Transformers: The Movie

[B4UTRUST]

Voice your opinions here. Remember to use your spoiler tags for those who haven't seen it. And warnings are nice as well.

[B4UTRUST]

Well let me start off by saying that I was lead to believe by people who had already seen the movie in other countries that there were more or less two really big "Fuck You"s to the fans by Michael Bay. I think the first one was the opening credits and the second one was the closing credits and everything in between was the giant fuck you.

SPOILERS


[spoilers]
For Primus' sake, since when the fuck is Jazz ghetto black?! Seriously, since when?! I know he always liked music and all but since when the fuck was Jazz Tupac?

And the black hacker. What. The. Fuck. Fat overweight black hacker living at home with his grandmother playing motherfucking DDR is somehow able to crack an alien language that no one has ever seen, heard, or known of in a matter of minutes and then create a working translation key of it to english. The Pentagon and NSA couldn't do it but the hacker could. Wow. I lost Int points for that one...

And the biggest FUCK YOU to the fans? Having the one line, the only line that you absolutely had to have in the movie fight between Prime and Megatron. And then you don't show the fight. All you show is Shia LaBlow the smartass prick hugging the fucking rubic's cube in the trenches. "One shall stand, one shall fall," my ass! Holy shit, how can any real fan cheer this monstrocity?

And WTF happened to Megatron's gun? Here's a guy in some continuities capable of leveling anything from towns to planets and everything in between and he whips out a pea-shooter. And now he's a jet. A cybertronian jet. How.

Oh, and speaking of the transformation forms... since when the fuck does ANY transformer possess the capability to adapt a new form instantly. It took Teletran-1 reconfiguring their entire systems to do it but now they can all do it on the fly.

And then there's the voices. Great job getting Cullen to do Prime. Possibly one of the only redemptions to the movie. Except that, uhm, you know, in the original series and all he did Ironhide as well. Why not do that here? No, instead, lets get some fucknut to screw that up too. Thank you Michael Bay. And then there was Megatron's voice. Which just pissed me off royally. Where the fuck was Welker when you needed him. I mean I can understand not getting Latta for Starscream, the man's dead, but damn...

Then there was Frenzy. A cassette in the original series, brother of Rumble. He had pile drivers for arms and shook things up and generally was a little bastard. Now he's a boom box(Soundwave anyone?) and a fucking cell phone?! Give me a fucking break already. And suddenly he's a tech expert capable of hacking the shit out of anything. Don't get me wrong, Cybertronian tech is lightyears ahead of humans but I don't recall him being much in the way of, oh I don't know, the patient lets hack instead of crack mangle and destroy type.

And Devestator is in there too. As a tank. What the fuck are they going to do for the next movie(Primus save us all from that, two fucking sequels before the first fucking day. Let's just shit on the ashes of our childhoods some more shall we?) when they actually are suppose to HAVE Devestator? $20 says that'll be Bruticus. Made out of construction vehicles. They're suppose to have an aircraft carrier in there too. Only Aircraft carrier transformer was Broadside. Betting money that's not going to be the name.

And since when the fuck do the human's know jack SHIT about the Transformers? With one glance the tech guy on the plane can figure out it's a regenerating micro-polycarbon fiber armor or whatever the fuck it was. Hey, here's an armor the likes of which we've never seen before in our lives, something that to our knowledge can not and does not exist. Something I've never seen before, heard about or had any clue about. But hey, let me break it down for you real quick...

And that armor was attached to the tail of Scorponok. A giant fucking transformer in the series, one that dwarfed fucking Trypticon and Fort Max. And now he's about an 18ft long piece of shit.

When I saw Blackout I had hopes. I really did. Blackout came in and just laid waste to shit. There was no bullshit of the human's having a chance, they unloaded into him and he just shrugged it off and wasted them. Boom. Done. The entire base gone. I was optimistic for a moment with that. Maybe they're not going to pull a Scotty and whip the answer to all of life's problems out of their ass by using Tech Jargon to explain something stupid. Gods I hate being so wrong...

