Michael Bay: Today is "Day One" For Transformers 3

[Stark]

A further point about Blackout's gun - we have no idea that it was his gun that sent the tank's flying, he could've just as easily tossed them, and his destroying the C-17s isn't exactly surprising - they're probably all filled with jet fuel. There's no reason to believe it's significantly more powerful than Megatron's arm cannon.

I remember way, way back before the movie came out, I thought it looked like he was just kicking the tanks in the trailer. Is the blue effect just the jamming/EW business?

[Vympel]

Are you a liar, or what? You already quoted me saying Megatron could just fly away if fractricide was an issue. Are you claiming I never said that? Think carefully.

Just because you move on to say "Megatron could fly away" doesn't mean you didn't clearly and unambiguously express incredulity about the point.

What I'm actually doing is 'thinking'. I know you like to uncritically accept things as 'awesome', but when we're talkiig about how TF guns are poop much of the time (or TF are especially vulnerable to xyz weapon or whatever) Blackout's terrible performance is relevant given his earlier amazing power. Would it make me fatter if I pointed out that shivving someone with a buzzsaw when grappling with your preciuos leader isn't without risk either? What's he doing to do, carefully cut Prime to death slowly? I guess Megs would have knocked him down or off-balance so he could get taken down... but that would be being a nerd, right? lol

You think it's just as hard to shoot someone in the middle of a fistfight with a friendly as it is to just stab / swipe them?

I remember way, way back before the movie came out, I thought it looked like he was just kicking the tanks in the trailer. Is the blue effect just the jamming/EW business?

It's used for a shcokwave he fires off around himself and for one of his guns, IIRC. He also has a machine gun he uses in Qatar, I just remembered.

[Oskuro]

Ok, let me contribute Blackout's observed weaponry:

1) Arm mounted minigun: He fires it shortly after transforming, taking out several soldiers and turning a few vehicles into swiss cheese. The minigun is visible when he reaches down for the SOCCENT computer core.

2) Arm mounted tail rotor: Wich he somehow decides will tactically benefit him by slashing cars. Oh well.

3) Chest mounted cannon: He pulls it out to shoot Epps, but doesn't use it, it could be argued that it is the origin of the blue shockwave of doom, but in every other instance he is seen firing the wave from his arms.

4) Arm mounted plasma wave of doom: A blue bolt that upon hitting the ground becomes a massive shockwave, that is, unless he fires it within city limits, where the shockwave can barely scratch a car.
Although it is not explicitly shown, the wave is implied to have the kinetik effect that pushed the tanks, mainly because of the explosive nature of the wave, and how several tanks were being blown away with similar force and direction, instead of just one he kicked.

As for utilities, he has a jamming device, and wireless communication (used when Frenzy and Starscream call them all out). Sadly, flares can blind him, so much for advanced vision systems.

[Vympel]

2) Arm mounted tail rotor: Wich he somehow decides will tactically benefit him by slashing cars. Oh well.

I always wondered what the hell he was doing there too. Then I got the Blu-Ray and noted that he was trying to kill Sam who was running past at the time, but missed.

Sadly, flares can blind him, so much for advanced vision systems.

When does that happen? Epps shoots a grenade at him in Qatar, that's all I remember.

[Anguirus]

[You seriously don't appreciate that sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils? Yeah, when it was a few hundred guys on an airliner or possibly a few thousand more casualties if it hit something, the airliner was SOL.

DUDE. What the fuck is wrong with your brain? You bring up the complete non sequitur of 9/11, I argue why it doesn't apply at all, and then you start acting like I'm so morally deficient that I wouldn't have ordered those planes shot down? Stop being dumb.

Unless you're having them lob around neutron bombs, exactly how do you propose to do that? What you've talked about is them running into an Armor ambush and exposing themselves to air power and paying the consequences. If you magic that away, really we're talking tac nukes and large naval guns, and you're already whining about one of and in some ways the most powerful naval gun ever mounted on a ship. Lobbing nukes at each other from miles away does not a worthwhile movie make.

