quote:That's correct, but just as space is cold the friction of entering the atmosphere makes things very hot, so it may be meant to thaw them. It's not inventing a solution, it's just following your own point one step further.
You lost me at "it may be meant to thaw them."
It's a simple enough concept and that was the second time I explained it. I suspect that you're being intentionally dense because you've already made up your mind that no explanation will suffice. It's a minor point to get hung up on anyway, so I'm just going to drop it.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I'm not being intentionally dense. It was the second time you mentioned it, not explained it. You haven't explained it. Explain how it would work, please, from a scientific perspective. Bonus points if your explanation makes *any* sense with what was presented in the movie.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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There's not really anything to explain. Assuming that they freeze during interstellar travel, presumably they don't need to prevent this or have special mechanisms to thaw themselves out because the heat of atmospheric entry does that. You're right that nothing in the movie discusses this, but we do see that they enter the atmosphere hot just like anything falling from space, so it's something of an inference. Whether it's plausible that the entry heat would be just right for thawing them out, I have no idea, and I think that anyone who actually tries to research the matter is definitely over analyzing an action film about transforming alien robots. Though I do think it's reasonable to accept that Transformer engineering is advanced enough to handle this freezing/thawing process and still function, given that we saw Megatron thaw out after decades on ice and function perfectly. Note that I chalk that up to highly advanced engineering rather than a plot hole. If anything, it supports my idea that they are designed to freeze/thaw.
/SPOILERS
Lame explanation? That's for you to decide. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, I just wanted to clarify what I was suggesting. Even if you still view it as a plot hole it's such a minor one that it seems pretty insignificant to me personally.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I love movies. I really love movies. I have a jar where I keep every ticket from every movie I've seen since I was 17. After over 20 years, the jar is packed so tight it's hard to fit in a new ticket.
The ticket from Transformers went straight into the garbage.
This movie sucked so much monkey butt that the monkey turned inside out.
I'd gone in cautiously optimistic because everyone had said how great it was. I figured that maybe it was a dumb concept that just worked.
(spoilers) But it didn't. The first hour of the movie wasn't too bad. Had some embarrassing humor, but not so much that I felt I had to leave the room. We got to know the little boy and his girlfriend. There was a cool combat scene in the beginning. And the whole chasing the car/robot thing around wasn't too bad.
Then the rest of the autobots showed up with their god awful inane introduction scene. And that was the extent of the autobots character development. Apparently saying "yo yo yo I'm Poochy, the rappin' autobot" is all that's required to make us love that character and have us upset when some other undeveloped robot rips him in half later in the movie.
Now I realize a lot of people just want a 90 minute long chase/fight scene with beautifully rendered transforming robots. If that's your thing, the second half of this movie is what your after. But I could hardly keep my eyes open.
posted
I saw it. Boring but beautiful, like 300 or The Painted Veil.
Plot: Utterly senseless. Defies explanation, so pointless. I realize some of this was baggage from the very premise (why on earth do aliens look like American machines? I can see robot aliens and I can see American machines come to life, but not robot aliens that just happen to be American machines) and some of the nonsense was made up all special for this movie (the glasses, the invisible robots, the disappearing police car robot, Megatron apparently being the hive queen considering the villains all disappeared when he died, the cube going from huge to carry-able for plot purposes, the soldiers in the helicopter taking care of everything if only the cube could be gotten to them despite the helplessness of the military so far).
Characterization: The only way to tell the difference between the robots was the occasional brightly-colored paint job. Every character with the exception of Shia and his parents, Optimus, and Bumblebee were embarrassing, occasionally offensive, stereotypes. That goes extra for the robots.
Pace: So long and boring that at one point I pulled out my Blackberry to play a video game - Tetris had more life.
Action sequences: Not bad, when they finally happened. Too long, though, and since the characterization preceding was so lame the tension wasn't earned.
Look of the film: The robots looked awesome. I think the original premise is pretty lame, but within those strictures, I thoughts the robots were cool. The best part of the movie was watching them morph in and out of forms.
Memorable images: Two. 1) When the giant robot stepped over the girl in blue in the street and she gave a silent scream, that was an incredible moment. It was the only moment of real, incapacitating awe over these creatures in the whole movie. There should have been more of that and less of the "tooth fairy" jokes.
