Billion-Dollar Sci-Fi Franchise Kickoff Hits Netflix, It Changed Movies Forever
As a film franchise, Transformers hasn’t exactly been more than meets the eye lately. The excellent Transformers One bombed at the box office and the live-action Rise of the Beasts was a middling mess that couldn’t achieve the critical or commercial glory of its earlier predecessors. It’s obvious that this franchise needs to (ahem) transform into something better, but until that happens, nostalgic fans will always have the hits from yesteryear. Case in point: you can now watch Transformers on Netflix, the initial Michael Bay masterpiece that took the world by storm.
Transformers fans have plenty of content to watch on Netflix right now, but there’s still something very special about this first live-action film. The movie tells the story of Spike Witwicky, a high school student whose first car turns out to be a transforming alien robot. Soon, the young man is caught in an ancient struggle between robotic rivals, and whether or not he can help the heroic Optimus Prime defeat the malevolent Megatron will ultimately determine the fate of the world.
While the real stars of Transformers are the titular robots, fans tuning into this movie on Netflix may be pleasantly surprised by how many big names are on deck to represent our human characters. Shia LaBeouf plays Spike, and his girlfriend-turned-partner-in-crime is played by Megan Fox. Josh Duhamel plays a heroic Army captain, John Turturro plays a weaselly government agent, and Jon Voight plays the Secretary of Defense.
Of course, longtime Transformers fans may be interested in what’s more than meets the eye…specifically, the voice actors behind this Netflix action classic. Original Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen returns for his character’s live-action debut, and he squares off against Megatron, the dastardly Decepticon voiced by Hugo Weaving. Fan-favorite traitorous trash-talker Starscream, meanwhile, is played by voice-acting legend Charles Adler.
While old-school Transformers fans were happy to see the return of Cullen as Prime, those watching this film on Netflix might have mixed feelings about the new designs of their favorite heroes and villains. Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of the decision to make all the bots look like robotic insects, and giving Optimus a mouth just feels downright wrong to this G1 fanboy. Some of the new transformations are great, though…I can’t deny that Bumblebee is much cooler as a Camaro than a Volkswagen, and Megatron is certainly more fearsome as a fighter jet than a pistol that someone else has to fire.
Transformers came out back in 2007, the same year that Netflix first began offering streaming services rather than just mailing out DVDs. At the time, the reception was mixed: on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a critical rating of 57 percent, with critics mostly praising the action and dissing the characters as unbelievable. However, it has an audience rating of 85 percent, indicating that this movie was a hit with both hardcore fans of the franchise as well as general audiences.
And that appeal transformed (so to speak) into major success at the box office. Against a budget of $145–200 million, the movie earned a whopping $709.7 million, kicking off a sprawling franchise filled with live-action sequels and prequels. That franchise goes off the rails almost right away (the first sequel, Revenge of the Fallen, might as well be a war crime), but this first film is worth revisiting because it provides a perfect combination of spectacle and sentimentality.
Will you find Transformers to be more than meets the eye when you stream it on Netflix, or will you decide Michael Bay’s film looks like something Ravage left in Soundwave’s litter box? You won’t know until you “roll out” and stream it for yourself. Just think of it a bit like The Matrix: as long as you can forget the awful films that came out later, you can enjoy this first entry as a nearly perfect sci-fi masterpiece.
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