Holy shit dude, why don't you understand that I'm not having an argument about the power of US weaponry (actual and theoretical)? This is a fucking Transformers movie. All I'm asking is that the concept of combined arms not be portrayed in a film as a uniquely American concept.

First of all, they didn't run into an ambush at all. They ran into tanks that drove up in plain sight. Stop arguing about details of a battle in a movie you haven't fucking seen.

Second, they spend a fair amount of time in both movies establishing what a badass Starscream is in the air. Why the fuck doesn't he do something about the B-1? Or the tanks? Dunno, he just disappears from the battle for twenty minutes and there's no actual reason for it.

They also spend the whole first portion of the movie establishing that Soundwave hears all communication everywhere. So why doesn't he send his protoforms to smash the carrier group (again, THIS HAPPENED EARLIER IN THE FILM) instead of lining them up in the fucking desert?

Except if they're uber-shit why do they need Macguffin #2 aka the Fallen? Unlike #1 the MacGuffin is such a big deal it's even advertised in the title. Your logic fails.

Why the fuck are you having this argument? You haven't seen the movie and you don't know shit about it. THE FALLEN IS NOT THE MACGUFFIN, HE IS THE PRIMARY VILLAIN.

Compared to normal action/sci-fi movie, that's still better. *snip irrelevant shit*

It would clearly take major surgery to keep you on topic.

To sum up, RotF takes enormous liberties with reality in order to be less entertaining. Most films do this in order to be more entertaining.

Except you've not established such a narrative, and what you seem to want would imply tac nukes being thrown around like they were grenades. Not the stuff of good narrative.

Why is it my job to establish the narrative for you, you twit? I realize that you can't be bothered to see the movie you are arguing about but you should have at least noticed the ad campaign that was literally all about how the bad robots were taking over the world. They don't need the Solar Harvester in order to WIN, because in the story they already have. The Fallen isn't destroying the world out of some sort of hurry, he's doing it for 1) spite and 2) to get energon.

At least if they'd had some line about "wow, those robots are a lot lamer than we thought" it could be argued that the utter failure of the 'cons to be a credible threat was some kind of story element. But no, they are built up as a threat and suddenly they are getting massacred by stock footage. SO COMPELLING.

You really overestimate what he was doing. If it was what you want to imply the squad never would have gotten away.

He lets the squad get away and sends Scorponok to trail them. You idiot.

He deliberately deploys a weapon at them, changes his mind, and turns away to unleash his mini-robot.

When did his weapon fail to go through a car?

Mission City. He transforms in front of Sam and fires two blue things. One of them misses, and the other one is blocked completely when Ironhide holds up a car. I guess it's tougher to blast through a car than a 100 foot plane.

]So by your own description in flat terrain, with the 3rd Army & rebuilt Air Force base from #1 and in the Mediterranean CVBG having moved at least within 200NM of the pyramids you want them to be wiping the floor with it thus rendering th MacGuffin they're rushing to activate and spent the entire movie going after, redundant? And that sets up a strong narrative? You seem to be the one proposing magic teleport, with the 'Cons getting in position. If it was USMC tanks, they could have gotten the size group you seem to be talking about there in short order even if 3rd Army didn't send theirs by rail.

I'm not proposing a magic teleport, I'm proposing FLIGHT. We also see the Decepticons destructively deploy protoforms from space. We also see Starscream, but he disappears from the battle for no reason. We see Megatron get blasted by the tanks, and then fly AWAY from them, but not fly back in order to try to destroy them.

Heck, they're Decepticons. Wouldn't it have been cool if one of the tanks turned into a robot and slagged the rest? (Or hell, if the 'cons had managed to shoot make and destroy ONE of the tanks? Oh wait, they are stock footage and therefore invincible.)

