Movie Defense Force: Transformers

[Buizel91]

I can't get angry at the movie for being different than the cartoon, because I am an ACTUAL transformers fan, rather than someone who just wants a 2hr long cartoon.

I grew up with it in the 80s. I watched it as faithfully as anyone.
I watched the movie during its original theatrical run as a ten-year old boy, watching my favorites get destroyed and killed just to divorce the line from its Diaclone roots and sell new toys[/b]. You think Bayformers can kill your childhood? I watched Optimus Prime die AFTER watching Megatron, Starscream, and the Constructicons murder Prowl, Ratchet, Brawn, and Ironhide in terribly horrific [and awesome] fashion.

I watched Beast Wars, and then later, Beast Machines, with the alterations to the continuity simply to tie it all together.

I watched the Japanese-made RID, Armada, Energon, Cybertron... and then the American produced Animated.

I've seen Transformers in multiple configurations, good AND bad. Sometimes REALLY bad. HORRIBLY bad.

I will say this, with absolute authority and conviction.

If you think the Transformers movies are the worst thing in the franchise, then you have absolutely no knowledge of the franchise and your opinion is not informed enough to make this determination.

I mean... KISS Players. Come on.

Marry me? Please?

Glad to see someone else shares my views!

 

[Arppis]

Transformers 1 wasn't a bad movie imo. It was fun and interesting enough to watch.

 

[PunkRex]

I'm with you on this one Jim, this film wasn't really the original Transformers but it was still pretty good, even if most of the human characters were just boring stereotypes who had way to much screen time. Before anyone says 'so were the robots', they downloaded their means of interaction from the internet, things were gonna get silly derp!

Also, it was nice to see Starscream not be a pussy for once, he was a badass in the first film.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I never really though the first transformers was that bad, but that it was the high point in the series (which is never really a good thing when its he first movie and its only really meh at best). BUt then again, I feel the same way about the first twilight (not necessarily bad and if not for the book series it would be alright movie and definitely the high point of its series) so that from that what you will i suppose.

 

[bandit0802]

Thank you, Jim! This is what I've been telling people for years!

I wouldn't bother with Revenge of the Fallen; there's no hope for that one.

Please do Dark of the Moon, though.

 

[scott91575]

Sorry Jim, I mostly disagree with you on this one. Sure, no one can hate Bay for being Bay. As South Park put it (in slightly different words) the fact he gets to keep making movies is simply proof god does not exist. Yet this movie is a steaming pile of crap. The robots do look bad, and don't fit anything. They are just a complete mess. Shia LeBouf does suck. The story is awful, and yes, I have watched this movie and even went in with an open mind. I did grow up on the Transformers, but I don't hate something based on not meeting nostalgia. If that was the case I would not have liked Burton's Batman or Nolan's Batman.

This movie has one thing, big explosions with big, messy, mostly indistinguishable robots fighting in it. If you like that, then ok, that's it's defense. Yet I don't agree with your other defenses for this movie.

 

[WindKnight]

Honestly, the first transformers wasn't that bad, and I'd hands on heart honestly say i enjoyed it.

Revenge of th fallen on the other hand....

lets just say I literally face-palmed at one point in the cinema.

 

[Winnosh]

It's cartoon to sell toys, what is there to ruin? I liked all three movies but Revenge was weird. Probably because they had to film off on the very first draft.

You see that's the thing Transformers was always more than that. Yes Takara Tomy wanted to sell toys To do that they got Jim Shooter and Denis O Neil LEGENDS in the comics industry and heads of Marvel to create the characters and a comic book based around them. There are some amazing stories told with the characters throughout the years.

The cartoons are great but the comics will always be my first love in Transformers... Don't get me started on how I hated that the cartoon made the Dinobots stupid...

 

[V TheSystem V]

Saw this at the time when Shia LaBoeuf was in everything, taking a risk and buying it on DVD without having seen it before. I really enjoyed it the first couple of times, but after the travesty which was Revenge of the Fallen, it just bored me a bit. Wanna see what Bay does for this sequel/reboot he's got going on with Marky Mark. Not got high hopes for it after Dark of the Moon was good-but-not-great, but we'll just have to see.

