On Tuesday Paramount released its biggest movie of the year, “Transformers,” on DVD in both a single and two-disc special edition set. Since the single disc doesn’t have much of anything in extras, we bought a two-disc edition and shoved into the old DVD player to see what’s there and if it’s worth spending any money on it.

The movie itself warrants shelling out $20 or $30 as it is, for lack of a better term, freaking awesome.

“Transformers” follows Sam Witwicky, played by Hollywood it-boy Shia LaBeouf as he discovers that his car is actually an advanced alien robot trying to recover the “All Spark,” an artifact that gives life to any electronic device its power is channeled into. He is joined by the smoking hot Mikaela Banes, played by Megan Fox, as both are thrust into the war between the noble Autobots and the evil Decepticons. Massively epic robot fighting ensues, hence freaking awesome.

First off, the video and sound on the movie is spectacular. This isn’t the HD DVD, but it was still very impressive even on my little 28 inch TV. Michael Bay movies are always shot with the intent to please visually, and every little amazing detail looks wonderful; the robots are shiny, the explosions are beautiful, and the set pieces are grand.

The sound is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, so, basically, if you have the system, it will not go to waste. All of the crashing, smashing, and blowing up will sound like it’s happening in your own little family room. There will also be a lot of sounds coming from odd angles in the room like explosions and clinking and machine gun fire which all really help to immerse you as you sit there in your little family room.

The extras on the disc are nice – better than some DVDs out there. But this set is no “Lord of the Rings” special extended edition. It’s basically above average.

The DVD features a commentary track, which is great, but Michael Bay is the only speaker. There’s no Shia LaBeouf, no Megan Fox, no Jon Voight, no screenwriters, so basically there’s only one perspective in the commentary. But the track is very insightful, since it is the director talking about his movie and Bay is a very hands-on director. You will hear about casting, stunts, special effects and most everything else that went on during the making of the movie.

The best part of Bay’s commentary is definitely hearing about the little stories about things that happened during the shoot. One particular story involves Shia LaBeouf’s first night shooting where he was almost mauled by vicious police dogs that got away from the trainers.

Disc two has most of the special features on it. First off is “Our World,” which details the genesis of the story and then works into talking about the cast, training for stunts, and then the sets. All four are separated into little chapters, which can be watched individually or all at once. The “Our World” extra explores the real world parts of the film. It is an interesting featurette, but it’s nothing ground breaking; we’ve seen this before in a lot of other DVD releases. Everyone knows that Shia is funny and Megan Fox is hot, we don’t need the casting director to tell us that.

The next four-part extra is entitled “Their War.” This extra is far cooler because it talks about the Transformers themselves. They go into the development of the robots and how they chose which ones from the 80s TV show would make it into the movie. Most of that is explained by the writers, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci. They talk about why each robot got to be which vehicle and how they chose what they would be. This featurette is a lot more interesting than the first one; at least for the nerd because it really gets into the decision making process the filmmakers went through to select characters and choose which story elements they thought would work and are cool at the same time.

The rest of “Their War” details the exhausting process of creating the robots on computers and adding them into the movie. This was probably the coolest part of any of the extras because they tell you how they had to invent new techniques for animating the robots to make sure all the shiny surfaces reflected the right amount of light so they never look unreal. They also offer up interesting facts like Optimus Prime’s transformation involves 10,108 individual parts. Those kinds of things are what make this featurette the best one in the set.

The last major extra is entitled “From Script to Sand: The Scorponock Attack.” This is basically an eight minute featurette detailing the making of the scene in the desert where the marines are attacked by the scorpion-based Decepticon. This is a cool little extra that goes into the explosives used during the shoot and the challenges of anticipating a robot being put in later in the shot. It is a solid scene deconstruction but it would have been better to see a deconstruction of a bigger scene like a segment of the end battle sequence where much more is going on and cooler robots are involved.

Besides that there are trailers, concept art and several Easter eggs which weren’t hard to find.

The concept art extra is a little disappointing because it runs for two minutes and there’s no way that everything they made for the film is in that little slideshow. The Easter eggs are fun, but forgettable, in which a few are deleted scenes while one is a faux commercial for a Michael Bay transformer toy.

This two-disc set is worth buying, it might be about $5 or $10 more than the single disc option, but the extras that are here (namely Bay’s commentary and the “Their War” featurette) are cool enough to warrant splurging just a little. The only thing to say against buying it is some of the extras are lacking and there will probably be another bigger release with more extras someday. That will most likely come prior to the inevitable “Transformers 2” theatrical release. If you enjoy a great sci-fi action adventure with epic robot fighting you will have to buy this movie and the two-disc set is the way to go.

Luke Soin can be reached at [email protected]