So yeah, you're trying to defend a shitty sequence in a movie you've never seen because you're just glad that Michael Bay masturbates to US munitions as much as you do. Meanwhile, I'm stuck liking giant robots and being treated to an elaborate battle sequence about how much they suck. Cause hey, having the know-how and power generation to travel FTL doesn't amount to any edge in terms of firepower.

I think you're classing me as part of a category of people that exist more in your mind than in reality.

He is in fact only arguing with figments of his own imagination.

[Vympel]

Orci and Kurtzman are confirmed not to be returning for TF3. Ehren Kruger is writing it - apparently him and Michael Bay were responsible for The Twins and the joke about Devastator's balls, so if you absolutely despised that, expect more of the same. Me personally it didn't bother that much, and Orci and Kurtzman's plots (Nu-Trek) aren't made of gold. So we'll see. Most threequels suck though.

[tim31]

*shock* are you saying the third TMNT film wasn't high calibre stuff??

I don't care if it sucks. I still went and saw Tokyo Drift and I knew that was going to be bad. But I enjoyed it anyway and didn't walk out.

[Vympel]

*shock* are you saying the third TMNT film wasn't high calibre stuff??

I don't care if it sucks. I still went and saw Tokyo Drift and I knew that was going to be bad. But I enjoyed it anyway and didn't walk out.

Yeah, neither do I. I don't give a shit how bad the movie is, if it's got robot action I'll watch it.

[Kane Starkiller]

But it should be interesting action. In the first film, one memorable scene was Starscream blowing those F-22s out of the sky because it was cool looking and it actually portrayed Decepticons as being real threat to US military denying them air superiority.
Having Megatron run after Sam (and not being able to catch up with him WTF???) only to be stopped by a few machine guns mounted on Abrams was "action" but I wouldn't exactly call that impressive.
Maybe in the third film there will be a scene with all the Autobots being transported by a C-17 only to have Starscream come in and blow them all out of the sky. Yeah that would be pretty cool.

[Bounty]

Orci and Kurtzman's plots aren't made of gold

Orci and Kurtzman didn't write TF2. They banged together a draft on the night before the WGA strike was set to start so Bay could start pre-production pending an actual script. When the strike ended, Bay had "worked on" the "script" and they just tried to salvage what was salvageable as filming was already starting.

Orci: It was insane. We literally started breaking stories two weeks before the strike. In two weeks, we generated an outline. It was pens down the minute the strike hit. We didn't deal with Michael at all during the strike.

Kurtzman: They prepped the movie off of the outline.

Orci: Yeah, but we had to come up with set pieces and sort of the basic thrusts of the movie and Michael prepped a lot of it. And the second the strike ended, it was like two months — I'm not exaggerating — two months between starting to write and day one of direction. So it was a crazy, crazy race to get it done.

[Vympel]

But it should be interesting action. In the first film, one memorable scene was Starscream blowing those F-22s out of the sky because it was cool looking and it actually portrayed Decepticons as being real threat to US military denying them air superiority.
Having Megatron run after Sam (and not being able to catch up with him WTF???) only to be stopped by a few machine guns mounted on Abrams was "action" but I wouldn't exactly call that impressive.
Maybe in the third film there will be a scene with all the Autobots being transported by a C-17 only to have Starscream come in and blow them all out of the sky. Yeah that would be pretty cool.

Really though, I've only seen the movie once but I think the degree of vulnerability the Decepticons had - and the focus on the military in general- is being vastly overstated:-

* First, the only Decepticon we saw die to any vehicle was IIRC one of the nameless cloned protoforms - and this was hardly one of the bigger Decepticons. Probably smaller than Barricade from TF1 or Sideways from the start.
* Second, Megatron was driven back by tank / IFV fire, not machine gun fire. Given The Fallen soon thereafter wiped out the entire force (including the USAF F-22s), I don't see how this is a big deal. Perhaps he saw what was coming? Also he wasn't significantly damaged by this at all.
* Yes, a B1 JDAM'd the entire area. However, IIRC I didn't see any Decepticons explicitly blown up from this.

