1st Impression: Transformers: Dark of the Moon Superbowl XLV Trailer

Michael Bay’s Transformers series. Largely viewed as blasphemy to the Transformers name. Hated by pretty much anyone who knows anything about Transformers. People complain about the designs, the story, the characters, the casting, and pretty much anything else they can think of when it comes to these movies. The most common reason? Because it supposedly shits all over the originals and will never stand up to Transformers: The Animated Movie. I, on the other hand, don’t care about any of that. I always liked these movies and this trailer has me excited again.

I grew up with Transformers as a secondary interest. I never cared much for the show. I’d watch it here and there, but never would sit down every saturday morning at a certain time just to watch it. Honestly, I liked Beast Wars better than G1. Go ahead and flame, but I wasn’t an early-80s kid. I was born in 1986 for Pete’s sake. But I always was, and always will be, a huge fan of great special effects, explosions, and giant robots transforming and fighting each other. I never really liked Michael Bay’s films very much, but Transformers is my one soft spot for him. This series combines many of the things I like and presents it in an exciting way. I love explosions. I love giant robots (not mobile suits, ROBOTS). I love transforming things (always liked the old Centurions TV show on Cartoon Network, Macross had my interest for a while, Voltron, hell even Go Bots). This series suits me really well.

The first thing I noticed in the trailer was that it looks like an entire city is being destroyed. If that’s the case then it looks like the scale of the action in this film will be raised drastically compared to the previous films. Then you got two cars hitting head-on and then transforming, looks like a black pickup and a black car, so I’m thinking Ironhide and someone else. Then we have a shot of Bumblebee that looks identical to a shot from the first film. Following this is a night shot of a fleet of starships attacking a city with missiles. Then a quick shot of a transformer with tentacles tearing apart the street. The next shot we see what looks like a dragon or flying dinosaur. Could this be the first Dinobot in the series? I certainly hope so, cuz I’ve been waiting for some Grimlock! Me love Grimlock! Next we see Shia LeBouf and Tyrese Gibson looking imperiled, followed by a shot of what could be Meghan Fox’s replacement (ha-ha for her getting fired for talking shit on Michael Bay). Next shot is Optimus spinning in circles tearing apart Decepticon after Decepticon, like the badass that he is. Flash cut to title and it’s over.

All this, added to what we saw on the first trailer, leads me to understand that something happened on the moon involving our boys on the Apollo 11 and some dormant Transformers ship that looks A LOT like the G1 Decepticon ship “Nemesis” or even Galvatron’s ship from Transformers: The Animated Movie (Moreso the former than the latter though). The astronauts woke up something in the ship that looks like Unicron (though I doubt very much we’ll see him in this movie, or at least all of him) and now, 40 years later, we’re under a full-scale attack. I wouldn’t doubt that the Decepticons went back to Cybertron to revive the dormant inhabitants of the ship on Earth’s moon in order to raise an army to take over Earth. This looks like it’ll be huge compared to the previous films. No more of the stupid Primes crap. I want to see huge battles this time around. I’m sure Slick will give me some backlash about this, but I am looking forward to this more than any other movie this year.