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Quint has a go at TRANSFORMERS 2!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I don’t know if I’m turning into an old man or not because the things I have to say about Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMERS 2 are the same shit I used to hear old people say about the movies I grew up loving. “It’s all noise!” and “I couldn’t tell what’s going on” and “There’s nothing but action and it gets boring.”
So, am I now that old dude with his nose in the air, not getting why the damn kids would like this trash?
Maybe. But probably not because I can understand why a kid would like this movie. It’s made for 8-12 year old boys. It’s got an edge of danger, with some really, really off-color humor and language, but not too much… it’s got two extremely hot girls essentially fucked by Michael Bay’s camera (Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas) every moment they’re on the screen… it has visual orgasms for 85% of its screentime and doesn’t really give a shit about the rest of it.
But you know what? There came a point where the movie went so ridiculous, so absolutely outer limits, that I couldn’t help but just turn myself over to it.
There’ll be some spoilers in this review, which shouldn’t be a big deal as by the time it’s posted most of you who were dying to see it will have either already done so at the midnight or still be in the theater. I don’t have long to spend on the review as I’m about to leave the country for a few days and still have a lot of work to do before I do, but I’ll hit some spoilery stuff here.
This movie reaches a point about halfway in, shortly after we’re reintroduced to John Turturro, that I just kinda decided that if I was sitting there waiting for a plot thread that made any sort of sense, any real character motivation or any subtlety whatsoever then I was fighting a losing battle and not taking the movie for what it is. It’s a big, loud, wet fart, but it’s a spectacular one. Unlike TERMINATOR: SALVATION which was such a disappointing, limp film you can see Michael Bay flexing nuts in every frame, millions upon millions of dollars parading in front of your eyes for the entire overlong 2 ½ hours of the movie.
It’s an interesting comparison. T:S never gets as bad as TRANSFORMERS 2 does, but the former film doesn’t have a solid vision. It’s like McG’s heart was in the right place (I’ve talked to many people who worked with him on the movie and they assure me he was striving every day to make a good movie, something that would work and I believe them) but he lost sight of what was important as cool, shiny new toys and ideas were presented.
With TRANSFORMERS this is what Bay wanted to make. No question about it. He never lost sight of what his main goal was, show the money up on the screen. At all costs. At all times. Everything screams big budget. The cinematography, the effects, the editing, the length of the film, the pacing… for good and bad it’s all to show summer movie-going audiences that a shit-ton of money was spent on this movie.
I suppose I should go over the plot, but why bother? Shia LaBeouf is at it again, off to college where he meets a fembot who you know is a human Decepticon immediately. She, for some reason, tries to seduce Sam in the first 30 minutes of the movie, which is the only quiet moment you get before the next 2 hour chase scene.
And no one seems all that surprised that a Decepticon looked like a human being and no more human impersonators pop up. The pacing of the movie is such that you get the impression that Bay doesn’t want you dwelling on anything that has happened. Don’t ask where the fembot came from, now it’s time to find the mysterious webmaster of a conspiracy theorist website… Don’t think about why he has just the right bit of info for our group, now it’s time to go to the Smithsonian to find an ancient transformer! Etc, etc, etc.
But at least Bay gives Shia and his family a little bit of non-action time. The poor soldiers… Tyrese and Josh Duhamel… don’t have one character building moment. Josh’s job is to answer the phone over and over again and shout orders in the desert. That’s it. After all the time spent developing him in the first movie I guess Bay just thought that was enough. He’s muscle now.
I do like the opening of the film and the set-up, which I wish they had followed up on. Basically you have a secret task force headed by Aaron from 24 (and also the first TRANSFORMERS movie) that is there to put a stop to rogue Decepticons that pop up around the world. Josh and Tyrese work with the Autobots to stamp them out as they appear. Pretty cool.
But then it’s all about Sam getting an eyeful of Cybertron history as a shard from the cube falls out of his sweater from the first movie.
There’s some overly complicated backstory about Transformers that were here back in the olden days and how a war between the two factions started when The Fallen, a Prime who turned evil, wanted to blot out our sun, the energy of which is needed for their race to survive.
Blah Blah Blah… Megatron’s back to kill Optimus because The Fallen won’t come back to Earth until the last Prime is gone because somehow The Fallen can only be killed by a Prime. We know this because he says it.
