Blu-Ray Review:
Transformers
By Jason Gillard
*Screenshots are not from the Blu-Ray source.
Movie
Transformers is a Michael Bay movie. If you know anything about Michael Bay you know what to expect here. I remember going to the theater and really liking the film. It had some of the most amazing CGI I had ever seen. I think in my review of the standard def DVD I said I could just spend two hours watching the robots transform. The plot is pretty simple but if you like explosions, action and robots this movie should be right up your alley. The movie stars Shia Lebouf who does an excellent job here as a kid that goes to buy his first car and gets brought into a war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. After watching the movie a second time, I had forgotten how much humor was in the film. Bernie Mac plays a used car salesman in a small role, but I thought he was quite funny. The action is crazy and the fight between Prime and Bonecrusher on the highway is pure eye candy. I think most people have seen the movie by now and I don't need to go into everything, but I thought the movie was great and I can't wait for Transformers 2.
8.5 out of 10
Video
I could end the video section right now by just saying WOW. Enough said! This is probably the best transfer I have seen on a blu-ray movie yet. Everything looks colourful, and the picture looks like it's about to jump off the screen. Even subtle scenes make you appreciate the fact that you have a Blu-Ray player. This is the disc you will pull out to impress your friends. Black levels are awesome, as is the detail. In my opinion this movie has set the standard, and I think Michael Bay was right to demand this film come out on Blu-Ray. Amazing transfer.
10 out of 10
Audio
Aggressive is the word I would use to describe this sound track. You get a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track. Every speaker was coming to life with little bits of sound. The track is right in your face where it should be. I am not sure if they won any awards for sound design, but they definitely should have gotten one. This is one of my favorite discs so far, because the use of the LFE track was great. This is reference material and it's hard to imagine a surround track sounding better than this one.
10 out of 10
Extras
There are two discs so I will list the extras on each disc.
Disc 1
Audio Commentary (Michael Bay)
Picture-in-Picture: "Transformers H.U.D."
BD-Live: "Intelligence Center"
BD-Live: "MyClips"
BD-Live: "Intelligence Center"
Disc 2
"Our World" (HD, 51 minutes)
"Their War" (HD, 5 minutes)
From Script to Sand: "The Skorponok Desert Attack" (HD, 9 minutes)
Still Gallery: "Concepts" (HD, 2 minutes)
Theatrical Trailers (HD)
If you owned the HD-DVD of Transformers, the extras here will be the same. But that's not a bad thing as Paramount has put together a collection of extras that is well worth your while. One thing I did was listened to Michael Bay's commentary. It's not something I usually do, but I can say that I really enjoyed his commentary. It's very informative and he also talks about what he wants to do when he starts working on Transformers 2. For me the best extras are on disc 2. I liked Our World quite a bit. You get many cast and crew interviews and they also look back at Transformers history. It's very informative and it's in HD which is nice. Also in this section is something called "I Fight Giant Robots" which focused on the military involvement in this movie. I really found this interesting as well. On the first disc there are some BD-Live features. I found them kind of boring to be honest, but it is a look at where they can go with this technology. Overall the extras are well done and great if your a fan of the movie.
8.5 out of 10
Overall
This is one of the best looking and sounding Blu-Ray titles out there. They could have stopped there and I would have recommended it. But it also has a really good collection of extras as well. So for me this is a definite buy.
9 out of 10
Highly Recommended