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I had virtually no exposure to the old style transformers

Went to the first movie with no real expectations and thought it was totally awesome:

I Liked the human characters - even the pretty whiny hero was ok
Megan Fox
Good action sequences with Robots AND humans kicking ass
great Special Effects
I lked the plot
good comedy - parents esp were great

Watched the second one thinking - cool more of the same and found the film ruined for me by the stupid "comedy robots" - wipe them from it and it might have been pretty good (although not as good as first).

Seen a lot worse though............

Transformers 1 wasn't half bad. It was fun.

II was a piece of crap in a multitude of ways. How It Should Have Ended covers some of the obvious ones (and points out the quipping of old school Former fans who hate the films just because it isn't G1).

I expect 3 to be horrible. If anything, 1 being decent was a fluke. Course I'll still be going to Michael Bay presents Michael Bay's Explosions with Robots.

My point was that Galvatron isn't Megatron I do like when they take him to that planet for psychological evaluation to fix his mind and they end up hooking him up to the planet to try and wipe his mind but his sheer amount of crazy ends up destroying the planet.

I watched G1 and Beast Wars. I liked Movie 1, and 2 barely gets past because of girls and giant robots. I read a review of a preview and they said it was better than 2 at least. Trailer looks good, so here's hoping.

sebster wrote:
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AvatarForm wrote:Why won't she be in the third?

Didn't get along with the director, Michael Bay. He called him a dictator, or something like that.

On the one hand, given Bay's career, the roles of women in his movies, and the lack of women returning to films he's made, it wouldn't surprise me if he was quite sexist and treated his leading women like crap. On the other hand, given Megan Fox's acting performances to date and what I've heard of her in interviews, it wouldn't surprise me if she's very stupid and really needs to be tightly controlled in everything she does.

How about we get this story right, shall we?

In an interview(on national television) Megan Fox compared Michael Bay(Jewish) to Hitler in regards to how he acts while directing.

The producer, a certain man you may have heard of named Steven Spielberg(also Jewish), heard her say this and called Michael Bay right away. His exact words to Mr. Bay: "Fire her right now."

Here's the story if you don't believe me: http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2011/06/20/megan-fox-was-fired-from-transformers-3-for-hitler-jibe-at-director-115875-23213110/

At least you admitted you Hadn't seen transformers before and that 'Michael Bay's Transformers' was your introduction to them. I respect your honesty.

Though i don't particularly dislike transformers, in fact i very much enjoyed both films. I found the dialogue to often be genuinely funny and Shia Labouef to be a likeable everyman lead. (If you don't like him it's because you're Anti semitic btw).

The Robots were okay and again had some good lines but were probably the least interesting aspect of the film imo. I definitely had 'numb balls' after all the CGI transformations/robot (hyper)violence.

Here's another point, so would almost everyone if a fan serving Transformers movie was made. Idiot fans want a movie with 90-100% transformers, you know how boring that would be? You may put forward the case of avatar but that had a far more convincing world than the anime trash background for the 'proper' transformers universe and was still grounded with a human story.

Case closed.

"You Got the Touch" was stuck in my head for like a decade...

I think Michael Bay gets a lot of unnecessary flack for making entertaining, though shallow, action movies. As much as I love the old Transformers, our nostalgia has put them on such a high pedestal that I don't think *anyone* could have possibly satisfied die-hard fanboys. (I hate that word, but I don't know if Transformers fans have a "Trekkie" equivalent.)

At first I wasn't sure how much I liked the new, more organic, design of the 'bots themselves. But even I had to admit that the talking rectangles of the G1 guys might not have looked so good up on the big screen.

Optimus dropping out of the plane and rolling into his truck form is one of my favorite scenes in an action movie to date. And his first transformation sequence must have been an animator's wet dream (or worst nightmare). I don't care how commercial the movies may be, or what the director's motivations were for making them...anyone who can put stuff like that on screen can take my $7.

As for the humans...is it really that hard to understand that an audience is more likely to identify with members of their own species than with 2-story-tall talking robots that can turn into vehicles? Without some human interaction, it may as well be an animation demo-reel...or car commercial...or one long giant toy deathmatch.

bushido wrote:"You Got the Touch" was stuck in my head for like a decade...

I think Michael Bay gets a lot of unnecessary flack for making entertaining, though shallow, action movies. As much as I love the old Transformers, our nostalgia has put them on such a high pedestal that I don't think *anyone* could have possibly satisfied die-hard fanboys. (I hate that word, but I don't know if Transformers fans have a "Trekkie" equivalent.)