It’s a whole lot of exposition that takes place when all Bay wants to do is smash more robots together, the bigger the better.
I said at the start of the review that I didn’t like the action. Say what you will about Bay, but his action photography has never, ever been his weak point. The dude knows how to shoot it, how to edit it and how give us landmarks. He doesn’t often overcut his stuff, you usually have a sense of geography with his action.
The end of the first movie was confusing, but I never felt lost. It was just the different robots that were hard to keep track of.
Here the action is fast and furious, but ultimately didn’t feel like they had any real sense of drama to them. None of them pushed the story along and each one felt like the choreography was based on a 10 year old holding up two Transformer toys and mashing them together over and over while making crash sounds with his mouth.
There are a couple of really cool moments in the movie… Optimus’ hooks being one of them, but overall I was a little let down by the action. There was plenty of it, but none of it was focused or carried any real weight, even when (Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler) big Red and Blue is taken out. I guess since it happens so early in the movie I figured it wasn’t permanent (and I was right), but even with that particular fight being the best of the movie I felt no connection to the screen. I was never involved, just a passive observer.
I think a lot of that has to do with one of the key problems of the movie, the fact that it didn’t learn one damn thing from the first stab at the material. What did everyone say? More moments with the Autobots and the Decepticons. We want to know these guys. I want to see that bickering between Starscream and Megatron for more than just one scene per movie. I want to get to know the family dynamic of the Autobots. We never get any quiet time with any of them, except for Bumblebee who somehow still can’t talk and has to talk through fucking pop songs (and somehow movie quotes… by the way, Tom Hanks should get a cameo credit for as many times as his voice is used) over the radio again.
In short, Bay still hasn’t figured out that the robots are the stars of his movie. I defend Shia a lot. I think he’s getting a bit of a shit deal from the fan community and that he’s a real, competent and talented actor. His work is what saved the first movie from being a horrible experience for me. But he’s not the star of this series. Optimus Prime is. We hardly ever get to see any of the robots when they’re not fighting, with the exception of the new ‘bot named Jetfire (voiced by Turturro, according to IMDB) who should be called the Expositionicon. He’s an old timer that walks with a transformer cane and randomly shits a parachute due to incontinence.
But you know what? Fuck it. That kind of stuff is what I liked about the movie. Yes, Mudflap and Skids are every bit the horrible stereotype you’ve heard they are and god bless ‘em for it. I think it’s funny that the filmmakers either don’t know what they’re doing or don’t give a flying shit.
There’s also a moment where Turturro randomly shows his ass, wearing a Sector 7 cup and I could have sworn he said that’s what he wears when he wants to fuck. I was told afterward he said that’s what he wears when he’s in a funk. If it’s the latter then I like the movie a little less.
But to me the only thing I can take away from the movie is just how over the top retarded it gets. It’s the only thing that kept me from falling asleep. Without a dog in the fight or a reason to care for any of the human or robot characters the action gets really boring really quickly.
And I have to mention… seing it IMAX is impressive, but I wish they planned the IMAX specific scenes better. THE DARK KNIGHT caught some shit for the effect of widening out to IMAX size, then shrinking back down to widescreen, but Nolan had whole sections of the movie in IMAX and used 70mm for the flyovers of cities. The change in aspect ratio felt motivated in a strange way. Here, Bay shoots so much of the coverage in regular 35mm that in 5 or 6 seconds of screentime we can jump from IMAX to regular and back about 2 or 3 times. The effect is like that of a lightbulb that's about to go out, subtly flickering.
And then the ending… Okay, more spoilers here… Two of our leads die in the film, both of them come back (one of them visiting Robot heaven… and it’s not the character you think would naturally be going there) and when Optimus has his big face-off with both Megatron and The Fallen he goes in wearing a horror show cannibal suit.
Jetfire, the most interesting and developed character of the story… an ex-decepticon who changes sides, has a great heroic moment, but is still a geezerbot, so he’s damaged badly. When Optimus is revitalized he’s all beat up so Jetfire literally pulls his own heart out and says to use his parts.
So Optimus takes the energy and then the rest of the Autobots quickly assemble the dead robot pieces onto him. Gross! Just imagine the human version of this scenario… Suddenly our hero would turn into Jame Gumb… and I’m sure Bumblebee could have played a bit of Goodbye Horses to really hammer home the connection.
