Michael Bay
Transformers

I remember that in 1984, for my name day, my parents gave me my first Transformers robot car. It was a sport model Datsun, I don't remember the exact name. That summer, my friends from that time—Manfredi, Nicola, Lorenzo, and Giacomo, if memory serves—were absolutely taken with the novelty of the time, transformable toys far more advanced than Legos and Playmobil, which were all the rage then—and especially amazed by the fact that a modest model could cost 18,000 lire.

I remember pestering my parents for months, expressly asking my father how much his salary was so that I could fund the much-desired purchase: my father told me not to worry, as his salary was exactly 18,000 lire, so somehow he would indulge me. I was too naive about the ways of the world to understand that, in 1984, no one could logically earn such a sum, with which, as the more mature Lorenzo told me, you couldn't even do grocery shopping on a Saturday, but anyway. In short, the toy was mine.

Also, in the summer of 1984, I moved house and city, lost my friends, and ended up in a condominium inhabited by elderly people without children, old people with children out of the house, spinsters, and middle-aged couples suffering various breakdowns (in 2000, I learned from the newspaper that one of them had jumped off a bridge, but anyway). There were no children on the street either, and added to this was the trauma of changing schools. In short, my transformer kept me much company. In the following two years, thanks to birthdays and Christmas celebrations, my transformer gained several siblings (the yellow Lamborghini, a Dinorobot, the legendary Convoy, and the giant robot made up of many small robots), so the ideal family grew. In the meantime, during the long autumns and winters spent in the sad condominium, I would watch on TV the exploits of Commander and Bumblebee, and, in short, I got by, while outside there was gloom and sometimes fog, much rain, and lots of boredom.

Then came MASK, but that is another story, hopefully, Spielberg and Michael Bay will make another film about it.

Last night the cinema was packed for the movie based on the Transformers games and cartoon: a great work, full of special effects and just shallow enough, perfect for a summer evening with company. I won’t tell you more, because, observing the audience in the theater, I didn't see too many under 20s, just people aged between 30 and 40, and there were many, all, in my opinion, searching for something they no longer have, and not just a robot car broken during the afternoons of the '80s.

Who knows what they were doing in the summer of 1984, and who knows what time they have sought, and maybe found, in watching the film.