Transformers Reactions Thread - No spoilers until July 4th

[Darth Servo]

There was a submarine beneath where they dropped the 'cons to recover them

[Vympel]

Yeah, that's a good way to get the next film rolling plot wise, they've got all the Decepticons in another base somewhere, have rebuilt them, and are experimenting on them, all over again.

Then Soundwave and Starscream come and get them back.

[Aenigma]

There was a submarine beneath where they dropped the 'cons to recover them

My pet theory is that the drop off was entirely CGI.

[Enigma]

Yeah, that's a good way to get the next film rolling plot wise, they've got all the Decepticons in another base somewhere, have rebuilt them, and are experimenting on them, all over again.

Then Soundwave and Starscream come and get them back.

Or simply the sub is a Decepticon playing along until it can get Megatron.

[Fire Fly]

Now that the movie is mostly over and sequels are penciled in for the making, the only question I have is, who should direct the next one? Most of the actors and actresses are returning already but I'm not sure if it should be another Michael Bay movie or not. The only thing I may want to keep Bay as the next director is to keep some of the consistency of the first movie but that's about it. We're pass the introduction and from-the-point-of-view-of-the-humans bit now and onto the main stars; a fresh feel wouldn't be so bad either and it might actually work, movie wise. My only fear of getting a new director is that the studio picks someone who has no idea of what they're doing and they put a Michael Gambon in charge.

Regarding potential contents for the next movie, they need to bring back Megatron, leave out Unicron (at least until the third movie), bring back Jazz, and no mass shifting Soundwave. This rumor of a transformer aircraft also sounds a bit dubious. Its going to be slow as hell and it doesn't even make for a good disguise.

[Davis 51]

Now that the movie is mostly over and sequels are penciled in for the making, the only question I have is, who should direct the next one? Most of the actors and actresses are returning already but I'm not sure if it should be another Michael Bay movie or not. The only thing I may want to keep Bay as the next director is to keep some of the consistency of the first movie but that's about it. We're pass the introduction and from-the-point-of-view-of-the-humans bit now and onto the main stars; a fresh feel wouldn't be so bad either and it might actually work, movie wise. My only fear of getting a new director is that the studio picks someone who has no idea of what they're doing and they put a Michael Gambon in charge.

Regarding potential contents for the next movie, they need to bring back Megatron, leave out Unicron (at least until the third movie), bring back Jazz, and no mass shifting Soundwave. This rumor of a transformer aircraft also sounds a bit dubious. Its going to be slow as hell and it doesn't even make for a good disguise.

I will bet money that Bay will end up doing the sequel. He already expressed great interest in doing the sequels, and Steven Spielberg loved what Bay did.

[K. A. Pital]

Okay, why are you not excited about a transformer aircraft carrier? Hell, it could serve as a base for Megatron, Starscream and co., plus give some great scenes (a ravage of the modern US Navy anyone? that's kill Pearl Harbor's measly attempts at ultimate shipwrecking )

[Stravo]

I saw this over the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised. I came into the movie with low expectations and came out with a big smile on my face and fully entertained. Before I get into my review I have to say that the Cloverfield trailer was awesome. The monster's roar was sufficiently creepy and evocative of the original Godzilla (I read on Wiki it is an inspiration for this movie) and I really like the concept. I gather from the trailer that it will be a monster movie told from the POV of a single guy with a camcorder.

On another note, whoever made that piece of shit upcoming movie "The Last Legion" needs to be flayed for fucking with my favorite myth like that. Caesar, the last emperor of the Roman Empire is actually king Arthur?!? Blow me you assholes. Enough with the faux historical bullshit trying to ineptly link Roman history and King Arthur. Haven't we learned from that attrocity "King Arthur" that it just isn't done right by Hollywood? And please please no more ahistorical warrior women - this one treaches Arthur how to fight. I'm really starting to despise this period piece cliche.

On to the movie:


The Good

The Action was amazing from start to finish. From the initial attack at Qatar to the rivetting final battle in the city with everyone fighting everyone it was action movie goodness. Yes, I hate Bay but yes he does action well.


The Transformers in general. I liked the look and the personalities and the way they fought. At first I thought I would hate the fact that Bumblebee spoke through his radio but I actually liked it. Optimus was great and that voice...the moment his voice opened the movie it was like I was 10 yo again, sitting on my living room floor watching the Transformers cartoon after a school day on WPIX. I smiled and knew I was in for a good show. And my fear that they all looked alike was quickly eased.

