TRANSFORMERS! Robots in disguise!

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Summary: it was fairly entertaining, but too long and boring in some parts.

Detailed breakdown on why it sucked (spoilers, spoilers)

Spoiler

Let's be frank: people want to see this movie because they want to see GIANT ROBOTS. This movie, much like its predecessor, focused too much on human characters. We don't care about human characters - we want GIANT ROBOTS! Most of the human characters were completely unnecessary anyway - only Sam and Mikaela really needed to be there. The Roommate was entirely useless, except to contact the Sector Seven guy, whose role should have been restricted to the infodump scene. Even the Captain Dude was basically unnecessary. In fact, I didn't care about any of the military stuff. Yes, planes, tanks and rail guns are cool, but if they're not also GIANT ROBOTS they had no business in the movie.

Granted, most of the scenes that did have GIANT ROBOTS were pretty cool. Jetfire ripping up the leopard, Bumblebee beating up Decepticons, and anything involving Optimus Prime comes to mind.

But here's another problem: crappy action scenes. I couldn't tell who was who, or who was fighting who, or who was on what side, or, indeed, any of the details of the transformations (which I think is the main selling point). More slow motion would definitely have helped. We barely got an introduction to any of the robots - I only recognized Starscream, Megatron, Optimus, Bumblebee, the Ice Cream Truck Brothers, and Ironhide. Which is a shame, because they all had really cool designs - I loved the cement truck with the Decepticon logo, or the car with the little statue of a Decepticon-dog. I would have loved to get to know them, except I had no idea who they were or what they did.

Here's another thing: the story. The story sucked, as did the pacing. The second half was basically a long, long journey to get the Matrix key to save Optimus. Cue confusing battles, slow-motion running scenes, and humans nobody cares about. In the end, Sam saves Optimus - great. Optimus comes back, and defeats the Fallen in, what, five minutes? What the hell?

And the movie's humour sucked. Sam's mum taking weed? Unnecessary and pointless. Dog humping other dog? Totally fresh and original! It seems like the humour was aimed too much at teenager-types, who would presumably enjoy this stuff (and now I sound old).

tl;dr: not enough giant robots, giant robots scenes were largely confusing, and nobody gave a crap about the human characters.

Thoughts?

 

I haven't seen the new one but will. I can't understand how they can have too little GIANT ROBOTS in a film that is about GIANT ROBOTS. I actually thought they had a decent balance of them in the first film, sure more couldn't hurt. I would actually honestly be happy if half the movie was scenes where decepticons went amok and the rest was footage of cows grazing.

 

I thought the decepticons looked too much like each other. But, Megan Fox in slow motion and the butt shot of the Home & Away girl is worth $15!!!

 

haven't seen it yet either but will do so soon. i heard it was pretty shi+ though.

 

I thought it was bad. Not terrible, as explosions and GIANT ROBOTS are always fun, but it was just... bad overall. Like DM said, the only necessary human beings were Sam and Mikaela (and I could NOT stand the roommate... he was incredibly annoying).

And the voiceovers were cheesy, stupid, and pointless. Maybe I just hate Optimus Prime's voice.

 

Deathmage's review is pretty much spot on. People want to see the robot but you could hardly ever tell which was which.

The coolest part that he didn't mention was when the Constructicons merged to form Devastator. That was a good nostalgia moment, but it was soon forgotten when Devastator did nothing more than eat some of the scenery.

 

I thought it was much better than the first one, but I thought the first one was terrible - so I'm not sure if I'm giving the movie a good review or not.

I was definitely entertained for 2.5 hours, so I give the film good marks for that. I liked that Starscream and Megatron had much bigger roles this time, and the fights and action were much more intersting, IMO. I went in expecting a popcorn-muncher, and I definitely got it.

The "twins," I will say, were totally unnecessary. They were kind of the like Jar-Jar Binks of Transformers: well-intentioned, but ultimately unfunny, pointless and annoying comic relief that the movie would have been better without.

