Transformers

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Transformers

Post by Kei »

Well, the reviews appear to be split right down the middle, with 60% of reviewers loving the film and 40% hating it. (One positive review claims that the movie is "better than sex".) The negative reviews seem to focus on undeveloped human characters, and many of the critics seem to like criticizing Michael Bay himself for no apparent reason. (Is there some kind of law stating that movie critics must condemn every action movie ever released?) I am planning on seeing this movie, and I'll post my own review once I have. As for anybody else who's seen it, feel free to post a review... but DO NOT REVEAL ANY SPOILERS, EVEN IN TAGS!!!
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Transformers

Post by Dragon »

Yeh I plan on seeing it too. I've heard all kinds of critics complain about everything from the director to 'why doesn't the transformers look like the cartoon', and crap. Sheesh, give a film a chance.... :roll:
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Transformers

Post by Dragon »

Ok, I've just seen the movie and it was far better than my expectations. Mind you I wasn't expecting a lot. There are of course lots of quotes thrown around from the original cartoon throughout the movie, and a few corny scenes, but action scenes by-far... FAR... did I say FAR? made up for these. There is also some very funny scenes (thinks of the mother's dialog about her son's 'special time') that had the whole theater rolling. Now I had heard that they wanted it to appeal to both older patrons as well as younger kids.. They succeeded. I saw it with a buddy of mine and his two kids (10 & 6). We all liked it a lot. Just like Harry Potter there ARE deaths in this movie, but they handled it very well. There is no blood or gore and many of the 'deaths' (apart from the Transformer's deaths themselves (yes Transformers are 'killed' in it)) are either so quick and bloodless you barely have time to gawk at how it happened, or they are scenes that are obviously going to lead to a lot of carnage that blip out just before and are referred to later. This may sound corny, but they pulled it off very well. You've all should have seen by now the commercials of it showing a Transformer attacking a military base in the sand dunes somewhere.... Well the 'killings' start there... very early in the film. The action between the humans and the Transformers is very good, and the collateral damage done by these large machines (on both sides) is extensive! The Humans aren't totally helpless against them either. Megatron lives up to being Megatron and it is far better that he wasn't a 'gun' like in the original cartoon. While I liked the original Megatron transforming into a gun (at one point though I thought he was going to morph into Galvatron, but that didn't happen), it would have been silly to see a tiny transforming handgun trying to take on a giant transforming big rig. Scale was off of course, but they did keep Frenzy (an homage to Soundwave?) as a small boombox. I originally mistook him for being a Minicon. Starscream was still actually pretty good, and there is an interaction between both Starscream and Megatron that pays homage to the cartoon where Megatron is seemingly always looking at Starcream as his failure of whipping boy... LOL... If your a Transfomers fan you should enjoy this one. I did.
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Transformers

Post by Kei »

Well, after seeing it, I give it an A-.

When the movie started, it got boring fast. Call me overly critical, but following up a rousing battle with a half-hour of high-school shenanigans just seems tedious to me. I was even starting to get bored.

Then Optimus Prime showed up. I don't know if there's some Hollywood law stating that anything Optimus is in automatically becomes ten times better, but that was certainly the case with this movie. From the point Optimus first transformed, it became a kick-ax knock-down drag-out thrill ride of an action movie the likes of which I have never seen. Definitely worth watching.

It wasn't perfect, of course. My main complaint is the director, Michael Bay... the editing was too choppy, the camera too shaky, and there were far too many establishing shots of random military hardware. Still, with a well-written plot, great actors and some of the best CGI I've ever seen, this movie transcends even Bay's tedious directing.

Word is Dreamworks has greenlit two sequels. Here's to hoping Spielberg or Lucas directs the next one (and that it has Unicron). Transformers has a bright future ahead of it!
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Transformers

Post by Dragon »

Ryoko wrote:Well, after seeing it, I give it an A-.

When the movie started, it got boring fast. Call me overly critical, but following up a rousing battle with a half-hour of high-school shenanigans just seems tedious to me. I was even starting to get bored.