2) Almost handing over the cube to the guy in the helicopter. That was kind of ruined by the senselessness of the action (there are flying robots everywhere and that wouldn't resolve anything) but if you could accept that if the helicopter soldiers got the cube everything would be okay, it was a poignant image.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I don't know about anyone else, but I got a little tired of the Transformers' moral dialog on humanity's potential. Last I checked, Optimus Prime comes from a race that has already destroyed at least one world and came very close to destroying ours. Gah! Where does he get off being our moral judge?! Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I'm going to agree that it was long, poorly paced, and had very little character development. It was still a fun way to spend a hot afternoon, and the experience was probably worth the price of admission - granted, at matinee pricing.
My seven year old son loved it, said it was the best movie he'd ever seen. My girls went to Ratatouille instead, with my oldest daughter as chaperone, and they loved it. Me, I'm kinda glad I saw Transformers but sounds like Ratatouille is the better movie. I'll probably buy it on DVD, and Transformers most likely not.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by lem: I don't know about anyone else, but I got a little tired of the Transformers' moral dialog on humanity's potential. Last I checked, Optimus Prime comes from a race that has already destroyed at least one world and came very close to destroying ours. Gah! Where does he get off being our moral judge?!
He wasn't judging us, if anything he was excusing us. Part of Optimus' schtick is that he's basically a robotic Superman. He's the big cheese, and he's also a do gooder. He wasn't passing judgement on us, and considering he was willing to sacrifice his life to destroy the only thing that could have rebuilt his homeworld JUST to save us, I'd say he was pretty damned generous.
Most of the other problems people are having I think would be explained away if you were familiar with the canon in the franchise, and while that doesn't necessarily make it a great movie for you guys, it still makes it awesome for me .
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:That's cheap and dismissive and makes a whole bunch of incorrect assumptions. I did not go to Transformers expecting Bridges of Madison County. I was a huge fan of the cartoons.
And this isn't?
quote:The movie was laaame
Whatever. Water under the bridge...
Oh well, after reading some people's pan of the movie in this thread, I just re-learned a valuable lesson. I shouldn't listen to anyone's review of a movie. (Excepting my closest circle of friends.) From here on out, I'll go see the movie and decide for myself. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed Die Hard, and I consider myself to be elitist when it comes to film. I'm not sure when I gained my ability to enjoy silly movies, but it probably happened when I forced myself to like Roger Moore's Bond.
Anyway, I had read the script a long time ago and was absolutely dreading seeing the movie (and wouldn't have if my theatre-employee friend didn't get in for free). Imagine the movie exactly as it was on screen but remove a third of the robot dialogue and every joke except "she's an evil jock concubine."
As it was, I had a lively audience who laughed at everything (including Bumblebee peeing on the Oh Brother Where Art Thou? guy). That probably helped.
SPOILERS SPOILERS
. . . .
Also, for fun - is this, to your recollection, the state we left the Decepticons in?
Megatron - dead. Starscream (Raptor) - Flying off into space. Frenzy (CD Player/Cell Phone) - dead. "Big Tank Guy" - blowed up. Blackout (Black Hawk) - dead. By humans. *Shame* Scorponik - Alive. Missing end of tail. Bone Crusher (Mine Sweeper?) - face stabbed. Barricade (Police Car) - lead the chase into the city but seemed to disappear when the fighting started.
Posts: 254 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Actually, just for the record, no. It isn't cheap and dismissive for me to say the movie was lame. I'm allowed to state my own opinion about the movie. What would be dismissive is if I started making statements about people who did like the movie and what their expectations were (even though I have no way of knowing that.)
"People who like Transformers have unbelievably low standards. Dangle keys in front of their eyes and watch their eyes light up. They'll watch anything with explosions, no matter how empty."
-- might be an example.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I went into it expecting it to be dumb, so I turned off my brain. I also had no prior experience with the Transformers, and I did find the whole thing a bit confusing, but what's worse is that I didn't care. When some giant robot exploded, and I couldn't tell whether it was even a good guy or a bad guy, my reaction was, "meh, it's not like it matters anyway."
The problem with all the pointless plot-lines is that they never went anywhere. The whole movie, I kept thinking, "Wow, this movie wants so badly to be Independence Day." But in Independence Day, all the characters do eventually reach a climax of their own plotline that is related to the general plot.
In this movie, the subplots go nowhere. For example, the group of soldiers that we follow through the whole movie could easily have been replaced in the final battle with generic soldiers, and it wouldn't have made one bit of difference.
