Transformers 3 thoughts, discussion. *spoilers*

Cafe Society
1

Major spoilers, don’t look if you ain’t seen it.

Just saw it, it was visually spectacular, but the problem is it’s still a Michael Bay movie.

My favourite parts:

Astronaut: Uh Control, we’ve found a GIANT METAL FACE

Control: oh NO! Not a giant metal face on the giant crashed spaceship!? Say it ain’t so Wally!

Astronaut: I’m afraid it is so Control, it’s , it’s almost like it’s THEIR war, OUR world!

Control: You mean, like, whoever wins, we lose?

Astronaut: Yeah maybe something like that.

The Italian Ferrari transformer:

“Hey Optimus no wanna talk to you’s! He don’t a wanna talk ta nobody! What a ya ganna do? FAHGEDABOUTIT!”

Megatron and Carly:

“And you know what Megatron? huh? huh? huh? that makes you his bitch!”

Megatron: “Oh no you didn’t girlfiend! I’m gonna show that Sentinel Prime who’s boss! NYAAAAH!”

And the final fight, when Optimus, who has literally been fighting Megatron for thousands of years, suddenly finds it in himself to just rip Megatron’s off head like a coke tab, easy, done. Then turns around to sentinel prime like "Oh how could you have turne…ENOUGH TALKING BLAM!!! End of Movie.

Again, must say, visually amazing, but yet I feel like I didn’t actually watch anything :confused:

I think the best part was Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s ass, that was no special effect, and yet very very special at the same time. Especially.

But driving home I maybe got the gist of the story; maybe I should be out there getting a girlfriend instead of watching Transformers movies.

So your thoughts, impressions?

2

Loved it. Full marks in the Guku household.

Nice to see Alan Tudyk still getting jobs, lots of good gags with him. ("…India!") It was also cool to see John Malkovich, who kind of reprised his role from last year’s Red. I’m still undecided if bringing in Buzz Aldrin was a very, very cool nod or utterly respectless, though I think it was handled well.

The action and visuals were absolutely spectacular. Especially in the building about to be brought down - I liked that they took that concept and ran with it for several minutes. And I could actually tolerate Shia Labeouf in this one, I liked that his character’s been allowed to age, mature and act out a bit. (The scene with his car in front of his girlfriend’s workplace was priceless.)

All in all, it’s certainly far better than the second and even tops the first. It’s nice to have a sequel that doesn’t dredge the bottoms of suckitude and then start digging. (I’m looking at you, Pirates.)

3

Has he figured out how to make a giant robot fight not boring yet?

I’m not being sarcastic. I liked the first one until the robot fights started, at which point I was astounded by how badly directed they were. Do the action scenes interesting this time? Do they have any sense of scale? Can you tell who’s doing what?

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Most importantly, how’s Starscream? I realize he probably still looks like the offspring of an ape and a bird, but does he at least scheme a little?

4

The fight scenes are vastly improved, they’ve been slowed down here and there so you can see how the robots actually transform, lot’s of time to enjoy the detail. The fighting is also much, much longer. The fight scene with the building is perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve seen at the movies yet.

As for Starscream, are you ready? Are you sitting down?..take a breath…

Starscream goes for Sam, Sam shoots him in the eye, throws a sticky grenade/spike thing at him, AND FUCKING KILLS STARSCREAM :confused:. Also, Iron Hide bites it

And another thing, seeing as I am ruthlessly dropping spoilers:

In the TF3, Optimus is all brand new and shiny, whilst Megatron is basically rolling scrap from his fight in TF2, so why does Optimus and the Autobots heal up all nicely and Megatron has to practically hold the pieces of his head in place? Clearly TF3 is biased against Decepticons.

So yes, amazing, but definitely lots of healthy doses of Bay cheese throughout.

And one MORE thing!

It is revealed that Sentinel Prime was actually leaving Cybertron with the Pylons to meet up with Megatron, yet in the first 5 minutes Sentinel Prime is shot down by the Decepticons, you think Megatron would have maybe sent out a quick Memo to his army not to shoot down the one ship containing EVERYTHING HE NEEDED for his plans to succeed?

Unless there WAS a Memo, and Starscream deleted it! You know that is something he would do, amiright?

And what’s amazing is how EVERYTHING essential lands on or near Earth; the Cube, the Matrix of Leadership, the Pylons for the space ship, Ipods (yes they actually came form Cybertron). So some robot somewhere, looking out at the vast expanse of the universe, decided to hide everything the Decepticons could ever need right here on Earth.

Although that may be Starscream again.

Poor guy rest in peace.

