Transformers: Dark of the Moon Review Thread

[blankall]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

That's exactly my point.

Special effects action extravaganza films don't have to be awful like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. It's completely possible for talented filmmakers to produce movies with exciting action and amazing special effects while ALSO having good stories, writing, acting, directing, and cinematography. This is why I don't give the Transformers movies a free pass because "they're just action movies about giant space robots, what were you expecting, Citizen Kane?"

Well some people don't mind seeing just action movies. I don't think Transformers is being billed as anything it isn't. You know exactly what to expect, and obviously there is enough interest in that to make the movies extremely profitable.

Sometimes people just want to see a mindless film. Nothing wrong with that.

[LGA]

I just watched it...don't even know what to say.

I don't know if anyone built models of Japanese mecha when they were kids, but I did and one of the most memorable things about those was the knockoffs. You see, there was the actual brand, Bandai, who used high quality plastics and had really well designed moulds that you could build into really neat models. Then you had the Taiwanese knockoff...Bendi, they used cheap plastic, it was flimsy, and the moulds were all off. As a result the Bandai models would actually stand up to quite a bit of abuse, whereas if you looked at the Bendi models wrong they would fall apart. Why am I bringing this point up? Because clearly whoever decided to construct the Transformers for the movie hired Bandai to build the Autobots and with the leftover change commissioned Bendi to slap together something resembling a Decepticon.

I find it completey unfathomable that there was ever a war for Cybertron. Essentially, through the course of three movies the amount of Autobot deaths can be counted on one hand...the Deception casualties number in the hundreds, possibly thousands. So, I'm assuming the Decepticons were actually some uprising from the poor, lower class who didn't really have much, are malnourished and just want a loaf of bread every now and again. The Autobots are clearly some monarchist dictatorship that rule as overlords over the poor peasant Decepticons. That would explain why the Autobots are seemingly impervious to damage and you could take down a Decepticon with a medium sized rock. Seriously, essentially 8 Autobots and a random scattering of (compared to the Decepticons) mouse sized humans defeated legions about legions of Decepticons. You're telling me there was a war? You sure it wasn't some sort of brutal massacre?

See, I actually somewhat enjoyed the first one. Yes, there was too much focus on Shia Lawhatever, but at least they made a point of making the Decepticons a formidable force. The opening scene with Blackout decimating an entire army base? Awesome. Since then, the army has apparently hacked physics and enabled invincibility. Freakin' brutal. I hate you Michael Bay, I hate you so, so much.

[VANFLAMESFAN]

^^ So......did you like it??

[LGA]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

^^ So......did you like it??

Clearly I absolutely loved it, would put it up there with Field of Dreams for pure inspirational movies.

[kirant]

Originally Posted by LGA

I just watched it...don't even know what to say.

I don't know if anyone built models of Japanese mecha when they were kids, but I did and one of the most memorable things about those was the knockoffs. You see, there was the actual brand, Bandai, who used high quality plastics and had really well designed moulds that you could build into really neat models. Then you had the Taiwanese knockoff...Bendi, they used cheap plastic, it was flimsy, and the moulds were all off. As a result the Bandai models would actually stand up to quite a bit of abuse, whereas if you looked at the Bendi models wrong they would fall apart. Why am I bringing this point up? Because clearly whoever decided to construct the Transformers for the movie hired Bandai to build the Autobots and with the leftover change commissioned Bendi to slap together something resembling a Decepticon.

Hey. Don't insult my Bendi Gandum!

Seriously though, this review put me into depression mode. I was really excited to see a war and the Decepticons look like something of a threat after being destroyed en masse by tanks in Revenge of the Fallen...

[LGA]

Originally Posted by kirant

Hey. Don't insult my Bendi Gandum!

Seriously though, this review put me into depression mode. I was really excited to see a war and the Decepticons look like something of a threat after being destroyed en masse by tanks in Revenge of the Fallen...

I used to love the Bendi's, you could use them as cannon fodder if you ever played war, they exploded quite marvelously.

[Sr. Mints]

^^ You guys actually took your toys out of the packaging?

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by LGA

I find it completey unfathomable that there was ever a war for Cybertron. Essentially, through the course of three movies the amount of Autobot deaths can be counted on one hand...the Deception casualties number in the hundreds, possibly thousands. So, I'm assuming the Decepticons were actually some uprising from the poor, lower class who didn't really have much, are malnourished and just want a loaf of bread every now and again. The Autobots are clearly some monarchist dictatorship that rule as overlords over the poor peasant Decepticons. That would explain why the Autobots are seemingly impervious to damage and you could take down a Decepticon with a medium sized rock. Seriously, essentially 8 Autobots and a random scattering of (compared to the Decepticons) mouse sized humans defeated legions about legions of Decepticons. You're telling me there was a war? You sure it wasn't some sort of brutal massacre.

This is why Beast Wars was better than Transformers.

