posted
*No Spoilers* So I saw Revenge of the Fallen last night and it was not good. Awful actually.
The good: The CGI was perfect down to every single nut and bolt and the transformations happening smoothly. It was funny(sometimes unintentionally) and it was exciting to begin with. Thats about it for the good.
The plot wasnt nearly as good as good as it should have been. It was either dragging through scenes and scenes of nothing happenning or shooting forward in a burst of exposition dialogue that you could hardly hear because the score was too loud. The dialogue left a lot to be desired too.
Also, I never thought Id say this but, there was too many robots in this movie. I didnt engage with any of them the way I did with the old crowd and most of the new ones were just plain irritating.
I know plotting and dialogue arent really a top priority when going into a Michael Bay movie but still its a shame really as there is agood movie in here somewhere. The first hour was actually quite good but its only after that hour when you realise nothing has happened that you remember theres two more to go.
Its as if Bay set out to make a near three hour epic but didnt have enough substance to fill it. This could have worked much better as a smaller movie like the first one or even just taking out the hour of the run time where nothing happens could have improved this movie immensely.
My main problem is that a Transformers movie is supposed to grab you by the balls. Its a testament to how bad this film is that not only does it not grab you, but it somehow manages to make giant battling robots boring.
Posts: 243 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Did the "good guys" make more or fewer insanely stupid strategic decisions that put civilians in harms way for no reason?
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Damien.m: Its a testament to how bad this film is that not only does it not grab you, but it somehow manages to make giant battling robots boring.
And yet it will probably still make $100 million at least.
(Course, I don't know what the budget for all that CGI actually was...)
There's something about a summer with two movies coproduced by Hasbro that makes you want to start drinking.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I actually liked it. I knew that it wasn't going ot be as good as the first one before I watched it though.
The CGI was of course great, although my friend still says you can not transform with people inside you.
The plot seemed like it was kinda thrown together and the movie seemed a little long in certain scenes.
The good guys seemed a little smarter in this one, although some things went left unexplained.
Overall I think it is worth seeing, only in theatere though so you can see the CGI and cool explosions. If your going for great plot and character devolpment, just don't go. Megan fox had only two jobs in this movie. Lean over stuff, run in slow motion.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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posted
Were the Transformers actual characters in this movie or was it still focused on the humans? I'm much more interested in a movie about the Transformers as characters.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question. Characters? What characters? Did you see that explosion?
Posts: 1336 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
anybody else find the movie a teensy bit racist? the two autobots who can't read are the two who are clearly of the ghetto demographic of transformers. maybe I'm off...
the movie was pretty fun though, for a 2.5 hour explosion.
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:As far as all the noise about ”jive-talking” ‘bots Skids and Mudflap being some sort of “racist” characterization, that’s simply absurd. Both are completely over-the-top in the satiric department. Like the flamboyant gay man we see everywhere today or Randy Quaid’s portrayal of a redneck Southerner in the “Vacation” movies, there’s not a hint of a mean-spirit anywhere in sight.
I haven't seen it yet, and based on the reviews may wait for the DVD instead, but from all the flap I'm hearing about the supposedly "racist" characters, they're played by both a black and a white actor and the 2 of them mutually decided to go with that style of speaking for fun, not to promote stereotypes or racism.
Posts: 1323 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
They need to just turn the animated movie into a live action movie.
Maybe drop the scene on the planet of junk. Other than that, it's a whole lot of awesome.
Annnd, it has Dinobots! They that we were teased with and then denied in this movie.
I haven't seen it, and I'm not even sure I plan to. It didn't look good to me before the reviews came out, and they seem to be reaffirming my initial tale. It looks to me like between the two movies, Bay managed to ruin everything that was actually good in Transformers. Don't mistake me, I'm not saying that the cartoons or comics were some sort of masterpieces or anything, but they were certainly more than quasi-orgsamic explosion fests.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Have you ever fallen into a city-sized Cuisinart that is grinding its way through a vast Chinese scrap metal field and had your face abraded with shards of aluminum and eyelash-size scraps of rusty torn iron, so all the skin is peeling off your face, your delicate nose-bones being flayed by grinding gear bits and yesterday's shredded microchips and at the same time that song "Citizen Soldier" from the National Guard commercials is blaring at top volume, and somewhere in the distance you can see that "The Hurt Locker" is screening for no good reason and there is sand inside what remains of your teeth and then Megan Fox float-flounces by (like the cow in "Twister"!) with her nipples nearly pouring out of her crop-top camisole and some kid is trying to give her a flower but she is like "I am sooo busy getting highly paid and even though the makeup department set their mirror to 'evening' instead of 'day' and so my beautiful perfect skin is sort of plastered needlessly with foundation, I am still the hottest sex doll on two legs," and so she doesn't take the flower, the poor sad flower, which stands for natural beauty, a flower which is then blenderized like a sad goose sucked into a jet turbine? If so, then you have seen the new "Transformers" movie, which opens tonight at midnight, and despite all this awful noise and machinery, the real star of this movie is Megan Fox's rack, which is unparalleled in our modern time. ...
