I felt sick opening the plastic wrapping of The Transformers: 25th Anniversary "Matrix of Leadership" Edition complete series set. A flood of memories from my childhood I must have repressed out of guilt overwhelmed me. I grew up watching the cartoons as a kid. Good God, the debt I plunged my parents in to for those toys. They're all still locked away in plastic sarcophagi inside a closet or storage unit somewhere in North Texas. The release of these box office-imploding first one and its sequel feel like those robot toys came to life and started taking over, spreading Reaganesque, over-simplified "us versus them" feelings back to thrilling life.
From what I've read since the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, that's something the critical community at large hasn't quite articulated, whether to avoid reader backlash or due to Bay-bashing distraction.
I must disclose here and now that my following observations are not any sort of critique of the movie. They couldn't be, since I have yet to see either live-action Transformers movie. I don't expect to correct that any time soon.
The reason the general public is telling critics to go stuff this or that by spending their dollars on the movie is more culturally embedded than our American need for explosions. From what I am told, the movie opens with Optimus Prime helping the US Army track down the evil Decepticons who've gone into hiding, "smoking them out," if you will. The War on Terror (aka War on Drugs 2) parallels have been far from hidden since the first installment. Now it's more apparent than ever that the American public is hopelessly applying Cold War and (God help us) WWII rhetoric to a very different threat. Reality isn't giving Iraq War supporters and apologists what they want, but reviving Reagan Era franchises sure as hell does. It doesn't matter that the symbolism doesn't line up one to the other. There's a stark division between the good guys and the bad, and that's all that matters.
"These evil, scary robo-bastards out there are bent on destroying our way of life and very existence. They want our Jesus and our hot women. They must be stopped at all costs, and damn it all, it's possible to get every last one!" That absolutism is what sells Fast Food America on it.
The real world is coated in different shades of grey, with no way to look at an insignia and definitively identify someone as "ok" or "dangerous."