Transformers Movie Review

there's 2 threads already made about this movie i think. but i gotta agree..it's a great movie

 

LOL yet another Transformers thread

yes, excellent movie, *very* entertaining.

however i also found it very frustrating in that 95% of the action was extreme close-up and hyperkinetic, for action scenes i'd rather a broader view so you can see what's going on better, and for the transforming itself i'd prefer it was a little better displayed, apart from a couple times it was basically just 2 million things happening in about 0.2 seconds, you hardly get the real satisfaction of seeing a nice transformation.

 

Wow, I am surprised so many people are liking this... when I first saw the preview I thought it looked like the stupidest movie ever. I guess I'll have to go check it out.

 

Transformers ****ing rocked!

 

Hmm either I'm too hard to please or you guys are easily impressed. I thought the movie was mediocre at best.

THE GOOD
Cars look AWESOME, special effects are out of this world, many of the old names you remember from the cartoon are back. Oh and Megan Fox is an uber personification of ultimate hotness.

THE BAD
NO character development to speak of. No plot. Action scenes are too close-up so you don't feel you're watching two robots battle as much as you are watching blurred bits of mechanical 'stuff' whizzing by the screen. Many of the characters were changed a bit much (Starscream is now a badass, not a hapless usurper of Megatrons leadership). I also thought the cheap laughs were tacky - like Bumblebee peeing on the guy, and Optimus saying "my bad" when stepping on the flowers. Just cheesy. Also, there are many continuity and suspension of disbelief mistakes. At the end, the decepticons head into the city - then the autobots show up. Megatron fights many of them but where is Optimus? Sleeping somewhere? The mixture of Jon Voight as a serious military character with John Turturro as a nitwit/comic relief "secret agent" character did not play out very well. And the special forces characters (and for that matter the hot blonde chick and the black dude and thei team) - what was their purpose in the movie at all?


Movie is a C+ at best. Yeah, it's easy to chalk it up to "hey its an action flicK" but sci-fi action flicks can be good too - Terminator 2, Matrix, and plenty of others. This movie ranked lower than "Last Action Hero" in plot and quality of the underlying movie, but since it had awesome effects it raises it up to a C+

 

I have to agree with SRT Mike.

I enjoyed the effects, but there was WAY too many plot-description monologues. I too would have like the action shots to be a bit longer-framed, as too often you couldn't tell what was happening at all.

Still, I enjoyed it and didn't feel ripped off, and that's about all you can expect from a summer flick these days

 

Effects were good but that was about it, SRT MIKE is correct about the lack of a stable plot, character development, & blurred battle sequences. Most likely it was a cost thing. Like any Bay film its more about "product placement than meets the eye" than one person can stand. Evey time I saw a pan shot of the GM Autobots I expected to here "HURRY, GET 3.9% FOR 72 MONTHS @ YOUR LOCAL GM DEALER NOW!" I was just a very corny film with cheap laughs to boot, I thought I would enjoy this film but it ended up being a major letdown.

 

You do realize the entire transformers cartoon was created to sell hasbro's new toy line, right?

Its a movie about robots coming to earth to fight eachother and save the world, take it with a grain of salt. The GM sponsorship came from the fact that Bay wanted to use the camaro concept, and GM said if they used it they had to include other GM cars as transformers.

I personally loved it, I saw it last night and the night before, both times the movie got a standing ovation from nearly everyone in the theatre.

The corny dialogue was great because it stays true to the cartoon. Optimus was always corny in the cartoon, always trying to sound heroic. I'm also really glad they brought the same voice actor back for him. It was like hearing an old friend when I heard his voice.

The plot seemed pretty stable to me, the autobots want the allspark, so do the decepticons. Clearly they have to duke it out.

Sure its shallow, but come on its TRANSFORMERS. The show was originally created for kids, don't expect something deep.

Enjoy it for what it is, I know i'm getting it on dvd and seeing every sequel they produce.


some criticisms though:

i would like more bot on bot fighting, it seemed like it was more people fighting than anything else.

the fight scenes were also way too fast when the bots would fight eachother, made for a nice headache after a while.

no dinobots or other transformer factions

I just hope the sequel only improves on the story.
-Joey

 

Well said Mike,...although I didn't think the movie was as bad as you made it sound, it also isn't as good as many of the other reviews.

 

Bam!

 

I liked it but as it was said , sometimes close up werent the best option. You didnt know what was happening other than 2 robots fighting.

Also, i think the F22 transformer survived no ??

 

Yeah, that was Starscream, he left Earth at the end. I personally Loved the movie, thought it was great/hilarious/full of action. I'm not one to critcize a movie at length, if it was enjoyable and kept my attention then I'm happy. And I was very happy, as were all my friends. I don't want to give anything away but the part when Bumblee becomes a new Camaro was hilarious/awesome.

There is one part that wasn't that well thought out, but I can't give that away now since not everyone has seen it. It has to do with the ending though.

But I'll definitely be waiting for the DVD and sequels which I heard there will be 2 more of atleast. I would definitely see it again too.

