Sneak peek: TRANSFORMERS
STARRING: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Jon Voight, Anthony Anderson
DIRECTOR: Michael Bay
RELEASE DATE: 28 JUN

Blast from the past gets a makeover

The story: The epic feud between giant shape-shifting alien robots, the peace-loving Autobots and power-hungry Decepticons, is brought to Earth.

In their efforts to help the humans, the Autobots meet up with an unsuspecting teen (Shia LaBeouf) who finds himself in the middle of an intergalactic war that leaves the future of mankind hanging in the balance.

The juice: Based on the '80s toy line and TV cartoon series, this live-action US$150million ($230m) blockbuster is directed by Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Island, Pearl Harbor) and executive produced by Steven Spielberg.

It has also been labelled by Empire magazine as this year's box-office dark horse.

There are about 20 mind-blowing set pieces done by visual effects studio Industrial Light and Magic, most featuring 9m-tall robots transforming at 130kmh.

Bay told MTV.com he favoured real stunts over CGI, adding: "There was one extremely dangerous stunt where we had to take a bus, jackknife it and split it with a guy driving. Then we add the robot coming through.

"A lot of people would just make a CG bus and crash it, (but) the audience can tell what's fake."

Transformers leaders Megatron and Optimus Prime were voiced by Frank Welker and Peter Cullen respectively in the original animated series.

For this film, Cullen reprises his role, but Welker was replaced by Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, V For Vendetta).

Megatron's classic alternate mode was a Walther P38, but the writers thought it was like "having Darth Vader transform into his own lightsaber and someone else swinging him around", so it was changed to a stealth bomber.

The character of Arcee was included in the script, but poor fan reaction caused her to be cut out and replaced with Ironhide (a GMC pickup truck), a cowboy-like character who is Optimus Prime's old friend.

Bumblebee, the 'little brother' in the Autobot family, makes an appearance as LaBeouf's car.

Its classic alternate mode was a Volkswagen Beetle, but was changed to a Chevy Camaro because Bay wanted to avoid comparisons with Herbie the Love Bug.

All the Transformers in the movie will be based on actual car models, making them walking, talking, brawling advertisements.

For instance, Autobot Jazz is a Pontiac Solstice while medic Autobot Ratchet is a Hummer H2.

However, as part of the promotional campaign for the film, the trailers show as little of the Transformers as possible.

A lot of the robots have been left hidden to arouse interest and will not be seen in their full glory until the film's release.