5

Two things in this movie really bothered me. The first really isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, but I think it is worth mentioning. Sentinal Prime (Leonard Nimoy) is trying to get OPTIMUS Prime to come over to the Decepticons, and uses the argument “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. Really? That line is from one of the signature moments in the entire Star Trek history. Do you need to score points with Sci-fi people that bad, that you rip off something that prominent? Not to mention that i was 12 when I first saw that film, and I was devastated when I saw Spock die. I can’t beleive Mr. Bay, and Mr. Speilberg would cheapen it so much by using it in this film. I also can’t beleive that Mr. Nimoy would let them.

The second thing that bothered me was along similar lines, but was a reference to a real world event. They strapped a Space Shuttle to the top of the Autobot’s ship as they are leaving into exile. Just after they launch from Kennedy, Starscream destroys their ship in an explosion and scene that evokes the Challenger disaster. WTF? You trying to pull at my heartstrings by using scenes like these, but you do it so poorly and bluntly that it just feels like you are cheapening the memory of the astronauts that died that day.

Otherwise it was a decent low brow Sci-fi movie with lots of giant robots beating each other up…

Regards,
Tony

P.S. I put the scenes in the order they ocurred in the movie, not in order by which one bothered me more…

6

The humans aren’t total worthless pussies in this movie, which makes me happy. A group of human soldiers actually jumped a squad of Decepticons and had a real battle that wasn’t just an excuse to show off how utterly hopelessly superior the robots are.

7

Where to begin.

Since Megatron was supposed to rendevous with the all spock, they could have explained it better. Megatron crashed sometime really early in the 20th century , leading to the hoover dam being built. While the all spock crashed on the moon in nineteen sixty, way to miss the turn at albeque .

Not too thrilled about the new hottie, I kept on waiting for her to turn into a decepticon, like the other blonde hottie.

I missed the twins.

What I did love were the archangel suits.

Declan

8

Imagine my surprise at googling “wingsuits” and finding out real people actually use that shit. :eek:

9

<Metal Gear Solid ‘notice’ sound>?</Metal Gear Solid ‘notice’ sound>

This was done (forced and badly, but it was done) in the first one. Heroic Squad Leader Guy killed a decepticon with a girl’s motorbike and an assault rifle. It turns out that the US army has giant-robot-killing bullets. By happy coincidence, the chopper that first ran into a decepticon had them, and took out the scorpion bot with no problems, once they figured it out.

This could have been a ‘scrappy military gus show their resourcefulness’ subplot. It was clumsy enough to be a blatant ‘HUMANS ARE AWESOME, ESPECIALLY THE US ARMY!!’ thing, which pretty much undercut the need for Autobots at all.

Of course, the government in the Transformers movies are actively and terminally stupid, so that probably tied their hands some. "Yes, we could issue the giant-robot-killing-bullets to the military and police, but killing decepticons might alienate pro-decepticon voters, which might cost me my re-election!’

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If a supervillian can kill a tank with an energy blast, it’s because you hate the military.

10

This movie was aggressively dumb and the “jokes” made me want to drown myself in my medium Coke Zero.

There were a few individual scenes I liked but over all it was as awful as I feared it would be.

You know you have script problems when you steal your plot from an episode of a cartoon made in the early 80s and the cartoon was more scientifically accurate. Also I am pretty sure I can successfully go about the rest of my life without having to hear the “hilarious” Mom character talk about her son’s junk again.

There was a chase/fight on a highway I liked and would have liked to see more of and there were aspects of the Invasion of Chicago that made me realize just how wasted an opportunity this movie was and the blonde was hot (and was so blatantly felt up by the camera throughout, the movie she should take a pregnancy test) but over all Transformers 3 was not good.

11

Saw it yesterday and liked the movie a lot. I am one of the only 4 people in the entire world who liked the second movie better than the first…and I think this one is under number 2, but still over one.

The thing that annoyed me the most about the movie was that now that Megan Fox is gone, we apparently have to have it drilled into us that Sam has a new girlfriend and THEY. ARE. HAPPY. AND. IN. LOVE.

I also got annoyed at the “oh no something bad is gonna happen…but wait! Something happened JUST in time!” that the writer constantly did. Something magical happened to save someone about every 5 minutes there towards the end, a bit annoying once I noticed it was happening.

Other than those two main points I thought the movie was great. Great action, not as many dumb/sick jokes, good plot (for what it was) a movie I really enjoyed.

12

He re-used stunt driving footage from The Island which is only six years old, so I don’t think he’s too worried about pulling people out of the story for a few seconds.

Neither of these really bother me very much - I don’t mind a bit of winking dialog and realistically expect that that the line would sail past most people who are going to see a Transformers movie. I’m 40, so the line is almost up there with “There is no ‘try’” for recognition - but I would guess that Wrath of Khan may not rank that high with the majority of people who are going to be seeing the new Transformers movie.

…and of course the inclusion of recycled footage was a compromise to avoid attempting to re-do a scene in which a stunt-person was seriously injured, and it’s kind of hard to complain very hard about that.

