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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [SPOILERS]


Shem

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I can't believe there wasn't a thread about this already.

 

Anyway, I went to the midnight showing with my brother last night. As with any sequel I try not to put expectations on it to be better than the original two years ago. So I go there with an open mind and see how it plays out.

 

*Positives

 

-The fight scenes were much better than the first movie and there are some breath taking moments in those fights. Basically there was lots of action in this one.

 

-Listening to Peter Cullen voice Optimus Prime never gets old. To me it brings out the kid in me because of how it relates to my childhood. Now if they had Frank Welker voiced Megatron, I would have been in heaven, but I still need to get over it.

 

-Bringing parts from the original film into the story was cool like the Matrix, which was introduced in Transformers: The Movie back in '86. Little things like that are worths smiling about.

 

-Seeing Sound Wave in the film and then watching him ejecting Ravage gave me chills. Now if he had ejected Laser Beak and Rumble, that would have ruled.

 

*Negatives

 

-Finding out that Megatron had a master to answer to really "ticked" me off. That to me is just bogus. Call it the purist in me crying out. That blunder would have been made up for if Frank Welker had voiced him from the start. :xp:

 

-Waaaaaaaay too much slap stick humor. In fact, too many attempts to be funny in that movie just made it hard to take seriously at times. There were times I did laugh at the jokes, but there were times I didn't and at times I was thinking that they're just overdoing it, especially when bad jokes are told.

 

-I hated those "ganger rap" talking Autobots. Yes, they did have some funny moments where I did actually laugh, but overall they were just two idiots that I was hoping would die. At one point I thought one did die and I was happy and was hoping the other was going to also. Well, he didn't and I was disappointed.

 

****

 

I'm still having mixed emotions over the film. Part of it being the purist in me and some of the added storyline in it that just rubbed me the wrong way. Mostly because of Megatron's master being introduced and that he had someone to answer to. I need time to see if this movie settles well or not.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the whole movie. I don't really have any gripes about the movie. It had Megan Fox, **** loads of action, and humour. Therefore, I am a happy person. Although, not as good as the first one IMO. But, I'd have to say I enjoyed it as much as T4 and Star Trek.

 

Keep in mind, this is coming from somebody whose only knowledge from Transformers is the movie from a couple years ago. :indif:

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I could make a long explain, but I'll just say me and my friends love the hell out of this movie. Its a shame the general review consensus around the critic sites is poor, but this is one of those times I'll knock it up to people simply unable to have a good time with a mindless movie. Loud? Too many robots? Too many humans? Too many special effects? Its a shame the reviewing community seems to have degenerated over the years into a bunch of crotchety old people (no offense to our older members, but thats the best way I can put it).

 

One big praise I'll give it is that most movies feel like a bunch of little movies put together when they are this long. I felt the movie flowed fantastically and didn't get that feeling with this one, but since the entire movie basically moved like... well, a single movie I can see why people with less patience would get tired out after an hour.

 

Jaw dropping, funny as hell (yes, I thought the twins were hilarious and Jetfire was the best part of that movie), and an exhilarating ride. Bravo Michael Bay.

 

NOTE: For those that would like to take there kids... think on it. This movie has a lot of cussing, some pretty sexual jokes, and very much deserves its PG-13 rating. If you are sensitive, or feel your kids are sensitive, then think twice on this movie. It is more violent, mature, etc than the first movie in a lot of ways.

 

-Finding out that Megatron had a master to answer to really "ticked" me off. That to me is just bogus. Call it the purist in me crying out. That blunder would have been made up for if Frank Welker had voiced him from the start.

I may be remembering wrong... but didn't Megatron answer to Unicron originally? As far as I recall, he's mostly been out for himself (I'm betting Megatron would have betrayed the Fallen if he could kill him, but he could not. If someone is more powerful than you, the smart thing for Megatron to do was follow the Fallen). But, take solice that Fallen is now dead so Megatron is on top now.