Yes, the movie is bad. Sometimes it’s so crazy I couldn’t help but just give myself over to it and it’s pretty. So there’s that. And there’s giant robot balls, dogs fucking and a 30 minute finale that is ridiculous, but impressive… especially since it’s so fucked up to think of Optimus getting power by wearing the dead body of a fallen comrade.
I don’t think I’d recommend this, really, but I don’t think anybody who is at all interested in seeing this is going to decide based on what I have to say anyway. See it or don’t. You know where I stand.
This review ended up being much longer than I anticipated and probably as random and wandering as the movie I’m trying to discuss. Oh well. Off to do some laundry and prepare for my trip to the great white north tomorrow. I’ll let you know more when I can.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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Jun 24, 2009 1:49:05 AM CDT
SLOPPY SECONDS....THIS MOVIE WAS FUCKING TRASH!!!FACT!!!
by charlesthomasmathews1978
But morons in North America will lap it up. No wonder our society is falling apart.
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...despite every fibre of my film-loving self says. Even if it's as disgracefully racist and misogynistic as all other Michael Bay pictures are.
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"Yes, Mudflap and Skids are every bit the horrible stereotype you’ve heard they are and god bless ‘em for it. I think it’s funny that the filmmakers either don’t know what they’re doing or don’t give a flying shit."I think this bears a little more expansion, yeah? considering it's been at the root of the distaste almost every reviewer (especially Harry) has for this shitstorm, and it's one of the things you somehow like about it. can you, um...explain that a little further?
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and nothing else matters.Now, head over to the Avatar thread.
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AARON PIERCE, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.!!!
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I guess everyone else finds it distasteful and offensive. I certainly find it to be distasteful, but I'd be lying if I said I was personally offended. I didn't find the characters funny as intended, more in the "I can't believe someone thought this was a good idea" way. So, yeah. I think I enjoyed it specifically because of the shitstorm they were creating if that makes any sense. I will not ever say they should have been in the movie, but I was grasping for anything that gave me any sort of entertainment value out of the movie.
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gives Mudflap and Skids a pass so as not to take anything they say the least bit seriously again. I also vow to punch Michael Bay in the face if I ever see him in person.
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Ebert - "Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: "Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!" (Bradshaw, Guardian); "Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!" Amen!
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I just had a film at the 48 hour film project here in Seattle tonight, and sitting through some of the other films, the schadenfreude was all I had to cling to as well...I'm just thinking you're gonna get a lot of flack in the talkback for getting a kick out of those characters.I know, I know...hard to imagine. talkbackers being irate. but as unlikely as it seems, I think it's going to happen amazingly enough.
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I hope you don't mistake Peter Horton for Bay then.
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followed by soldiers blowing up randomly for 20 minutes (some robots were off fighting in the background). then Optimus shows up with a jet packs and kills all the bad guys. the end. Now save your money or watch something else. while your waiting for that movie to start, sneak in and watch the early fight scene. then leave.
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probably go with the girlfriend to see Potter, that might be ok. but i havent really followed it.
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Jun 24, 2009 2:35:45 AM CDT
I literally feel raped. Seeing that movie was the worst decision
by spectrebeeyatch
Why? Why was it so bad? It shouldn't have been. It should have been sweet.
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Jun 24, 2009 2:38:38 AM CDT
GIVE TRANSFORMERS 3 TO THE CRANK : HIGH VOLTAGE GUYS....
by charlesthomasmathews1978
If you're going to be offensive then GO ALL FUCKING OUT!!!
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Shia dies and the robot angels tell him good job! and send him back. the worst part is you think im joking right now
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Now that's a good idea.
I am still going to see this flaming cat turd... -
post here could write a better story. most of them are idiots.
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is the reaction from the general public. I've seen a lot of 10/10's being bandied about. Sad.
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Jun 24, 2009 2:55:29 AM CDT
wait til you see the box office records get shattered by it
by bmacsmith
Bay knows that most people are idiots, and can be easily distracted by shiny objects just long enough to take their money. We could all learn a lot from Michael Bay.
