Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Harry just had to beat me to it, didn't he? Damn this spotty internet at the lousy Imperial Palace hotel! Oh well. If you want a second report on the footage, here it is... and the rest of my first day at ShoWest. I never heard from anyone at MGM, so I opted out of trying to sneak in to MR. BROOKS, the Kevin Costner thriller. Just seemed like a huge pain for something I'm just kind of interested in watching. So, I went to Caesar's Palace, met up with a buddy and smoked one of my last Cuban cigars over a Mojito. Nice and relaxing. Got me ready to attack the DISTURBIA screening at 10pm. I caught wind that there was more to the screening than the movie, which I already saw and dug a whole lot, so I showed, waiting for my Paramount guy to walk me in. I don't know if they read my earlier report where I ragged on them, but one of the Rogers & Cowan ladies came up to me and gave me a ticket with a smile. Extremely helpful. Maybe she's one of the friendly ones or maybe she's setting me up for the big fall tomorrow. Something involving rabid pitbulls with AIDS and a barb-wire toothbrush... Let me tell you, the Jubilee theater at Bally's is fucking nice. So much more comfortable than the Paris theater where I usually see all the big stuff. The projection is amazing and the sound was bonerific. And boy did the sound system get a work out. After a delay of about half an hour, a representative walked out and was very coy about showing us something special. Then he introduced Michael Bay, who came out to plug the release date, tell all the middle-aged to elderly theater owners that TRANSFORMERS was going to make a gagillion dollars and then left the footage to run. It was 3 complete scenes, with incomplete effects in some areas and some temp sound, but they were very close to being finished. There was only one obvious temp CG shot and some wires that hadn't been removed yet that I noticed. SCENE 1 Starts with a pair of military choppers flying over the desert. The burn in said it was Qatar, in the Middle East. On the chopper are Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Zack Ward and a couple others. Standard grunt chit-chat here. Kind of funny, kind of showing of each of their characters. One of them speaks Spanish and English, flowing from one to the other, sometimes in mid-sentence. The others give him a hard time about it. "You know we don't speak Spanish..." etc. Didn't really come off as scripted, so that's a good thing. They land at a base and we see them interact with some other soldiers, Duhamel trading candy to an Iraqi kid for some kind of backpack thing. Then the ominous chopper is seen. Black. Angular. The audio was even distorted when the rotors were spinning, sounding otherworldly. Very cool little touch, I thought. Aaron from 24 is in charge of the control tower on the base and is alerted of the bogie by his radar guy. He orders it to deviate from military airspace. No response. He then sends some recon planes to check it out. They get a visual and report it back as one of theirs, but the aircraft number is one that was shot down in Afghanistan. Aaron from 24 says it must be a mistake, but one of the younger soldiers says he doesn't need to recheck because on of his friends was on that chopper when it went down. There's no mistake. The chopper lands. The sun is going down and the military surround it. We get a glimpse of the pilot, the shot from the trailer as the electrical glitch goes over his face. Then the fucker starts transforming. For the love of god, all that is holy... it actually made the transforming sound from the cartoon. My little geek heart went pitter-patter. The blades fold up and giant pieces start to shift. One detail I liked was that the army goes right at the thing. They don't watch it transform. Right when it starts to shift the guns start blazing, bullets bouncing off of Blackout as he becomes a giant robot. Bay hid the beginnings of the transformation with military jeeps, so you only catch glimpses at first... until you see him stand. He lays waste. I'm telling you, this scene was huge. And the old fogey theater owners? They erupted in applause as he started blasting away army guys with his arm cannons. Can you imagine hearing a predominantly 50-60 year old crowd that applauds a giant machine killing US Army? Blackout seemed to have a variety of different weapons. There was one arm cannon gun that seemed to shoot rapid fire mini-gun style, then his arm would move a little a bit, reconfiguring, and it'd be a plasma/EMP charge. You get a glimpse of this one in the trailer when Blackout first attacks and the blue-ish bubble of light erupts at his feet. Then there was one like a 4-shot missile, where they got all cork-screwy. This fucking thing wiped out a dozen tanks, 2 dozen parked jets and squished or blew up a ton of army men. He almost steps on Tyrese, who gets some kind of video evidence of the decepticon. Blackout notices and goes in for the kill when Duhamel hits him with a grenade launcher. Tyrese gets away, but the robot doesn't take much notice. He turns and Skorponok jumps off his back, digging into the sand and disappearing. Blackout makes for the heart of the base, rips the roof off and reaches in to grab the server. Wires immediately connect from the robot to the machinery. Aaron from 24 sees that the big fucking robot is accessing all the secure files, looking for something. Imagery flashes on a computer. He yells for someone to cut the hardline, but they can't. So Aaron from 24 grabs an ax from the wall and does the job himself. SCENE 2 This one was Shia LaBeouf centric and offered the first look at Optimus Prime and the autobots. This scene was more humorous than the previous one. It starts with LaBeouf's parents on the phone to him, bickering lovingly back and forth. He's about to be grounded if he isn't back home very soon. Then we see a parade of autobots come down the street, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide and Optimus in automobile form. LaBeouf runs out and gets to the door. His dad is waiting for him. It's a profile shot of the two of them talking through the screen door and in the background we see Optimus stand. His transformation was blocked by a house, but when he stands, he's taller than the house, so his head and shoulders come up. LaBeouf notices and tries to keep his dad from seeing it. To make matters worse, Bumblebee pokes his head around the side of the house, only a couple feet away from LaBeouf. Optimus walks to the yard and LaBeouf really starts to get panicky. You can see Bumblebee making "Shh" gestures and waving Optimus back as LaBeouf's dad ends up going back inside, none the wiser. All the autobots stand around LaBeouf and Megan Fox, talking. Optimus steps on a giant potted plant in the middle of the courtyard. "My bad..." Ut-oh... Honestly, as much as I hate that shit, hearing Peter Cullen say it made the pill a little easier to swallow. His little rat dog comes out and barks at the robots, then it goes up and pisses on one of their legs, causing the robot to lift his foot and try to squish the little dog. LaBeouf stops him... I think it was Ironhide, who know has his arm cannons trained on the dog. "You have a rodent problem. Do you want me to terminate it?" The Autobots urge LaBeouf to retrieve "the glasses," which they need in order to find the energon cube, it's in his room, so up he goes. Optimus tells the group, "Autobots, recon." And they watch the house as LaBeouf goes upstairs. After a moments searching, he sees Optimus' face in the open window. He jumps and then sees Optimus is holding Megan Fox. He puts her through the open window and into the room with Shia and enquires about the glasses. Here'll be a big point of contention with fans. During this whole exchange, Optimus' face guard was down. He looked a little... odd. His face was a little long. But you can see the edges of the face guard on his cheeks, so it's pretty obvious it shoots up when he goes into action. LaBeouf tells the autobots to keep a low profile and we see Ratchet accidentally step on his neighbor's fence and bumps into some power lines, sending him crashing to the ground, causing the whole block to shake. The parents think it's an earthquake. A parade of Sector 7, government SUVs race down the street, stopping in front of his house. John Turturro, Jesus himself exits the car and quickly walks to the front door, incessantly pressing the doorbell over and over. The parents answer the door and in walks Turturro being his quirky badass self. Government guys surround the house, looking for any signs of something... they obviously know a little bit. But how much? No autobots are around, obviously they pulled back. Turturro is told that they can confirm direct contact and he holds a machine up to LaBeouf. It goes off the charts and Turturro's eyes go wide, a great grin on his face. His guys grab the kid and his parents and the scene ended. There was a little more humor in the search in the room, including his mom interrupting and asking if he was masturbating. Sounds a little ridiculous and it might be, but LaBeouf was reacting so funnily that I didn't mind it too much. SCENE 3 This essentially the whole Skorponok sequence, the one I saw them film in White Sands. Skorponok burrows under the sand and his tail comes up, sharp, right behind Duhamel, like in the trailer. Tyrese sees it and shoots the tail, shouting a warning. Skorponok burrows again, this time coming up behind Zack Ward and piercing him straight through, then dragging him down beneath the sand. There's that slow-motion shot of the troops running and the decepticon jumping up behind them. They get to a small middle eastern town and the remains of the troop hold off the surfaced Skorponok, who shoots many projectiles out of his pincers, blowing this town to shit. It dodged the incoming fire from the grunts, rolling out of the way and getting quickly back up to retaliate. There was one particular shot I liked, a close up of the Skorponok's face as it reflexively shielded itself as it is being shot, these metal slabs shooting up to protect its face as bullets ricochet off. There's a whole bit where Duhamel gets a cell phone from one of the townspeople and calls into a switchboard trying to gain communications with the pentagon. Of course, the guy on the line is an asshole and demanding a credit card to complete the call, so Duhamel has to run back outside and get Tyrese's card. Eventually they get some arial support and everything I described in my set visit happened. They line up the robot, surrounding it and pointing their laser sights on it, so the jets can pinpoint where to unleash their load. They hit with missiles and raking fire from giant machine guns. Surely that got him, right? No siree. It's not happy, but it's still moving. Tyrese is in communication with the pilots (on the cell phone) and tells them to use the 105 rounds and they attack again, this time successfully. Skorponok is mangled, but he still works enough to dive under the sand and retreat, leaving only his twitching, severed tail. CLICK HERE TO READ MY SET VISIT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS SCENE!!! That's it. I liked what I saw... but it really only solidified my theory that we're really going to be seeing Michael Bay's giant robots being badass and destructive. Cullen as Optimus and that glorious wah-wah-wah sound as Blackout transformed were great, but I don't know if they'll be enough to satisfy die-hard fans. But, I think the movie looks like a blast, one of those huge movies where every single penny of the outrageous budget is up on the screen, showing you something you've never seen before, at least at a level you've never seen it before. It'll be a fun fucking movie. I have no doubt. And it's going to make a mint. No doubt in my mind. Tomorrow is Lionsgate stuff. Should be some goodies in there. Plus some Travolta in drag. Be back then! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com