I mean jeez, all the interesting action is in the robot fights. Bumblebee tears off Rampage's arms and then rips Ravage's head off. Jetfire cuts Mixmaster in two and the half of him still working gets stomped on. Scorponok gets crushed by Jetfire. Optimus takes Starscream's arm off, blows half of Megatron's head off, and then rips The Fallen's face off. Seriously, I don't get the focus on the "firing into the desert" that results in not much of consequence until the big airstrike in which we see not much anyway.

That's a fuckload of stuff happening, and that's just part of the (IMO a bit drawn out) climax. I don't really wonder "where was Starscream while so and so was happening" because like in a lot of other sci-fi movies (RotJ being a prime example) I assume shit is happening off screen. It's not like we saw very much of Ratchet, Ironhide, Sideswipe or Jolt in the final battle (we did see one or two of the Arcees getting killed, I forget) so I assume they were battling off screen.

After I get the bluray I'll have a better recollection of what happened, but it's not like there was a dearth of shit getting fucked up.

Orci and Kurtzman didn't write TF2. They banged together a draft on the night before the WGA strike was set to start so Bay could start pre-production pending an actual script. When the strike ended, Bay had "worked on" the "script" and they just tried to salvage what was salvageable as filming was already starting.

Two months hardly seems like an insufficient amount of time, but then I don't know shit about scripts. I don't know, with just one writer the plot may be less jumpy and have so many silly errors, like all the retarded geography.

[Zac Naloen]

Two months hardly seems like an insufficient amount of time, but then I don't know shit about scripts. I don't know, with just one writer the plot may be less jumpy and have so many silly errors, like all the retarded geography.

I'm fairly certain most movie scripts take about a year to write once they've been through the proper proofing and drafting procedures. Two Months explains why the film is so disjointed and full of so much ill-thought out plotting.

[Anguirus]

Really though, I've only seen the movie once but I think the degree of vulnerability the Decepticons had - and the focus on the military in general- is being vastly overstated:-

* First, the only Decepticon we saw die to any vehicle was IIRC one of the nameless cloned protoforms - and this was hardly one of the bigger Decepticons. Probably smaller than Barricade from TF1 or Sideways from the start.
* Second, Megatron was driven back by tank / IFV fire, not machine gun fire. Given The Fallen soon thereafter wiped out the entire force (including the USAF F-22s), I don't see how this is a big deal. Perhaps he saw what was coming? Also he wasn't significantly damaged by this at all.
* Yes, a B1 JDAM'd the entire area. However, IIRC I didn't see any Decepticons explicitly blown up from this.

Well, you did leave off Devastator from your Death List, but 1) he might not be dead and 2) I'll give them that that was pretty cool. I just would have liked to see him tear up shit that wasn't a pyramid.

Also, all of the 'cons disappear after the JDAM. It's unclear (like most things in the movie) but the TFWiki lists them all as casualties.

As far as Megatron getting messed up by tank fire, sure he didn't drop dead, but if he'd cut a hard right once he was flying and dropped another couple of big blasts on the area he would have won the movie (killing Sam and desecrating OP's corpse). It was tolerable that Mega-Optimus managed to beat up him and his master at the end, but that scene when the 'cons are supposed to be doing well was distinctly jarring to me considering what a badass Megatron is in, well, every other combat scene of the franchise.

Also as far as focus on the military, they may not have explicitly killed many 'cons in the desert but the Autobots sure didn't rack up any. Sideswipe, Ironhide, and Ratchet have all been established as pretty big badasses but they just stand around and shoot in this scene. Arcee almost does something and then dies. Tanks may have killed one 'con, but I didn't see 'cons kill any tanks.

[Oskuro]

Sadly, flares can blind him, so much for advanced vision systems.

When does that happen? Epps shoots a grenade at him in Qatar, that's all I remember.