 

Could have been worse. The fact that Megatron beat the hell out of Starscream made that up to me tenfold. As far as I gathered from G1, Megatron was as much of a coward as Starscream. Sure, he was the ultimate evil but he was in agreement with running away most of the time. He bowed to those who managed to be altogether bigger than him, and much like a Sith relationship the deceptions are all about Saturday morning cartoon evil, betrayal, and cowardice.

 

-Finding out that Megatron had a master to answer to really "ticked" me off. That to me is just bogus. Call it the purist in me crying out. That blunder would have been made up for if Frank Welker had voiced him from the start.

Play the game. Frank is the voice actor, and I can assure you he doesn't fit this Megatron. He is a great voice actor, and a great G1 Megatron, but he is an appalling Bay-Megatron. That, and age has not treated his voice all too well. You can definitely tell the difference after all these years, and at this point I would not find Megatron threatening at all with Frank's voice. Nostalgia is what keeps people wanting him, but I'll be the one to sit back and say no.

 

I'm still having mixed emotions over the film. Part of it being the purist in me and some of the added storyline in it that just rubbed me the wrong way. Mostly because of Megatron's master being introduced and that he had someone to answer to. I need time to see if this movie settles well or not.

If you have not, take a second and rewatch some G1 Transformers.

 

Nostalgia goggles aside, the story and most of the characters... are terrible. Just terrible. I just watched the episode in which the Dinobots were created, for example, and I cannot even begin to explain the ways in which nostalgia is its only redeeming factor.

 

Maybe it was a bad move for Megatron to answer to someone, but in context of the Fallen it makes sense. But then again... Megatron no longer turns into a book or tank sized hand-gun anymore and that managed to tick some people off so, really, nostalgia is G1's redeeming factor. Not to say that Bay's Transformers is perfect, but I feel there are improvements and that comparing G1 to Bay-Formers is a bad move.

 

EDIT: This is not to say that I dislike G1. Me and my friends are actually going to sit down and rewatch it, but like a lot of stuff I liked as a kid I can sit back nowadays and admit that they had some definite faults.

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I agree that the reviews were ridiculous. Okay, so it's not going to win an award, but the movie was so much fun. The special effects were astounding, and the new Autobots and Decepticons were very nice, especially Jetfire. :p The slapstick humor was at times a bit too much, but overall, I had a good laugh.

 

Oh yeah, Optimus Prime is so much more bad-ass in this movie. He's kicking the hell out of those Decepticons. Amazing.

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I saw it last night, unlike some of you, I am no almost nothing about transformers, I've seen the first movie a few times and read some wikipedia articles on some transformer stuff but other than that I'm a pretty big transformers noob. I'm going to say this first, every negative movie review I've read is written by an idiot who doesnt know how to watch movies. Would you watch the notebook expecting a sci fi thriller? no. Would you watch Citizen Kane expecting a low brow comedy? no. So why the hell are they reviewing a movie about fighting robots like its supposed to make a deep emotional connection and cause deep thinking. The only deep thinking I did after transformers was thinking of how cool it would be to have a transformer car, and I am happy with that. I dont want moral dilemmas in my explosions and boobs, that would ruin the movie for me.

For the Pros:

1. Almost every single battle was awesome

2. Megan Fox

3. score was good again, though I didn't think quite as good as the originals

Cons

1. The battle against devastator, compared to some of the other battles it seemed kinda bad

2. Some of the product placement was even more blatant than in the first movie

3. The robot lady, that was kinda weird

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Aside from the negative reviews, which are kind of abusive in ways.. i thought it was a good film. Good action, good story for the most part. Sure it has its negatives, but I think those are mainly drawn from the fact that Michael Bay has a bad reputation in hollywood... Anyways i liked it, and that's all that really matters, if you like the movie.

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If you make broad sweeping generalizations, then frankly this movie sucks.

 

Or something. The movie is so bad I really don't care.

How was it that bad? Did every aspect just suck?

 

It isn't going to win any awards, and was a mindless summer blockbuster, but unless you were going in expecting Gone with the Wind or some other masterpiece...