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Transformers 2
Optimus and crew try to make a life here on earth and thus must mine energy cubes from the earth. They create the Constructicons to mine the fields for them. The Constructicons realize that there's only enough cubes for 1000 years and get greedy and steal the cubes. Now it's a fight for who will survive. They fight on freeways, at the White House, Barack Obama tries to nuke their energy supply, and in the end they end up working for the government to protect all of mankind. -
I remember seeing Armageddon in the theatres with that totally gratuitous swipe at Greenpeace. Even as a 15-year old I found that insulting. So people, please, if you don’t boycott this shit you’re basically accepting that the bar is lowered yet again.
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You've been paying to see this vacuous dirge for more than a decade now. If it makes money, Hollywood will churn it out again and just turn it up a notch. Teenagers with disposable income is a massive market now. Talent is no longer a requirement for a summer blockbuster. Pretty people, wall to wall cgi and noise is all it takes to keep morons entertained. You've lapped it up for years and now you've got your wish - two hours and forty minutes of glossy over-edited noise, with fart gags, dogs fucking and some pretty people. Well done everyone, give yourself a round of applause.
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Public's review of ROTFL
Loud noises blurry action shinny metal guns tits ass cussing shit comedy bright colors farting leg humping random screaming
random S'PLOSIONS Linkin Park It is the greatest movie of all time 10/10 -
Jun 24, 2009 3:01:45 AM CDT
Actually that was pretty fucking funny Quint
by glory_fades_immaxfischer
"I think it’s funny that the filmmakers either don’t know what they’re doing or don’t give a flying shit."..lol
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the scene where the Autobots are battling Megatron while hurtling toward Earth in the first episode of Transformers Animated, and you'll see what these movies should've been.
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-e
Bay is a genius and a visionary .....hopefully future generations will understand his greatness. -
..Is there going to be a review by Alexandra Dupont ?
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Okay, no one needed to know that.
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...couldn't have said it any better myself. Bravo!
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not really.
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"God, why can't enter heaven?" Michael asks. "Because you're a fucking idiot" replied God, "Seriously, robot angels?"
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you wrote a 10,000 word essay about a fucking robot movie. maybe you should look at why you are in this business to begin with. this isnt the 10 commandments, its a robot movie that presents itself as pure popcorn and nothing else.
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Or into Kim Jong Ill's collection set.
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like almost everyone else.
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Just because it's in the comics doesn't mean it should be made into a movie.
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Jun 24, 2009 3:25:17 AM CDT
I could argue that 5million yr old truck people from space
by ironic_name
wouldn't make a very good movie, and so far thats true. unless you count the one in the 80's where they killed Optimus. but that was a cartoon too.
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But that ain't going to happen.
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Is people like you giving this shit a pass because it's just a 'popcorn' movie. Just becasue its a sumemer blockbuster doesn't give Hollywood the right to hoist this moronic, marketing led trash upon us. The term blockbuster came from films that were SO good that people flocked to see them. Movies that were well written and directed, imaginative and exciting. Now it just the one with the biggest marketing spend. Who cares if its any good, look at the explosions
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I don't think those people read AICN.
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Speak for yourself, I know a fair few people here who can write to a damn fine standard.
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because if you change the fantastical elements of them being aliens and make them military prototypes acting out wargames, essentially "small soldiers" with big robots, it could work as some silly fun, but the petulant children who scream that everything must be exact to the show would scream and wail, of course they would eventually say it was the best decision ever, just like they hated tf: animated and now hate any other form of tf, but they would still insist that people who have jobs and mortgages and wives, these people would accept a story of aliens that are robots, that are humanoid, and 5 million years old, and make absolutely no sense the same way non freaks accept movies like the Godfather. they wont. if certain lunatic fans had they're choice, they'd make a gus van sant style scene for scene shot by shot remake of the cartoon, only with people and real cars, and then the people and real cars wouldn't be like the cartoon enough, so they would be rotoscoped so that fanboy director would show the hokey ass cartoon and actually expect people to finally take their sad obsession with toys seriously. "fans" are the biggest scumbags on earth.
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Jun 24, 2009 3:43:55 AM CDT
Mr. Zeddemore, I highly doubt you or anyone else could write
by ironic_name
a story about alien humanoid truck men from 5 million yrs ago that makes any sense. not a slight on you, but on the concept.
