TRANSFORMERS

[Faolan Bloodtooth]

Luckily for us in dear old Australia, we got Transformers here before America

So i'm guessing most of you haven't seen it... but fear not! No spoilers shall be uttered in these sacred halls

It is an awesome movie, very heavy on the special effects (as you would expect) but it is seamlessly done (for example, there's a scene where Optimus transforms on the highway, extremely well done)

If you like your action, go see this movie, and even if you dont, the characters are extremely lifelike and i enjoyed it thoroughly, so much so i will see it at least 3 more times

Laters

[ravaged_warrior]

I missed out on Transformers as a kid (just barely, though... ended up with Beast Wars and for years couldn't figure out why Transformers were always associated with cars... silly me), but this looks pretty good. It takes itself seriously, which seems the right way to go for a live-action film, the emphasis seems less like the show, where the people are the focus and the cars are not (they haven't even talked yet), giving what I've seen of the film (just the trailers, really) a more mature look. And the CGI is incredible. Giant fighting robots is one of those times in a live action movie where I'd say the use of CGI is okay, so the fact that it looks this good is perfect.

[Dreamer]

Ya know what they need to do for at least one of the sequels? Put Unicron in there. Come on, now THAT would make a kick-a** action movie.

[Scott Gardener]

I read rumor somewhere that they intend three movies, with Unicron appearing in the third. That info is, however, rumor. (I also hear Lucas has in mind a fourth Star Wars, set a number of years after Revenge of the Sith. In it, Anikin, now Darth Vader, unknowingly kidnaps and tortures her daughter while trying to find stolen plans for a planet-sized battle station, while Obi Wan runs into Anikin's son, a kid named Luke. Don't know how reliable these rumors are, and I'm sure the fans will complain about this one.)

Being an American, I haven't seen it yet. They're releasing it here the day before July 4th, which is to us our national holiday, the Fourth of July. (We have a hard time naming holidays around here. You wouldn't believe the fuss we make over naming Christmas.) July 4th and the weekend after are peak blockbuster movie times, so it's no coincidence its release is right then. I saw an HBO special about it, and it looks pretty fun to me. Cathey wasn't interested; my wife considers it too much the usual formula of twenty-year-olds running and jumping everywhere. But, there's a place in my heart for giant transforming robots from Cybertron dueling in explosive combat, so I'm going to see it.

I grew up with Transformers; a fan-fic my sister and I imagined back in the mid-eighties was a pretty important testing ground for our imagination in general and also for later story ideas we would incorporate into more polished works later, so seeing the previews of the Autobot caravan following Optimus or of killer jets transforming into angry robots was almost subliminal, reaching into my soul. Granted, they weren't entirely right--all the Autobots as GM vehicles and Megatron having a screwy looking face will definitely establish this as a different continuity from the ones I grew up with. But, then again, the comic and the cartoon were blatent continuity conflicts, so I'm already accustomed to alternate Transformer timelines. I remember my sister and I seeing the 1986 movie and having to scrap and redo our entire fanfic storyline to take into account all the stuff that happened then.

I noticed in the preview that, at the dealership where Spike picks up Bumblebee, there's a yellow VW beetle parked next to him--almost certainly an inside joke tribute. I hear rumor--I think somewhere a few pages up right here, in fact, that Volkswagon refused to allow their car to be pictured in a movie with lots of war and battle images. I do know that GM is getting creamed right now by Honda and Toyota, so they're pretty desperate for some extra publicity. I still think it would have been nice to have made the vehicle choices a little more faithful to the originals where possible. We see a Porsche dealership in the trailer, and in the HBO documentary they used a Porsche Cayenne as one of their principle film trucks, so it wouldn't have been that big a leap for Jazz to have been a Porsche, be it the classic 935 Martini Racing or a contemporary equivalent such as a 911 GT3. I do grant that having Megatron turn into a hand-held gun would have caused some plausibility issues, so I don't fault some liberties taken there. Still, he should have a giant cannon mounted onto his right arm. It's his signature. Unicron knew it and kept it in place when he became Galvatron in the 1986 movie.

