Movie Defense Force: Transformers

[kailus13]

Shia Lebeouf is that bad though. He's completely unlikeable in this movie, which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't decide to make him more important than the titular characters.

 

[redknightalex]

Sorry Jim, this is one movie you will probably never get me to watch again and your defense was as bad as the movie was. There was no plot, there were offensive jokes, and all the teenage angst and "coming of age" storyline was wrapped up in tropes so big you couldn't even see the movie anymore. This was the only movie were I thought "I want my two hours back." Only time.

I enjoy the mindless action movie like everyone else (hell, I watch Resident Evil films because of that) but this one...sorry, can't get behind you. Maybe if your points were better than "it did what Michael Bay does" I could have bought it.

 

[SwimmingRock]

When Jim defends movies I've never seen, but heard about, I'm willing to give those a shot. Lord knows I tracked down a copy of Showgirls because of his video on it.

This one, unfortunately, is a lost cause for me. I went to see it in the cinema with friends and walked out about 30 minutes in, because I was bored out of my fucking mind. I didn't care about the money I'd spent or the group of friends I was leaving behind (they all stayed through the end and I went home) enough to sit through this. Not a chance in hell I'm looking it up for another try.

 

[Malisteen]

Bayformers 1 wasn't awful. It was pretty bad, but it wasn't awful. Bayformers 2, that's another thing entirely. It's beyond terrible and completely indefensible, the very worst sort of racist, sexist, incoherent dreck. It is to other Michael Bay movies what they are to legit good movies.

 

[Olas]

Up to about halfway into the movie I didn't mind the first Transformers too much. The intro stuff with Laboef, Bumblebee, and his family is all pretty decent job giving us some weird lighthearted comedy mixed in with action scenes from the military guys. It's when the other Transformers appeared and started talking, especially the black stereotype robot, that it completely lost me.

Keep in mind I have no attachment or even knowledge of the original cartoon.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I never really cared about Transformers and i hated the movie (not as much as the sequel though...). I mostly hate it because it´s boring and feels extremely long, the action scenes are confusing and kinda rubbish and the rest is just bland. I might have been kinder to the movie if it ended after 1½ instead of 5+ hours. The worst though, is that i suspect that the movie started a lot of very negative trends that still, to this day, are ruining promising Summer Blockbusters. But there are plenty of action movies out there that are worse than the first Transformers, just take something like Battle: Los Angels for instance... And it would also be very easy to find something that were infinitely worse than Transformers, but i still think it´s a very very boring movie.

I don´t know when blockbuster directors lost their ability to make movies, but somewhere along the lines everyone seemed to forget how to film and edit an action scene in a way so you actually knew what was going on.

 

[theultimateend]

I personally liked the first transformers film, so this episode makes sense.
Now if you defend the next two.....I'll be shocked.

My problem with the first movie besides it being a thinly veiled military masturbatory exercise (aka. Bay Films) was that they zoom the camera so close in during the robot parts that you can rarely make out more than whirling bits of metal.

Just pull it back a bit.

I'm guessing he had budget constraints and they masked bad work with choppy camera angles.

But you couldn't tell what the god damn robots looked like, nor could you make out really wat was going on in the fight scenes.

Strapping a tiny camera on the head of a ferret and feeding it crack before letting it loose around the scene is no way to shoot a movie.

Ah! Good someone else said it.

It was the main comment of everyone I saw it with and everyone who talked about it after.

"Do you know what happened?" "No. Do you?" "No."

Followed by...

"Did the 'black' robot seem a little bit racist to you?"
"Yeah and he's the only one that dies too."
"...in a fairly horrific way as well."

Jesus and I thought you reached a pathetic and desperate level when you did Phantom Menace, now I'm starting to think your nothing but an attention whore.

I think the point of MDF is that everyone is too hyperbolic and should just relax.

 

[Crazy Cali]

I don't understand why Bob defends 2012 for being stupid fun but not Transformers (1 not 2)

 

[sir neillios]

Didn't think this needed defending much, thought it was pretty okay when I saw it. The best of the three by a mile, well, better than the third by a mile for not being pants on head retarded with the ending, and better than the second by... a lot more than a mile.

 

[Comic Sans]

I had very little experience with the cartoon, and STILL loathed this film. I went and saw it at the local midnight showing with a few friends, and walked out feeling like I had wasted my time and money. I honestly had pretty low expectations going in. I just wanted a big dumb movie with robots fighting each other. It failed to even reach that level. Instead, I got a movie about Shia Lebouf trying to shag Megan Fox while driving around in Herbie. The Transformers were barely in the damn movie, and when they did show up for fights it was often in the background of a shaky cam shot rolling around shooting at random stuff. Oh, and cheap humor. The movie was dragged down by tons on unnecessary characters who served as nothing but comic relief, adding nothing to the plot. The parents were dumb, the hackers were dumb, and even the Transformers seemed mostly there for humor until the final action scene. The overdone humor was even worse given how juvenile it was.