All of a sudden Sabot rounds are the answer. Those can stop em. I weep at this solution. In the series the humans couldn't even fucking phase them. They managed to take out Bumblebee and it took a fucking platoon to do that. Bumblebee, the weakest of the fucking transformers. I mean even Soundwave's cassettes were better armored and armed... But now Cybertronians are getting wasted left and right by the humans. But they're 6000 degree Sabot rounds! ZOMG t3h heatzors! Y'know, you would think that a race of giant sentient transforming robots capable of interstellar travel, interstellar war, lifespans in the millions upon millions of years, who in some cases have fucking micro-singularities for power supplies would have figured out a way to beat thermal heat. I don't know, just a guess. I think atmospheric reentry gets pretty hot, though maybe not 6000 degrees hot. But still, you'd think they would have solved that little issue. Naw...

And what the fuck was with Megatron bargaining with the boy blunder anyhow? Since when the fuck does Megatron bargain with ANYTHING? This is the asshole who sacked up and didn't take shit from Unicron. But now he's going to bargain with a useless fleshling? Bargaining, not simply grabbing, smashing, or otherwise beating the shit out of the kid. Or killing him, or any of the other infinite ways that Megatron would have done it. But no, we have an idiot director who's knowledge of Transformers is as extensive as "You mean that kid's toy? So this is a story about a kid who's buying his first car that happens to be a giant alien robot?" My own mother knows more about Transformers then this assclown.

And then, against all probability, against all logic, against ANYTHING, Megatron dies... not to Prime, not to gigantic amounts of damage after an epic brawl between the two leaders that left the city in ruin, but to Shiblow shoving the fucking rubic's cube into him. Ow. My mind hurts.

I know some of the fans were disappointed to learn that some of the original music score as done by DiCola and Bush would not be making an appearance in this craptastic fest of childhood scaring. Personally, I'm glad it didn't. Not because I don't enjoy the music, I love the original music. However, hearing it and having part of my mind link that great score to this shitstorm of epic suck and fail would have traumatized me further. Maybe that's what Bay's got planned for the next movie.

Against all expectations and odds I was dead wrong about this movie. I thought it was going to suck. I thought that maybe, somehow, there might be some redemption in this movie. Against all odds I was wrong. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was worse. So very much worse.

Michael Bay has raped my childhood, douched its anus with gasoline, burned the body and pissed on the ashes. And with the news of 2 more movies to come, all I can foresee is him somehow finding a way through foul dark arts of necromancy to reanimate the corpse of my childhood memories and have his foul way with it some more, somehow finding a new and painful way to desecrate its shattered remains.

God, I know I don't pray to often or even really believe in you most of the time, but if you really are out there, please...please... kill Michael Bay before he can do the Transformers any more harm.
[/spoilers]

Edit:
Though I am reminded that the movie wasn't all bad. There were some hilariously redeeming parts to it. Mostly it was the mentally challenged 20something sitting in the row in front of me who was so excited yelling "That's an autobot! That's an autobot! Hahaha!" At least someone enjoyed it. Though it raises questions about why it takes a mentally challenged individual to enjoy one of Bay's films...

Additional spoilers that I've thought of since my first posting...
[spoilers]
Why, oh dear gods both ancient and horrible why, did the transformers have to learn human languages from the fucking internet. All of a sudden we've got fucking walking talking advertisements for eBay.

"Are you username Ladiesman217?!" "Huh?" "Are you username Ladiesman 217?" "Y-yeah." "Where is eBay item 286452?! Where are the glasses?!" "I sent them FedEx insured man! Besides, your payment hasn't cleared Paypal yet anyway!" "Oh, ok. My bad..."

Of course it sickens me that the entire movie was a huge fuckall recruitment ad for the fucking Air Force.

Speaking of the Air Force, when they call for 105 rounds, you should probably, oh...I don't know...fire 105 rounds? Not the fucking 40mm Bofors! And yes, there is a huge difference in impact size and sound. I work on Herbie with the gunships, I live right outside of Herbie. Damn near every day I hear gunships at the test ranges firing off rounds. I god damned know well and good what the fuck a 40mm and a 105mm sounds like. That sure as shit wasn't no 105.