[Dreamer]

Also, kinda off yet on topic, why don't they continue the original G1 storyline (Not in this movie, but for the cartoons and toylines) rather than re-booting it every few years. Transtech would be an awesome way to do that. SO WHY DON"T ThEY RELEASE IT?!

[CyberWolf]

Spoiler below

[spoiler]Poor Decepticons
Every decepticon, even Megatron gets killed except Starscream (Yeah Starscream the sole survivor).
I bet we get Galvatron in the next movie ^_^[/spoiler]

[Terastas]

I'd previously heard that there would be more than one too. What I'd heard was that the character Soundwave was omitted from the first because they "wanted to get him right."

[CyberWolf]

Also, kinda off yet on topic, why don't they continue the original G1 storyline (Not in this movie, but for the cartoons and toylines) rather than re-booting it every few years. Transtech would be an awesome way to do that. SO WHY DON"T ThEY RELEASE IT?!

Well there was an actual few sequel series for G1.

They were called: Transformers Headmasters, Transformers Victory, Transformers Masterforce and Transformers Zone.

They were sadly never dubbed in america (well there is a different dub of headmasters i think in canada by different voice actors).

The above sequel series to G1 were replaced by the season 4 3parter "the rebirth". Which was specially made for the americans by japan (because america didn't wanted to continue transformers. [spoiler]DAMN YOU AMERICA[/spoiler]).

[Dreamer]

Yeah, but thecnically, theuy also starteed doing that with Beast Wars/ BEast Machines. And then they stopped. WHY! They had Transtech, why didn't they do that! Or at least something to replace it.

[alphanubilus]

Spoiler below

[spoiler]Poor Decepticons
Every decepticon, even Megatron gets killed except Starscream (Yeah Starscream the sole survivor).
I bet we get Galvatron in the next movie ^_^[/spoiler]

Megatron dead... hardly... Supposedly he dies, however, his remains as well as all the other Decepticons get dropped into an oceanic trench at the end. Starscream flees. Megatron my be down, but I doubt he is out for good.

[chubhound]

Plus, there's one other Decepticon that I don't think died in the movie.

[alphanubilus]

Let's not for get the Mountain Dew dispenser or Xbox360 Decipticons!

[CyberWolf]

Spoiler below

[spoiler]Poor Decepticons
Every decepticon, even Megatron gets killed except Starscream (Yeah Starscream the sole survivor).
I bet we get Galvatron in the next movie ^_^[/spoiler]

Megatron dead... hardly... Supposedly he dies, however, his remains as well as all the other Decepticons get dropped into an oceanic trench at the end. Starscream flees. Megatron my be down, but I doubt he is out for good.

You do know that when Megatron "dies" in the comics or tv series, he always comes back as the upgraded Galvatron (as seen in my last line, if you even read it)

[psiguy]

I liked the movie. That's all I'm going to say.

[chubhound]

I liked the movie too. My only complaint is that the Transformers never really got to show much of their personalities. The Autobots BARELY got to show what they were like when they weren't blowing things up, and the Decepticons....those poor guys never got to be anything more than "bad guy robots". I would've liked to have seen all of them show their personalities. For example, all we get from Jazz is one minor acrobatic type move mid-transformation, and him saying the Earth looks like a "pretty cool place to hang out" (which is what one "family friendly" movie reviewer called "a 'black' robot that uses street slang while throwing gang signs". Yeah....I'm NOT joking). Just out of curiosity, did anyone else think that one of Megatron's lines sounded suspiciously like Agent Smith? Same actor, I know...but that one line really jumped out at me.

[ravaged_warrior]

Holy s***, Hugo Weaving plays Megatron? I need to see this movie.

[Figarou]

Seen it...love it....going back for more!!!


At the beginning of the movie....a few soldiers was talking to each other.

I heard one call the other "Fig." I was like....."Wait.....did I just hear "FIG?"

A few scenes later...I can clearly see "Fig's" name tag on his uniform.