The plot behind the endlessly-long series of explosions that Megan Fox's rack is forced to endure is impossible to relate or understand. Of course, the world is going to end if the bad machines get their way. That is the plot in theory. In practice, there are a bunch of machines who are mad at other machines and they enter into many encounters where they whirl around, but if you are any kind of normal person, you won't be able to tell which machine is which, and so it will pretty much look like two or more enormous microwaves with swords violently mating. Some horrible chaos happened in the editing room where someone tried to make sense of this mess but it was too late. There are some ludicrous attempts at exposition. Actually, many of them—Hasbro & Co. are trying to throw so much into this movie to account for its endless run time, they have to keep stepping back and have some machine explain its motivation. This is hilariously sad.
There is exactly one funny joke in this endless, extremely long and unbelievably loud and nonsensical movie, and it has to do with the invention of the wheel. The rest of the things that pass for humor—which often take place at the worst possible time, as the "director" feels the need to add moments of levity to its explosions, thereby undermining his "end of the world" scenario constantly—are frat-boy fag jokes, crudities, robots farting, and general moronities. All told the script is WAY too crude for children; but also, far too childish for teenagers. At least people of every age and gender can have a relationship with Megan Fox's phantasmagorical rack.
posted
basically what I am trying to point out here with this is that transformers 2 is a very bad movie.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: "Awesome! Now he can see Megan Fox's rack on the big screen..."
And a splendid special effect it is, I'm sure, but hardly worth the double insult of plunking down $9 or more and then sitting through two-and-a-half hours of Michael Bay nonsense.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: "Honey, our son wants to go see Transformers 2."
"Awesome! Now he can see Megan Fox's rack on the big screen..."
I don't remember anything after that.
I don't think her rack is that great TBQH. The plot was not as bad as the reviews make it sound, and Shia actually does quite a good job with the material given to him.
As for freakin awesome rockem sockem robot battle royales, this movie set the bar just a little higher.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots, Deceptibots and Otherbots is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I don't think her rack is that great TBQH.
My son's only eight years old. I have not had the opportunity to teach him the intricacies of such analysis. His standards are lower.
And Ebert's review is a great read...
quote:A Bot makes no visual sense anyway, but two or three tangled up together create an incomprehensible confusion. I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with... fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of staples. They have tiny little heads, except for one who is so ancient he has an aluminum beard.
posted
It felt like they had to up the ante on everything.. I mean, come on, no one needed to see that sector seven guy's rear.. It was ridiculous. I wish there was at least some semblance of focus on the robots themselves--at least the last movie had some character devlopment. This one really pushed the robots aside and focused on Sam. Which was annoying, since apparently he hasn't grown up at all in two years. All it is is one giant, never-ending explosion.
Speaking of explosions, out of all the explosions Megan Fox and Shia Lebeouf went through, hardly any of them could have been realistically survived, or at least there was no way they would have landed unharmed and got up running. I mean, I know there's not any "reality" contained in this movie but really. It was pretty ridiculous.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:The day will come when "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" will be studied in film classes and shown at cult film festivals. It will be seen, in retrospect, as marking the end of an era. Of course there will be many more CGI-based action epics, but never again one this bloated, excessive, incomprehensible, long (149 minutes) or expensive (more than $200 million). Like the dinosaurs, the species has grown too big to survive, and will be wiped out in a cataclysmic event, replaced by more compact, durable forms.
quote:I didn't have a stop watch, but it seemed to me the elephantine action scenes were pretty much spaced out evenly through the movie. There was no starting out slow and building up to a big climax. The movie is pretty much all climax. The Autobots® and Deceptibots® must not have read the warning label on their Viagra. At last we see what a four-hour erection looks like.
quote:Michael Bay seems to be evolving in the wrong direction.