No annoying kids. I was afraid Sam Whitwhicky would be a horror show of teen angst cliche as only Hollywood can make teens. You would think the writers of movies had never been teens themselves they are so inept at writing them but Sam was a refreshing change of pace for your standard summerfare teen. The love interest was needlessly hot. I mean c'mon it's just not fair to show her off like that.


Story - though not faithful to the comic or the cartoons it was still good and respectful of the source material. However there are some plot points that annoyed the hell out of me - see below.


Soldiers - I really was afraid these guys would end up like the Caprica B story in nBSG that I despised so much. An unneccessary and annoying plot deviation and I would be rooting for them to die a horrible death. Instead they were a likeable bunch and their plot line was as entertaining as the main one. I didn't find myself annoyed when we cut to them.


Our guys actually stood up well - every alien invasion movie in recent memory depicts the US military as either ridiculously inept or completely impotent. Here we get a nice showing in terms of taking out decepticons and making a stand for ourselves. In both the comic and the cartoon the human military is a joke and if not for the Autobots we would have been enslaved long ago.



The Bad


Optimus Prime character - throughout the movie there were little things that didn't ring true to the character of Optimus. When he rudely hurries Sam to find the glasses is a minor one but there was a scene when he is rushing up to the building to save Sam and he sidesteps a blackhawk helicopter tumbling down with people inside. He doesn't even pause to try and save them. That's not the Prime we all know and love.


Decepticons character development - as in none. The cartoon and comics give us some great insight to the character of the various decepticons. The backstabbing Starscream, the cold monotonous Soundwave, etc. The only Decepticon who got any characterization was Frenzy. Even Megatron was just a cliche spouting black hat.


Hip Hop Transformers - It may be my intense dislike for the whole Hip Hop culture in general but it was really annoying to see a transformer like Jazz go from a Scatman Caruthers voice to a bog standard hip hop vernacular ridden speech down to the arm crossed gang sign throwing charactiture. Optimus Prime's "My bad" was another ugh moment.


The Transformers at Sam's house scene was annoying and over the top cutesy. I liked (generally) the humourous overtones to the movie but this scene was like straight out of a kids' film and it was infantile to have the dog peeing on Ironhide's foot, the response of wanting to blast the dog was also over the top. The parents and transformers doing a little dance around each other was making me think I was watching an Abbot and Costello movie.


Bay stock characters - Bay has the same stock characters in all his movies. Loud mouthed black guy, government leader with a heart of gold, quirky agent/cop/soldier.


Megatron really had so much menace and promise of wanton bad assery promised. Hell, there was devil Damion music playing whenever he appeared on screen frozen. What did we get? "I will crush you." "Give me the cube boy and I might make you my pet." Yeesh. Optimus did not have a counterpart among the villains and that's sad because I really enjoyed the nastiness of the comic and cartoon Megatron who could throw dark cruelty out there that matched Prime's noble statements.


Didn't we see this in ID4? I swear it seemed that the plot structure of ID4 was used as a framewoirk and like a macro seemed to plug in Transformer plot points. Secret Government Program no one knows about that knew the menace was coming? Racial steretypical characters led by loud mouthed black guys? 20th century tech created by unearthed artifact? Secret government base attacked at the end by alien force?


The Ugly


Hispanic stereotype - the hispanic soldier was offensive to me. OK, we get it, he's hispanic because he needs to somehow talk in a mix of Spanglish to get his point across. At first he was a Cajun soldier pining for his gator and gumbo then seconds later he's talking about arroz con abichuelas. Something tells me the character was orginally going to be Cajun and they forgot to change those lines from the beginning. Still, while I recognized many racial steroetyoes and Bay usually panders to them in his movies, this one really annoyed and in the end actually offended me. His antics were equivalent to a portrayal of the black soldier if they made him speak solely in street rhymes. Yuck.


In some ways not kid friendly. The movie is about a kid's toy line. It has giant robots battling each other, it has cutesy family moment scenes. Obviously this is just begging to be a kid friendly movie and in my opinion is marketed as a family summer film. Yet why was I blasted with cuss words throughout and even one barely restrained Motherfucker? Was there any need for that? I noticed some parents were not thrilled with that fact during my screening but thankfully I did not bring my daughter.