HA!!! Its FIGUEROA!! He DID call him "FIG!!"


The only thing I didn't like was the scenes where the camera shakes.

Other than that...I enjoyed it.

[Kaebora]

Saw it last night. Very nice.

[Dreamer]

I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard the reviews. And I just hope that in the sequel they fix the main problems critics have with it (Although most of the reviews are positive). That problem is that the plot isn't that great.

[Figarou]

I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard the reviews. And I just hope that in the sequel they fix the main problems critics have with it (Although most of the reviews are positive). That problem is that the plot isn't that great.

well...the plot and each character's behavior, is a heck of a lot better than what they are showing on Cartoon Network right now. (Transformers Cybertron.)

[CyberWolf]

I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard the reviews. And I just hope that in the sequel they fix the main problems critics have with it (Although most of the reviews are positive). That problem is that the plot isn't that great.

well...the plot and each character's behavior, is a heck of a lot better than what they are showing on Cartoon Network right now. (Transformers Cybertron.)

Maybe because the dubbing company who dubbed Energon butchered it.
Watch the Galaxy Force sub instead.

Who wants to hear "Cyber Planet Key, Activate!", when you can hear "Force Chip, Ignition!".

Also, every weapon of Megatron/Galvatron has the word Death in front of it ^_^

Heck, even parts of the story was changed. In the dub they say that Megatron gets Unicron's armor (which changes him into Galvatron), although nothing about Unicron is said in that entire series!!!

[Fenrir]

....the thing would have been better if they had not put a love story into it and instead put more charactor developement. But I liked it, and could stand to see it a couple more times.

[Scott Gardener]

It was good as general entertainment, and it was nice that they kept at least as tributes some references to the Transformers with which I grew up. It could have been more intelligent, or it could have been more faithful. But, it could also have been a lot worse. As a thrill-ride with some nostalgia thrown in, it worked.

Granted, other than Optimus, most of the characters were so heavily revamped that they were barely recognizable. Most of the Decepticons were completely different characters from the ones in the old school shows. They also fidgeted a bit with the mythos, cramming together two unrelated things--the creation matrix from the comics and energon cubes from the cartoon--into the plot device for which everyone was searching.

The design elements looked a little cluttered and junky; the characters looked so much cleaner in the cartoons. (Except, obviously, Wreck Gar, who was supposed to look junky) The view of Cybertron (never said by name, only referenced as "the homeworld") looked pretty spectacular; I wished I had seen more than fifteen seconds of it.

I enjoyed it, though I wish they had done things a bit differently. Actually, they did.

[nekocj]

Heh...you didn't like the camera shakes Fig? Well in that case you shouldn't have liked the whole movie because the whole thing was like that. Now I need to get this off my chest. Get ready because I'm probably about to piss some people off. Read if you dare, spoilers guaranteed.

Before I start, this movie sucked. It really, really, really sucked.

[spoiler]First of all I'm glad they like to make fun of the arabian people on the other end of the service call line "I'm sorry sir the attitude will not help" yeah great, waste of time, simply saying "patch me through to the pentagon" isn't going to get anyone anywhere. But whatever it's cute right? HA HA HA. Ok that little robot that turned into a cell phone and a stereo. HA HA HA he said Oh s***! HA HA HA How funny, my 6 six year old will enjoy it! *If I had one*. So cute.

Oh and lets waste time by introducing the autobots! So silly those autobots. Jazz is break dancing (totally out of character) and actually throwing gang signs and speaking slang HAHAHAHA so freaking funny. How cute. Oh and lets introduce Ratchet the medical officer. "Oh his pheromones indicate he wants to mate with the female. He wants to shove his penis into her vagina and copulate and shoot semen into her uterus and create babies therefore procreating his species". HA HA cute. Pointless, wasting my time, *Oh and in between all this the camera does not stand still*

Oh and lets waste more time. "Are you masturbating in there?" Waste 10 minutes or so talking about his sexuality while he gets embarrassed and defends himself oh look a girl in his room! So exciting their son can finally shove his penis into a vagina and shoot seminole fluids into her uterus and fertilize her eggs therefore procreating the species while the autobots hide around the house "oh my bad" mighty leader of the autobots HAHAHAHAHA funny. Cute. I'm sure my 6 year old would enjoy it.