 

[Ashley Blalock]

There was an episode of I Love Lucy entitled "Lucy Writes a Novel." In an effort to become famous like Ricky, she manages to write a full novel and tries to shop it around to various publishers. Much to everyone's surprise, a publisher actually replies back and wants to set up a meeting with her and an author of a new text book about writing fiction. Which is an even greater shock. Lucy is obviously excited, and so is the author. Because he wants to feature her novel in a chapter titled "How NOT to Write."

I grew up in Hollywood and was a film student for a time. Bay is never held aloft as any soft of visionary nor artist. He is the Lucy of film making. He is used by every film instructor (well, the ones I've met) as an example of how NOT to make films. Some of you might wonder then, how is it that he is still a film maker. It's really for two reasons. His films are basically like a porn shoot and he is probably the only director that consistently completes his films under time and under budget.

Oh, and a third reason: because people are fully willing to pay to see a monkey fling shit on to a film reel.

Bay's films are text book examples of terrible film making. And audiences are apparently fine with that. However, being good at being shitty is not a pass or an excuse.

There is also the marketing factor to work in since Bay seems to really understand that concept of modern film making. Really don't want to dig up the source, but when asked why The Island wasn't a big box office success Bay blamed the marketing team. Bay seems to grasp that the quality of the film isn't as important as the quality of the marketing for the movie.

Take some good trailers, run the heck out of the trailers and TV ads, work the entertainment news to build buzz, and get one of the biggest release dates for action films in the US then it's hard not to make money.

 

[Yuuki]

I don't usually use Rottentomatoes but it's general ratings and summary accurately reflects my feelings towards the Transformers movies.

Well shoot me, but I liked the first one. The movie caught me by surprise, blew me off my feet. Everything from the smooth introduction of the individual transformers to seamless blending-in with human characters was great. Since I had never seen anything on this level of CGI, my mind was almost raped by the sheer detail of the transforming sequences and battles. The plot was at least COHERENT and the characters were at least SOMEWHAT believable. It was something easy to follow and easy to enjoy, something which blew our minds not with plot or characters, but with the raw power of CGI expressed as an art form with a simple plot & characters to drive it.

But after the first one....this happened...

I almost walked out of the cinema halfway through this fucking loud and incoherent mess of a movie. This wasn't what I was expecting. I couldn't take it anymore. During the last 30-45 minutes the sheer noise and explosions had gone on for so long that I just sat there with my hands over my ears. I'm a bit sensitive to extremely loud sounds (however the first movie was more than fine), but I fucking SWEAR the amount of decibels pumping during the action scenes was increased by at least 20-30db compared to the first.

Everything from the "ghetto bots" to the sheer drivel the humor attempts had been lowered-down to...I mean I get low-brow jokes but Sam's mom eating weed cookies? Dogs/robots constantly humping legs? Giant robot monster with a dangling scrotum? All the while Megatron flies around trying to sound genuinely seriously evil? Please fucking STOP. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, I could keep on listing everything else that pissed me off (like all the slow-mo scenes of Megan).

It was unbearably loud, unbearably incoherent, unbearably frantic, unbearably messy and from that point I swore to never watch a Michael Bay movie in cinema ever again. I'm not the only one who is completely and utterly enraged by the 2nd movie, many Youtube user reviews said the same thing. It was just awful. Not exactly Last Airbender awful, that kind of awful has a special place in hell, but still definitely in my top 5 worst movies of all time.

Finally, the last one...

Obviously I didn't watch this one in cinema and simply borrowed a friend's DVD, Michael Bay movies are no longer worth my money. The reason this received better reviews is because the only people walking into the cinema after experiencing the 2nd movie would be either very small children/teens, blinded fucking fans and/or people who's expectations were almost as low as the ground itself. And at least it did-away with the horrific humor attempts and we got to see more robot fights instead of Sam dicking around. For me it was a resounding "meh" since I no longer gave a fuck about ANY of the characters in the end, not even Megan Fox's replacement, not about anything.