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Same place all the calculators go. And Shia apparently. Was there a scene with Brigette Nielsen in a pack lift anywhere in this astrotrain wreck?
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"He doesn’t often overcut his stuff, you usually have a sense of geography with his action."
Quint, you have to be kidding. Right?
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Was bagged hard by reviewers everywhere, and really, didn't expect much to be different here. I enjoyed the first one, for what it was, A BAY film. I know exactly what I'm getting when i see one of his flicks.
It's also funny to note, that critics who previously hated on part one, are singing it's merits in comparison to part 2. So...I'll go in with my expectations lowered and ear muffs on, popcorn in hand. -
...so goddamn loooooooong. That's just bad writing.
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Jun 24, 2009 4:32:58 AM CDT
someone explain to me the virtues of "I know what to expect from
by badmrwonka
all the people here saying things along the lines of, "well, what do you expect? it's Bay? I want a fun thrill ride, and I get it!"do you not see the difference here? even people who normally ENJOY his films are calling this a trainwreck. it's being EVISCERATED EVERYWHERE. we can all agree that movies like The Rock and Armageddon may be silly and stupid, but they were at least coherent and fun. Transformers one was retarded, but at least it didn't have racist robots or any of the rest of the moronic shit that it sounds like this new one has.we have all seen in the past couple years that you can make HUGE summer blockbusters that are actually GOOD. Dark Knight, Iron Man, Star Trek...WHY WOULD YOU BE CONTENT TO SETTLE FOR MINDLESS RETARDED SHIT WHEN YOU CAN HAV YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO?why give Bay a free pass to make this mindless shit, make it obscenely stupid, misogynistic, racist, etc. (not to mention marketed for kids) when you could hire a real director and actually make a decent movie?this whole, "oh come on, it's just mindless fun" mentality, it's completely lost on me. why would you WANT to have to turn your brain off to watch this shitstorm?I'm honestly asking for someone to explain to me why anyone would want to settle for the lowest common denominator.
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It's a film made by scumbags for the entertainment of idiots.
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All the guys booed and all the girls cheered. I wanted to leave the theater.
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I haven't seen transformers so forgive my off topicnessThere was never really any problem with T:S when there were Terminators on screen. and when the T800 came out... WOW.... but the film on a whole was just trash. uninteresting characters, boring under developed sub-plots and really really wacky editing. that opening teaser part was fucking ridiculous... and then the fade to black and cut to written info on the what happens next and where we're now going to be set was equally as dumb. My biggest gripe, When the terminator showed up in both T1 & T2 there was a real peril, a fear for the person being attacked because the Terminator incapacitates it's victims so cold and grusomely. THAT was the appeal imo.... watching T:S i found myself seeing moments when fists could have been put thru bodies, when bones could be crunched. and the let down hurt. dont get me started on terminators having usb ports that can be used to control via laptop. fucking bullshit movie. why did i see it?
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"Oh, no! The machine is buried in the pyramid! If they turn it on, it will destroy the sun! Not on my watch!" - John Turturro
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Instead of asking those of us who hate it or gave it a bad review to realize it is "just a popcorn movie" or "that it isn't Shakespeare", maybe you guys should just accept that it is a POS and not worry what other people think.
It is called a guilty pleasure. You don't have to force others to accept it, you just have to acknowledge that you like it despite the fact that it sucks or that it is aesthetically lacking. Hell, I like BLOOD DINNER and DON’T TELL MOM THE BABY SITTER IS DEAD, but I don’t think anyone out there would consider those good movies. They are guilty pleasures, films I realize are completely devoid of any artistic merit but I still like them for some reason or another.
So Transformer defenders, instead of getting mad at people for giving a bad film a bad review, maybe you should just say “Yeah, I know it sucks but I still liked it.” I think you’ll find that people can understand that versus you insisting that we someone give Transformers a free pass just because it is a Bay film.
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"versus you insisting that we SOMEONE give Transformers" I meant "that we SOMEHOW give".