13

I also want to mention I saw the movie in 3d…which was not my choice, but after having seen it in 3d it was excellent in 3d. A lot of that can be chalked up to the fact that they made it with the actual 3d cameras (like Avatar did) as opposed to doing it in post (like most other 3d movies). I would very much recommend it in 3d

14

Saw it last night. I didn’t see it in 3D but now I almost wish I had.

The action sequences were noticeably improved from the previous two movies. There was a lot more slow-motion, which on the one hand, OK, is a slightly cheesy effect, but it really, really helped with being able to tell what was going on in the “giant robots fighting” scenes. And I think the editing was just better in general.

How does Michael Bay manage to get actors of this caliber into his movies?! (I know, I know, the answer is green and has pictures of dead presidents on it.) But seriously: Leonard Nimoy, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Malkovich. John Malkovich!

I loved the shout-out to Star Trek II, by the way, although there was absolutely no recognition laughter or applause in the theater where I saw it, so I think Larry Mudd is correct; that line is going right over the heads of a lot of the people seeing this movie.

The romantic interest was a dud as usual. I don’t miss Megan Fox but I wouldn’t miss the new girl, either. Having her running through ruined Chicago while wearing high heels was just ludicrous and her “You’re Sentinel’s bitch” line was…well, also ludicrous. Honestly, the love interest bullshit could be totally excised from all three movies and I’d barely notice. It adds nothing. (Well, it adds eye candy, which I assume is the point.)

Having lived in Chicago for a few years, I dug the scenes of ruined Chicago, and the wingsuits were mega-cool. I was surprised to see that they showed a lot more dead (human) bodies in this one than I remember from the previous films. I mean, there are implied deaths in the other two but I don’t remember seeing anything like an entire El car full of dead people, or someone’s skull rolling down the street.

Overall I really liked this one, more than I liked the second movie. I should point out for full disclosure that I genuinely like Michael Bay films in a non-ironic way, and so I enjoyed this one as an example of that genre. I recognize that it isn’t a timeless film classic. :smiley: But for a Michael Bay giant alien robot action movie, it was really quite good.

15

Loved the final battle; Drop the story and let the robots duke it out. I don’t even think the parents or Malkovich or the blonde bureaucrat were even in the second half. It reminded me of a Godzilla movie, where a meandering plot would be dropped so the monster battle could take center stage. I was in absolute Transformers heaven.

However:

The first half-hour or so, with Sam looking for his job, were unbearable! I was fidgeting with boredom, even though I knew I’d eventually see robots blowing stuff up.

I didn’t like the generic Decepti-mooks. I want to see the characters I saw from the cartoon. They could’ve used Stunticons, Combaticons, etc… besides the one-shot, one-kill, non-transforming robots. Same goes with the fighter craft and blimp things. Those could’ve been transformers, too, like the Starscream’s different-colored jets from the cartoon. The Nascar-bots could’ve been Wheeljack, Bluestreak, Cliffjumper, etc.

A power struggle between Megatron and Spock. Two robots wanting to rule the Decepticons, what a clever idea! Again, harkening back to the cartoon, why couldn’t they have made it Starscream vs Megatron? That is the #2 thing* I didn’t like about this trilogy: they never had Starscream try to betray Megatron.

But, hey, perhaps I need to realize that the movies aren’t supposed to photo-real versions of the 80s cartoon. Do I just need to grow up? :wink:

  • #1 thing I missed? No Dinobots. Only one thing is cooler than a T-Rex? A robotic T-Rex!
16

Yeah, I was disappointed in the lack of transforming Decepticons. The Autobots (especially Bumblebee) were going back and forth mid-battle. Of the few Decepticons that did transform, they only did it once or twice and they did it just to get somewhere else.

17

Seriously? That’s it? I heard about that a couple days ago, but I never watched the video. I thought it would be a whole scene, not a two second shot.

18

I enjoyed the fact that there weren’t as many call-backs to the cartoon characters because then it feels like they are just shoehorning in every one we know for the sake of it

(coughstarwarsprequelscough)

19

There were several characters from the original toyline and comic who weren’t in the cartoon who showed up in the movie. All three of the NASCAR Autobots, for example. The name of their group (the Wreckers) and their ship (Xantium) are from the UK comic!

Additionally, Dino was Mirage and Que was Wheeljack.

20

My wife liked the first one, so she wanted to go to the second movie. She fell asleep halfway through.

Then last week she wanted to go to the third movie, so I made sure we went to an earlier showing. She still fell asleep halfway through.

I thought the bits that didn’t involve robots fighting were painfully stupid, with most of the actors seemingly rushing through their lines as if they couldn’t wait to be done. The bits that did involve robots fighting were a mixed bag; it was easier to tell what was going on, but some things just seemed lame (generic bad guy robots, bad guy robots piloting airplanes instead of turning into planes, etc.).