Transformers

[ratjin]

Um. Well, I saw it last night, paying full price since I was too sleepy at 10am to get see it then. It actually sold out at 8:15 when I was going to see it (yes, on the 2nd week of release in a theatre with it on 4 screens), so I sat around for the 8:45 screening

Comments

[ratjin]

***spoiler alert*******

I can imagine a good many simple ways in which this movie could have been made better.

(1) Do it as a tight-focus action movie instead of a broad-focus disaster movie. In this way, instead of wasting screen time on a lot of characters you don't need (NSA hackers, for instance), you actually get to spend time getting to know the Autobots. A boy and his car (plus gf and 4 other robots) would have made a fine movie.

(2) Greater visual distinction between the giant robots. I could never tell one fighting robot from another because a lot of them were the same colors.

(3) Slow down the fighting. Can't tell what the hell is going on. The robots are huge. It's okay if they're slow.

(4) Actually funny jokes. There were so many obviously intended jokes in the movie that no one in my audience even tittered at. I was the only one who giggled at the "There's more to you than meets the eye" line. The robots bumbling around the outside of the house and managing to actually hide wasn't funny. It was beyond belief. Like the 4' robot sneaking around in plain sight in front of what can only be the first platoon made up 100% of blind and deaf soldiers.

I had heard the movie people say that Optimus Prime was going to have a sense of humor. Not that you had to have a sense of humor to put up with him. . .

I thought Shia LeBoeuf was great! I look forward to seeing him in Indiana Jones 4, but probably still won't see Disturbia.

[octaviancmb]

I share some of your criticisms, but I still think the movie's awesome!

[mjeanette]

Yeah, since I walked into the movie knowing that it wasn't quite up to Tremors level of good, it met all my expectations and exceeded some others.

Of course I was perfectly willing to suspend all desire for it to make sense or be something else. There were some things I could've done without... like the scantily dressed gal who was suppose to like this guy. Um, yeah, no. But I let it go. And the discussion on masturbation... why did they have to put that in?

And I personally thought the robots hiding all around the outside of the house to hide from the parents was very very funny.

I agree it would've been nice for some differenation on the robots when they were fighting because I couldn't tell who they all were either. But for the most part there was some sort of conversation about it that clarified it enough for me when it mattered. I'm not sure the fighting would've been as much fun if I really could've seen what was going on. The adrenaline rush was some of what I loved...

Sorry you didn't like it. Maybe some of the other summer flicks will be better for you.

[writingjen]

Agreement on Shia LeBoeuf! He's believably nerdy but not annoyingly so (like some mvie "nerds" are hipster movie producers' ideas of what nerds are like). I found him very charismatic and funny. (I also liked the "more than meets the eye" line).

My least favorite thing: The soldiers trekking through the desert, then that big fight in the village with the sand-scorpion (?) robot. It was as if the screenwriters said, "OK, we need to thin down the number of Josh Duhamel's buddies and plus it's about time for a fight sequence." The concept of the scene was preposterous, the execution was poor and its importance to the plot was nil.

Come to that, what was Josh Duhamel even doing here? We can't have ordinary people (cf Shia) put into extraordinary situations? That's the meat of what makes so many Spielberg movies great, but apparnetly his role as producer was not enough to override Michael Bay's military fetish. I mean, Josh Duhamel seems like a nice guy, easy on the eyes and all, but this should be Sam's movie.

Also hated the fight scenes: This is the big trend now (as I noted in my Harry Potter review, strangely enough), to have really fast, confusing fight sequences, where it's just a lot of motion and it's hard to tell who's who. That's OK up to a point (if you're trying to go for the chaos of battle), but not as the usual modus operandi for all fights all the time. (This is a trend that extends way outside Transformers, even outside Michael Bay, but he's been a big reason why we have to always have this style of fight scene, with the cameras constantly moving and everything within the frame also moving.)

That said, I didn't overall hate the movie, but then I went in with zero expectations, and plus I didn't see the final climactic fight (Z ran out of patience). Such is the power of LeBoeuf.