The biggest problem is that the movie can't decide what it wants to be. It has super serious military wank, dumb slapstick and sexual humor, and giants robots in dumb action. It's all so conflicted. It never settles on a tone. It all just clashes horribly, and ruins the pacing. The movie feels quite long, with the cool bits being strung apart by tons of stupid filler comedy. With the movie trying to do so much, all the aspects suffer. The action is limited by trying to crowbar in so much bad comedy, the serious military tone is undermined by the inherent corniness of giant robots stomping around, and the comedy tries to appeal to everyone with slapstick humor for kids and crude humor for young adults, so the humor lacks focus, and is shoved in where it doesn't belong. Combine this with a bad plot, and to me the movie is just nonredeemable.

Stuff you said

Yeah, the plot is basically a nonfactor and stream of events. This is no more apparent than the setup for the final action scene. The autobots wanted the glasses so they could find Megatron, and the location was etched on them. This ends up being moot as it turns out the government had Megatron, making the entire thrust of the plot and Sam's character importance meaningless. However, despite the glasses saying Megatron wasn't even on this continent, and not knowing he was found here, the robots are STILL meeting the heroes in the desert. WHAT. WHY. WHY ARE THEY DRIVING IN THE DESERT WHEN THEY HAVE NO REASON TO KNOW MEGATRON WAS THERE. THEY HAD NO REASON TO BE THERE TO RUN INTO THE MILITARY GUYS. It's like the entire plot forgot itself because it needed a final action scene in a city. And then after the scene where there is millions of damage to city property with giant robots openly running around, we're supposed to believe that the government covered it up. I felt INSULTED at the end of the movie.

 

[Lunar Templar]

eh ... I don't care about the bayformers movies anymore, used to care they sucked, and they do, but eh, they just aren't worth the effort to actively hate, not when I can just not go see them or buy any of the crap that comes with it.

 

[Buizel91]

*Sigh*
The first film and DOTM are, for me (being a transformer fan), great ROTF is crap, but the action scenes are some of the best. It's just another TF continutiy, not the best mind you, but i would take this over the godly amount of animation errors in G1 any day!

Personally i can't wait for TF4...Hound is confirmed!...MOTHERFUKING HOUND!

Hound is the big army vehicle, Bumblebee is the black camero (more representing his Prime Beast Hunters self) and apparently the other 2 cars are Blurr (The blue Buggati), and Drift, Prime is obvious...

 

[Manthraxx]

I liked the first movie.... cue the torches and pitch forks

 

[Buizel91]

I liked the first movie.... cue the torches and pitch forks

Same here! Tis the only film in the trilogy where Megatron is actually threatening, in the 3rd he was awful, and the second one he was lead by the fallen...Bay broke the only rule in Transformers...NO ONE COMMANDS MEGATRON...Apart from unicron...

Dont get me wrong, all 3 films have there merits (the 1st and 3rd more so over 2nd...) but the first is the best.

 

[Henkie36]

The reason I don't agree with this is actually stated: the thing Bay does best is showing us the most effective ways of ridding this planet of our fellow man. And since so much of this movie consists of retarded angsty teenage drama, i can't count it as a success. Add to that Megan Fox' awful preformance and the fact that just out of frame building-sized robots are beating the shit out of eachother so the disaster is complete. If this was called ''Douchebag Peter Parker and I-totally-didn't-get-this-role-just-because-I-have-nice-tits Megan Fox with some Transformers in the background'' (not very catchy nor would it have made 700 million) I woldn't have this problem. But it's called Transformers and for that title, there is a shockingly low amount of actual transforming going on.

 

[attackshark]

does nobody care about what happened to barricade?

the action is fun. now if bay could just HOLD THE FUCKING CAMERA STEADY FOR ONCE IN HIS GODDAMNED FUCKING CAREER, i'd be a happy camper.

 

[sammysoso]

I think the awful sequels have ruined this one's reputation quite a bit.

I really enjoyed it, it's a big dumb action movie of the highest order, and I didn't feel like I wasted my money and time in the theater.

 

[anthony87]

My problem with the Bayformers movies is the really stupid stuff that drags you completely out of the moment. Bumblebee pissing on a dude? That bit with the testicles? Frenzy humping Megan Fox's leg like a dog? Those fucking twins in the second film? Jetfire having a cane for....reasons? A big collection of little things that just sour the overall films for me.

Aside from all that stupid shite I quite enjoyed the transformers themselves beating the shit out of each other.