 

[Yuuki]

edit: very strange, double post...

 

[Chaos Marine]

I watched the first movie and am a huge fan of the original series. Why I absolutely HATE the Bay reboot movies is that they focus too much time on the humans. Fuck them, I want to see the actual Transformers.

 

[minimacker]

I can't look past the incredibly racist transformer, the over-the-top gremlin thing (That only gets as far as he does because the humans are complete fucking dolts) and the toilet humour. During the big battle, all the robots kind of blended together and I couldn't tell who the hell was what except for bright yellow Bumblebee and red-blue Optimus.

The bad stuff really tips the scale because it's *so bad*. It's the kind of bad stuff that makes you groan in theaters completely instinctively. The kind of stuff that makes you facepalm or talk at the screen. Endless Vlog material.

You might notice I'm not talking about the humans everyone complains about. That's because I... can't really remember anything. They're so forgettable I can't remember one scene. Maybe one, but I think that was from the sequel.

 

[Deacon Cole]

I'd like to see Jim defend Exorcist II: the Heretic. Tricky, but I think it can be done.

 

[Pebkio]

I have to disagree... mostly because I thought the big battle scenes were too shaky and the robots fit together like intimate legos that it was often too hard to see the details of what the hell was happening in any given combat scene. It even got to the point of being head-ache inducing WITHOUT being in 3D.

 

[Dfskelleton]

I feel the same way a lot of other people feel; I dig excessive, overly rendered robots beating each other up and everything exploding. That's all great and fun to watch, and that's what Bay is actually good at.
What he's not good at, however, is making teenage romantic comedies, which comprises about half of the whole movie. That's the part I really didn't like. Bay's good for over the top action and fun, but when he tries to do something with more of a plot, he falls flat.

 

[DracoSuave]

You see that's the thing Transformers was always more than that. Yes Takara Tomy wanted to sell toys To do that they got Jim Shooter and Denis O Neil LEGENDS in the comics industry and heads of Marvel to create the characters and a comic book based around them. There are some amazing stories told with the characters throughout the years.

The cartoons are great but the comics will always be my first love in Transformers... Don't get me started on how I hated that the cartoon made the Dinobots stupid...

Takara [wasn't merged with Tomy back then] had nothing to do with the American transformers series--they'd been selling Diaclone and Microman toys for almost a decade before the first of Transformers aired. Micromans were the mini-autobots that didn't scale with everything else, Diaclones were everything else.

HASBRO decided to import the toys and molds and release some of the designs as a unified line called Transformers, with a cartoon and comic to market the toys with. The toys that had car and truck forms became the Autobots, and everything else became a decepticon.

It didn't take long to get popular, so Hasbro then made a deal to bring in the Scramble City lineup of toys, as well as more of the Microman selection and more Diaclones.

Eventually, however, they ran out of Micromans and Diaclones that they thought would sell, so new transformers engineering started happening at both Hasbro and Takara for this toyline, by now marketted as its own thing in both companies. This caused a different aesthetic, which required the removal of many Diaclone toys to prevent clashing--the new toys had no cockpits and were based on futuristic vehicles and fantastic things rather than being recognisable earth vehicles and objects. Thus the movie happened and killed everyone's childhood forever by murdering Optimus Prime.


And then they brought him back because people got angry.

And that is why Duke survived in the GI Joe movie no one watched.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

It's not that it's a bad transformers film it's just that it's a bad film period! I'm pretty sure any decent director could make a good transformers movie but they gave it to Michael Bay instead.

 

[Tumedus]

The major premise of this defense is that the movie has good action. But it doesn't.

The action is so horribly shot. The transformers are hard to tell apart in robot mode, and the bulk of the action is shot in fast cut shaky cam with long stills close ups of humans reacting to visual nonsense elsewhere. I could go on about how offensive it is, how not funny it is, how bad the actors are, etc. but why bother. The one thing it had going for it, the one thing you try to use as its defense, it did horribly.