Rushay Hays

It was a fun movie but it probably won’t be a considered a classic. The action, the comedy, the animation and acting were all great. The only issue is that this movie was designed to be a family-friendly kids movie, but the overall message of the movie revolved around understanding the the nuanced distinction between: “waging war out of necessity to protect people’s freedoms and secure a better future for them” vs “waging war as a reaction to finding out the government in charge is corrupt and committed massive human rights violations against you and everyone you care about”. Mind you Optimus and Megatron are both running around fighting a war and killing people, but because Megatron specifically wants to execute the guy who 1.committed treason against the entire world 2.Mutilated thousands of people at birth so that they could forced into hard labor. Megatron’s a bad guy?! Mind you Megatron is a bad guy, but the short run-time and family friendly nature of this movie means the movie couldn’t actually show him committing the kinds of war crimes the movie was trying to imply he would escalate to if given the chance. If you squint really hard you can see there were some heady themes about war, why it’s waged, leadership, and the changing of political regimes; but this brightly colored family friendly robot movie was not the best medium to try and discuss them. 4 out of 5 stars.