Sign that it is late and I should go to bed. -
Perfect review..exactly how i saw the movie as well, including the terminator 4 comparisons. Mcg tried so hard and came up short(although i still enjoyed the movie)but Bay just threw far too much into the mix..i cant believe a movie that dumb could still hurt my head by the end of it!Eyes...over...focused...ow
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This is a little harsh, but you're right, it's SFX pornography. For a review that's a little less aggressive ;)... http://movies.sky.com/review/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen
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"Bay's most unrestrained and ridiculous effort to date. The teenage male cinematic equivalent of snorting cocaine off a hooker's ass."
Best film critic quote EVER.
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could turn human. I'm with you, Quint. If they could do that then there would have been no need for them to be anything else, nor the autobots for that matter. Robots in disguise? Aren't exact replicas of humans more of a functional disguise than an F-22 Raptor or a Semi? This is EXACTLY the kind of canon raping crap I took Orci to task for in the Massawyrm TRANSFORMERS 2 TB.
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I could save them about 50 million on the budget by waving erector set robots in front of a moving camera and cutting every five frames!
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...I had the misfortune of seeing this "film" last night.
It really is a truly jaw droppingly bad experience, that one feels like it may have been done on purpose. There is no script, no style, no substance, Bay is obsessed with Fox so much that you can imagine him cracking one off behind the camera. Even the effects are slapdash, going from great to awful in the space of minutes.
Worst thing is I convinced my girlfriend to come with me. She was not impressed. And yes fellow geeks it got worse, we went for a curry after, she ordered chicken tikka (she cannot take very spicy food), I order chicken madras, I was in the heads when the food turned up, in her ignorance she tucked into the spicy one, when I arrived back she was almost dying. After ten mins of coughing and drinking water I had to order a taxi as she wanted to leave, parting words "thanks for the shit flick and ruining my curry" (although she technically did that herself) and I was left with a £52 bill and a table load of curry which I took home.
Damm you Michael Bay. -
For the record
Michael Bay has NEVER made a good movie! They all suck, but make money which makes him the biggest successful hack in Hollywood! A hint for Mikie...static shots! Stop moving the friggin' camera! -
And if it wasn't for UP, STAR TREK, and HANGOVER it might be seriously the worst ever. Especially since even though they're technically "Summer" films, UP and ST came out in May. And yet, if there's a box office dropoff, the studios will blame those damn Video Pirates. Arrrr! "Oh...I'm so scared!"
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Rolling On the Fall Laughing rather than "Revenge Of the Fallen."
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Jun 24, 2009 7:28:18 AM CDT
ironic_name: How dare you post such wonderful fake news!
by fuckmichaelbay
If Bay was really dead, I guess I would've felt an unexplained feeling of relief.
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WTF?
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I remember hearing he would, so I played close attention to his voice in the theater and was surprised to find Jetfire sounded absolutely nothing like Turturro. I checked the end credits and am pretty sure they said someone named Marc Ryan provided the voice. Imdb needs to update their credits bc I'm sure I saw Micheal York's name as a voice actor too. Maybe for one of the Primes.
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They were called "Pretenders". And don't forget the Beast Wars. They did, at some points, use organic tissue (or at least something that looked like organic tissue) as their outer shell. It wasn't completely made up for the movie.
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I don't have to see it. Ever. I have Netflix too, so I don't even have to see a huge fucking wall of retarded DVDs at Blockbuster. Life's pretty good.
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so was the abyss T2 true lies lord of the rings star trek....nothing gets a pass with me.
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Suck on my huge swinging pair haters!
I want more movies like this. If you love film - go see one...If you loove laughing at spectacle, go see ROTF. But I'll see it 5, possibly 10 times.
Cause i loved it. i loved it that much.
This is again, a very fir review....only Massywyncunt got it wrong.
Fuck Massa an his limp cock. -
...Michael Bay doesn't overcut his action? Seriously?I dare you to go back and watch any Michael Bay film as part of A Movie a Week or whatever and say aloud, "New Cut" every time there is a new cut. Let me know how many you get to.