At first I wasn't sure how much I liked the new, more organic, design of the 'bots themselves. But even I had to admit that the talking rectangles of the G1 guys might not have looked so good up on the big screen.

Optimus dropping out of the plane and rolling into his truck form is one of my favorite scenes in an action movie to date. And his first transformation sequence must have been an animator's wet dream (or worst nightmare). I don't care how commercial the movies may be, or what the director's motivations were for making them...anyone who can put stuff like that on screen can take my $7.

As for the humans...is it really that hard to understand that an audience is more likely to identify with members of their own species than with 2-story-tall talking robots that can turn into vehicles? Without some human interaction, it may as well be an animation demo-reel...or car commercial...or one long giant toy deathmatch.

There could stand some middle ground though. In neither film at the actual thater could I tell what was what with all the moving parts. Its when I played it on a small TV that I was able to figure it out.

Now there are several scenes in the second movie that I really liked, but overall that movie was so bad that the reviews for the third one have to be on the order of "this movie leaps out and s your " before I'll spend a dime on it.

bushido wrote:"You Got the Touch" was stuck in my head for like a decade...

You don't really know musical joy until you've heard Mark Wahlberg sing a cover of that in Boogie Nights.

^^^
That is pure truth. And my reason why I laugh at people that think he ACTUALLY did the singing in RockStar

Ahtman wrote:
You don't really know musical joy until you've heard Mark Wahlberg sing a cover of that in Boogie Nights.

Gah! They don't make water hot enough!

Platuan4th wrote:How about we get this story right, shall we?

Ah, that's stories changed a bit since I first heard it. Thanks for the update.


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Perkustin wrote:Though i don't particularly dislike transformers, in fact i very much enjoyed both films. I found the dialogue to often be genuinely funny

Okay, but you have to realise you're among a small minority there. Most people found it incredibly stupid.

The Robots were okay and again had some good lines but were probably the least interesting aspect of the film imo.

I thought they worked well in the first film, and were almost non-entities in the second.

I definitely had 'numb balls' after all the CGI transformations/robot (hyper)violence.

I think most of the action scenes were terribly constructed. There is skill in constructing an action scene, that is supposed to explain how the scene is unfolding, and give it a sense of geography and space. Instead we just got close ups of explosions and robots doing random stuff. They were beautifully shot explosions and intricately constructed robots, but they could have been from any action scene within the movie.

Go and watch the bank heist from Heat, or the battle against the Cave Troll in LotR, or the Empire attack on Hoth in TESB. These are great action scenes. Great action movies need great actions scenes. Transformers II had no such scenes, because the director is a great project manager (always get his big budget movies in on-time, on-budget) but a minimally capable director.

Here's another point, so would almost everyone if a fan serving Transformers movie was made. Idiot fans want a movie with 90-100% transformers, you know how boring that would be? You may put forward the case of avatar but that had a far more convincing world than the anime trash background for the 'proper' transformers universe and was still grounded with a human story.

That fanboys make foolish complaints doesn't make Transformers II a good movie.

Case closed.

Not really, no.


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bushido wrote:I think Michael Bay gets a lot of unnecessary flack for making entertaining, though shallow, action movies.

I think he gets exactly as much flak as he deserves for making shallow action movies that are often incredibly poorly constructed horribly bloated.

Die Hard is a shallow action movie. It also has a very slick script and fantastically constructed action scenes.

As much as I love the old Transformers, our nostalgia has put them on such a high pedestal that I don't think *anyone* could have possibly satisfied die-hard fanboys.

I also love the old Transformers. I accepted long before I ever saw the movie that it'd be quite different to the old cartoon.

My problem isn't that it's different, it's that the second movie is incredibly poorly made.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:My point was that Galvatron isn't Megatron

How do you rationalise that?

He is clearly the same, Unicron simply rebuilt his body and re-named his pet.

'Most people found it incredibly stupid' I can think of around 50 odd million people who enjoyed the film, don't make such 'incredibly stupid' generalisations.

You and your buddies aren't 'most people'.

Action is not a means to an end. If HEAT had more than one large scale shoot-out or the story did not lead up to it no-one would even remember that scene. Plus the scene is technically no better than the shoot-out in 2010's similar movie 'the town'.

'that fanboys make complaints doesn't make transformers 2 a good movie'

Neither do Armchair critics who think they know anything about film making.
You are putting words in my mouth, did i say transformers 2 (or indeed 1) was a 'good movie'?........................ .........dotdotdotdotdot........dot...dot..dot
No.
I said i enjoyed them, at points 'tremendously'. I enjoy taking a dump, at points 'tremendously'

EDIT: what i will say, that of the 2009 summer films Transformers 2 was better than the giant turd that was 'Watchmen' (I liked the comic AND 300)

Cheesecat wrote:

STARSCREAM!!!

