Transformers: The Movie (my review – there will be spoilers)
Upon the announcement of this movie 3 years ago I was hoping to see something with the girth of say Jurrasic Park, E.T. or Star Wars. When I first saw JP in ‘93 I was astounded by the effects which made me think, wow. The technology is there to actually make a Transformers movie one day. That’s why I work in CG today. I always thought Transformers could and should be an epic tale. Something even bigger than Star Wars since the Transformers universe and timeline outweigh that of Star Wars but best of all. Unlike Star Wars, Transformers brings this emmense universe home, to Earth. After seeing the designs and deviations from the original mythology I thought at worst I would be in for a good Michael Bay movie. I’ve always thought that Michael Bay was an underrated director and that people just kinda jumped on the bandwagon with hating him. I still believe there are people out there who just hate Bay cause it’s cool to hate Bay. I’m not one of those. As entertaining as i’ve found many of Bay’s films I don’t believe we even recieved a good Michael Bay film here. It’s also clear that Michael Bay did not “get” Transformers.
My girlfriend and I went together and we started counting how many Transformers T-shirts we’d seen before the movie started. The first one was an Autobot on the street car going to the same theater. The coolest one was a matrix on the chest that looked like a home job. We counted 19 I believe but there was probably more. We got there an hour early and got our seats behind the metal bars to rest the feet on. No idea why noone else recognizes these as the best seats in the house. We watched as mangeek after mangeek arrived at the theater to witness what we had been waiting over 20 years for. We had evidently been summoned there for a purpose but this time it wasn’t Unicron.
The effects were very realistic. But edited and shot in ways that at times made it difficult to read what was happening. The action was great although I did feel like I saw most of the best shots in trailers and TV spots. Starscream transforming back and forth taking out F-22s was awesome, better than i’ve imagined in a great Starscream battle.
Audience gave a small reaction to: Feature Presentation, when Prime scanned the truck, when Barricade transformed into vehicle mode! People loved Frenzy’s ridiculous walk when leaving Air Force One. Lots of laughs at the humans joking and the masturbation scene. I didn’t mind that, nor the dog peeing. Not a big deal to me. People loved the Prime/Megs fight, me too, especially flying through the building? SWEET.
However, I think I did know and I had seen a bit too much. Despite never reading the script. However I also felt watching the movie that the movie’s budget did shine through as there wasn’t enough robot characterization given to really care about any of them. I guess I did have pretty high expectations but I don’t believe this movie lived up to either of the movies it tried to emulate. Jurassic Park or E.T. Despite the multitude of scenes dragged and dropped directly from those movies. We weren’t given enough time for Bumblebee and Sam to bond and thus you barely care when Bumblebee is captured by the feds (unlike in ET). We are told Bumblebee is Sam’s protector but Bumblebee doesn’t actually *protect* Sam enough for you to feel that. A basic rule in storytelling and film making is you should always SHOW and not TELL. Instead of Sam being TOLD bumblebee is his protector. We should have WITNESSED it. Optimus Prime could have used more of a build up to getting to him. Making his reveal grander. A moment with him in the shadows. A calmer demeanor. The Decepticons not nearly enough characterization, not nearly enough interaction between one another besides talking over the radio. The only ones I remember actually interacting at all was Megatron and Starscream for a brief second other than that you get a 10 seconds of Starscream here, 10 seconds of Barricade there. Cinematography could have been kept on more of a human level to accentuate the perspecive more.
The plot. Yeah the plot sucked and we’ve been forewarned. Why should we go to a movie expecting a plot to suck again? I’ll never get that. Anyway, should I even bother mentioning the plot? Or am I being stupid just hoping there would be a decent plot? Still don’t get it. The Allspark. To me the Allspark is like an episode of the Transformers cartoon. Where Megatron gets his hands on this new device that allows him to do some kooky thing. Like create Decepticons out of thin air. You know, the type of shit that worked great in a children’s cartoon but should probably never be in a live action movie? At least not the introduction movie.
It doesn’t serve the greater story to Transformers at all. Infact it takes away from it. It cheapens the lives of Transformers if you can just create them out of nothingness. Why not abandon all Cybertronian back story if characters can just be created with the Allspark? Which in the end Optimus Prime does as well. He decides he’s just gonna stick around Earth cause he’s decided that Humans are good, he has seen that they are good! How? cause Sam pushed the Allspark into Megatron and not the robot that had been defending him? Maybe he’s just staying on Earth cause hell, Cybertron is just a barren world anyway, nothing to go back too. And Earth is just an all around great place. That does leave a sour taste in my mouth cause I always liked to think that Cybertron was infact a much more interesting place than Earth and finding out that even the Autobots don’t mind sticking around here makes me not really give a rat’s ass about what goes on on Cybertron.
I’d like to know how in the late 1800s they transported Megatron back to the states while keeping him on ice. Oh yeah i’m not supposed to talk about the plot.
The humans. Too much time on so many characters leaves you not really caring about any of them. Not even Shia or Mikaela. Even though Shia’s greatness does shine through. And he is quite a likable character. He’s a bit like a Han Solo, Harrison Ford, I can see this…..
The robots. Some great compositing on these creatures. The mouths of every single one of them bothered me, especially the swivel jaws of Ratchet and Ironhide. Not so much Megatron for some reason. I felt a lot of the lines were thrown in as an after thought and wondered if the mouths were even actually animated or they just overdubbed the voices. When at times the line felt like something that character would say it didn’t fit his particular action or body language at that time. MOSTLY because the characters were highly over-animated. Always swaying around pointlessly, Optimus prime swinging around under a bridge like an ape. Walking around just to step on Sam’s dad’s lawn. I really didn’t like the way they walked either, too mechanical and unnatural. More so than the cartoon, despite all the extra joints for articulation. The voices would have felt better if the volume levels changed. If you actually felt like Prime was shouting when addressing Megatron at times. If the voices changed in accordance to the distance they were from the camera. But instead every character seemed to ALWAYS be just talking at. the. same. monotone. volume. Megatron did have a nice amount of character but nothing Welker couldn’t have pulled off. I especially loved when he actually called Sam a fleshling “Is it bravery or foolishness which compells you fleshling” (something like that )
The death of Jazz, one minute Jazz has spotted Megatron and shouts, “Autobots retreat!”. Couple shots later you see Megatron flying along clasping Jazz with his talons just before he rips him in half. So how did Megatron get his claws on Jazz? It doesn’t show. Is this what Michael Bay calls “shooting for the edit”? At the end of the battle Prime is mentioning what a great warrior Jazz is. Noone else really seems to care too much what he’s saying, I don’t remember if they were even listening. How about a close up of some of the Autobots faces? How about Optimus Prime looking over Jazz’s body as opposed to dangling the lower half of Jazz’s body from one hand and the other half from the other hand. More weight was given to the death of Skyfire in the cartoon. (probably my favorite transformers episode BTW “Fire in the Sky”)
I was hoping I would want to see this movie a second time on my next trip to the theater but i’m gonna have to go see Ratatouille for my fix of some great story telling. Something Transformers COULD have had but many people just seem to think that’s too much to ask for from a movie based on a cartoon. To me you’re never asking for too much to have great story telling. Pixar makes it’s movies for EVERYONE not children, they are great story tellers. Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one had some great story telling and it was based on a…………..theme park ride. So yeah, i’ll never understand the low expectations had by many others out there. Lowest common denominator indeed.
I do think a lot of the issues can be resolved in a sequel. Much more respect should be given to the source material though.
Here is another article i’ve written on te subject of this movie:
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