Transformers

[satori01]

Too much humans, too little of the Transformers. The thing that bugs me about Bay is he could make a great movie if he cared too, but just takes the easy way out. He always casts for beauty, not for talent, always has plot holes in his movies, and always has the shaky camera work, and a point in a movie where you have endured so many explosions, and chases, that you do not really care anymore.

The aspect of Transformers I have always found fascinating is that you have two armed sides that have been battling each other for centuries, that have gone from large armed organized armies to a mere handfull of combatants on each side. The cartoon obviously had the luxury of more time to build up that antagonistic but intimate element of the relationship between Autobots & Decepticons.
Bay did next to nothing on that front, which is a shame. Look at something like Kill Bill, and Tarantino made it a point to bring out that intimate aspect, that sense of one character truly knowing another, with brand new source material. Bay could have used the cartoons as a guide.

The movie is called Transformers not Section 7 and the Sec Def. The camera work left me with a headache in the action sequences. I also had a headache from the Bourne Identity or Supremacy, the shaky camera work is a huge impediment to me, I can not follow the action, and have an adverse physical reaction.

While not common I also know I am not the only one that the camera work has that effect on.

 

[satori01]

Unlike, say, Batman Begins, which cuts insanely fast in many fights.

I never got a headache from Batman Begins, and I saw that in a theatre with less screen quality, ( Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, so still of good quality) than where I saw the Transformers. While the action can be fast sometimes, e,g, when Batman swoops down, the camera position itself is a stable point, and the essence of the scene is too show how fast and guerilla like Batman is. Same thing with Gladiator, it is not sped up camera work that gives me the headache, as Gladiator did not, but the stability of the camera itself.

Bay is trying to make you feel kinetically you are there in the midst of the chaos & confusion of the shin dig....for some it works...my wife likes those scenes...for others like myself it hurts. Even my wife agrees if Bay would consider the point of a scene and its impact on the created fabric of the world and universe, like say the action direction of the first Matrix, his movies could be great, not just popcorn fare.

 

[Banshee16]

Not to mention that while the the plot was setting up during the beginning of the film, they would cut to Qatar and Scorponok provided a great deal of action early on. Yes, there was a bit of a dry spot after, but by then the Autobots had all shown up and it was good times.

I can't believe people didn't like the 'hiding around the house' scene. Sure, nothing was blowing up, but it was fun.

The dialog around that scene was pretty good in spots.....sure, it was cheesy, but the lines about the rat infestation, and the embarrassment of Sam with his mother's suspicions about what he was actually doing there? I don't know about anyone else, but in the showing I was at, everyone in that room was laughing, because most of us can probably relate in one way or another

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

The trivia for the movie on IMDB.com said that the movie's makers had a deal with GM so that all the cars were GM models (one of a couple reasons why Bumblebee was the Camaro instead of the Bug and Jazz was a Pontiac instead of a Porsche; the other reason being VW and Porsche no longer wanted their cars assocated with 'war toys'.). I would be surprised if that was changed for the sequels.

Barricade was a Mustang, which is definitely not a GM But maybe he was the exception. The Hummer, SUV, Solstice, and Camaro were all GMs.

Banshee

 

[Evil Monkey]

Barricade was a Mustang, which is definitely not a GM But maybe he was the exception. The Hummer, SUV, Solstice, and Camaro were all GMs.

Banshee

You are correct (but I'm sure you already knew that ). I suppose I should have looked in multiple places before just going with imdb's trivia . Wikipedia has this to say about Barricade being a Mustang:

In the 2007 live-action movie, Barricade is a Decepticon, that transforms into a Saleen S281 Ford Mustang (modified to resemble a police car). Other than Megatron, Barricade is the only non-military Decepticon and the only non-GM car Transformer. It is said that Ford would not allow licensing for the Mustang, so the producers acquired rights to use the Saleen Mustang from Steve Saleen himself.

I'd like to know what kind of military-issue stereo Frenzy is, since this says Barricade is the only non-military Decepticon!

Edit To Add: And just to throw my .02 in, I too loved the old show and absolutely LOVED this movie. I wouldn't think twice about seeing it again in the theater.

 

[Halivar]

The cartoon obviously had the luxury of more time to build up that antagonistic but intimate element of the relationship between Autobots & Decepticons.

I don't think you and I watched the same cartoon growing up. The relationship between the Autobots and Decepticons is summarized neatly in the intro: "Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons." Nothing I saw in the cartoon added any extra dimension to that.

Bay did next to nothing on that front, which is a shame.

Optimus calls Megatron "brother" in a wistful tone at the end, which is more intimate than any words they ever exchanged in the cartoon.