It actually is a bit confusing, I'm not sure if it is a flare, or the flash from the grenade, or what, but when Epps runs from under Blackout, we see his POV, and hear the energy weapon charging up, then something flashes half blinding him, and he suddenly decides to deploy Scorponok instead of blasting the tanks the soldiers where hiding under.

To be honest, I liked the first Transformers movie a lot, but it has many inconsistencies and plot holes.

[Simon_Jester]

Sorry I forgot it was 'awesome' to have a guy with magical spacebombs and ... no other weapons. More poorly armed than a Humvee?

He's probably got plenty of guns. The fact remains you don't try and shoot someone who's grappling with your leader at the time.

...Well, unless you're Starscream.

[Kane Starkiller]

I always thought that was supposed to be a joke. Blackout scans Epps' camera and then forms his own camera on his chest and takes pictures of Epps as he is running away.

[Simon_Jester]

It seems more likely to me that Blackout (no idea who that was until this discussion) had a mission to attend to and decided it was more important than trashing the sole survivors of the military base.

[Anguirus]

He actually does an extremely good job on that base. Remember, Lennox's team are the ONLY survivors. And he has Scorponok tailing them.

[Simon_Jester]

As I said. "Kill all survivors" is not his primary mission, even though he's good at it; but at some point the time it would take to chase down a single group of survivors (which this Scorponok is presumably quite capable of handling itself) is outweighed by the need to get on with the real mission.

[FOG3]

[You seriously don't appreciate that sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils? Yeah, when it was a few hundred guys on an airliner or possibly a few thousand more casualties if it hit something, the airliner was SOL.

DUDE. What the fuck is wrong with your brain? You bring up the complete non sequitur of 9/11, I argue why it doesn't apply at all, and then you start acting like I'm so morally deficient that I wouldn't have ordered those planes shot down? Stop being dumb.

Excuse me? I brought up airline hijackings, and only tangently emphasized the 9/11 hijackers weren't exactly well armed to make the point hostage situations do not lead to a military response. Your answer was that we cleared airliners to be shot down on 9/11 [because of simple math with civilian casualties], on a scenario where civies were taken hostage and there was no such math morals in play.

Which means your above comment apply more to you then me. Getting nailed by your own words, is bad. Effectively bitching yourself out and throwing all kind of accusations, I never even touched, is priceless.

Holy shit dude, why don't you understand that I'm not having an argument about the power of US weaponry (actual and theoretical)? This is a fucking Transformers movie. All I'm asking is that the concept of combined arms not be portrayed in a film as a uniquely American concept.

And as posts after this have revealed in reality you're raising this ruckus about 1 redshirt midget <2 ton 'Con getting nailed by a tank, and having a dramatic pity party about how utterly castrated they were, because they weren't omniscient, permanently having the initiative, and oh able to do orbital strikes whenever. Uh-huh, fanboy.

Except you've not established such a narrative, and what you seem to want would imply tac nukes being thrown around like they were grenades. Not the stuff of good narrative.

Why is it my job to establish the narrative for you, you twit? I realize that you can't be bothered to see the movie you are arguing about but you should have at least noticed the ad campaign that was literally all about how the bad robots were taking over the world. They don't need the Solar Harvester in order to WIN, because in the story they already have.

On other debates on here we demand members are able to give a decent summary, and we are allowed to critique based on summary. Why do you rate special treatment fanboy?

Yes, I missed it in theaters, but the DVD doesn't come out to 20 OCT 09, ergo several weeks in the future. So exactly where in your deluded mind did you think I'm supposed to be seeing the movie that I'm so lazy not to, fanboy? Honestly, for someone throwing around insults about intelligence you only make them towards yourself.

The bottomline is you have yet to make a point that holds up for why this is such a big issue with the story, that doesn't devolve to a tantrum about what you wanted to happen. A tantrum it has been revealed in based around only verifiably losing one measly mini 'Con to a direct hit from a 120mm cannon.