MY BROTHERS REJOICE!!

Perkustin wrote:'Most people found it incredibly stupid' I can think of around 50 odd million people who enjoyed the film, don't make such 'incredibly stupid' generalisations.

No, you don't know 50 million people that enjoyed the film. You know that around 50 million people went and saw the movie, but that's really not the same thing as enjoying it. In fact, one is merely a condition of the other.

You and your buddies aren't 'most people'.

I'm not thinking of my buddies. If I was to judge the film based on general reaction, then I'd be thinking of the general critical response (20% on rotten tomatoes), and the general internet response, which was strongly negative.

This is not some great secret I'm letting you in to here. In fact, I refuse to believe that you're unaware of the general impression that it was a bad movie. It's fine to differ from the mainstream, admirable even, but it's delusional to pretend the film was popular.

Action is not a means to an end. If HEAT had more than one large scale shoot-out or the story did not lead up to it no-one would even remember that scene. Plus the scene is technically no better than the shoot-out in 2010's similar movie 'the town'.

The Town was a terrific movie, and the climactic shoutout was also very well pieced together. As you're familiar with it, you'd see how we were given a clear understanding of the geography of the fight scene, a feel for the relative locations of the two sides, and then watched the two sides operate in that terrain to achieve whatever each side is trying to achieve. That's what a good action scene has.

Compare that to the final action scene Revenge of the Fallen. When Sam is running around in the generic ruin type things, do you have any idea how close he is to other events in the scene? Where is he running to, and how long will it take him to get there?

Neither do Armchair critics who think they know anything about film making.

I don't know much about film making, happy to admit it. I know enough to pick out very poor movies from good movies, though. And with Transformers II it's not like I'm alone.

You are putting words in my mouth, did i say transformers 2 (or indeed 1) was a 'good movie'?........................ .........dotdotdotdotdot........dot...dot..dot
No.
I said i enjoyed them, at points 'tremendously'. I enjoy taking a dump, at points 'tremendously'

So you recognise they're crap movies, but you like them anyway. That's cool, we've all got guilty pleasures.

EDIT: what i will say, that of the 2009 summer films Transformers 2 was better than the giant turd that was 'Watchmen' (I liked the comic AND 300)

And now suddenly you're acting like you know all about film making. And constructing such powerful arguments as 'giant turd'.

I didn't like Watchmen much either, and think it ultimately proved that adapting the comic was a really bad idea. But I also don't think 'better than another big budget, mediocre movie from the same summer' is a particularly useful criteria. Quality isn't relative to genre, or to other movies released at the same time.

Review of Revenge of the Fallen that plots out clearly and concisely why is sucks

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/bonus_robs_transformers_2_faqs.php?page=1


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 feth. "Math? Math is for pussies. My movies are about gak blowing up, man."

I try to ignore minor mistakes like that and enjoy the film as a whole. As for transformers 2, i enjoyed it, especially the scene with Optimus Prime just kicking ass (comes under the OMG C.G.I! EXPLOSIONS! MICHAEL BAY!, which isn't bad if thats what your looking for).

i disliked revenge of the sith. i mean fallen. because it had very little internal logic and focused far too much on funny or silly moments.

When a 1986 cartoon movie takes things more seriously then you need to have a good look at what you are doing.



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Murray wrote:I try to ignore minor mistakes like that and enjoy the film as a whole. As for transformers 2, i enjoyed it, especially the scene with Optimus Prime just kicking ass (comes under the OMG C.G.I! EXPLOSIONS! MICHAEL BAY!, which isn't bad if thats what your looking for).

optimus kicked so much ass. but when he died (not a spoiler cause he ALWAYS dies!) i was just counting down till he came back.

AvatarForm wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:My point was that Galvatron isn't Megatron

How do you rationalise that?

He is clearly the same, Unicron simply rebuilt his body and re-named his pet.

G1 Megatron: Cold, calculating, doesn't give a crap about anyone else. Always has a plan before he goes into action. Really likes to get betrayed by over-placing faith and then blaming someone else.

Galvatron: Psycho, impulsive, very disorganized. His whole purpose was to be an opposite to Rodimus, who is also tons more impulsive than Optimus was.

I've noted that you didn't watch tons of the pre-movie episodes by your synopsis as well, because Daniel was Spike's son and the show originally had lots of Spike and his friends running around. There was even a kid with glasses in a wheelchair that Ravage attacked one time That moment sits up there for me with when Bumblebee does a running charge and tackles Starscream. Good times.

