PSA: When posting a YouTube video using the handy [ video ] tag, remove the "s" from https://

90% of the time, that "s" is why the embed is failing.

It's not that it isn't a high art masterpiece, it's that the action sequences are constructed like shit. I am all for giant robots destroying one another, but if I can't tell what the fuck is going on because of incomprehensible editing and shakycam, I'm not going to enjoy it.

Last edited by Ewing (2014-03-05 17:31:47)

Someone on twitter described the action scenes in Transformers perfectly, and it sums up why I never much liked anytime the robots start fighting: It looks like someone threw a drum kit down a flight of stairs.

The brilliance of the design of the original cartoons was that they were blocky and chunky with no more than two primary colors and distinctive silhouettes.  When any two of the Bayformers start fighting, I literally can't tell where one ends and the other begins.  And if I can't tell who is punching what with who, then why should I care?

There's a pretty big gradient between "high art masterpiece" and "fucking insulting garbage." I don't expect it to hit the one extreme, but it doesn't have to wallow so happily at the other.

Anyway, unless the Rotten Tomatoes score by some miracle comes in above 70%, I'm not going to see this thing in theatres and probably not at all. DARK OF THE MOON wasn't even enjoyable drunk.

Last edited by Dorkman (2014-03-05 20:24:53)

Tried multiple things, Teague, including dropping the "s". I can't get a consistent fix whenever I post one, so I just said screw it.

I understand peoples' viewpoint on the action for the first film, which is a style they may not like, but the ground-level and shaky was all part of showing it from the human perspective. Some people also see that perspective as a flaw, but for the first film I ate it up. It continued too strongly through the series though, as it became evident we were going to get little to no real personal story on the characters everyone showed up to see.
However, in my opinion Dark of the Moon had the best and most coherent action of the series. It's my favorite film of the trilogy, despite it's first act. On top of that, the freeway chase and Optimus vs. Sentinel were among my favorite action set-pieces of the year, but getting people to actually watch them with an open mind doesn't happen. Still, once the action starts in DotM, the camera backs up and focuses on the Transformers more than the people, which is something it's predecessors insisted against. That's what has me interested in the action this time, it has evolved and in the right direction.

I honestly do agree with the Dorkman's 'insulting garbage' standpoint, as far as the sense of humor is concerned. The Bad Boys grotesque, racist slapstick is out of place here, and the major downside I've had to tolerate with Bay being at the helm, but I've been willing to because omg, ILM. Part of what's got me interested for #4 is that Bay has said he was dialing back the humor this time around.
Then again, the guy also said he was done after 3, so grain of salt.

And then there's a giant metal dinosaur. So there's that. (I've never liked the dinobots.)
Actually, what really interests me is the "We found a Transformer!" plot. It's nice and simple, like 'a boy and his car', let's just see if they can get more than just that right. Until now, these have been playing out a lot like disaster films, with the Transformers taking the role of the twister/volcano/etc, so it'd be nice if they could make something a bit more personal on the side of the title characters. DotM got close, but it was still more about Sam & Co. than it was the Autobots. We don't know anything about Optimus' personal history, other than he's from a war-torn planet and that was rough. Even one of the humans sitting down and having a heart-to-heart with him would be great. "So how'd you end up here?", something.
The rare scenes of just Transformers talking among themselves are always a pure joy, it's a shame we can't get a whole film that way.

It's a complicated interest I have in these films, lol. Love/hate, something. Too damn cool to ignore, too ridiculous to state a serious defense. People like them or they don't, but given how much hate there is, I'm left wondering just how they're making so much freakin' money. 

Actually, they have been. The first two sampled bits and pieces and took a ton of liberties, but DotM was based on the G1 arc 'The Ultimate Doom', and did a fine job of adapting it (story-wise). I was surprised when I stumbled across those episodes afterward. I've been getting into TF: Prime since the Superbowl trailer hit, and there is definitely some good stuff there that these films will likely never touch. The show didn't start getting good until the children became the backdrop rather than the focus, and I don't see that happening just yet.

Heh, until I got into the films, I actually had the same problem with the show, on the rare occasion I'd see it. "Wait, who is he again?" Aside from the main 3-4 characters, I never knew which robots were who. 
That was probably indifference more than anything though.

Agreed. Big, chunky, simplistic slow things. The movie, ugh, but now those were some robots.
I was super fond of Real Steel's bots as well, though that only skimmed the surface of robot/human allegory. I don't think we've yet seen a live-action film that is actually about robots. Wall-E knew what's up.

Last edited by Vapes (2014-03-05 21:50:07)

He also said he recognized the problems with 2 and promised 3 would be better. He's got no qualms about shitting on his last film if he thinks it'll trick you into paying for his next, which he will happily lie about.