Where was Soundwave? Nuff said.


Bumblebee "peeing" on someone. WTF?!? What was that? I was annoyed at the casual bathroom humor that really came out of left field in the movie. Never to reappear again but did it have to surface at all?



Overall a good entertaining movie and I recommend it.

[Big Orange]

More speculation about the origins of the Transformers: in Transformers: The Movie from 1986, a few Autobots stumbled into a grisly court where they see multi-faced and mechanical creatures passing judgment on Transformer type robots, then dumping them into a shark pit - in the sequel could the writers imply that a updated version of this race created the Allspark and some of them are still out there?

And I don't understand the general aversion to John Turturro's eccentric G-Man character when Jon Voight's Defence Chief, Rachael Taylor's frivolous technician and the various stock Army/Marine/Air Force/S-7 men were far more blander - I could tolerate the US command bunker bits, due to the impressive NORAD-style sets and also the big hints on how much the Decepticons could tread right over over a big military superpower without firing a shot or making their presence known.

The seemingly unavoidably trite OC/Smallville/Roswell/Holly Oaks scenes were salvaged somewhat by Shia LaBeouf's performance, Megan Fox's extreme fuck-a-bility and the reasonable acting support from the older cast members.

The humour running through the movie was more subtle, witty and self aware than given credit for.

I could tolerate Section 7, since the US Government already having a anti-Transformer taskforce seemed like a good concept and I found it fishy that they were supposedly officially "disbanded" (the US authorities wouldn't also just dump wreaked alien artefacts into the Pacific like that). I generally think the scenes where Blackout stomps through the US Military garrison, when that arachnid shaped Decepticon gets PWNED by the USAF and when Barricade chases LaBeouf's character were generally better done, more coherent set pieces than the final battle.

The Decepticons getting limited character development time was perhaps intended to make them seem more faceless and alien in comparison to the warmer Autobots.

Hugo Weaving did competent voice work, but the artificial voice modulating obscured his real accent anyway and I would've loved Leonard Nimoy as Megatron instead (even though he did Galvatron).

The CGI was nigh on flawless and the Transformers themselves were convincing as genuinely alien mechanoid creatures.

I think the implied mass civilian deaths in downtown Los Angeles were perhaps not so horrific, when you don't see charred bodies littering the sidewalk, hundreds of bystanders are running well away unhurt and the main characters are easily surviving things that would've mangled or decapitated them in real life (I also think the spoiled teenaged girls trapped in that "feral" Transformer car were perhaps thrown out of it's innards instead of getting shredded alive inside).

And Starglider should lighten up...

[neoolong]

I could tolerate Section 7, since the US Government already having a anti-Transformer taskforce seemed like a good concept and I found it fishy that they were supposedly officially "disbanded" (the US authorities wouldn't also just dump wreaked alien artefacts into the Pacific like that).

I think they were shut down and replaced. Likely by Lennox and company for the sequel. They did successfully fight them off and have the most battle experience of the humans. And the Autobots would likely tolerate them better than the Sector 7 personnel that were going to experiment on Bumblebee.

It should be a given considering that at the end of the day, they're still missing Decepticons. I find it hard to believe that the government would toss the rest, and then conveniently forget the two or three that they know got away.

[Stark]

People trying to link the movie with the old cartoon (G1 specifically, for some reason) is nowhere near as strange as trying to force the goddamn Quintessons into it. I mean clearly the Junkions built the allspark lol.

[DPDarkPrimus]

The final battle does not take place in Los Angeles.

[Stark]

Was Orange talking about the movie, there? They even mention the name of the town in the movie (not that I remember what it was) and it's near the Hoover Dam... not LA.

[neoolong]

I could have sworn that Lennox said Mission City.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Okay, why are you not excited about a transformer aircraft carrier? Hell, it could serve as a base for Megatron, Starscream and co., plus give some great scenes (a ravage of the modern US Navy anyone? that's kill Pearl Harbor's measly attempts at ultimate shipwrecking )

Technically, Scorpionok and Fortress Maximus filled in for the "robot carrier" bit.

[Shroom Man 777]

Seeing as how Lennox rides one of the Transformers (Ironhide?) back to his wife and kids, maybe he and his troopers became military liaisons with the aliens?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Seeing as how Lennox rides one of the Transformers (Ironhide?) back to his wife and kids, maybe he and his troopers became military liaisons with the aliens?