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I think the Decepticon in question is supposed to be the movie's take on a Pretender which, according to Wikipedia, were in numerous Transformers series.Granted, the Decepticon Pretenders were apparently disguised as large beasts and it was the Autobot Pretenders that were disguised as humans. Even the human looking Pretenders though apparently looked more like tall humans clad in armor.Wikipedia article can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/n2qstq
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its canon,get your facts straight before announcing yourselves as fans and condemn anything that exceeds your ignorance.
have a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretender_(Transformers) -
Right at the start Optimus says that he and the Autobots and the army have spent the last 2 years hunting down stray decepticons and killing them. Hang on a minute, isn't that ethnic cleansing. They don't like a group of people(robots) so they hunt them down wherever they are and just kill them, no "get off the planet", no trial, no chance for rehabilitation. The twins may be stereotypes and offensive but i can get over that because adults can get over it and kids won't see it but i'm not sure what it says to make it okay for the heroes to just hunt down and wipe out people that disagree with them (although i guess it was written and produced during the Bush administration so maybe it was meant as satire. If so, bravo Mr Bay, but i think in reality we all know that subtlety is beyond him!
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and my students all think the movie is shit
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Have the movie be about Optimus..The Shia/Sam story was the first film...move on from that now..
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In the cartoons, this is how transformers' sparks worked. There was even an episode where Megatron made all the other Decepticons give him their sparks so he could have some of their powers to fight Optimus Prime. I remember Starscream didn't want to give his up and was made to at gunpoint. So when Prime gets the other spark, and gains some abilities, that's about right as far as "lore."
Also, that's Jetfire's story from the cartoon as well. He was evil and I think got reprogrammed into an autobot Skyfire who looked very much like a Valkyrie VF-1J from Macross. I like this version better, actually, where he had a philosophically motivated change of heart.
Not that anyone who doesn't remember the cartoon that well will know or care about this stuff, and my kids still think it was shit except the guys liked looking at Megan Fox. -
Are the Dinobots in this?
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Jun 24, 2009 10:40:24 AM CDT
"He doesn’t often overcut his stuff, you usually have a sense of
by jawa 007
Are you kidding!?!??!?!!!??!?!?!?!!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
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"I said at the start of the review that I didn’t like the action. Say what you will about Bay, but his action photography has never, ever been his weak point. The dude knows how to shoot it, how to edit it and how give us landmarks. He doesn’t often overcut his stuff, you usually have a sense of geography with his action."
Which Michael Bay movies have you been watching? 'Cause this is about the exact opposite of what my experience has been... -
Bad Boys 1 and 2 and the Rock are the ones that stick out to me, great action - over the top, definitely - but shot well and not a shaky cam mess.
Even the first TF was easy enough to follow in terms of the action, it sounds as if this time he's gone over the line into self-parody. -
I really and truly enjoyed the entirety of the first Bad Boys, but that's the only movie of his I can say that about, and I've seen them all (save TF2). There are nuggets of goodness to be found in most of them (except for Armegeddon, which gives me a wild, splitting headache), but for the most part, it just cuts together as wretched, incoherent excess that doesn't interest me. Also, without exception, I enjoy his films more at home than in the theater - I genuinely think he shoots and edits for the smaller screen, not the larger one.
You know, if someone made some kind of coffee table book of amazing, iconic action shots - not sequences, but single shots - I'd expect Bay to be well represented. The man's previews are stuffed full of awesome, heroic, well-framed images, but when I see them in the context of the movie, they just don't gel for me... -
IT'S A GOD DAMN THREE STORY HIGH SCREEN YOU ARE ONE STORY AWAY FROM. FUCK IMAX!!!!
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JESUS!
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Nobody fucks with tha Jesus!
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Nothing would make me happier then to see Trans 2 and GI Jerk fail. They are franchises that should go to a different generation of film makers. NOT these old men.
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Some movies are meant to have a great script and be thought provoking, others are for pure entertainment and thrills and are meant to be fun. If I want to be mentally stimulated I would go to an art gallery or museum, if I want thrills I go to the theme park and ride the biggest, most intense roller coaster.
My point? Its the same for movies really.
Transformers was a cartoon to sell toys to kids, I loved them. I grew up watching the show and playing with the toys, they were the next bext thing to star wars. The best thing about films like transformers is that they make me feel like that excited kid again, its the fun filled roller coaster ride that puts a great big 10 year old grin on my face. Its a pure guilty pleasure that some adults seem to forget about.
Transformers isnt meant to be anything else than a fun and exciting ride, it basically does what it says on the tin and does it very well. If you enjoyed or loved the first one, youll love this one and have a great time. Its like Bay took the first movie and turned it up to 11. This isnt meant to be a deep movie, its meant to bring to life an adults inner child and blow kids away like the cartoon did to us all those years ago.