Transformers 2 advertisements to come:
Pepsi-cola Optimus Prime. Toyo tires stickers for bumblebee. Maybe some Pioneer ones as well. Or Edlebrok maybe? TomTom consulting Ratchet? Google-searching Perceptor?

[/spoilers]

[Dark Silver]

I'm in agreement with B4 on most of it....

with some added qualifiers....the story focused WAY to much on the fucking humans, I went to see the story of Transformers, not to see a movie primarily about humans, and oh, here's some giant transforming robots.

The fucking product placement was annoying and way to fucking obvious, like in the final battle.....the rest will be spoilerized...

[spoilers]
Sam falls, drops the Allspark and a energy wave goes out. Suddenly randomb its of tech become Decepticons (which since it's all based off of Megatron anyway....including the Xbox and MountainDew vending machine....) all come to life. Suddenly the GMC Trailblazer comes to life and kills the driver, the Xbox comes to life and tries to kill the dumbfuck whose holding it up in the air, and the Mountain Dew machine turns to a robot and starts lobbing gernades. I mean, come on, give us a break here at least a little bit!

And then there's the MacGuffin AllSpark itself! When we first see it all big, Frenzy uses it to heal himself and get a new body....yet Bumblebee couldn't do it when his fucking legs got crushed while taking on Devestator/Brawl? And speaking of Bee...why the fuck could he suddenly speak at the very fucking end!

Then they just dump all the Decepticons in this trench I never heard of so the ocean pressure could crush them. Makes no sense...

Oh...and Starscream. Starscream should have been assfucking those F-22 Raptors left and right in the air. No fucking way a human pilot could hope to cope with the supreme Air Commander of the Decepticons.

And sabot rounds....did Bay and the writers even know what the fuck Sabot rounds are? Or did they just use the name because it sounded fucking cool? And I can only say one thing....thank the fucking gods unholy and evil that Jazz got ripped in two by Megatron.[/spoilers]

[Gandalf]

I was just bored.

[spoilers]Who didn't see the whole "Valiant photogenic American soldiers will survive and get back to their homelands to save the day with the recording blah blah blah" thing coming?

A shitty story is something I can handle, but here's my biggest gripe:

Bumblebee, the one that looks like a Volkswagen in reality: Why the fuck is he now some sort of uber muscle car? Are Volkwagens not extreme enough? Are audiences so lame that seeing a giant fucking robot come out a Volkswagen is somehow less credible than having one come out of a muscle car?[/spoilers]

Fuck Bay, fuck him up his stupid arse.

[B4UTRUST]

I was just bored.

[spoilers]Who didn't see the whole "Valiant photogenic American soldiers will survive and get back to their homelands to save the day with the recording blah blah blah" thing coming?

A shitty story is something I can handle, but here's my biggest gripe:

Bumblebee, the one that looks like a Volkswagen in reality: Why the fuck is he now some sort of uber muscle car? Are Volkwagens not extreme enough? Are audiences so lame that seeing a giant fucking robot come out a Volkswagen is somehow less credible than having one come out of a muscle car?[/spoilers]

Fuck Bay, fuck him up his stupid arse.

Gandalf,

Apparently VW isn't signing on with Hasbro for the new stuff, so Bumblebee is now a Camero not a Bug. Can't blame that one on Bay.

[Gandalf]

But aren't there other Autobots who could fill the role of a Camaro-esque car?

[Hotfoot]

Volkswagon no longer will liscense their vehicles or brand with anything even remotely resembling "war" toys or items. Even modern toys of Bumblebee, movie or no, are not VW Bugs. I think there was one that was a Mini Cooper, but that's about as close as you're going to get.

Bottom line: IF BUMBLEBEE WAS TO BE IN THE MOVIE, HE COULDN'T BE ANY VOLKSWAGON CAR, MUCH LESS A BEETLE. The best they could do was:

[spoilers]showing Bumblebee NEXT to a yellow VW Bug as a silent nod to the fans.[/spoilers]

So bitch at Vee-dub for that, not Bay.