Bromsy wrote:
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 feth. "Math? Math is for pussies. My movies are about gak blowing up, man."

Easy: Scalpel is hiding inside one of the others(as evidenced by him popping out of a chest when they get down there) on the way down. At no point do we see him return to hiding inside another 'Con before returning to the surface, so the math is actually 5+1-1+1=6. People keep using that as an example without actually counting the number of characters on screen at the time.

The greatest Transformer of all time comes from the ludicrously kid-friendly and incredibly goofy series Transformers: Robots in Disguise


Sky-Byte, the Haiku spouting Predacon shark.

Huge Transformers nerd, rewatching everything right now (So far, through G1, Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Robots in Disguise and about to start on the Unicron trilogy for the first time since they originall aired) and seeing DOTM tomorrow.

Karon wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

STARSCREAM!!!

MY BROTHERS REJOICE!!

Starscream: Megatron? Is that you?

Galvatron: Here's a hint! *BLAM!*

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:

AvatarForm wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:My point was that Galvatron isn't Megatron

How do you rationalise that?

He is clearly the same, Unicron simply rebuilt his body and re-named his pet.

G1 Megatron: Cold, calculating, doesn't give a crap about anyone else. Always has a plan before he goes into action. Really likes to get betrayed by over-placing faith and then blaming someone else.

Galvatron: Psycho, impulsive, very disorganized. His whole purpose was to be an opposite to Rodimus, who is also tons more impulsive than Optimus was.

I've noted that you didn't watch tons of the pre-movie episodes by your synopsis as well, because Daniel was Spike's son and the show originally had lots of Spike and his friends running around. There was even a kid with glasses in a wheelchair that Ravage attacked one time That moment sits up there for me with when Bumblebee does a running charge and tackles Starscream. Good times.

What synopsis? I think you are mistaking someone else for me.

I grew up on G1 (or as those who grew up with it know it as, Transformers). Megatron became Galvatron, your arguement based upon personalities is over-analysing something that is simply a syntax. One was the successor to the other, though essentially the same. The situation and opposition simply made Galvatron into what he became. Or you could simply enjoy the series and put the differences in personality down to the writers pre- and post-The Movie.

My biggest grip with the Michael Bay movies is that they’re essentially unfaithful to the source material. All of the different incarnations of Transformers have always followed a similar pattern as far as character design and plot was concerned. It basically ensured that the outcome was Transformers product that anyone could enjoy, regardless if you preferred Megatron as a gun, tank or jet. Villains were likeable and calculating, heroes had three dimensional character traits.

To put it simply why the Michael Bay movies were bad, in both character design and plot, they didn’t feel like Transformers movies (both movies felt more like a generic Hollywood alien invasion movies where the American military saves the day). I’d say they only Transformers movies in the loosest sense in that it had Autobots, Decepticons and Peter Cullen. Inadequate dialogue, character depth and screen time for non human was probably the biggest failing for the movies IMO.

Realistically, the hard core fans will probably always something to complain, regardless of how good/bad the movies are/could have been however given the fan complaints have generally covered broad categories rather than small specifics (such as Hugo Weaving voicing Megatron instead of Frank Welker), it is a big sign of how much Michael Bay really dropped the ball on this one.

Cheesecat wrote:
Starscream: Megatron? Is that you?

Galvatron: Here's a hint! *BLAM!*

Exactly!

how can they be didfferent? Galvatron is Megatron 2.0... tah dah!

If Rodimus is the same as Hot Rod, then Megatron is the same as Galvatron. Lord help us all :(

I enjoyed Transformers quite a lot, when I was little. It was a show about fighting robots. It was neat.

That's all it was.

Transformers 2 is a bad, bad film. It played like an out of breath eight year old trying to tell you a story about his toys, and how awesome they were. It relied on visual spectacle from shot to shot, rather than coherent visual transition and storytelling. The bloody thing gave me a headache. I'm not denying that anyone enjoyed the film, but it was a poorly made work, and should not be called 'good.' To claim that no film can be considered objectively better than another is an insult to the medium.

Am I the only one that didnt care for Hotrod/Rodimus?

KingCracker wrote:Am I the only one that didnt care for Hotrod/Rodimus?

You mean the Bot that nearly half the fandom blames for Optimus' death?

No, I'm pretty sure you're not the only person that doesn't care for him.

I kinda like the Rod and more attribute Optimus' death to his Messiah Complex. The guy LOVES to die(he had himself blown up over killing virtual humans in a video game death match one time).