Diana and I watched Transformers today, and she loved it. I gotta tell you, I'm surprised at how much people love that movie. I think the reason is that you really care about the characters, including the robots. When Bumblebee gets captured by the humans, Diana was really upset by it. I think that really says a lot about the kind of heart and detail that went into the movie.
What I found most impressive is that they did all of the special features in HD. I don't have a lot of HD DVD's yet (this is only the third, not counting Planet Earth), but I've noticed looking at them that so many include the features as standard def, same stuff on the regular DVD's. That's kind of a bummer.
The biggest surprise in the making of docs (there are about two hours worth), is how much stuff was shot in-camera. Stuff I thought was CG was actually real. Maybe that's why it sold so well, actually.
Michael Bay seems like a real arrogant dick, but I suppose when you need to make a movie of that magnitude with a $140 million budget, you almost need someone like that to get it done on time and without going over. Really the success of the movie is something I think you have to credit the countless artists who brought the vision to the screen. They succeeded in not destroying a fond memory that, according to one of the features, 75% of all men ages 28-38 have (or something like that).
Great stuff though. This is probably the first action movie that has made it into my absolute favorites list.
Another cool HD-DVD I picked up was 300. I haven't seen a lot of the extra material but one of the ways you can view the movie is w/ the filming commentary on in which they have a PIP window that shows what the scene looked like when they filmed it (which is pretty cool seeing as the film was basically show on a green screen).