The main thing is this: Just about everyone has agreed that the movie is silly and pointless, and even a little confusing. The question is: is it inexcusably pointless? I vote yes.
Posts: 31 | Registered: Jun 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Javert Hugo: Pace: So long and boring that at one point I pulled out my Blackberry to play a video game - Tetris had more life.
I hope you either went out to the hall or were completely alone in the theatre (or accompanied only by your friends you didn't care) otherwise I think I might actually hate you.
Posts: 450 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I'm going to see it tonight at midnight with a bunch of friends. I think it will be a nice start to the weekend.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Just about everyone has agreed that the movie is silly and pointless, and even a little confusing. The question is: is it inexcusably pointless? I vote yes.
I dispute that the mass of opinion is that it's silly and pointless. Everyone I talked to at work, all my friends, and my family all thought it was awesome. But then, I had no problem following it or knowing what was going on.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I meant silly and pointless as opposed to deep and meaningful. Lots of people liked it because it was exciting. Lots of people liked it because it was funny. But no one has had the same emotional connection to it that has been expressed in, say, the Ratatoulle thread. I wasn't insulting it. I think silly and pointless is a perfectly respectable category of movies.
Posts: 31 | Registered: Jun 2006
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I thought it was fun. Yes, there were a LOT of plotholes and I cringed more than once. But I went in to it with no knowledge of the Transformers and a pretty good idea that it was going to be a silly, less than coherent action movie (as my roommate said it was fantastic and that's generally his taste in movies). But the humor was better than I expected and just overall, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would (my vote was to see Ratatouille).
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I enjoyed it! I grew up watching the cartoons and my brothers had the toys. I guess it depends on what you expect from your movies and why you go to watch them.
I go just to suspend life for a couple of hours and forget all the crap I have to deal with day to day. Sometimes I need that escape to be an emotional purging so I'll see that stereotypical chick flick knowing it will make me cry and I can get those building emotions out. Sometimes I'm frustrated and want to go see a good blow 'em up high action flick. Sometimes I want to think and find a movie that is designed to provoke that. Sometimes I just want to have fun and who really cares about the plot holes
For me this was a good, blow 'em up action packed flick that let me get away from life for a few hours.
Posts: 1132 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
I've never seen a movie that was so bad and so good at the same time.
Did anyone else find it a little creepy that the kids were making out on top of Bumblebee while the rest of the Autobots stood around and watched?
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Sorry for not reading the thread before I post this. It's unforgiveable, I know.
But this movie was utter crap to anyone familiar with the transformers.
Aside from the masterbation and bumble "pee" jokes that keep me from sharing this with my kids, who I really really wanted to see it with, and aside from the fact they didn't make Optimus Prime, the most heroic figure of my entire childhood to be all that more heroic than bumble "pee" and a figure of comic relief in most of his scenes . . .
Aside from all of that crap was the fact that hardly any action any character made seemed to make even a tiny bit of sense.
"I know! There's a bunch of giant armored transforming robots around, but let's give the super-important cube to the least capable of the humans to carry to the military! That's a great plan!"
Big robots fought, though. If you want to see big robots fight, this is your movie. A couple scenes were okay.
Micheal Bay hasn't quite joined Brian Singer on my "People I will punch in the face if I ever see them in person" list, but I will never forgive him.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2001
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quote:Micheal Bay hasn't quite joined Brian Singer on my "People I will punch in the face if I ever see them in person" list, but I will never forgive him.
I'd be curious to see your list. My only entry on that list so far is Uwe Boll, but I think it's time to expand on it.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by TL: ...raise you one Dan O'Bannon. (It's a lifelong grudge.)
I'm curious as to why... He's had a good collection of movies - some of my favorites. Of course, he doesn't let aliens just die already, but I don't know how much control he has over that.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: Did anyone else find it a little creepy that the kids were making out on top of Bumblebee while the rest of the Autobots stood around and watched?
Ooooh, yeah. That was just...weird.
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: Did anyone else find it a little creepy that the kids were making out on top of Bumblebee while the rest of the Autobots stood around and watched?
quote:Originally posted by Javert: Did anyone else find it a little creepy that the kids were making out on top of Bumblebee while the rest of the Autobots stood around and watched?
I thought it was kind of a joke because the voice-over was talking about hiding on Earth or some such when it pans to the other Autobots who even in huge-ass SUV form look about pretty out-of-place in the middle of the park.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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