[JD]

Originally Posted by LGA

See, I actually somewhat enjoyed the first one. Yes, there was too much focus on Shia Lawhatever, but at least they made a point of making the Decepticons a formidable force. The opening scene with Blackout decimating an entire army base? Awesome. Since then, the army has apparently hacked physics and enabled invincibility. Freakin' brutal. I hate you Michael Bay, I hate you so, so much.

This paragraph sums it up for me... That opening scene in the first movie gave you that "omg, the human race is soooo f***ed" feeling. It was a great opening scene that was supposed to be a glimpse of what the Decepticons are capable of. Now, I haven't seen the 3rd flick yet, but that feeling has yet to be duplicated for me.

[speede5]

Originally Posted by JD

This paragraph sums it up for me... That opening scene in the first movie gave you that "omg, the human race is soooo f***ed" feeling. It was a great opening scene that was supposed to be a glimpse of what the Decepticons are capable of. Now, I haven't seen the 3rd flick yet, but that feeling has yet to be duplicated for me.

Once they get past the lame attempts at humour, this one is much darker than the other two, you'll get that feeling back.

[3 Justin 3]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

This is why Beast Wars was better than Transformers.

Beast Wars is better than sex with 2 Megan Fox's.

[VANFLAMESFAN]

People complaining about the good guys winning.....that's funny to me.

[Yasa]

Rattrap for the win.

[LGA]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

People complaining about the good guys winning.....that's funny to me.

It's not so much winning as the way they win. Take Terminator for example, you get that feeling of relief when the Terminator's sent after John Connor are beaten. That's because the Terminator's are terrifying and menacing creatures and the heroes actually have to work and use some ingenuity to beat them.

If there's anything Transformers reminds me of is the switch from the classic games, where the difficulty of the games brought a real sensation of accomplishment, to the modern age games, where everything is made to be so easy that there is almost no point in playing. The Decepticons manage to kill innocent civilians...that's about it for casualties. Movies about people fighting people have more "hero" casualties than this movie. The threat of the Decepticons is completely eliminated and takes away from the enjoyment of the film. Take Shockwave in this craptastic movie. He fires his gun maybe 5 times throughout the movie. The rest of the movie he is walking very slowly, not stalking people, just moving very slowly. He is doing that or standing still and moving his head left to right. Why advertise a pylon?

Also, they completely castrated Megatron. He went from this death dealing, walking terror in the first movie to a joke of a side kick to whatever random new guy they decide to bring along. Megatron should have been like Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men, a seemingly unstoppable beast. Not a snivelling, rusting joke.

Their forced attempts at humour, and trying to shove the romantic angle down our throats just topped off this complete and utter raping of a part of my childhood.

[VANFLAMESFAN]

Originally Posted by LGA

It's not so much winning as the way they win. Take Terminator for example, you get that feeling of relief when the Terminator's sent after John Connor are beaten. That's because the Terminator's are terrifying and menacing creatures and the heroes actually have to work and use some ingenuity to beat them.

If there's anything Transformers reminds me of is the switch from the classic games, where the difficulty of the games brought a real sensation of accomplishment, to the modern age games, where everything is made to be so easy that there is almost no point in playing. The Decepticons manage to kill innocent civilians...that's about it for casualties. Movies about people fighting people have more "hero" casualties than this movie. The threat of the Decepticons is completely eliminated and takes away from the enjoyment of the film. Take Shockwave in this craptastic movie. He fires his gun maybe 5 times throughout the movie. The rest of the movie he is walking very slowly, not stalking people, just moving very slowly. He is doing that or standing still and moving his head left to right. Why advertise a pylon?

Also, they completely castrated Megatron. He went from this death dealing, walking terror in the first movie to a joke of a side kick to whatever random new guy they decide to bring along. Megatron should have been like Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men, a seemingly unstoppable beast. Not a snivelling, rusting joke.

Their forced attempts at humour, and trying to shove the romantic angle down our throats just topped off this complete and utter raping of a part of my childhood.

You clearly have put way more thought in this that I ever would have, so I commend you for that and won't even bother engaging in debate on the parts of your post I disagree with. You win.

[trackercowe]

Just came back from a 3D showing, and while it was a tad better than RotF, I still didn't leave the theatre at all satisfied.

The effects, CGI, and voice work was great. If they focused more on the Autobots/Decepticons the series would be a lot better imo.

A few problems I had were:

Why do most of the characters in the move act like complete spaz's? In the first two movies only the Witwickey's and Turturro's character's acted overly strange at times. In DotM there was just too many strange characters to go along with the aforementioned characters. This time around it seemed like the only partially realistic characters were the military guys and his cardboard cutout girlfriend. Everyone other character was either way over the top (Dempsey) or was way over the top and served no purpose (Malkovich and Jeong).

Secondly, a good portion of the first hour seemed entirely pointless. There was the Sam trying to find a job, and working under Malkovich. Then the scene with the Russians (why did their women pull guns on them, who cares I guess, they're Russians!. Also a couple scenes with the parents just seemed random; well the earth is being invaded, but I better spend time with my parents in their stupid motor home. Once again Bay could of saved some of us a good amount of aggravation and cut down on these needless scenes, and made a 2 hour movie, rather than a movie that pushed near 3 hours.