Oh lets waste more time. "The dog peed on me I'm going to shoot it" "No you can't shoot my dog" "I'm going to shoot it" (15 minutes later) "Don't shoot my dog!" HAHAHA wow that is so funny. Oh and then BumbleBee pees on the guy! HAHAHAHA that's great! The kids are having fun now.

Oh and um all these highly trained government guys in the department of security and what not. But they can't do anything lets depend on the guy that lives with his Grandma and all he does is say "Oh well the frequency is really high!"......wow great observation. Worth going to jail for. What else does he see? Ooooooooh ok his $600 home computer sees hidden symbols and codes in the audio wave but our highly paid special elite government people can't see that. Great that's nice. Oh yeah they also can't work a radio so get same said comedy relief to HOOK A COMPUTER MONITOR TO THE RADIO TO SEND A SIGNAL...........HAHA funny. So cute.

What else? Oh not quite done yet. Quick kid get that cube to safety on the roof. After all once its on a chopper in the middle of the battle it'll be safe. Yeah no problem. Just run along side him and tell him to hurry when you can probably jump once or twice and already be on top of that building autobots, but whatever I guess it's not that important.

So this movie is hip and now right? Gotta give Optimus Prime purple flames right? Wow that's pretty bad a** right? Right? Purple flames on a semi. Wow so cool. Whatever. Oh and on the subject of Prime. Nice face. Geez leave the mask on like in the cartoon because the face they modeled for him was really dorky and childish looking. I'm sure the kids enjoyed it though.

Starscream was really the only good thing about the movie. He didn't say much and his in-flight transformations were pretty bad a** while he was taking out the jets. That fact along with Peter Cullen as Prime and Hugo Weaving as Megatron (why did he have to look like a shark and only turn into a little plane?) were the only saving graces of this film. That and the scorpion thing at the beginning was pretty cool along with the helicopter attack at the beginning.[/spoiler]

I expected so much more from this film. I have been waiting for this film for a VERY long time and they give me this. A silly, slap sticky comedy that is trying to be an action film. Or is it a straight up action film trying to be a slap stick comedy? Whatever it was it didn't work and not even the visuals could impress me. I'm sorry awesome visuals don't make up for poor writing and crappy cinematography. I'll hand it to Shia LaBeouf though, he usually plays some fun, interesting characters. His characters usually always make me laugh. However. Not even his charming acting style can save this film. It bombed in my opinion. I have never been so disappointed.

I'm sure all that crap would work in another film, but not with transformers. The original animated movie was a zillion times better not to mention it had Unicron and the Dino bots. That's all I gotta say. That's my opinion, I'm incredibly resolved on that opinion so I'm sorry but I'm sticking too it. I was really just so disappointed.

Sorry for angering anyone, if in fact anyone actually read any of that. Hope you guys enjoy it though. I'm sorry I didn't. And Fig I am glad you liked it at least, you are usually so enthused about movies it's hard to hate a movie when you talk about it

-Neko

[chubhound]

Jazz is break dancing (totally out of character) and actually throwing gang signs and speaking slang

I heard this from a movie reviewer too. I caught the break dancing (if you really wanna call it that....I just saw him doing a spinning hand-stand during his first trasnformation, I'd hardly call it break dancing). But I totally missed the supposed throwing of gang signs. Unless they count him sitting on a car and crossing his arms like a rapper "throwing gang signs". That's the only thing that I saw that could have been seen that way...I suppose I could've missed it though. As for the slang, Jazz only had one line in the movie (maybe two...I forget if he's the one that said "We can't just leave him" when Bumblebee gets captured). I'd hardly consider one sentence ("This looks like a cool place to kick it" or something to that effect) to be tossing out tons of street slang. I'll have to see it again & watch more carefully for that stuff.