Transformers

[Greg from Aus]

I don't get all the criticism, I loved it.

[TonyL]

I actually enjoyed it too, for what it was worth. Could it have been better? Oh hell yeah it could have. But this is what we are stuck with. **THAT** is the point no one is making about this movie series. Bay is taking all the credit when ANYONE could have made these movies any style and people would have flocked to the theater to see them. The movie made that much because its Transformers. Not because it's a Bay film, clearly. We went because we don't have a choice.


For me, it's like the batman movies. Remember those? The original ones? That just got more and more horrible? Then, THANK GOD, someone came to their senses and made Batman Begins. And the old movies are forgave and forgot. We all agree the new ones are better, and have made more than the first BatMovies made. I hold out hope that this will happen for Transformers. Someday someone's going to get it. That the robots are enough to carry the movie, that they're all the characters that we need. We dont need human p.o.v. or to see how they deal with the transformers invading their world. The show was always about the war from the robot's perspective, their interpersonal relationships and problems. Humans were just filler, or people who ran screaming when the decepticons showed up.

I cannot believe Hollywood hasn't figured out that the robots are what people are coming to see. Not the music, effects and explosions and "hot ass" and tasteless jokes. We came to see robots kick ass on each other. We came to see robots turn into other everyday stuff. (not everyday stuff turn into robots dammit. There is a huge goddamn difference. Robot first, kitchen appliance second.) Someone will figure it out though. Especially now. Someones going to say: "hey, if a horribly written and directed Transformers movie makes 700 million dollars, how much will a truly epic Transformers movie make?"

It'll happen.

[BonzoHansen]

I liked it, it's not like I expected Godfather. But not as much as the first one. We just wanted to see robots kick the crap out of each other. Mission accomplished.

PonchoJohn and others, you are dead on. They screwed the pooch on the language and such. It was not needed and given the toy aisles right now I'd say it is marketed to kids. I plan on dropping a line to the filmmakers, not that it will matter. I told my 8 Y/O on the way home he can only use those words if he is being chased by a 200 foot robot. And don’t tell Mom.

Actually, you CAN get the bumblebee "Z28" body kit from chevy now. Just order the bumblebee Camaro. It comes with those wheels and that bumper and spoiler.

Really? Can you get that hood? IMO GM also screwed up by not offering a $50k+ true BB version, in that awesome color. Then again after seeing a new Camaro in person this weekend, especially after sitting in it, GM screwed a lot up with this car. I digress….

[TonyL]

I've seen conflicting reports now. One is simply a badge option with the autobot logo in the center of the stock wheels, yellow paint black stripe and a logo on the steering wheel. But their are reports that since all work was done on the Z car, they are putting the body kits they have on the Bumblebee car. We'll have to wait and see.

[BonzoHansen]

If it isn't that cool goldish-yellow it's just weak.

[vyking67]

hey who really cares its a movie... a huge leap was made from childhood cartoon to live action movie and any assemblence of continuity was lost in the very first movie when they made bumblebee a camaro and not the volkswagon bug he was...

people are having debates over the producers choices in this movie but are ignoring the facts from the original cartoon or comic book..

facts .. i cant believe i used that term..

[parsonsj]

I saw the movie last night with my 13 yr old son, who owns dozen of Transformer toys. He loved it, and wants to see it again.

Me: not so much. I found the action sequences confusing, and the human vs decepticon fights not very believable.

Tony's thoughts triggered this with me: my problem is that I don't know the autobot characters. I know OP is the leader, and he's the biggest, but I don't know what kind of weapons he has, or anything like that. Bay's film does nothing to develop the autobot characters, and that's the problem. Next movie should be a prequel, with few humans in it, with the idea of really showing who Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Ironhide, OP, etc. are.

Anyway, that's my take.

jp

[Mathius]

I actually enjoyed it too, for what it was worth. Could it have been better? Oh hell yeah it could have. But this is what we are stuck with. **THAT** is the point no one is making about this movie series. Bay is taking all the credit when ANYONE could have made these movies any style and people would have flocked to the theater to see them. The movie made that much because its Transformers. Not because it's a Bay film, clearly. We went because we don't have a choice.

I agree. Bay seems fairly arrogant. I heard a quote about how he said he was the first to use the pyramids in a movie or some crap and when someone brought up Jumper he dismissed it and said they didn't get good shots or something like that. If I could remember where I saw it I'd post the exact words.

