FEATURES
Transformers DVD is released on Monday 3rd December 2007.