One thing I absolutely HATED, though: the toilet humor. I love toilet humor as much as the next guy, but it was done in such an unnecessary and cheap-laughs kind of way. At the end of the day, this is a kid's movie. Good robots saying the P word, and Sam's mom eating Marijuana brownies, saying "sh*t" a dozen times and talking about her being in the house when Sam got his "cherry popped," and a little robot humping Megan Fox's leg, and a close-up and specific mention of Devastator's "scrotum"...come on. You don't have to go so low brow to make an entertaining movie. And if you must scrape the toilet for a laugh, at least make it funny, make it add something to the movie. None of these jokes did.

I'd give it a 3 out 5, I guess.

 

Racist, sexist, homophobic, insultingly stupid, and pretty entertaining. Would only have been better if Bay had added a running tally of civilian fatalities to the corner of the screen. Best review: Michael Bay finally made an art movie

 

Teenage Snook and I saw the IMAX version today and we both enjoyed it thoroughly.

 

Have to agree that the imax version was amazing.
The story was jumbled & a fair bit weak however overall it was very entertaining.
I have to agree that the language was a bit over the top & the twins were irritating but the kids in the theater seemed to love them. I also thought that the Fallen went down way to easily at the end.

It made a crapload of moolah though(why do critics even bother?).

Bay also states that the third film will be out in 2012 not 2011.

 

I agree completely.

I slightly disagree about the humor though - most of the toilet-humor was stupid (like all the dog/robot humping), some of it was amusing (the scrotum joke was good, IMO). And I completely disagree about it being a kid's movie - everyone who played with Transformers or watched the show is now in there 20's at least, so saying sh*t, etc was not unnecessary. It had less swearing than most action films anyways.

 

I found it to be a terribly rubbish movie. His mom and the twins did absolutely nothing to add to the movie. Having him go to college was completely unnecessary as well, considering how little effect it had on the story. It was predictable, at least when it followed through with a possible plot end (was there any reason for Shia to read so fast, and scribble all those symbols? really could have been done better... but of course, I'm not a writer/director)... Ugh.

HUGE ROBOTS were the highlight, but you cannot have a movie last 2.5 hours with this much of a disjointed plot and characters that (for me, not sure about anyone else) I did not care about at all. Movies that are that long need to have at least some emotional appeal to me and it didn't do it.

I guess I'm not man enough to sit through 2+ hours of (semi-) predictable and really unclear videos of robots fighting other robots... I think.

 

Well...you can argue that saying sh*t a bunch of times wasn't inappropriate, since there were also adults in the audience. But cursing (unless you're going for gritty, true-life stuff) is never necessary. In this context in particular, it felt completely out of place and trying too hard. A product of a crappy, ham-handed "treat the audience like they're stupid" writing style that has come to identify all Michael Bay films as much as the over-the-top action and way-too-hot-to-believe female extras do.

But that's the Michael Bay© brand - thought-free, plotless, popcorn-munchin' eye candy.

 

Haha that pissed me off too - literally every girl at that college was smokin' hot... I wish they would come to my college. Then it might be worth going back to

 

This isn't true. Transformers arrived on the scene 25 years ago with Generation One (Optimus Prime and friends). But there's been many different cartoon series, comic books, and toy lines since then. In fact, when I first looked at the title of this thread, I thought it was referring to the toy line "Robots in Disguise" (yes, I did find if wierd somebody wanted to talk about a toy line almost a decade old until I read the first post). There's a Transformers cartoon currently on Cartoon Network called "Transformers Animated". I don't watch Cartoon Network. I can only assume that children watch it. Transformers is as relevent in children's lives now as it was when it first debuted in 1984.

 

Haha, everything about that college had me and my friends saying... "not like real college" or "not wazzu." stuff to that effect.

 

The more I think about it, the more rubbish that film was.

 

Best not-review: Transformers 2 FAQ. Spoilerific. Which really, really, really shouldn't matter for this film.

 

In 1984, Transformers was on network TV and no one had cable. Rest assured that it was a hell of a lot bigger and more influential with kids (at least to scale) in 1984. Nowadays, Hannah Montana is more recognizable to kids than Optimus Prime.

 

I really liked the movie. Not particularly epic but it was still great. I agree that it would have been nicer if it had a better arc though, or if it went as deep into the transformers themselves as the humans... I was barely able to recognize or distinguish who from who, what with the underdeveloped personalities and all.
Starscream stood out a bit, which was nice, but I'd expected a bit more.

But honestly. They've done Transformers 1 & 2 now? We want Dinosaucers!