Some parts of DotM (like Sam trying to get a job) almost worked for me. ALMOST. In a weird way they reminded me of Coen brothers' movies.

Oh, the Dinobots... I remember them from the Marvel comic book. Even as a kid I thought they're a little too silly, even for Transformers (that was in 1991 or 1992, before the Jurassic Park phenomenon).

To me, they felt like a pretty big improvement over "the enemy's scrotum" and Bumblebee pissing.

It's the long action scenes that annoy me. The Chicago battle was exhausting, not exciting. The Avengers has a vastly superior city battle.

Another thing that bothered me about DotM was Shockwave. He looked somewhat ridiculous in the comic book, but he was a fairly well-developed character (badass enough to usurp Megatron). In the movie, he's just another Decepticon soldier. Come to think of it, most robots in those movies have no personalities whatsoever.

Last edited by MartyJ (2014-03-06 00:56:44)

Yes, please and thank you. Lasted for far too long and needed a heavy revision in the script stage to accomplish its goals in half the time. Editing in post probably couldn't save that.

I feel that the first film did a great job setting up characters, and especially giving Decepticons good face time. Even if we don't get a full personality for Bonecrusher, Skorponok, Barricade (<3), or the Apache one*, they're all identifiable and had screen time devoted to them. (Also, you know, Megs and Starscream, but duh.) The second one had, um. Devastator. Aaaaand ooh Ravage. Can't think of any other Decepticons. Third, Shockwave should have been awesome but was squandered and the rest were just mechanical filler. I hope that this one gets back to a limited robot cast so they can all get enough screentime, Autobot or Decepticon.

I confess that a still from the Super Bowl spot with that very image is my desktop background. I was planning on seeing it anyway but it let me know the level of spectacle we'd be seeing. That they seem to be incorporating a good story with Wahlberg and family... actually gets me more excited, to the point where seeing Grimlock in the trailer was like, "Oh right, that. That'll be neat too, I guess."

*Screw it, looking it up... okay, Blackout, a Pave Low, not Apache. Still.

**And Vapes, nice signature change.

Last edited by Boter (2014-03-06 03:53:26)

Haha, Vern's paragraph about "A buddy who loves Michael Bay" hits me right at home.
I can't believe how much I've written about these films, rushing to their defense, when really, they're a phase that comes and goes, and not even in my Top 10 all time faves.
Plenty of ammunition, I guess. No one gets riled when I talk about how good A Beautiful Mind was, lol.
Oh well, it's my day off and I ain't doing much of anything else. ;-)

A review like that, I can't get into because it essentially reads at "So this happened, that was dumb. Oh, then the next scene happened and that was dumb too". I don't see an actual reason here, but negativity and a guy trying super hard to be clever and hateful. Vern has a problem with the opening scene having a location subtitle, for crying out loud.
"I can’t help but be sad that this is what we are willing to accept as entertainment."
The thing about that is, this guy says he went in expecting and wanting to hate it, and surprise, he did.

"MH-53 pilot, power down now. Have your crew step out or we will kill you."
I watched that teaser more times than is probably healthy, and seven years later, here we are. lol. I knew next to nothing about the franchise prior to that freakin' teaser, it's all their fault.

Seriously though, who does the TF trailers? I need to look this up, because he/she/they is/are my hero/es.

It sounds like we're all in agreement that the robots didn't get enough focus. Boter's hit the nail on the head, the first film did a fairly good job of establishing the characters, particularly the Decepticons in their unique vehicles, without telling you much about them.
With a series like this, that has a long history in various forms of media, a large complaint I've seen is that a character is over-looked or underutilized, but that comes back to the "years of history" vs. "two hour movie" argument. Think about another action film, let's default to Die Hard... how much do we know about those villains?
Nothing. They each have their own signature look, we get a little feel for their personality, and they each play their role. For TF1, that worked out pretty well. #2 is when they started throwing tons of random characters at you and DotM was just a mess. "Wait, Barricade's still alive?" Scorponok's random 3-shot cameo into RotF was one of the biggest WTF moments aside from robo-balls and I'd swear they were just using characters they still had on file in order to save VFX time/budget.
Hence seeing 'white Blackout' in RotF as well, and all the protoform 'Cons in the sequels. The cost and time it takes to make these characters look as good as they do is undoubtedly a big reason we can't have a film just about them, but they could definitely find a way to focus the story better.

The nice thing about DotM is they killed ALL THE DECEPTICONS. Like, seriously, all of them.
Hopefully AoE remembers back to the first film on how to introduce it's antagonists. Gunface seems like a step in the right direction.

If we get a DinoRiders movie out of this, it'll be a win regardless.

Last edited by Vapes (2014-03-06 05:27:49)

Michael Bay sure loves the American flag...

Interesting. It would make sense, he got into this business in the early to mid-90s before color correction was a thing, so he would've had to learn how to do all of this practically.