For me, it's like the batman movies. Remember those? The original ones? That just got more and more horrible? Then, THANK GOD, someone came to their senses and made Batman Begins. And the old movies are forgave and forgot. We all agree the new ones are better, and have made more than the first BatMovies made. I hold out hope that this will happen for Transformers. Someday someone's going to get it. That the robots are enough to carry the movie, that they're all the characters that we need. We dont need human p.o.v. or to see how they deal with the transformers invading their world. The show was always about the war from the robot's perspective, their interpersonal relationships and problems. Humans were just filler, or people who ran screaming when the decepticons showed up.

I agree with this also, but I think spike and sparkplug and perhaps even carly were essential characters, but you're right the rest was filler. Still one of the better episodes in my opinion was Autobot Spike where Spike went into a coma and they transplanted his brain into an autobot body from spare parts while they repaired his human body. Humans do have their place, but the point is supposed to be the robots.

And the biggest issue I had that ruined the movies for me, was the way they made the robots look all mechanical-like. I don't care about Prime being a different type of semi, or Bumblebee being a Camaro instead of a VW, or any of the continuity errors, but it bothers the crap out of me that the transformers look like a walking pile of junk with all the servos and wires hanging around. They didn't look like that in the cartoon and I never pictured them that way.

I cannot believe Hollywood hasn't figured out that the robots are what people are coming to see. Not the music, effects and explosions and "hot ass" and tasteless jokes.

I disagree. Hot ass is always nice.

We came to see robots kick ass on each other. We came to see robots turn into other everyday stuff. (not everyday stuff turn into robots dammit. There is a huge goddamn difference. Robot first, kitchen appliance second.) Someone will figure it out though. Especially now. Someones going to say: "hey, if a horribly written and directed Transformers movie makes 700 million dollars, how much will a truly epic Transformers movie make?"

It'll happen.

Hollywood ruins everything. Look at the new GI Joe movie coming out. Look at the old Masters of the Universe flick with Dolph Lungren.

Mathius

[TonyL]

hollywood ruins that which they underestimate and don't understand. There are producers out there who dont want superman to have a cape, or a suit at all. They pay no respect to established cannon, and really really underestimate what people will react to. When the first images leaked while making the first transformers movie, and it was clear they'd look nothing like the "boxy" type robots we knew, the excuse was "no one would accept that. They need to look more alien." Bay is WRONG on that. Flat out wrong.

and it has been proven... just look how awesome this is.



Why oh why couldn't they have looked like that??

[mikedc]

-- I agree about the stylized robots. WAY too ornate. The robotic form of these characters bears essentially no resemblance to the vehicular form. We only know Bumblebee from Optimus Prime because of a few streaks of yellow or red & blue on them.



-- Bumblebee wasn't a beetle mainly because of product placement. But IMHO it was a good idea anyway. Giving a kid a cool car (but still within reason) was a decent idea. And most importantly, if they had given him a non-verbal yellow beetle, then Bumblebee would have felt like such a total "Herbie" ripoff that it would have been distracting.



-- I don't like Michael Bay's directing either, but I grudgingly admit that he's got more going for him than just the flash & dash. It seems like there's no brains behind it at all (and there still isn't a lot of brains), but there are other directors who have screwed up movies trying to imitate him. And I think he's also toned down the worst of his style since the 1990s.

Bay & Bruckheimer amount to a certain flavor of movie. Love it or hate it.



---------------

[79-TA]

"hey, if a horribly written and directed Transformers movie makes 700 million dollars, how much will a truly epic Transformers movie make?"

It'll happen.

This movie is very much riding on the success of the first one as all sequels do. So i like to think that TF1 is getting the rest of its due credit now.

Anyway, I saw it in Imax and a commenter on IO9, a Gawker blog, described the experience perfectly:

crashedpc : ゴキブリ and 蟑螂 division: "You should be scared of this movie. It is a ****ing mess. But it still was awesome. Seeing it on a real IMAX screen would probably actually blow your mind, for real. The combination of sensory overload as only the IMAX can deliver with complete logic deprivation as only Michael Bay can deliver would put the audience into a catatonic shock for a few hours."


Really, if you're going to see it, don't see it in Imax. And sit in the very back so you can better see what on earth is going on.

[mikedc]

Well I still liked this movie better than the first one.