[The Cleric]

I heard the movie was awesome.

[Gandalf]

[spoilers]If that VW in the car lot was the silent nod, I'd be absolutely fine with it. I'd be happy with no Bumblebee if VW no longer wanted to lend their name to such things. I understand that the 80's are long gone, and things like Megatron being a gun are not really feasible.

Assuming that the name Bumblebee wasn't used, I'd still be unimpressed with the whole thing. The humans were so damn annoying that I considered walking out.[/spoilers]

[Hotfoot]

By that logic, Megatron and Bumblebee both should not have been in the movie.

[LadyTevar]

Ok... boys? You're too fuckin' purist.

I happened to LOVE the movie, changes and all. The dialogue was funny, the in-jokes plentiful, and we had lots of big robots and things going BOOM.

Hell, we got to see Puff the Magic Dragon take on Scorpinox

[spoilers]Starscream was toying with the F-22s... notice he didn't attack until *after* they unloaded on Megatron? Typical Starscream, letting the humans take down the boss for him, and then heading off to recruit more for a second try. Barricade wasn't among the wounded either, or did ya'll notice.

But dammit.. why'd they have to kill Jazz? [/spoilers]

B4, you might be bitching about Jazz being ghetto, but you're forgetting he was BlackCulture in G1 as well. Or were you too young to remember that?

Hell... all of you 'purists' were barely out of diapers when the show came out in the first place! I am the one who should be bitching, I was in Jr High when the show came out, so I have far better memories of it. My take on the movie? IT WAS BETTER THAN THE CARTOON MOVIE YOU JACKASSES.

Now stop your whining, I'm sick of hearing it. It was a damn fun movie, a great movie in my *adult* opinion.

[SirNitram]

The complaints all seem to be 'It wasn't G1 replayed exactly'. Well, if you were stupid enough to think it would be, guess you got what you were asking for.

I enjoyed immensely.

[spoilers]And Frenzy needs less crack.[/spoilers]

[Hotfoot]

My primary criticism of the movie, to be honest, is that I would have liked to have more actual Transformer interaction. I would have liked to have:

[spoilers]cared more about Jazz dying. He had all of ten seconds of dialog altogether, which was still more than Rachet. Don't get me wrong, humans are important to the transformers story, but it's the interaction between humans and transformers that was always fun. Also, am I the only one that thought the autobots were kind of assholish? Especially Ironhide who wanted to practically destroy everything in sight.[/spoilers]

[B4UTRUST]

Actually Tev, though I may have been in "diapers" as you say I remember the original airings of the show. I was and still am an avid fan of the show. I have all the episodes, I have multiple copies of the movie in different formats. I still have all my old toys! I've still got my collectables from Botcon for Primus' sake!

In my *adult* opinion, I will grant that the movie is a good action movie. But Bay does that well. It's the only thing he does well, except maybe wipe his own ass, but I have my reseverations about that. Michael Bay's Transformers is a good action movie. However, I still feel it's a lousy Transformers movie.

And Jazz liked music, Jazz was very up on earth culture, far more then any of the other Autobots. Jazz never constrained himself to one genre or section of interest. Jazz was primarily about the music but enjoyed most of the aspects of Earth culture. Jazz was not, however, ghetto. I never expected to see Jazz transform and puffs of pot smoke billow out of his body or see him break dance or throw up gang symbols in the original series or comics. Jazz from Michael Bay's Transformers did everything short of that and did break dance. I swear to Primus I had to look to make sure he wasn't wearing bling bling or throwing up a west coast sign.

But in no world, be it Earth or Cybertron, did this new movie come anywhere close to being in the same league of greatness that the original film did. We're talking worlds of difference. For instance, the original animated movie had an arcing storyline and interesting characters that showed some sort of intelligence, emotion and growth. It also had talented voice actors, a well written script, an epic musical score. It was also about the Transformers. It was a great movie.

