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The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Chillreaper wrote:

I'm assuming that it will involve the humans finding the Maguffin that stops him.

Never! What writer worth his salt would use such a plot device! Everyone knows the way to destroy Unicron is either a) expend the matrix dooming your race inside him, or b) have scorpinok attack his feet.

Well... On the plus side they seem to have an endless wave of scorpinok (as in the original live action movie version) available on that battlefield.

Went to see it.

Probably my favourite of the live actions. The Bumblebee movie was pretty good, but... Bumblebee.

I've never been into the whole "Bumblebee can't speak" thing and I'm still bitter after 40 years that he supplanted Hound as the human-Autobot relations bot.

I'd watch Transformers 40000.

I went in hearing that this movie was really good and I absolutely agree. I'm not a GeeWuner and have never actually watched more than just clips of Beast Wars but this movie did both series proud.
Prime was far better this time round with his anger played off as a result of his loss which he later starts to come to terms with. Mirage was a fun likeable character and he actually had his ability from G1 unlike so many of the Transformers we've seen in movies so far. Scourge felt like a threat even if he was a throwaway villain and his cronies were brilliant as well.
The soundtrack was brilliant and clearly a love letter to both the 1986 score by Vince DiCola and the 2007 score by Steve Jablonsky. Hearing snippets of the original Unicron theme in this movie's version was awesome and the 2007 Autobot theme brought a huge grin to my face.

I’m over the voiceless Bumblebee thing, it’s just kind of old at this point. I did like the drive in line though. But yeah, glad Mirage took their spot as the main one in this so we get actual dialogue between them and the human.

Maximale are kind of weird in that they virtually never transform. Just kind of hang out in beast form all the time while the autobots are in robot form. Makes an odd dichotomy.

Loved the bit with the business card. I did Not see that one coming.

The Maximals needed to be visually distinct and keeping them in beast mode does that. It can also be interpreted as a call back to Beast Wars where the Maximals and Predacons had to remain in beast mode due to the huge amounts of raw energon present on the planet.

Yeah I can accept them remaining in beast form, esp because the Bay style transformations would have them looking very similar in humanoid form.

Whilst I honestly hate reboots of film series (an oft complaint I have with marvel/dc) I'd honestly love if they took what they are starting with this film (ergo actual evidence that they've been exposed to transformers material) and did a massive reboot of the series with more of a focus on Transformers.

Btw, did I miss the names of Scourge’s two henchbots? I’d be curious to compare them to their originals.

Battletrap and Nightbird.
Battletrap isn't that similar to the G1 original but Nightbird is a good reimagining of the character that still stays close to the original in some ways.

 Gert wrote:
The soundtrack was brilliant and clearly a love letter to both the 1986 score by Vince DiCola and the 2007 score by Steve Jablonsky. Hearing snippets of the original Unicron theme in this movie's version was awesome and the 2007 Autobot theme brought a huge grin to my face.

That's good to hear, I didn't get that impression from the trailer.

This whole film series lost me even BEFORE I saw an undead robot knight- that was just the nail in the coffin. They keep ret-conning it and making less and less sense.
Which is it this week?
A) Earth needs to be protected because it's where the all-spark is
B) Earth was going to be changed into Cybertron
C) Earth was going to be changed into Transformium
D) Earth is Omicron

See that's one of my fundamental problems with the whole series of films. In every one everything is so human-centric.

Recall the one with Devastator where they not only gave him swinging "balls" but also decided that every single major invention/machine in human history right down to the first car and before that was - a hiding transformer.

It just made zero sense - yeah Lockheed YF-12 is a transformer; the first car; this that etc... Things that teams of people spent years tinkering and building just became transformers overnight...

I will note that this one isn’t part of the Bay series of films, it’s a sequel to the Bumblebee one.

Its a bit cursed because Bumblebee went from a prequel to a soft reboot of the movie universe.
Its why Bumblebee is still the old Camaro but everything else is different. The opening sequence to Bumblebee was awesome though. Classic G1 aesthetic mixed with Bayverse CGI and it looked brilliant. Cybertron looked a lot like it does in the War/Fall of Cybertron video games.

 Overread wrote:
See that's one of my fundamental problems with the whole series of films. In every one everything is so human-centric.

Preach! Humans could essentially be scenery and I wouldn't care, I'm here for the robots.

I am dissapointed that they seem unlikely to finish the Bayverse story line.

"Storyline" is a generous term for whatever the heck was going on with that series past the second film.

My friends and I liked Bumblebee precisely because it paired down the story and proved you could have the humans engage with it without being a drag.

All's the more the shame that this movie is so bad.

In the broadest of the broad strokes you can break a movie down into its story and its execution of that story. This movie fails at the latter so hard it hurts.

Nothing happens in this movie.

Plenty of things happen over the course of this movie, but they never happen in the movie.

Instead, someone will say something will happen, it will start to happen, and then we'll see the aftermath of it happening.

I sound crazy even as I write this. I feel like this movie gave me ADD

Example:


The movie is just full of these moments. It's really bizarre.

It wouldn't be so bad if this slap dash storytelling was in service of a good story, but on that front this is just Revenge of the Fallen, with the Beast Wars cast in a small speaking role.



All in all, this is a half baked movie with a script made from a grab-bag of ideas they couldn't bother to fit in the aborted Bayformers movie series with the Beast Wars characters tacked on in a cynical effort to rope in fans of that series (which as a Beasties fanboy from back in the day, I find especially galling).