Then Optimus Prime showed up. I don't know if there's some Hollywood law stating that anything Optimus is in automatically becomes ten times better, but that was certainly the case with this movie. From the point Optimus first transformed, it became a kick-ax knock-down drag-out thrill ride of an action movie the likes of which I have never seen. Definitely worth watching.

It wasn't perfect, of course. My main complaint is the director, Michael Bay... the editing was too choppy, the camera too shaky, and there were far too many establishing shots of random military hardware. Still, with a well-written plot, great actors and some of the best CGI I've ever seen, this movie transcends even Bay's tedious directing.

Word is Dreamworks has greenlit two sequels. Here's to hoping Spielberg or Lucas directs the next one (and that it has Unicron). Transformers has a bright future ahead of it!
Ok, then your overly critical. :wink: Jk.
Seriously though I feel your pain about the high school scenes... *yawn*, but alas we know why they had to have that in there... it was simply to 'introduce the hero', 'hero gets car', 'hero has stupid friend', 'hero likes girl', 'girl has fight with boyfriend', 'hero gets girl'.... then the movie continues... thankfully they dropped the rest of that high school movie cliche and did not revisit it in the end to have the 'hero kicks jock's butt' scene... I've heard/read that some felt that Optimus didn't fight all that well in the movie.. but I remember how he was portrayed to fight in the cartoons as well as the original animated movie and this version of Optimus defiantly was a warrior who had no problem killing off a Decepticon or two... That first conflict in the movie does a great job of getting your adrenalin going and thats a good thing cause your going to need every bit of that to get you through the craptacular high school scenes.... well thats too harsh (guess I'm being too critical now), in all reality its just kinda anti-climatic to go from such a great opening to ... ho.. hum.... Still I'm very tempted to see it again... :D
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Transformers

Post by bluemercury »

I have to agree with Dragon I found the only real prob was the high school bit, the part with the stoned cop sucked too, but it help with how he reacted to Beracade before he transformed.
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Transformers

Post by Dragon »

Did you mean the hologram?
:shock:
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Post by JustDJR »

but the stoned cop was the awesome guy from Band of Brothers!
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kagami »

say heelllllllllo to the sequel : http://www.transformersmovie.com/

i dont like the aircraft carrier sinking. ticks me off.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

Why? They'll just build another one...
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kagami »

well i think it comes down to one of the biggest ever machines made by man, an engineering triumph, a powerful weapon, a symbol of human achievement...smashed in one hit. reminds me of how annoyed i got at spielbergs war of the worlds.

plus i like ships, big ships. got a model of an aircraft carrier in my room
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

I loved War of the Worlds. :(

You're telling me you didn't like that movie because a bunch of machines got smashed? :shock:
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kagami »

the fact that we didnt stand a chance left me with a feeling of frustration, war of the worlds implies there was a battle, not just a one sided bleh massacre at the top of a hill, and we cant see it happening... :banghead:
while i liked alot of the wizz bang wizardry and special effects, I didn't like the actors very much. And the girl was really really annoying. Story though was pretty cool, for the first half, the alien tripods coming out of the ground...that was epic. but the very abrupt end just left me saying "Yeah but what happens now?"

i didnt really care about the machines getting gg'd, i just got filled with revenge...and the film had no revenge...plus it wasnt just a bunch of machines, we are talking about most of the military capability of the human race that was destroyed

Transformers is better, at least we get a chance to kick some alien booty at some point.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

That was the entire point of War of the Worlds. If I might quote from the opening passage of the novel:
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were
scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.
H.G. Wells' purpose in writing WotW was to challenge the notion that man was the most advanced or powerful species in the universe, as we often assume ourselves to be. By creating an alien adversary so overwhelmingly mighty that it is practically a force of nature, he made us realize that, even with all our mighty technology and weaponry, we are still insignificant against the grand scale of the cosmos. Stephen Spielberg's movie conveys the same message.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kagami »

I see your point, I really do. I have never read the original story by Wells, but I can understand the notion that we are indeed an infinetely small part of our universe, not as big as our ego's would want us to believe.
However, perhaps the book conveys this message better, as I am full of prejudice and slanted opinions that probably blind me to the message trying to be conveyed. Its a film after all, therfore if I dont like Tom Cruise, well its already going badly...but thats my problem.