Maybe I'm in a minority about that, but I thought the first one was full of scenes & jokes that were ploddingly obvious. And some of its dialogue felt as forced & cheesy as anything I've heard since the Star Wars prequels.



This second one had all the weaknesses of the first one. But they weren't as bad IMHO.

And at least it felt like THIS was the movie they were selling you. It often feels like the first movie in a series these days is basically an afterthought, just assembled out of a list of things they wanted to set up for next time. Sometimes I walk out thinking that I just paid $9 to see a bunch of info that could have been covered in 2 minutes worth of backstory montage at the beginning of the next movie.


-----

[Ron L]

and it has been proven... just look how awesome this is.

Why oh why couldn't they have looked like that??

Kinda like these? I was hoping that's where the movie was going but instead they randomly cut up the body panels and pasted them onto organic figures.

Then there are the lips. In the cartoon, fine, because it's a cartoon. But moving mechanical lips? Blinking eyes? Ugh.

The "Barely-R" rating skews the fan base as well. For example, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are PG-13 and I'd rather my kids watch those movies again for movie night at home than have them re-watch Softporn-formers. It would've been great to market Transformers to kids (as someone mentioned - look at the toy isles) and raise a whole new generation of Transformer fans. Instead, many kids that see this will idolize their favorite robots that say things that "only mom and dad can say", piss on people, hump legs, joke about their balls, and fart parachutes. OK the farting part was funny, but what kid movie does not have fart jokes in it nowadays?

[Mathius]

Another example of Michael Bay's arrogance and stupidity: http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/us-m...n-fox-bay.html

Mathius

[Steve1968LS2]

Oh my God!

This is the best review ever! And while I enjoyed the movie this guy is 100% correct..

Enjoy..

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/...aqs.php?page=1

Classic sumation:

Can you explain Megan Fox's appeal?
Yes. She looks like a porn star and has the same acting talent as one, yet for some reason she makes mainstream movies. This tonal disconnect is what's so appealing about her.

If you had to pick a single scene that exemplifies Michael Bay's utter disdain for story and continuity, what would it be?
When five Decepticons sink to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve Megatron's corpse. A submarine tracks five "subjects" going down, and when they get there, one of the Decepticons is killed to give parts to Megatron. 5 -1 +1 = 5, right? No, because the sub somehow tracks "six" subjects coming up. Not only is this very basic math, this is the simplest of script errors. It could not possibly have been more than one page apart in the script. And yet Michael Bay either didn't care to notice or didn't give a ****. "Math? Math is for pussies. My movies are about **** blowing up, man."

Could you sum up the film in one line of its dialogue?
"I am standing directly beneath the enemy's scrotum."

[Steve1968LS2]

Another example of Michael Bay's arrogance and stupidity: http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/us-m...n-fox-bay.html

Mathius

Are you kidding?

He is exactly right that Megan Fox is a complete idiot.. if she wasn't hot looking she would be assembling burgers at some fast food joint.

Or working in the government.. take your pick.

[Steve1968LS2]

The deep thoughts of Megan Fox :

"I think people are born bisexual and the make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who is bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never sleep with a girl who had slept with a man." - Esquire, June 2009

"I wouldn't regret [my "Brian" tattoo] if we weren't together. I can always have a kid and name him Brian. There are options." - FHM, June 2007

"I'm so suspicious of boys-slash-men. I just don't like them or trust them." - Elle, June 2009

"I've always gotten along better with boys." - Elle, June 2009

And my favorite on what she would say to Megatron to keep him from destroying the world:
"I'd barter with him," she muses to the July issue Total Film UK, "and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?"

[79-TA]

Oh my God!

This is the best review ever! And while I enjoyed the movie this guy is 100% correct..

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/...aqs.php?page=1

Classic sumation:

Well, that almost covered all of the plot holes . . .








I really don't understand the Megan Fox bashing. She just mentions that the movie did not focus that much on acting. The fact that Michael Bay got her discovered has no logical impact on whether or not Megan's statement was correct.

[mikedc]

There is probably quite a size disparity between his ego and his genitalia.

His over-reaction to a hot young coworker's negative feedback makes perfect sense in that light.

[Steve1968LS2]

Well, that almost covered all of the plot holes . . .






I really don't understand the Megan Fox bashing. She just mentions that the movie did not focus that much on acting. The fact that Michael Bay got her discovered has no logical impact on whether or not Megan's statement was correct.

Actually it's more about other things she has said.. like I said, good thing for her that she's hot.