So is the hyperactive blockbuster CGI action genre. If there is one thing everyone in Hollywood thinks they know for sure, it's that the three most important words in movie development are story, story, story. This is not a story: A group of inconsequential human characters watch animation.
quote:Thank goodness Michael Bay made the new Transformers movie, because if he hadn't Charlie Jane Anders wouldn't have written this stupendous review for io9.
Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.
posted
*shrug* I went in expecting it to be awful, and thus was able to enjoy it more than a little but less than a lot.
Note, though, that I had to tell myself, "Stoppit!" when something stupid happened. So, I'd recommend it to anyone who likes cool looking stuff happening, but only if you're willing to give your suspension of disbelief a hefty workout.
(Hey, here's a big one: Optimus Prime dies in a fight with, like, a half-dozen Decepticons; everyone is sad. Sam was right there when it happened, but he knew - as in, had held it in his hand - that he had a shard of the resurrecting thing)
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I think they should have gone the extra mile. They didn't need the sector seven guy, what they needed was Keanu Reeves.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Xann.: I think they should have gone the extra mile. They didn't need the sector seven guy, what they needed was Keanu Reeves.
They already have Agent Smith as Megatron. It might have been just too much awesome to have Keanu, even for Michael Bay.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Maybe it was because I'd had a long day and sat down to watch it at 10:45, or maybe it was because the guy sitting next to me had major body odor issues, but sitting through that movie was misery.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Xann.: I think they should have gone the extra mile. They didn't need the sector seven guy, what they needed was Keanu Reeves.
I thought that was what Shia The Beef was supposed to be. He and Trinity, I mean Megan Fox, even rehash that bit where the hero "dies" and the girl brings him back to life with the shear force of LURRRRVE.
In all honesty, though, I actually kind of enjoyed myself. I went in expecting it to be incomprehensible, terribly written, poorly acted, numbingly stupid. Plus I'd heard that the explosion porn wasn't actually that great.
All of those things were true. But they were slightly less true than I had prepared myself for, and so, another movie "triumphed" thanks to low expectations.
And let's face it, The Beef is an amusing and appealing actor (as annoyingly-written as his characters are), and Megan Fox is an amusing and appealing pair of breasts. So I guess it had that going for it.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
I wish it wasn't so loud that I could have slept through it.
My son loved it. Thankfully, he's still at an age where plot doesn't really matter and is completely inconsequential to him. He liked it for two reasons:
- Megan Fox (he didn't say it, but I can see the smile on his face. They learn so young...)
- Giant robots blow stuff up!!!
His standards are low.
Mine, however... I think I said it best when I described the experience as "...watching paint dry while being on fire!"
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Is the paint on fire or are you on fire? Because I do not think I would mind watching flaming paint dry.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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posted
I reckon that anybody who saw the first movie and then went back to see the sequel deserves whatever they get.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
A group of us see a movie each week, usually on Fridays, and we have a particular affinity for terrible movies. I think we enjoy complaining about the movie afterward more than we enjoy watching theater movies in the first place.
Tonight's offering is a choice between Transformers and Drag me to Hell. Each terrible for its own reasons.
It's a shame there aren't more quality movies to entertain us.
Posts: 15 | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
I noted that there was a difference between them. Drag me to Hell received good reviews, but it was still meant to be terrible, in its own wickedly fun way. Believe me, it certainly gets my vote for movie night, as it did last week when instead I endured Year One.
I will use you as a reference tonight when making my case for Drag Me to Hell.
It is technically another guy's call, but his last choice was The Last House on the Left, which left us all feeling physically, emotionally, and spiritually bereft.
Posts: 15 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: basically what I am trying to point out here with this is that transformers 2 is a very bad movie.
I personally had a lot of fun watching it. Is it deep? No but it's funny and filled with amazing effects and Shia and Megan are really good looking and their characters are people who you want to root for.
posted
This movie will not be nearly as decent in a home theater setting. The fight scenes will look like crap on a home system.
Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Just saw transformers today, I thought it was really good. (Unless you wanted a story that made sense)
Megan looks really good! My girlfriend summed up her entire preformance: Her job is too look good, lean over stuff, get really dirt and sweaty, yell "SAM!!!" a couple times, and lean over more stuff.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I reckon that anybody who saw the first movie and then went back to see the sequel deserves whatever they get.