 

Personally, I really enjoyed the movie. I agree with the comments about too much up-close fighting. I enjoyed the scenes when you could see the entire robot much more. But the effects in this movie are easily some of the most stunning ever produced.

I loved the part when the hot chick makes the comment about "if he is some super advanced robot then why is he disguised as this crappy old camaro?" and he then throws them out and next thing you know up rolls the bad-ass new concept camaro.

Since this is a car forum, what was everyone's opinion of the "new" camaro? I peronally loved it. It looked great moving down the road. I like it MUCH better than the new Mustang. As much as I hate to say it, if the production model looks close to the car shown in the movie I might be taking a trip down to my local Chevy dealer in a year or so to see what kind of great GMAC financing they have going on!

 

Ahh thanks didnt see that part.

What becomes to the actual driver of the new camaro when Bumblebee becomes the new Camaro ?

 

Nah... when and what Megan Fox (TOTAL HOTTIE) says something regarding Bumblebee and what happens directly after it is said...


Edit: what nathan said. when she calls him a cr@ppy camaro and he kicks them out and scans the new Camaro to transform into it.

 

that's what i was wondering...

 

If you haven't seen the movie, what is below can be a bit of a spoiler, so you are hereby warned!

Bumblebee doesn't actually "become" the new camaro. In the scene, there happens to be a new camaro passing them on the road going in the opposite direction. He pulls a quick u-turn, passes by the new camaro and "scans" it, thus allowing him to look like the new car instead of the old one. One of the core ideas of the movie is that the robots can "scan" whatever object they want and then transform themselves to look like that object. The original object they scan is unhurt and unchanged. If you notice, when they first come to earth they are in robot form, and must find something to scan so they can disguise themselves. For example, when Optimus Prime lands on earth there happens to be an 18-wheeler passing by him, so he scans it and can then tranform to look like it. Until they scan something they can apparently only be in robot form.

 

ok thanks, that wasn't made entirely clear. sometimes it appeared that way, but other times it appeared more along the lines of them putting their "soul" into an existing object and taking it over.

 

Up there with spiderman 3 and joe dirt as one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

 

I thought that too. Pretty cool when they transform the nokia into that little pissed off bugger .

 

I think the movie is going to do wonders for the new Camaro - IF AND ONLY IF IT LOOKS LIKE THE CAR IN THE MOVIE!

Detroit is famous for showing an awesome car, then watering it down and wondering why the 75% of "the edge" they took off the car leads to sluggish sales.

DO NOT swap those awesome rims for crappy rims. DO NOT change the colors or the lines or the rear end. DO NOT raise it up 3" and put 180 size tires on it. Its gotta be 99.9% of the movie car or it won't do that well.

If it looks like the car in the movie, I will buy one. I am not a brand snob - don't care that it's a cheap Chevy, it looks awesome and I am sure it will be a blast to drive. With a nice big V8... maybe throw a turbo on it and it can be a new drag car.

 

+1, but I was disappointed how starscream was really the only Decepticon that came remotely close to the original. Shockwave (if the radio thing was shockwave) was like a snivelling Johnny-5 monkey thing which was not pleasing. And the other ones? The tank, truck and helicopter??

I did like how they looked once I saw them moving.

Agreed on all points. I was just thinking about how those two scenes with the Autobots were both out of character.

I hate/loathe/despise when they throw in inappropriate Gen Y "computer hacker genius" characters. These ones were particularly useless, and by the scene where they're making the morse code of the computer fighting off shockwave I was thinking that plotline was getting really freaking tired.

Why do the black men in the movie all yell at their mothers/grandmothers?

+1 RE Turturro. Why was he even there? Just let the parents be the comic relief and leave it at that.

The action was reminiscient of Bourne Supremacy: you know there is fighting going on, but you just can't see it happening.

Another thing that is becoming cliche in action movies is that everything that hits brick/buildings crushes them or bursts though. Even in fistfights in movies now they have to smash through walls and shatter brick with their force. That stylistic 'enhancement' is starting to get old.

My complaint about the (useless) F22 sequence is that the jets move into attack flipping and rolling. Same with some of the robot fighting -- John Woo-inspired rolling sideways and shooting.

I hope the next one focuses more on the robots themselves now that the plot has already been introduced.

 

I also wished the movie was more dramatic/obscure. The beginning was pretty good when that lone robot whipes out the military base by itself.

The jokes were funny but out of place.

 

Agree 100%. When I saw the concept mustang a few years back. I was certain I would buy one when it came out, and I am NOT a Ford/Mustang fan by any stretch. The car just looked so RIGHT in conceot form. Then the production model came out, and upon seeing it in person I was very underwhelmed. They neutered it just a bit too much. Although I can not point out any striking differences in the concept mustang and the production one, there are enough subtle differences piled on top of each other to make the car very watered down and unappealing.

By all indications Dodge is going to leave the production Challenger very close to concept form. I also like this car, but I absolutely refuse to buy any performance oriented car with an automatic transmission, and there has been no official word that there wil be a manual version of the Challenger built.

Hopefully GM will leave the concept Camaro as-is. If they do, it will be a home-run sales success. I am holding out hope, as the production Solstice was very close to the concept version.
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