I think your nostalgia has added depth and characterization to the cartoon characters that simply didn't exist in the cartoon as shown. I bought Season 1 and watched it a few months back, and I have to say that I was disappointed that it didn't really live up to my memories.

 

[Pants]

Except for the very first sequence.

The opening scene was cool as hell, too bad Blackout never did anything like that again in the rest of the movie. Really showed how powerful the transformers were, then Bay managed to pussify them over the rest of the movie. Too bad, that opening rocked.

I can't believe people didn't like the 'hiding around the house' scene. Sure, nothing was blowing up, but it was fun.

It went on a little too long, that's all I can say about it.

Hell, that's my main complaint with the entire movie, too long and too full of pointless characters and boring stuff. Otherwise, it was fairly good popcorn entertainment.

In the last whole segment, about the only cool thing was Starscream, because, he's like, the awesomest robot ever. Why wasn't there more Starscream?

More Starscream would've made the movie better. It is known.

It was entertaining, but if the people who'd made it had been less in love with all the awesome stuff you can do nowadays, it could've actually been good.

It's frakking Transformers. It's about frakking robots that change into frakking cars. I think there might be some universal law that prohibits it from being good. There's no way it'll be good (I'll agree with Crichton on that), but there are ways that it could've been more fun.

Unfortunately, Bay inhibits the possible fun at various portions of the movie. Is it fun? Yes. Could it have been more fun? Hell yes. Even though I went in to the movie knowing that Bay was at the helm does that somehow prevent me from complaining about the rampant Bay-isms? No, because Bay sucks, though somehow the movie managed to be fun despite him.

Yeah, the shakycam in Transformers seemed pretty mild, really. There were generally a few blows per cut, and zoom at least captured most of the characters. Unlike, say, Batman Begins, which cuts insanely fast in many fights.

Yeah, I didn't even notice the shaky-cam. It wasn't bad at all.

I'd like to know what kind of military-issue stereo Frenzy is, since this says Barricade is the only non-military Decepticon!

Frenzy is waaaaaay too lame and annoying to be worthy of a mention.

 

[Jubilee]

Can someone tell me what Starscream actually did during the movie to fail Megatron? I identified some other failures on the part of other Decepticons, but not that one..

/ali

 

[Grog]

I'll also mention that Starscream is certainly awesome but is dwarfed in all respects by the excellence of Optimus Prime. Starscream is an entertaining coward and traitor. He's no Prime.

You wouldn't know that from watching this movie. Now, the cartoon didn't exactly have loads of characterization for the Decepticons either, but this movie didn't have even that low level of characterization. Ditto for most of the Autobots. Sure, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime each won a fight with a Decepticon, but for the most part, the Autobots were only there to provide the Decepticons with things to shoot at until the humans came along and beat them.

And the directing was terrible. The Tourette's editing in the action scenes made it impossible to follow what was going on. I'm sure they spent a ton of money on special effects and CGI for this movie, but I couldn't be impressed by any of it because the camera wouldn't stay still long enough for me to see what was going on in any of the fight scenes.

This movie was a tremendous disappointment.

 

[Darth Shoju]

While the action can be fast sometimes, e,g, when Batman swoops down, the camera position itself is a stable point, and the essence of the scene is too show how fast and guerilla like Batman is.

Hmmm. That may have been what they were looking to achieve but all it did for me was make me pissed off that I couldn't see what was going on in any fight scene in the movie.

As far as Transformers is concerned, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was the best action movie that I have seen so far this summer (best overall movie of the summer is Knocked Up). I found the shaky-cam distracting at times but overall I found I was able to follow what was going on pretty well. When I first saw the character designs many months ago I wasn't impressed; like others I couldn't tell who was who or really what they looked like. However I found in the movie itself they were more distinct (possibly because it was on the big screen - it may not hold up as well on a tv). I also thought it was pretty funny in a lot of places and the crowd seemed to agree.

Still, while I did enjoy it I also found it didn't really trigger my nostalgia. After thinking about it I guess it is due to the focus of the movie on the human characters. While I found Spike was good, there were too many secondary characters cluttering things up (as someone else pointed out). The Transformers themselves felt pretty secondary and I never really got to identify with any of them; as weird as that sounds when speaking about giant robots, I think that is where the disconnect was for me. While I agree that the original series never really had strong characterization, it was still about the Transformers. I think this movie would have worked well if Spike had been kept as the main protagonist, the secondary cast thinned out a bit and more time been spent with the robots. If they had been given some more human-like facial features (like the original cartoon) it would have helped too.

But in the end it was still really enjoyable. I'd see it again without hesitation.