In response we have you guys flailing around and acting like someone drove by in a Hummer and killed Megs. Pretending and groveling in your own crap about how a 30x mass difference is even vaguely 1 to 1 is just pathetic.

You really overestimate what he was doing. If it was what you want to imply the squad never would have gotten away.

He lets the squad get away and sends Scorponok to trail them. You idiot.

Give one logical reason for that, given what you're arguing is the blast wave is so intense its vaping things. Go ahead and give the children's "I meant to do that" excuse and try to act smart. It's not like it holds up to any level of real scrutiny.

When did his weapon fail to go through a car?

Mission City. He transforms in front of Sam and fires two blue things. One of them misses, and the other one is blocked completely when Ironhide holds up a car. I guess it's tougher to blast through a car than a 100 foot plane.

You remember how people lambasted Trekkies for not getting the difference, between destroying things by secondary explosion and directly? Why is that a problem for you to the point you refuse to even acknowledge it?

[Anguirus]

Excuse me? I brought up airline hijackings, and only tangently emphasized the 9/11 hijackers weren't exactly well armed to make the point hostage situations do not lead to a military response.

Ok...

Your answer was that we cleared airliners to be shot down on 9/11 [because of simple math with civilian casualties], on a scenario where civies were taken hostage and there was no such math morals in play.

So, in other words, the 9/11 hijackers provoked an immediate military response.

So I still can't quite figure out how your brain is working, and what about plane hijackers (9/11 or otherwise) threatening a few dozen people and alien robots marching up the street in broad daylight, climbing buildings, and generally declaring themselves in charge makes them somehow comparable.

Which means your above comment apply more to you then me. Getting nailed by your own words, is bad. Effectively bitching yourself out and throwing all kind of accusations, I never even touched, is priceless.

And now I'm back to wondering what self-delusion you are arguing with. You're either really inarticulate or just plain off your rocker. Plus, you somehow managed to overlook your 180 degree self-contradiction above so, good job.

And as posts after this have revealed in reality you're raising this ruckus about 1 redshirt midget <2 ton 'Con getting nailed by a tank, and having a dramatic pity party about how utterly castrated they were, because they weren't omniscient, permanently having the initiative, and oh able to do orbital strikes whenever. Uh-huh, fanboy.

They do an orbital strike in the middle of the movie (you idiot) and another one towards the end (you idiot). They just decide to hit nothing with the second one (those idiots).

Also, I have no problems whatsoever with one 'con getting killed by a tank. Hell, I loved the first movie and three 'cons were highly messed up my enemy fire at the end, not even counting Scorponok.

What I am objecting to, if you'd bothered to pay any attention to the substance of my posts (which you should since you are relying on them for specific information about the movie), is that the tanks take no hits themselves and use no discernable tactics ("armored ambush" lol) and yet the Decepticons simply charge into them, leading to the death of at least one, the failure of ANY to make it past them or break their line, and they make Megatron tuck his tail between his legs and run like a 50 foot tall death-ray-spewing puppy.

As far as them being omniscient and having the initiative, that's what they've been doing for the entire movie because they have Soundwave, who demonstrates the ability to hear basically any wireless communication and who the good guys never find out about. So yeah, the 'cons are just handed the Retard Ball for the last 25 minutes of the film, which would have been more tolerable if their Brute Force Ball hadn't also just been deflated.

On other debates on here we demand members are able to give a decent summary, and we are allowed to critique based on summary. Why do you rate special treatment fanboy?

Yes, I missed it in theaters, but the DVD doesn't come out to 20 OCT 09, ergo several weeks in the future. So exactly where in your deluded mind did you think I'm supposed to be seeing the movie that I'm so lazy not to, fanboy? Honestly, for someone throwing around insults about intelligence you only make them towards yourself.