I will have to read the book.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

I can't recommend War of the Worlds highly enough. It's a masterpiece of science fiction literature, even 110 years after its original publication.
The book has been in the public domain for some time, so you can read it for free online. This site allows you to read it in your browser, or download it as a text or pdf file.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kagami »

An awesome flick that carry's on the first flic's awesomeness. Multi-layers of awesomeness that doesn't just include Megan Fox...
worth seeing.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

Thus far, the reviews of Transformers 2 have been abysmal. One reviewer called it "the next Batman and Robin". I'm still planning on seeing it... but I'm not expecting much other than a lot of loud, noisy special effects.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kagami »

I made sure not to read any reviews from our papers, because either they swing far on to one side or the other. Seeing it with friends is a definite, and it fulfilled all my criteria for a FUN flick to see. People who want moral depth can go jump. It was pretty funny, the cinema cracked up many times, but became more aligned with disney's treasure hunt towards the end with rushing between locations making one lose any sense of perspective, and the decepticons talked a hell-of-a-lot more then needed. That said, it tries to be a bit more complex then the first movie and thus tails off a bit.

The flick has multiple layers of awesome in my opinion:
Megan Fox.
Ships.
Cars.
Megan Fox.
Blackbird SR-71
Aircraft Carriers.
Cars.

And some people probably won't like that. OK yes it has Megan Fox as the eye candy, but when she was off screen there was plenty of other types of eye candy keeping me happy. Still, in my opinion it is a fun flick that is worth seeing in the cinemas, and is certainly more then just noise and special effects, unless you didnt like the first flick, then you're not going to like this one at all.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Shamisen »

xsirhc wrote:I made sure not to read any reviews from our papers, because either they swing far on to one side or the other. Seeing it with friends is a definite, and it fulfilled all my criteria for a FUN flick to see. People who want moral depth can go jump. It was pretty funny, the cinema cracked up many times, but became more aligned with disney's treasure hunt towards the end with rushing between locations making one lose any sense of perspective, and the decepticons talked a hell-of-a-lot more then needed. That said, it tries to be a bit more complex then the first movie and thus tails off a bit.

The flick has multiple layers of awesome in my opinion:
Megan Fox.
Ships.
Cars.
Megan Fox.
Blackbird SR-71
Aircraft Carriers.
Cars.

And some people probably won't like that. OK yes it has Megan Fox as the eye candy, but when she was off screen there was plenty of other types of eye candy keeping me happy. Still, in my opinion it is a fun flick that is worth seeing in the cinemas, and is certainly more then just noise and special effects, unless you didn't like the first flick, then you're not going to like this one at all.
*Googles, Megan Fox.* I see, another, young aspiring actress, with very pretty eyes..

8)

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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

I don't think it's her eyes everyone is looking at... :roll:
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Re: Transformers

Post by Shamisen »

I think one should... They are very captivating...

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Re: Transformers

Post by Joel »

She must be quite cold... Anyways, I should be going to see it some time this weekend. I don't really care if its good or not but as long as Soundwave has the same rediculous voice as in the original cartoon I'll be happy.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Gothlette »

My mate dragged me to this. It was pretty dumb.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Joel »

Saw it and it was awesome. Bit disappointed by Soundwave though. He wasn't a tape player and he didn't have the voice. That was the only thing bad about it though. There was a Naruto poster in it somewhere as well which made me laugh.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

Well, this review (which I found on Seibertron's forums) pretty much sums up what I think of Michael Bay's Transformers (both 1 and 2):
SoooTrypticon wrote:I'd like to kick this off by saying that I'm both a film-maker and a fan. I work in the animation industry as a story artist and designer. My very first transformer was Sky Lynx, who my parents saved up for and got me one Christmas. As a little kid I would pour over the art on the back of his box- a vivid space battle between monster robots- and imagine what they were saying. I carried around the "Transformer Map" as I called it, which was really just the fold out catalog that came with the toy. I always wanted Trypticon, so he could battle Sky Lynx, and maybe they could become comrades in the battle against Skeletor... Never got Trypticon though. My most recent purchase was Animated Blackarachnia.

