Transformers

[Asmor]

Another long time TF fan here, and I think I've stated my opinion enough in here

 

[John Crichton]

Matt, sure there was some robots punching other robots, but no actual scenes of it. Rather than showing a fight with individual characters -- who you could tell apart, instead of being a blur of robotics -- doing actual cool things, they just presented a general sense of 'stuff going on.'

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?

But c'mon, you really don't think the scenes would've been more interesting if they'd actually let you see a given character for more than 5 seconds, do you? (Oh wait, they did, but it was always in Michael-Bay-motion, where sun beams down from above, everything slows down, a character looks really bad-ass, and a choir sings with amazingly dramatic music, before cutting back to the same tripe as before.)

Bumblebee vs. the evil copcar bot? Yeah, we see about 5 seconds, and then we go to the kids running away and dealing with the Salacious Crumb wannabe.

Optimus vs. Megatron? Badly framed shots with too much panning to get a sense of how the characters are moving.

Really, I want to rewatch the old cartoon movie. I think, even without nostalgia making me love it, at least I could tell who the characters are, and what they're doing.



Oh, and my personal least favorite moment in the movie: when Optimus is telling the other Autobots about where the cube is, and they're just chilling some place in the middle of the day, talking to each other. And what does the cameraman decide to do? Zoom and pan. Pan and zoom, and have a wide tracking shot. Holy bleeping bleep. Do people just not sit cameras down and record characters doing stuff anymore?

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.

Ryan, I will respectfully agree to disagree with you on the quality of the movie and its cinematography. Where you see problems I see an entertaining movie. While it was far from being celluloid perfected it was a damn good time.

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.

I simply can't have an intelligent discourse on this film. It's a popcorn movie through to its core and there for fun. It's not intelligent. It's like trying to discuss the politics and social commentary of ID4.

I was like 7 when I fell in love with the Transformers. The movie entertained both the 7 year old in me and the 30 year old who just wanted to hear a few classic lines and see big fights and explosions. It was a spectacle that begs to be experienced much like Jurassic Park (with all its flaws) 14 years ago.

 

[Asmor]

I simply can't have an intelligent discourse on this film. It's a popcorn movie through to its core and there for fun. It's not intelligent. It's like trying to discuss the politics and social commentary of ID4.

Hey, let's write a computer virus on our circa 1996 computer which can infect and take down an entire alient invasion fleet infinitely more advanced than ourselves!

Still a great movie.

 

[John Crichton]

Hey, let's write a computer virus on our circa 1996 computer which can infect and take down an entire alient invasion fleet infinitely more advanced than ourselves!

Still a great movie.

Uh oh, I may have mistakenly cast ID4 in a positive light.

Oops.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hey, I loved Independence Day! And honestly, Transformers felt like it was trying to rip off Independence Day.

I won't deny that Transformers was fun. I just always feel sad when a movie is 'fun despite being flawed' when with a little work it could have been 'flawless and awesome to all 11s'.

 

[John Crichton]

Hey, I loved Independence Day! And honestly, Transformers felt like it was trying to rip off Independence Day.

And there it goes. ID4 rips off and sensationalizes War of the Worlds based off the summer blockbuster formula started by Star Wars which was influenced by serials and Kurosawa flicks ... it goes on and on.

As a writer, you know damn well there are no new stories to tell, just new ways to tell them.

I won't deny that Transformers was fun. I just always feel sad when a movie is 'fun despite being flawed' when with a little work it could have been 'flawless and awesome to all 11s'.

When dealing with material such as 80's toy lines and Michael Bay I only expect so much. He did justice to robots in disguise, a preposterous premise to start with. And looked good doing it. You had fun with the film? Then mission accomplished. They weren't trying to recreate Shakespeare.

 

[RangerWickett]

They weren't trying to recreate Shakespeare.

Optimus: (holds up severed robotic head)
Alas poor Bonecrusher! I knew him, o Bumblebee: a fellow
of infinite bones, of most excellent crushing: he hath
borne me on his mechanical scoop-thingy a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my transformation it is! my energon blade stabs at
it. Here hung those asses that I have kicked I know
not how oft. Where be your grappling hook now? your
roller-blades? your lasers? your flashes of bonecrushing,
that were wont to set the table on a roar?

 

[Victim]

I'm another that loves Transformers and loved the movie.

The movie pays a LOT of homage to the old stuff, and even keeps a lot of the charm/cheesiness that was always there. In fact, a lot of the reasons I see people not liking the movie are things that were always in the show to one degree or another.

Shakycam isn't one, of course, but I didn't have a problem identifying things through it. Obviously there are others that didn't, either, so its not a universal thing that shakycam causes problems for people.

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.

What made some stuff difficult to follow was that the robots didn't look so different in transformed mode. The distinctiveness of the external paint jobs was lost in robot mode since lots of the pieces were from the largely undifferentiated interior.

 

[John Crichton]

Optimus: (holds up severed robotic head)
Alas poor Bonecrusher! I knew him, o Bumblebee: a fellow
of infinite bones, of most excellent crushing: he hath
borne me on his mechanical scoop-thingy a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my transformation it is! my energon blade stabs at
it. Here hung those asses that I have kicked I know
not how oft. Where be your grappling hook now? your
roller-blades? your lasers? your flashes of bonecrushing,
that were wont to set the table on a roar?

If that was from memory, I'm impressed.

Otherwise ... not so much.

 

[Shayuri]

LOL!

Thank you, Ranger Wicket, for making us laugh at love.

Again.