Michael Bay's Transformers had none of that. The characters were dull, the Transformers moreso then the humans. The Transformers were horrible. They were ugly monstrocities of metal and random parts thrown in to try to make it look good except that it just eneded up being confusing. And the camera angles to even look at them were absurd. I felt the entire time like I needed to look up above the screen to see what the fuck it was I was suppose to be looking at. The voice acting was abhorid, the dialouge was just appaling and there was no real depth of character there at all. They played second fiddle to the humans the entire movie. In a movie ABOUT THEM! Hell it was an hour into the film before we even really got to see them. Like I said, the only redeeming part of the movie was getting Cullen for Prime.

And no Nit, I didn't expect it to be G1 exactly. I knew it wouldn't be that. Plus I also enjoy other continuities in the series as well, especially the comic continuities. They don't follow G1 cannon in the slightest in most cases. However, they do still stick with some basic tennants of Transformer history, ability and knowledge. This movie didn't. That, in all honesty, is what pisses me off the most. Michael Bay's Transformers is to the Transformers what Enterprise was to Star Trek. It was like a sorry half-assed rewrite of source material that failed in a horrible fashion.

That's my final thoughts

[LadyTevar]

I disagree with you, B4... and I'll leave it at that.

*HUGGLES*

[Cynical Cat]

The original film was shit. Everything after Prime's death was pretty much crap.

I don't expect G1 repeated, especially considering some of the stupidity in G1. What I want is a good, entertaining movie with consistency in spirit to G1. I would have prefered getting Welker back as Megatron, but I can live without it. My worries are a shitty plot, humans being capable of trashing transformers without extreme levels of difficulty and firepower, and too much attention paid on the humans.

[frigidmagi]

Haven't seen the movie yet. Right now all I can say is I dislike the new designs. They look like the poor bots were covered in robot puke.

[LadyTevar]

I don't expect G1 repeated, especially considering some of the stupidity in G1. What I want is a good, entertaining movie with consistency in spirit to G1. I would have prefered getting Welker back as Megatron, but I can live without it.

I found it a highly entertaining film, so I would be very surprised if you didn't. Megatron may not sound like Welker, but his attitude has not changed at all.

My worries are a shitty plot, humans being capable of trashing transformers without extreme levels of difficulty and firepower, and too much attention paid on the humans.

The plot's cheesy, but makes more sense than many action movies imho. Humans have to call in MAJOR firepower to hurt a minor Decepticon, so the fight scenes have them as damn tough to kill.

This is a summer blockbuster, as it should be. Matrix I saw once and never felt the need to touch it again. Same with Rush Hour 1&2. Very few movies have I wanted to see multiple times on the big screen, but I'm begging Nit to take me back to see Transformers again.

[Cynical Cat]

Saw it, liked it. I have a few critiques: the "jokey" seens were a little too long, they spent too much time on Witwicky and not enough with the army guys, and too little on the Transformers in general. Overall: good fun, worthy of a sequel.

Prime was worthy, Megatron was a metal nightmare, and Starscream is still a dick.

[frigidmagi]

Seen it.

[spoilers]Okay once again Bay proves he is purely a formula story teller, thankfully it worked this time *shuddersoverPearlHabor* I could have done with less fast talking bumbling teen trying to get laid and more Transformers or SpecOps, but that isn't the Bay way, Ah Well.

Unlike B4 and DS I have to say the movie was well done. It wasn't G1 and to be honest I wish it was but you can't always get what you wish for, suck it up lumpy and move on. Where was I? Oh Right...

The fight scenes felt a bit matrixy, which I could live without and the robot designs were godawful, I had serious problems telling the robots apart during the fights. Other than that no real problems with the film.

I liked Starscreams new form and Megatron was done well has a Harbinger of death I think. Frenzy was entertaining for me. I was also very glad to see Prime actually kill something. I rate the movie a B+ and advise better designs for the sequel and bring in Shockwave (this time don't kill the big bad) as in the comics at least Shockwave was able to beat the unholy shit out of Megatron... With a single hand[/spoilers]

I liked it although I prefer the first movie.