Just go and enjoy the movie for what it is, the best ride ride in the park. -
It could be so bad, it's good, like Rocky Horror Picture Show but with robots.
I'm tempted to wait for DVD though, because essentially this movie is made for 12 year olds, and, well, I'm not twelve. -
Yes, it as dumb as it sounds. You could have spoiled that.
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most of the time you can't tell whta teh hell is happening on teh asteroid in armaggeddon and it was just some guys diggin a hole on teh ground
Bay is awful at action, I would even say taht he's better and the character/story scenes than action, but both are retarded -
WTF?Is this what you guys are going to pay money to see???
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Thoughts?
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Good "bad" movie = The Giant Claw
Bad "bad" movie = Transformers 2 and any movie with Paris Hilton. -
Thank you...that is all you have to say.
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there's some overly complicated story about ancient transformers? How can it be both?
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I LOVE Canada!!!!
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they finally out-did Jar Jar Binks with this one.
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I feel ya on your opening paragraph. I remember the days when I would get excited about a film and want my father to get excited and watch it with me. 30 minutes into the film he would be snoring. now i'm in my 30's and stuff like this just bores me. well at least the first one. i kind of want to see this one just because of how horrible everyone says it is. but i'll wait for dvd
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And I'm not joking. It's full of sexual innuendos and excessive machismo that it feels like it was directed by a man in serious denial about his sexuality. But the movie itself is a huge trainwreck. The best parts being the CGI work and the IMAX shots, which are great but I agree with Quint, the cutting from 35mm to IMAX is too distracting. What sucks? Everything else. Even the action isn't paced well and the robot designs are still shit so you still cant tell what the fuck is going on on the screen.
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Quint : 1
Journalistic Integrity : 0 -
It's like trying to read a copy of Reader's Digest as a novel.
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Got betrayed by Starscream frozen in ice your a few million years switched sides end of story. that was the cartoon canon.
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And how you got Don Murphy banned from a Transformers fansite's message board. Kudos to you, True Professional!
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His general asshattery is what got him kick off the site. As HNS stated he was on a personal crusade against bloggers on there own blogs and Me and several other TB'ers were lambasting him here, when the script leaked or something, then he did a prelim Q & A on Seibertron. c o m. Where he saw fit to badger everyone who asked simple questions like "please explain why we are so glad that Soundwave is not in the move". He got into a pissing match with several Mods and the owner of the website and was promptly dismissed from the site. Then Some of his minions And I had some fun this one actually tried to get me fired. Good times man, good times.
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"...except for Bumblebee who somehow still can’t talk..."
In the Alliance comics, one of the official prequel to the movie, Bumblebee gets his ass kicked by Starscream, damaging his vocal processors again.
Why don't reviewers learn this stuff before they go watch a film? -
Ah oh thanks I forgot the story.
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"Say what you will about Bay, but his action photography has never, ever been his weak point." I take great exception to this lame-brained statement. He has always been the action director who has no idea how to shoot action.
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asshat ... weasel ... shoplifter ...
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It's like the first one, really. I think Mikey Bay is IN on the joke, okay-things exploding, gratuitous overkill in violence, CGI Robots, etc Military rah-rah shit--and so-he delivers what he ALWAYS does here. C'mon-you have Robot Angels, a baddie hide-out on Titan, Megatron making Crank Calls, the Fallen aping Jaack in Bats '89 over-taking the airwaves to threaton everyone, pointless cameos of the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, etc. It was great. You can't tell any of the robots apart-but then it's like whining about keeping the pawns, knights and rooks apart in a chess-game. Backstories on the motorbike twins there or a few more lines for the greysilver one-Sideswipe?-while okay for Fanboy Whank, really wouldn't add much, now would they? Heck the whole opening biz about the family, the gremlin bots, the college shit, the girl w/ the metal tongue and the gay dogs-that was funny, and honestly over-with kinda quickly it seemed to me. This is what you're gonna get if you make a movie series based on Toy Robots that turn into Trucks, cars, planes, and hit each other. Bay is given the keys to Ft Knox to make these, he DOES--and there ya go. This is what you get. It's fun. I liked it more than I ever did Bats II last year, so---there ya go.