QFT. You'd have to pay me a whole lot of money to see the sequel.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I was surprised by the amount of profanity in that movie. I don't buy the excuse that it's a PG-13 movie. The first Transformers didn't have near the amount of profanity.
I was disappointed.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Of all the things to be disappointed in...
Oh come now Tom, is it really advisable to start playing the, "My values are better than yours game?" As if we could even begin to decide whether gratuitous swearing is objectively a worse thing than Megan and Shia surviving all those huge explosions.
*spoilers* Well I suppose that last one sorta got Shia. */spoilers*
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
My issue was that I had my kids with me. They watch and enjoy the first one. We always skip over the "Sam's happy time" part, but other than that, there are not too many curse words.
I have said here before that I am not opposed to harsh language in movies. Just don't put them in a "family" movie. Considering Transformers is the story around a set of toys, I would call it a family movie.
We went into this expecting more of the same from the first movie. Instead, we got profanity laced vulgarity.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
If your kids are to young to hear profanity then aren't they to young to see a pg 13 movie? I know it they are over 13 then they hear and say a lot worse things at their school then they would hear in that Transformers 2
Posts: 305 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
You are correct and normally I am more diligent in screening the movies. Some movies are PG-13 for Sci-fi violence and others are for language or sexuality. Given the first Transformers, which we screened ahead of time, we felt safe in taking the kids. Especially given the content in the first movie.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
And... it's not about them being too young to hear profanity. They do hear it at school and such, it was just unexpected and not something we would normally allow them to watch.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
As do my kids. My issue is that it is unnecessary to have that level of profanity in a "family" movie. There are Harry Potter movies that are PG-13 but don't have language harder than Bloody Hell.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
If I had kids, I'd be more far worried about the violence than the sex or profanity in this movie.
It seems to me that if you subscribe to the idea that movies/ TV shows/ video games can influence the behavior of children, then it should be far more objectionable to expose them to 2 straight hours of violence than a combined five seconds of swearing - which is about how things add up in "Transformers 2."
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by SteveRogers: This movie will not be nearly as decent in a home theater setting. The fight scenes will look like crap on a home system.
Unless you have a 42" 1080pi computer monitor and 200$ speakers.
Which some of us have *smug* access to.
I think I will personally compile a list of all the people who badmouth this movie and beat the ever loving crap out of all of you, seriously its an awesome movie with lots of Continuality Nods, THEY HAD A PROPER SOUNDWAVE!!! And he didn't die! And he had a mass driver!
Seriously people who DONT enjoy the movie have their standards so far up their ass that they are in danger of choking on it. Its a movie about our favorite transforming toy aliens from SPACE who cares about anything else?
Also I find that they upped the involvement of the US military and their effectiveness to be the best part the whole Human RedShirt army actually being an effective part of the action and not just clean up. So Humans hae been upgraded to Mauve shirt status.
However here's my issues:
1- I will agree with the difficulty to hear the transformers dialogue, however I don't mark it down for this because I am hard of hearing and have difficulty hearing conversation clearly 10 feet away.
2- Why was the US military operating in China with not a single member of the People's Liberation Army of People's Armed Police in sight? They could at least used Chinese helicopters and the Chinese version of the Tupolev for carrying people incase anyone spots them. A liason officer to boot would have made sense.
Thats about it, its a movie about giant robots and explosions what else do we need?
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quote:Seriously people who DONT enjoy the movie have their standards so far up their ass that they are in danger of choking on it. Its a movie about our favorite transforming toy aliens from SPACE who cares about anything else?
I'm well aware that you predictably did not care about the fact that the plot was completely brain-dead, the movie was bloated at over two and a half hours, and that the action scenes were mostly motion blur, but it's the height of fanboyishness to insist that nobody else has the right to dislike the film because of these things.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Its Transformers, I saw no serious difference between this movies plot and the 1980's movie. There's a bad guy, Humans and Autobots have to stop badguy, Boom Boom Boom badguy dies.
I think people are confusing plot with something else here, if a plot is the linear progression of events from A to B then whats the problem? They had a perfect plot, there was the enemy, he wanted to do something evil and destructive so they had to find the mcguffin to stop him, a battle then occured over the mcguffin and then they almost won, the mcguffin gets destroyed the evil dude gets killed and the normal villains run away for act 3.
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