Transformers has a long and bizarre history- one that has recently come to a head as the Robots we love breached the mainstream and got their own big budget feature film.

And it bums me out.

Not since "Carbombya," (http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Carbombya) has Transformers reached such an all time low. (Well, maybe Kiss Players bridged that gap). Instead of opening a rich and varied "mythology" to people unfamiliar with the franchise, the movies have set a standard of fast, loud, and dumb. It's not that the various TF cartoons or comics haven't had their share of the same- but so have Batman, Superman, and Spiderman. And yet they all got films that surpass the Transformer films in almost every aspect, the major difference being explosions.

But like their superhero counterparts, the Transformers have had their share of terrific story-lines and characters. What about the Marvel series- early on when Ratchet is the last Autobot left, and he alone has to strike a deal with Megatron? He was a great character- amazed by trees- a type of life he never dreamed of on Cybertron. In those same comics we also follow the origin of Circuit Breaker- a pretty nasty turn from technician to robot hating killer. See, humans and robots, treated with smarts, about to embark on cool adventures. Ratchet travels to a jungle hidden in the North Pole, and Circuit Breaker ends the Decepticon civil war by blasting Shockwave. How about Beast Wars? I remember them. I thought it was the end of Transformers, and instead it became one of the most enduring narratives in the franchise. While it had its share of "energon farts," it also had the exchanges between Dinobot and Rattrap, Megatron's master plan, and Blackarachnia's warming up to Silverbolt. Over the years Transformers have had a slow but steady climb from a hodge-podge of import toys, cobbled from various lines- to a complex (and sometimes confusing) history with a surprising amount of humanity.

And now the movies are here.

The films may be simple, or perhaps they're better "with your brain turned off," but somehow I just feel like they set Transformers, and the community, back a few decades. I think it's safe to say that both films are light on character and plot. We do get a bunch of action. In no particular order, we also get:

(NOTE: CERTAIN NSFW WORDS REFERRING TO MALE ANATOMY DELETED)
-Dog sex jokes.
-Wrecking ball *********.
-Weak or non-existent female characters.
-A robot with a gun for a *****.
-Robot pee.
-Jockstrap jokes.
-Bizarre portrayals of race and culture.
-Character threads that leave portions of the cast missing by the end of the film(s).
-Pot brownies.
-A transformer with a gold tooth.

As a community, I think we could be a bit more discerning about what we support. When you imagined a Transformers film (and I know you all have), were these the things you thought of? Wouldn't it be nice to favorably compare a Transformers movie to The Dark Knight rather than Batman and Robin? We have a cool community, dedicated to an awesome series of toys, comics, and shows. Do the movies really measure up to the level of quality the franchise has been building to for the last 25 years?
And in response to a claim that Transformers 2 was a good film because it 'appealed to the masses' (i.e. made lots of money)
SoooTrypticon wrote:The masses also went to go see The Dark Knight if I'm not mistaken. I think the filmmakers involved could have tried a little harder. The two films also have the same rating- so same demographic.

Dark Knight was well written, well acted, and made a boat load of money. Transformers could have easily done the same, and the film-makers chose not too. They chose to make instead an asinine, poorly plotted, borderline racist set of films that reflect the lowest common denominator in film-making taste... And they will make money too.

So, what it comes down to, is that the people behind Transformers just didn't want to try that hard- because they knew they'd make the money anyhow. Instead of shooting for the stars, they shot fish in a barrel.
Couldn't have said it better myself. :banghead:
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

Hasbro has started a Transformers Hall of Fame. Four transformers (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron and Starscream) have already been inducted, and they're holding a vote to determine the fifth. Who will YOU vote for?
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Re: Transformers

Post by Ryu »

I believe the correct choice is Soundwave.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Kei »

AUTOBOTS INFERIOR. SOUNDWAVE SUPERIOR.
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Re: Transformers

Post by Stilts »

Dinobot is a velociraptor.

That should be all the reason you need to vote for him.

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