Transformers NY

For two glorious years, Optimus Prime was America’s hero. He starred in Transformers, a thriftily animated series (cynics would call it a half-hour toy commercial) that pitted Prime and his army of Autobots against the vicious Megatron and his Decepticons. On the small screen, these robots in disguise were more than cartoons, they were towering titanium gods, massive in their machine carapaces: tractor trailers, cop cars, fighter jets.

In toy form, Transformers combined the tantalizing tactility of a Rubik’s Cube with the vroom-vroom automotive voyeurism of Hot Wheels. Add a touch of Cold War moral clarity and we were hooked. Boys ages 5 to 11 — and it was boys — faithfully tuned in week after week to watch the saga of these doughty bots, who struck out from their home planet, Cybertron, with vague and mixed motives — conquest, freedom, resources, defense — and brought their civil war to our planet. We welcomed them as liberators and adopted Prime as our mech-daddy. Some quite literally: In 2001, a 30-year-old National Guardsman from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, legally changed his name to Optimus Prime. “I really latched onto him when I was a kid,” Prime said to TV reporters before shipping out to the Middle East in 2003. “My dad passed away and I didn’t really have anybody around.”

Then in 1986, the original Prime did something that distinguished him from most other cartoon heroes. He died. He died for freedom, for righteousness, and for shelf space. In the toy biz, there’s no room for fatherly affection — only next year’s line. The Transformers: The Movie, released in August of that year, was Prime’s swan song. For nearly two decades, through various toy lines and dubious toon reboots (a gorilla named Optimus Primal? Please.), the sons of Prime waited for Papa Bot.

At last, in July 2004, it was decreed from the throne of Steven Spielberg: There would be a live-action remake of Transformers. (Wonder! Joy! Blogging!) A year later, another revelation: Michael Bay, best known for such Truffautian explorations of modern manhood as Armageddon and The Rock, would direct. (Rage! Spittle! Blogging!)

The Making of an Autobot

Bumblebee’s transformation from 1974 Chevrolet Camaro to towering Autobot was just one part of a 14-month-long f/x process that required more than 60,000 virtual parts and 34,000 texture maps. The project pushed Industrial Light & Magic’s 5,500 rendering processors and 280 terabytes of disk storage to max capacity. — Erik Malinowski

A prayer went up across the Internet: Please, God, don’t let Michael Bay screw this up. Debate rocked the virtual halls of nerd Thunderdome, aka Ain’t It Cool News, where Transformers (out July 4) racked up more traffic than any other upcoming film — no mean feat in the Spidey-infested, franchise-fueled summer of ’07. “It was as if you told them Michael Bay was directing Star Wars,” says Harry Knowles, editor of Ain’t It Cool News. “I don’t get it, because the things that Bay does best are make cars look cool, make things blow up. He’s the best exploder in the business.”

So why all the grief over a Bay-battered Transformers? It’s a toy. A cartoon. What’s next? Please don’t let Brett Ratner desecrate the Care Bears? And aren’t ass-kicking robots exactly what you’d expect from the high priest of high-octane puerility?

But among a certain sect of geekdom, there’s more at stake. Prime practically step-parented the latchkey kids of the mid-’80s. He was our Allfather at a time when flesh-and-blood role models were increasingly few and far between: Stallone had begun his long sag. Arnold was already more credible as machine than man. So when Prime declared, “One shall stand, one shall fall!” in that seismic, tear-down-this-wall timbre of his (or, more accurately, voice actor Peter Cullen), you believed him. Thus began the cyber-outsourcing of masculine heroism, a process that would eventually, inextricably, link Y chromosome to Xbox.

“I’ve heard so many people say, ‘Michael Bay, you’ve destroyed my childhood,’ ” says the man himself from the cathedra of his Santa Monica, California, editing bay. Appropriately, Bay is wearing a black Decepticons T-shirt. He’s aware of his image and, to some extent, relishes it. “I knew there were fans,” he sighs, shaking his shaggy blond power-mane. “I didn’t know there were people who’d hunt you down. I urge them to watch the 1986 animated movie, go watch the cartoon. You’ll want to shoot yourself.”

This article originated from http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-07/trans_movie.