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I'm not one for writing long explanations on movies that I didn't think were amazing, so here it is...

It was good for what it was...a summer popcorn flick...it wasn't very good as a feature film as a whole though...

 

that's all folks! ;)

 

Oh...and did anyone notice that none of the shots (minus like a 1 second shot or something) showed Meghan Fox's thumbs? I found it interesting...

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well, can't say i liked the movie. then again, i can't say that i hated the movie, either. here's the skinny:

 

The Good: its a run of the mill Micheal Bay movie, and that means fantastic special effects and excellent over-the-top action. the comedic relief is usually quite good.

 

The Bad: its a run of the mill Micheal Bay movie, and that means a weak story and an emphasis on action instead of drama. some of the "comedy" was too dry and rehashed from other great slapstick movies.

 

The Ugly: horrible pacing for a 2+ hour long movie. this one really drags at a number of points. seriously, when i'm paying more attention to how much my butt is numbing up than i am to the movie, there's something seriously wrong with the movie. yes, its nice to have some drama, but it shouldn't feel like somebody pasted it right into the middle of a battle sequence.

 

overall, the action sequences hold this thing together, and watching Optimus Prime kick some serious behind was a big plus. but there was too many other problems for the action to overcome. Rating: 4/10

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I may be remembering wrong... but didn't Megatron answer to Unicron originally? As far as I recall, he's mostly been out for himself (I'm betting Megatron would have betrayed the Fallen if he could kill him, but he could not. If someone is more powerful than you, the smart thing for Megatron to do was follow the Fallen). But, take solice that Fallen is now dead so Megatron is on top now.

 

In the animated movie Megatron was dumped in space by Starscream after getting an ass-kicking(and dealing one) to Prime. He was then reformed by Unicron into Galvatron, who "followed" Unicron's order's under pain of death.

 

 

Personally I think one of the things that really made me love this movie was some actual Megatron-Starscream dynamic. It was there, a bit, in the first, but it was good old Starscream running away and Megatron kicking his ass. Ah, the memories.

 

Yes, by no means a masterpiece of a movie, but certainly great for what it was supposed to be, a giant commercial for toys and cars based off an 80's cartoon that was an ad for toys, with plenty of giant robot action and some nice hot shots of Megan Fox.

 

And Jetfire was awesome. The Twins were annoying but funny. Overall, good movie for anyone who wants to see giant robots beat each other up, and everything explode.

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Apparently admins can get away with DPs, along with shameless self-promotion. :p

 

 

Given this film's director, I don't have to see it to already know that it sucks. With Michael Bay, suckage is a foregone conclusion. God, how I hate that man.

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I dunno, the kinda cheesy crap Bay makes is just about as cheesy as Transformers is to begin with...

Case and point:

 

Does that not convince you? How about this episode:

 

Michael Bay ruined it? Really? Are you going to put it in writing that Michael Bay was the worst thing that happened to a series that was created for the sole purpose of selling toys?

 

Pearl Harbor was bad. Armageddon gets more hate than it deserves in my opinion. Transformers... was a wreck before it got to Bay. In fact, I dare say the series started off as a wreck and is saved only by nostalgia goggles.

 

Who else would you have given it to? I mean really, it is a show about giant robots who spend the majority of the show fighting in stock footage explosions, saying cheesing a** lines and more often than not contradicting its own logic. I just watched an episode in which Prime yells and warns about how dangerous this meteor that crashed was, AND THEN SHOOTS IT TO GET A SAMPLE... WITH HIS CANNON. I then saw Starscream turn into Thundercracker like, 6 times in one episode due to lousy editing.

 

And the Transformers 80s movie?

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thedudette/nostalgia-chick/8881-transformers

 

That about sums it up.

 

The show followed a simple forumula: Find energy, turn into energon, fight for 15 minutes, explosions, explosions, happy ending with moral said by either that annoying kid or Prime...

 

Does... that sound familiar? Well, it should as that was basically the plot of both Michael Bay movies. Autobots fight Decepticons, cheesy dialogue, explosions, find plot goal, fight for most of the movie over said goal, happy ending with optimus moral.

