People don’t usually breathlessly watch the critics and blindly follow them, either. Frankly, I consider ignoring the critics a sign of intelligence.
So do I; but it seemed to me that this movie also got considerable bad response from a significant part of its audience – if the opinions I read here and elsewhere aren’t for some reason more out of whack than the ones for movies like The Hulk, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Watchmen, Terminator Salvation etc.
Those movies seem to have suffered when people talked about their shortcomings, while this one seems to thrive on them.
Oh well, I just thought, someone had a brilliant idea to explain, why one explosive action movie tanks while the other, quite similar one does incredibly well.
I liked T2, but I thought after seeing it that T1 was a better movie overall. I knew I was going to be seeing at least once, so far twice in actuality and will pick up the DVD when it gets released sept/oct.
As for why more people like it beyond the usual suspects, I would probably have to say that it was a crappy year for most folks ,getting laid off, losing money , normal mundane stuff like that. Some times all you really want is a viseral type movie that goes beyond escapism and transends into an empowerment movie.
Like seriously , I assumed you watched independence day, the amount of people that cheered when the white house got taken out by the saucers , resulted in a friggen huge cheer amongst my other theater goers at that time.
We just want to blow stuff up and go home with the hottie.
Time to await transformers 3
Declan
I always feel like the odd man out when people at work talk about the first film, because I gave up about halfway through.
Mostly because none of the titular characters really show up until the the halfway point and until that, we have to deal with Shia Lebouf’s character, who annoyed the hell out of me from the get go, and his really hot girlfriend which I didn’t find her liking him credible. I was holding out hope for the transformers to show up…trying to endure the boredom. Then the transformers showed up…and started talking in slang.
THat’s when I decided it just wasn’t worth it. I turned it off and have never felt the urge to rewatch it since.
So, yeah, I won’t be watching the sequel either, particulary since I hear it’s worse.
I has made me wonder if Shia Labouf is annoying or he just consistantly stars in movies I find to be horrible(Indy 4…Eagle Eye…Transformers)?
It’s “butts in the seats” appeal. These sort of films are not made to generate long-term box-office success, but rather to get as many butts in seats as quickly as possible. This is especially true if it is a bad film, where you want to get people in the theater before word of mouth starts to seriously affect your box office. That’s why they ramp up so big and then quickly fade away.
Don’t want to read the whole thread, but just add my opinion that yes, this movie was a blinding pile of crap. First and foremost:
- Megan Fox’s “acting”. It’s literally like she thinks her presence is perfectly enough.
- The spinning/“I love you” scene before Shia leaves for college. I was dizzy- I can’t believe the thought that could have gone into that scene. “Let’s just spin around them…ten times!! YES!”
- The plot. Well. Uh…
- The dogs. What’s up with dogs in movies lately? (I thought the pack of evil hounds in Up was just a bit too much.) They had no place other being a crude throwaway “joke.”
These are mostly from the beginning, just because the end was so muddled my eyes just glazed over.
I am not a huge fan of action movies, but there are definitely good action movies. This is not one.
Like 100km, but the entire geography of the last scene was the most insane part of the movie.
(this movie is pretty much spoiler proof, but I’ll use tags just in case)
[spoiler]
The heroes spend the night at the pyramids, then spend the next day driving to Petra, a process that apparently takes at least a few hours. They cross directly into Jordan, despite Egypt and Jordan’s non-existant border.
So far just the normal level of movies playing fast and loose with geography. Except it’s a little extra annoying because the director actually shows a map of where they are and where they’re going, hence forcing the audience to think extra hard about how this makes no sense.
Then, in the final scene, they reach Petra and begin the ultimate showdown of ulitimate destiny. The US army manages to role in tanks from the coast, despite not being close to the water. Then, the section-7 guy, realizing the evil plan of the decepticons to Destroy the Sun!! with the device hidden in the pyramids travels spends what can’t have been longer the five minutes running back to Cairo! Finally, at the end of the film, we see him back at Petra.
The film was crap, but I admit to really enjoying just how nuts the last 30 minutes was. Sam goes to robot heaven, people randomly transporting from the pyramids to Jordan, the Decepticons stealing Mr. Burns evil plot, Optimus Primes final speech (something like “the destiny of our future is within the past of the fate of your peoples future destiny”). I was honestly laughing harder then I have at any comedy in recent memory[/spoiler]
If I’m not sure about a movie, I glance at Rotten tomatos. If it gets a score below 50%, I usually give it a pass. Even a high scoring movie will have me reading a few random reviews before I decide to go or not.
Worst movie I ever had the displeasure of enduring two-thirds of.
Someone should put a hit on that Shit LeBarf moron. >_>
I took my kids to see it. At the IMAX theater – $45 for tickets. I only brought them because they wanted to see it. Afterward I found that they’d already seen it and the only reason they didn’t tell me is because they thought I wanted to see it. I didn’t want to see it.
In retrospect, I’m a genius.
The movie in a nutshell: Sam goes to college and then there are 2 hours of computer generated stuff flying willy-nilly across the screen. That’s pretty much all I got out of it.
I loved it, plan to see it again tonight.
Yeah, it made no sense that the NEST guys were trying to fight giant robots with assault rifles and machine guns, when the previous movie had them all using grenade launchers and laser-guided airstrikes. I mean, I know they have a belt-fed automatic 40mm grenade launcher, and I’m pretty sure you can put one on a helicopter.
The two loadmasters standing on either side of the cargo bay of the C-17 while Optimus Prime rolled out (literally) made for a rather cool shot, even without him transforming in mid air. I LOL’d at the Autobot parachutes.
“Now, I want you to pull the primary… Not NOW, you dumbass!” fwoompssshhh!
The Twins didn’t strike me as a black stereotype so much as it reminded me of a couple of dumbass white guys constantly ragging on each other. What can I say, I’m in the Air Force, I see this kind of thing all the damn time. Overall, I thought they were pretty funny, having a brother myself.
“Ow! that hurt!”
“It’s supposed to hurt, it’s an ass-whuppin!”
And once again, it was nice to see that while the humans don’t have a lot of fancy hi-tech alien space robot technology, they still embrace the “Sledgehammer” school of problem solving. Because sometimes, every problem IS a nail. Decepticons getting pounded into the sand by a carpet bombing air strike = WIN. In the next movie, I expect to see about five times that many Decepticons get pasted by about ten times that many B-52 Stratobombers.
ETA: Oh, so the GI Joe trailer, yeah, I really think this movie could have done without turning into a watered down Iron Man ripoff. But the robot suits reminded me of something: From time to time, GI Joe and Transformers have been known to do crossovers (a few times in the comic books, and I think an episode of Transformers established that GI Joe took place about 20 years in the past, with Cobra Commander running around causing trouble still). What if GI Joe turns out to be a crossover, and the robot suits are Cybertronian tech?
Yeah, it’s still gonna suck, but it’s a fun idea.