You are trying to make a highly specific point about the quality of one battle sequence in one movie that you haven't seen. You had no actual basis to come in here and call me out as being wrong in the first place based on details of said battle scene, you merely assumed I must be wrong because you perceived me as wanting to "cheaply hamstring military forces." Which is, needless to say, wrong...I'd rather see both sides using good tactics rather than one side using basic tactics and the other side using none at all.

Now if you want a synopsis, ask for one and I'll give it to you, or go to the TFWiki or Wikipedia and read one. It's annoying when I have to correct your misconceptions about the sequence and the film as a whole even as you try to use them as legitimate points (line of tanks = not an ambush).

The bottomline is you have yet to make a point that holds up for why this is such a big issue with the story, that doesn't devolve to a tantrum about what you wanted to happen. A tantrum it has been revealed in based around only verifiably losing one measly mini 'Con to a direct hit from a 120mm cannon.

This is why I'm calling you a retard.

-The "mini-'con" was almost the size of a tank himself. As for him getting toasted, good, one casualty is fine and he was doing something stupid.
-None of the 'cons try any other, non-stupid tactic for dealing with the tanks, despite the fact that at least two of them fly and the one in space took out a carrier group an hour earlier in the film by dropping protoforms on it. Uh-huh.
-Possibly related: they apparently ran out of money to show tanks blowing up or actually interacting with robots, so we see no tank casualties.
-Megatron flees from the tanks like a bitch. Specifically, he FLIES away, and doesn't come back despite his two greatest enemies being right there. This seems...out of character, if only because Starscream actually must convince him to flee from Uber-Optimus later on (and when he fights U-OP his gun arm works, so no claiming that was damaged).
-Both Devastator and the giant mass of Decepticons are dealt with by US forces. None of the Autobots actually needed to be there except Prime. In fact, the only two Autobots that attack Devastator simply disappear;we don't even know if they are dead or not at the end of the movie. (Personally, I wanted to see some reason why we needed the good robots, both because 1) it's a Transformers movie and 2) one of the movie's many under-developed subplots is the conflict over whether the Autobots need to be on Earth at all.)
-The MOST important point: there is no explanation in the narrative for why the Decepticons are suddenly castrated (i.e. unable to shoot at tanks and jets) at the end of the film. No Autobot strike, no misguided decision from The Fallen, not even a throwaway line, they are treated as uber-powerful until suddenly they are not. This is narratively weak and inconsistent. The capabilities of Starscream, Soundwave, and even Megatron to deal with things are simply forgotten.

What do all the above bullet points have in common? I've made them before.

In response we have you guys flailing around and acting like someone drove by in a Hummer and killed Megs.

Only the man in your head who you are arguing with is saying this.

Give one logical reason for that, given what you're arguing is the blast wave is so intense its vaping things. Go ahead and give the children's "I meant to do that" excuse and try to act smart. It's not like it holds up to any level of real scrutiny.

What in the fucking fuck? The blast wave IS so intense that it's vaping things. Its power is rather inconsistent, as I've called out, but in that opening sequence he specifically uses it to fry masses of fleeing soldiers and planes on the tarmac. He clearly lets one group get away, sends Scorpy after them, and starts firing at other people. He does NOT take a shot at Lennox's group in the SOCCENT attack.

You remember how people lambasted Trekkies for not getting the difference, between destroying things by secondary explosion and directly? Why is that a problem for you to the point you refuse to even acknowledge it?

What?

I'd have to check the film to see if he does hit any military equipment directly or if it's all blast-wave effects. I actually haven't the scarcest idea what you are getting at with the "Trekkie" thing.

Do you, then, have an explanation for why the blast wave does kill masses of fleeing soldiers and C-17s at the SOCCENT base, but doesn't kill a small number of soldiers directly in front of him that he's specifically trying to kill in Mission City? Aside from just plain inconsistency?