That's possible, since they've had first hand experience and survived Blackout and Scorponok, they're excellent as liaisons for any future Autobot arrivals, should they occur (definite).

I'm also curious about the Decepticons' fate. Given their regenerative ability and raw power, even with Megs and Blackout being downed by Starscream with the former losing his spark, I bet they could come back. Even after Autobot and Decepticon fought, we can see they come back later on, at least so long as they aren't dispatched Highlander-esque as Prime did with Bonecrusher, so he may not be back (annoyingly).

I just don't buy the others being dead, bar Megs for a better reason. It's not unheard of the US gov't doing something stupid like saving the Decepticons and trying to turn them to their cause, but failing totally to take into account the Decepticon hatred of humans and Autobots.

Plus, Bay has to direct the sequels with Spielberg producing still. It wouldn't be the same otherwise, when the only niggles were some writing issues and maybe trademarks of Bay's style (fights on highways, rotating around characters in gunfights, action during sunset etc.).

I mean, if anyone can do a CVN Decepticon destroying the USN and a city, Bay can. I was hoping the CVBG would be attacked by Blackout and Starscream when ordered to return back to protect CONUS in the movie.

[Big Orange]

The final battle does not take place in Los Angeles.

It was supposed to be Mission City, a remarkably bland major city that I haven't heard about before, yet the giant multilayered intersection and oddly familiar skyscrapers cried out "Los Angeles" to me (they even reused that derelict Art Deco/Classical building from The Island).

[McC]

I could have sworn that Lennox said Mission City.

He did.

Saw it on Saturday again. In DLP this time. So awesome.

Anybody who doesn't like this movie is clearly an idiot.

[VF5SS]

Anybody who doesn't like this movie is clearly an idiot.

y halo thar, fanboy.

[Mad]

yet the giant multilayered intersection and oddly familiar skyscrapers cried out "Los Angeles" to me

At least some of those scenes were filmed in Los Angeles (a friend of mine in LA was an extra, though I couldn't spot her, assuming any of her scenes made it in the final cut), so some similarity is to be expected.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Bay always uses LA in his movies, or something analogous (Miami in Bad Boys). In this film, I think they used an amalgamation of LA and other West coast cities filmed in the traditional Bay sunset way. So it's a fictional city that consists of at least two others.

[Lord Woodlouse]

I liked the movie, thought it was fairly well written and genuinely funny in parts. Like that the humans were not complete 'tards when facing the Transformers. I barely remember the original cartoons, so I pretty much came at this fresh.

My main criticism was for the action scenes. They had amazing CGI but often they just moved too fast and had too much shakey-cam to really see what was happening. It would have been nice to see the transformers (and humans) fighting out a bit more like the earlier desert combat scenes where the camera was further out and we got a better view of what was happening.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I really don't get how some can't tell who is who in the final battle. I know some had a time trying to follow the shakey cam, but given this has a good effect for the movie and for any scene where erratic action and disorientation is taking place (Saving Private Ryan landing scene, nBSG battles, Greengrass directing the Bourne movies etc.) I find it effective.

What I didn't like was the lack of exposure for the Decepticons. There were more of them and they were badass, yet had no real time to shine. Even Starscream only had one line of dialogue (awesome as it was, dripping with insincerity) and he was pretty eager to stay out of the game to save his own arse and takeover who survived.

I'm hoping with most of the layout done and setting up and so on, the next movie can have more battles and more Decepticon screentime.

[Lord Woodlouse]

I really don't get how some can't tell who is who in the final battle. I know some had a time trying to follow the shakey cam, but given this has a good effect for the movie and for any scene where erratic action and disorientation is taking place (Saving Private Ryan landing scene, nBSG battles, Greengrass directing the Bourne movies etc.) I find it effective.

I don't mind some shakey-cam, I've heard people criticise BSG for shakey-cam but I think it works for BSG. It's not so all over the place that you can't focus on what's going on. Some of the city battles in Transformers just seemed to shake too much, made it impossible for me to get an a good concept of what was going on. Atmospherically, it was great, but it made the battles less satisfying for me. If they want to use shakey-cam in that way they need to balance it with more slow overhead shots.

In my always humble opinion.