Transformers

[Tarthalion]

Best movie of the year so far...as has been stated many times the graphics were absolutely mind boggling.

Other than KNOWING in the back of my mind that what I was watching was not real, I could never have been able to tell that just by looking for visual cues.

Oh...and I <3 Megan Fox...


That is all.

 

[F5]

I'm seriously hoping for a director's cut, hopefully with more Autobot characterization and action sequences put in.

Ditto that. A scene that I would like to see would involve one of the marines (probably the army Sergeant Lennox), and one of the Autobots (Ironhide, maybe?) commiserating soldier-to-soldier. It could have been a very short scene, but would have tied the two groups of characters together better at the end. Ideally, it could have been reminiscent of the ribbing the soldiers were giving each other in the helicopter in the opening scenes.

I'm not generally a Michael Bay fan, so I was really, pleasantly surprised. This was an awesome summer popcorn movie. I went in wanting to see giant robots fight each other in spectacularly destructive ways, and I was not disappointed. I did not expect any character behind the giant robots to come through at all, and it did.

I was really impressed with the amount of respect that Bay had for the nostalgia elements, while still updating the story to make it more relevant and modern. To those who say "Bumblebee is supposed to be a yellow VW bug!", he gave a nod in that direction in the car dealer's scene. Some throw-away lines about "more than meets the eye". Prime actually said "Autobots, roll out!" That was enough for me…"One shall stand, One shall fall" was just icing on the cake.

Did I mention the part about giant robots beating the tar out of each other? Because that was good, too.

The gamer geek in me has to analyze some of the plot-holes that bugged me at the end:
[SBLOCK]
I missed something with the whole "I'll sacrifice myself to destroy the all-spark" bit at then end. I was not the only one leaving the theatre wondering why, if you know that inserting the thing into a robot's chest is immediately fatal, that Prime wasn't suggesting that as a last resort, stick it into MEGATRON'S chest? If you've gotta sacrifice someone for the greater good, sacrifice the BAD GUY! Unless there's something we don't know about the after-effects of absorbing the all-spark, which we will find out about in the sequels…(ps, please make sequels!)

Also, why is it that all new transformers created by stray zaps from the all-spark were evil? I'm thinking the clue is how Prime said that their own race was savage and warlike in their own past, and had to overcome it…maybe he wasn't talking about their ancestors, but that they themselves started out savage and had to learn civilization? Maybe the Autobots are thousands of years old?
[/SBLOCK]

 

[Providence]

I can only suppose there's some half-baked "leave them wanting more" theory at work.

The Godzilla-like movie is being produced by the guys who do Lost . . . "leave them wanting more" is pretty much what they do. Personally, I like that sort of style, but I can understand people getting tired of it. I can barely read fantasy anymore because I would rather have my dentistry performed by a coked-up mandrill with a jigsaw than hear about another prophecied--"the one"--hero.

As far as the movie itself went, let me clarify first that I normally hate CGI. No matter how pretty it is, it always looks fake to me. Give me grade-A costuming and puppetry over CGI any day. Of course, with a live action Transformers CGI is pretty much your only option. I went in to the movie expecting to have to just shut the disappointing effects out of my mind, but they ended up completely blowing me away. The shakiness (which I do actually like) and the excellent camera angles made you really feel that there were giant robots towering above you and fighting around you.

The plot was simple, the dialogue was corny, and there were not many surprises, but it was still a great movie. The comedy was excellent and I like the way they stressed the alienness of the transformers.

Two big complaints:

[sblock]Jazz just kind of dies, which doesn't even get mentioned again until Ratchet and Ironhide bring his body to Optimus, who commemorates his close friend's death in barely more than a sentence and can only keep up a sad tone long enough to say, "Aw, Jazz." Jesus, it was like watching X3 all over again.[/sblock]
[sblock]What the hell happened to Barricade and Scorponok?[/sblock]

But one scene made up for all of that:
[sblock]"You have failed me yet again, Starscream."[/sblock]

 

[The Serge]

While I certainly wouldn't call this the "greatest movie ever," Transformers is certainly a fun action flick.

I liked the ample amount of internal humor, I liked the explanation for the manner in which the Autobots spoke with humans, I liked the fight scenes and the CGI. I thought the story was fine as well, something that can make or break an action flick... It was balanced well between the out-and-out action and the exposition.

That said, this film had a number of challenges. First, there were waaaaay too many secondary characters running around. We have the chick that discovers the message and then pulls in her cyber-geek friend, to the army guys, to the Sector 7 guys, to Sam and the chick, to the Autobots and Decepticons. Waaaay too many characters, most of whom weren't necessary. The portions I found most intriguing and worked the best were those interactions with Sam and his family/friends and the military discoveries (including most of the scenes with Voight's character). Virtually everything else could have been collapsed into one of those two areas in order to give more screen time to the Cybertonians themselves. Which leads to my second gripe.