So yeah, the first film was not a model for technical consistency but it was at least fun to watch. Much of the final battle in RotF, on the other hand, was not fun to watch for me, mostly because of wasted potential. Devastator is unmolested by enemy forces except for the "Twins" (god I hate them), who then simply disappear from the narrative and the screen without explanation (did he kill them? I hope so, but I have no idea) so that the Navy can take over. Except for specific moments like BB vs. Rampage, the whole fight seemed to boil down to intercut footage of military equipment shooting and robots running around and getting hit.

So before you strawman me one more fucking time with "hur hur you're stupid for thinking Americans can't make robots blow up good" I'd like to point out that in my view TF1 struck a pretty damn good balance, with the ONLY thing I took exception to as Blackout's threat level being a little inconsistent. TF2 starts with a similar balance in the opening scene (both Autobots and humans contributing) and then at the end, it seems like Dumbass National Security Advisor is actually right and the only thing the US military needed any help with was beating The Fallen. I don't think that was the impression the movie wanted to give. The movie is actually structured so that the 'cons are losing when 'bots and humans work together, and winning in the middle of the movie when Dumbass NSA makes the 'bots stop fighting. The issue is that the actual battle choreography didn't give the Autobots much to do in order to make this point come across.

[Vympel]

Again, I think the Blu-Ray needs to be watched, for example re: Megatron's gun arm, why would anyone say it's damaged? He's firing it as he's being shot at by the AFVs, just before he flies away. And again, given that the Fallen wiped them all out shortly after, I don't see why his flying away is a big deal.

The "mini-'con" was almost the size of a tank himself

No way, nowhere near. A Decepticon near the size of a tank would be near the massive size of Brawl from TF1.

[Vympel]

Got my hands on a 2 gigabyte *cough* version of the film from a friend.

Looking at the final battle, some things leapt out at me:-

* I was right that only one "Mook" Decepticon is shown as being implied to be destroyed from combined tank/ IFV fire.
* Mixmaster (Constructicon Cement Truck) does destroy some US armor, though it's not clear what he destroyed, since they obviously can't blow up a real armored vehicle, the camera shows it in a way so that it's implicitly shown by means of an explosion amongst other tanks- he does so with his chest cannon. Immediately after this Jetfire guts him.
* Other "mook" Decepticons (there are two distinct types of cloned protoforms, one type with two 'wing' type protrusions from its back, and one without) are seen getting struck / damaged, but it could be fire from either the Autobots or the US AFVs, we don't know.
* The complaint about how Simmons can contact the US CVBG when the Spec Ops couldn't has no foundation. Starscream sets off his EMP pulse in the air well before the Jordanian Blackhawks arrive - ergo, their radios still work when Simmons gets a radio off of one of them at the crashsite. Not the sort of thing you'd pick up in the cinema considering all the crap that's going on.
* Long Haul (green dump truck Constructicon) is damaged/ knocked over by multiple F-16C missile salvo just before the B-1 comes in and drops a stick of JDAMs.
* Two out of the three Arcees are destroyed by Bonecrusher (or a clone of him).
* The forest fight is still one of the coolest robot fights ever.

I need to watch it again to see if any Decepticons are destroyed in the bombing sequence. Hard to tell.

[Anguirus]

^ Hey, you caught some nice touches that I missed. I'll keep an eye out for the DVD...the overall lameness of the film, as I said, is balanced out by some wicked awesome robots. And hey, I've bought most of the Godzilla movies so it's not like my standards are high.

[PeZook]

* The complaint about how Simmons can contact the US CVBG when the Spec Ops couldn't has no foundation. Starscream sets off his EMP pulse in the air well before the Jordanian Blackhawks arrive - ergo, their radios still work when Simmons gets a radio off of one of them at the crashsite. Not the sort of thing you'd pick up in the cinema considering all the crap that's going on.

I picked it up!

Yay me!

* The forest fight is still one of the coolest robot fights ever.

It's also hilarious. Megatron screaming "So weak!" at Optimus after he almost killed them all was just too funny