If you have read my ongoing “Films That Can Be Salvaged” series, you’ll see me prescribe a number of cuts and edits that would escalate the entertainment potential of a film. Transformers (2007) was slated to be one of them.

But much to my shock and surprise, someone has already chopped up this film and streamlined it with amazing success. I was flipping channels when I caught it on MuchMusic (Canada’s MTV) this afternoon. I immediately noticed this film had been hacked to pieces in the first ten minutes I watched.

I started watching when the soldiers were getting attacked by Scorponok in the desert. This television cut omitted the entire scene with the phone operator (“Would you like our premium plus phone package?”), the scene of troops scrambling to their planes was deleted, the interior shot of the spy plane deleted, and they hurried the demise of Scorponok.

Then it jumped to the next scene where the hacker girl stole the memory card - she was suddenly at her friend’s house examining the data (no cab ride, no video game dancing). The cops arrive to arrest them both. Then we break to Sam on the phone with his friend, and then he was running out of the house on his bike. The scene literally transitioned with audio of Sam on the phone while the arrests took place.

It goes on and on like this. I thought it was a TBS-like censor cut to remove the swears and violence, but literally this a chop job to get the running time down substantially. And it worked, all the fat has been removed, the film moves at even more break-neck pace. I was quite impressed. Less human chatter, more robots.

I’m guessing the film’s original run time of 2 hours and 24 minutes is not TV friendly. According to MuchMusic’s TV listings the time slot for the film is 2 hours, meaning they chopped out something in the neighborhood of 40 - 60 minutes(!) to accommodate commercials. Even if it aired commercial-free, that’s 25 minutes they would have to excise, no easy feat.

So kudos to whoever chopped up the film for television. I’d love to get a cut of this.