While the Transformers were cool, we saw too little of them in action, particularly the Decepticons. Essentially, the Decepticons show up to get slaughtered and that's that. The only Decepticons we get a feel for are Frenzy and Megatron... Aside from the one comment Megatron makes to Starscream, we've no idea about their inter-relationships. Now, I'm not saying we needed a lot, but it wouldn't have taken much to give some of the Decepticons a little more oomph.

Now, Prime was cool. My major issue with him was how much difficulty he had taking on Megatron... That ticked me off. I've always preferred the approach being Optimus having greater natural fighting skill compared to Megatron having slightly greater fire-power and willingness to "cheat." In this, Megatron beats the hell out of Prime... Still, the voices were universally cool. Hugo Weaving sounded a great deal like Frank Welker (Megatron in the original cartoon) and Cullen was perfection.

Finally, the movie was too long. Like so many movies over the past decade, it was over two hours. Now, while this can work in the hands of an expert director dealing with a well-written script, most often the result is lulls in the narrative. We had a lot of that here. Sometimes, the humor was dragged on needlessly and sometimes the saccharine was a bit much (at least there's not really a kiss until the end). The film could have been trimmed by 15 to 30 minutes.

Despite these issues, I did enjoy this movie and will see it again this weekend. There were a lot of cute jokes for those who were fans of the toys, comics, or cartoon. From Bumblebee being discovered besides a Volkswagon bug to quite a few of Optimus Prime's statements ("One shall stand, one shall fall") to Megatron's disgust with Starscream ("Once again you fail me") there's quite a bit here for fanboys. Casual fans will love the action sequences and the humor.

B

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

The gamer geek in me has to analyze some of the plot-holes that bugged me at the end:

[SBLOCK]

I missed something with the whole "I'll sacrifice myself to destroy the all-spark" bit at then end. I was not the only one leaving the theatre wondering why, if you know that inserting the thing into a robot's chest is immediately fatal, that Prime wasn't suggesting that as a last resort, stick it into MEGATRON'S chest? If you've gotta sacrifice someone for the greater good, sacrifice the BAD GUY! Unless there's something we don't know about the after-effects of absorbing the all-spark, which we will find out about in the sequels…(ps, please make sequels!)

Quite possibly it just hadn't occurred to Prime to do that. Honestly, that's something I'd expect from a really creative player in Spike's position..."Hey, if Optimus has this spark thingy, shouldn't Megatron?"[/SBLOCK]

[SBLOCK]

Also, why is it that all new transformers created by stray zaps from the all-spark were evil? I'm thinking the clue is how Prime said that their own race was savage and warlike in their own past, and had to overcome it…maybe he wasn't talking about their ancestors, but that they themselves started out savage and had to learn civilization? Maybe the Autobots are thousands of years old?

That's what it probably is. They start out feral, and then at some point developed a veneer of civilization, which Megatron brought crashing down on them. Possibly if they had time, they could've educated and civilized the random transformers.

And they do mention that the Allspark crashed to earth about 10,000 BC. IIRC, they also mentioned that the Allspark left Cybertron when it was trashed, so the war's been going on since then (probably in fits and starts as Autobots and Decepticons find each other). So, yes, they're old.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Asmor]

Hugo Weaving sounded a great deal like Frank Welker (Megatron in the original cartoon)

Really? That's one of the things I didn't like about the movie, I thought Megatron's voice was pretty far off from the cartoon voice.

 

[Pyrex]

That was fun. And brought far more funny that I would have expected.

I do think they went a little overboard on the slapstick a couple times though (specifically, trashing the yard and "lubricating" the Sector 7 agent).

But I do have to agree with the post above: 2.5 hours of awesome.

 

[Seonaid]

The Serge sums it up quite nicely.

 

[Providence]

Latest I've been able to find out about the nameless movie from the previews is that it is currently going under the name of "Cloverfield" and it is supposed to be a giant monster (currently called "the parasite") plot told completely through home video.

 

[Mouseferatu]

While the Transformers were cool, we saw too little of them in action, particularly the Decepticons. Essentially, the Decepticons show up to get slaughtered and that's that. The only Decepticons we get a feel for are Frenzy and Megatron... Aside from the one comment Megatron makes to Starscream, we've no idea about their inter-relationships. Now, I'm not saying we needed a lot, but it wouldn't have taken much to give some of the Decepticons a little more oomph.

I can sort of understand why they'd focus on the humans for the first movie, when introducing the Transformers to Earth and the mythology to a (somewhat) new audience.

Now that it's done, though, I'd love to see them do movies 2 and 3 back to back, and more closely linked, much as the Pirates series did. This would allow them to develop more intricate stories, and to spend a lot more time on nonhuman character interaction.

I'd love to see movie two have Starscream in purported command of the Decepticons, but have a faction of the Decepticons actually working to restore Megatron. (And of course, have his "resurrection" occur at the end of the second movie, heralding the major challenge of movie three.) That would allow for a lot more characterization of the various Decepticons, I think, without requiring too much screen time taken from the Autobots, who also need some development.