Finally, while I do really like some of the mythology in the Transfomers Universe and the battles are well done, part of it just pissed me off. Just going to lift this off imdb

"Ok so yet again Bay out did himself I mean yes this was better then ROTF but not by much. My real problem with this movie, and ROTF outside of the terrible plots, and unconsistancy in the stories and maybe im in the minority but is how he treated megatron as a character.

I mean seriously leader of the decepticons, destroyer of cybertron, ruthless, should be feared by all, but was a no show in this movie and in ROTF. I mean seriously in tf1 he was how can I put it, someone you genuinly felt would destroy everyone in his path, he whooped optimus, destroyed jazz with ease and was willing to destroy and enslave all of humanity.

Then tf2 he is revived and should of been extremely pissed and ready to kill optimus which he did but not the way I felt he should have...he fights optimus and gets beatdown with the help of star scream and the helicopter cant remember his name at the moment. Then only kills optimus by sneaking up behind him like a wuss. How do you go from ultimate match for optimus to loosing with your second in command helping you??? It makes no sense.

Then I thought the disrespect couldnt get any worse, but wow did it. Megatron now puts in motion this elaborate plan to bring cybertron to earths galaxy. Im thinking ok now we are starting to see the megatron from the tf1 a real leader, then come to find out Sential struck a deal with him so he wouldnt be killed im like yes even this dude fears megatron, but oh how wrong i was for getting my hopes up. He then throughout the majority of the movie disappears and lets a human go up and talk trash to him and doesnt even kill her...REALLY!!!! This is the same robot that in tf1 flicked a human just cause the human probably got to close. Seriously then oh the ultimate just WTF moment. Optimus now has one arm Sential is getting ready to end optimus's life and megatron saves him, now smart megatron would of waited for him to kill optimus then shot him in the back but i understand why that didnt happen. But anyway he then says a great line like "Prime where would you be without me." Im thinking ok we are gonna get the epic showdown and end this movie the way it should be megatron vs optimus, but no optimus with onearm let me repeat one arm kills him in one damn swing...like wow anti climatic. These movies had the characters and material to be epic but Bay does his usual and gives us medicore at best."

Brings up some very good points in my opinion. I would like to go further into detail, but I still have a massive headache from the movie. I'd give it a 4/10 on first viewing. Once again I never watched the cartoon as a child, so I am just commenting from more of an outsiders perspective.

[LGA]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

You clearly have put way more thought in this that I ever would have, so I commend you for that and won't even bother engaging in debate on the parts of your post I disagree with. You win.

I had two and a half hours to really figure out why I hated the movie as much as a I did as I had promised a couple friends of mine we would go see it. Unfortunately I had already watched it earlier with another friend today, so upon the second viewing it was like everything that I found mildly irritating the first time was slapping me in the face. An hour in I was ready to get up and leave but realized that would really ruin it for my friends.

[VANFLAMESFAN]

Originally Posted by LGA

I had two and a half hours to really figure out why I hated the movie as much as a I did as I had promised a couple friends of mine we would go see it. Unfortunately I had already watched it earlier with another friend today, so upon the second viewing it was like everything that I found mildly irritating the first time was slapping me in the face. An hour in I was ready to get up and leave but realized that would really ruin it for my friends.

Ugh, seeing a movie you didnt like twice in one day?? Brutal. Reminds me of the same kind of situation where I saw Phantom Menace twice on opening day because of a promise I made to two different groups of friends. I have never wanted to kill a kid so much as I did during the second viewing.

[trackercowe]

I loved that my theater gave the movie a standing ovation when it ended. I mean the effects were good, but not worthy of a standing ovation. The last two movies sure make you appreciate the first one a heck of a lot more. The effects weren't as good, but the story was simple enough and they were able to treat the Transformers with more respect since they only used so many.

In the last two entries Decepticons are just being killed off at pure random; and when Ironhide was killed off no one even gave a crap. Really wish they focused more on the Transformers and less on Witwickey and friends.

Edit: Once thing I missed was during the final battle, when Optimus was tangled up in those cords for 15 minutes how did the the other Autobots get captured by the Decepticons? Just seemed to come out of nowhere.

[3 Justin 3]

Originally Posted by trackercowe

I loved that my theater gave the movie a standing ovation when it ended. I mean the effects were good, but not worthy of a standing ovation. The last two movies sure make you appreciate the first one a heck of a lot more. The effects weren't as good, but the story was simple enough and they were able to treat the Transformers with more respect since they only used so many.

In the last two entries Decepticons are just being killed off at pure random; and when Ironhide was killed off no one even gave a crap. Really wish they focused more on the Transformers and less on Witwickey and friends.

Edit: Once thing I missed was during the final battle, when Optimus was tangled up in those cords for 15 minutes how did the the other Autobots get captured by the Decepticons? Just seemed to come out of nowhere.

A standing ovation? God help us all if people actually think these movies are worthy of a standing ovation and I like them.