 

I agree Bay's previous movies were either crap, or ridiculous summer blockbusters. But you put this episode formula into any other director's hands and see what happens. The story, explosions, etc spot on with the original series. The only thing Bay truly did different was give the humans more screentime than the robots. People got mad, and so he put more robots in. Know what the critics said?

 

THAT IT DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH HUMANS.

 

Explosions? Senseless destruction? Cheesy dialogue? Odd camera angles? Loud, obnoxious, etc?

 

Watch G1 Transformers. Watch Armada. Watch Beast Wars. Watch Beast Machines. Watch any Transformers cartoon you can get your hands onto and they nearly all follow a similar formula. Michael Bay copied the formula put before him, and knocked that **** up to 11. He actually gave the humans screentime which most of the shows did not, made the explosive fight scenes the show was well known for elaborate and pretty, and made a plot that was still an improvement over the episode above in which Megatron tried to take over the earth with a Dam. Yes, a Dam.

 

Weak story? The Transformers show's story SUCKED. The show starts off with them AS THEIR VEHICLES for no seemingly apparent reason. They built the Dinobots because they, on a whim, thought it was a pretty cool idea to have pet dinosaurs! The entire Transformers 80s movie was literally just a marketing tool to sell a new line of toys.

 

Bay is the cheesy plot, special effect master and most people hate him for it. But with Spielburg as the producer behind him, I think they managed to make some damn good movies.

 

I feel the same for the Resident Evil Movies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, and almost any other movie based on a game or a show. The Resident Evil story is already one of the worst stringed together plots in gaming history, TMNTs was already a show with a ridiculous story and concept, and the same goes for everything else.

 

Bay's Transformers at least TRIED to bring the show to a modern audience and yet still managed to be more faithful to the original show than most director's could have hoped to be. Sure, we could of had Bay or another director cut out all of the humans, have one token human, and then all of the G1 robots...

 

But then, like the critics of this movie, there would only be complaints of a lack of humor, lack of connection... and, ironically, lack of a human element.

 

And that is why the Transformers movie, like most movies based off of games and shows, was destined to fail no matter who was behind the wheel... at least with the critics and those either refusing to take off their nostalgia goggles or just go in hating the director and not even giving the movie a chance.

 

I'll say it again, if in some strange, bizzare world some of you were going in expecting a masterpiece then I have absolutely no idea what rock you've been under for the past... 25 years.

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I won't argue that Transformers was cheeseball long before Bay got a hold of it. Transformers The Movie really pissed off a lot of us kids when they killed off a bunch of the original characters we loved just to sell a new line of toys. That's when I lost interest in both the series and the toys and went back to my old standby and the greatest toy ever invented; LEGO.

 

I just hate Michael Bay and everything he represents, which, in a nutshell, is just bad film-making and how it's taking over Hollywood.

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I just hate Michael Bay and everything he represents, which, in a nutshell, is just bad film-making and how it's taking over Hollywood.

I won't argue that. But, like Keanu Reeves... everyone sort of has their part to play even though they take stupid routes and ignore them. Reeves should have stayed in the first matrix movie and never acted again, and Bay should have stuck to making stuff explode instead of placing pointless love plots into movies.

 

This is just one of those times when I think someone who has built their entire career on being out of their element finally found their calling. Sure, it is giant robots but everyone's gotta have something.

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I agree that there is indeed a niche for shallow, crap films. I'm just afraid that it won't be long before that's all that comes out of Hollywood.

 

Speaking of Keanu Reeves: you want to see a movie where he's so out of place that it's epically comical? Watch Braham Stoker's Dracula, where he's surrounded by a veritable wealth of acting talent. Everyone, and I mean everyone in that film can act -except him. It's ****ing hilarious. It's also a great and thoroughly entertaining movie in spite of him. Best viewed while ripped. :thumbsup:

 

And along the same vein: Devil's Advocate. Also best viewed while ripped. :devsmoke:

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