[Quote=Terrifel]
Transformers takes us on a journey to the heart of Michael Bay’s personal universe, and that heart is made of giant robots pounding the crap out of each other until they explode.
[/Quote]
That was a sentence of great beauty.
I’ve never been a Michael Bay fan, and I’m too old to have fit the original Transformers’ demographic, but I’m gonna see the thing Sunday, for sure. Sounds like a hoot and a half.
Three pages and nobody’s asked this yet, so I will.
If you’re at Hoover Dam, and you want to have a fight scene involving giant robots in a nearby big city, there is only one big city nearby:
VEGAS.
So why, why, why did they go the the giant unnamed city (which, if I remember the credits correctly, might have been Detroit)? What could possibly have been cooler than having the big giant battle in freaking VEGAS?! It’s only 45 minutes’ drive from Hoover Dam! What, they ran out of money and didn’t want to recreate recognizable buildings? What city were they supposed to be in, anyway? Where is the nearest big city from Hoover Dam other than Vegas? Phoenix (6 hr drive)? Carson City (ha!)?
I went to see Transformers on the 4th. The next day, going back to work from lunch, this yellow camero with black hood stripes pulls up behind me. That was a ‘what the hell, I thought that was just a movie’ moment from me.
[QUOTE=RikWriter]
Well, it might have been had that been the way it happened, but it wasn’t. They tracked him a long way off at around dusk. When he wouldn’t respond, they sent out a flight of fighters to intercept. The fighters IDed the chopper as one of our Pave Lows, and one of the guys in the TOC IDed the tail numbers as coming from a bird that had gone down in Afghanistan a year ago. The OIC was confused but didn’t want to possibly shoot down one of our own choppers so he had the fighters escort it to a landing and had it surrounded by armed Bradleys and troops.
Did you hit the john in the middle of the scene or something?
[/QUOTE]
Sorry. I disagree with you. I was paying attention thru the whole thing and you are adding OIC confusion that was not played up the way you are selling it. It happened exactly as I paraphrased above. Remember the guy who confirmed, without any doubt, that the chopper was shot down because his buddy was on it? It wasn’t actually escorted and the radar operator said, with much confusion and suprise, that the chopper was landing at the base. If they were expecting it to show up he wouldn’t have reacted that way.
Did you hit the john during Blackout’s actual arrival at the base?
[QUOTE=Stinkpalm]
Sorry. I disagree with you. I was paying attention thru the whole thing and you are adding OIC confusion that was not played up the way you are selling it. It happened exactly as I paraphrased above. Remember the guy who confirmed, without any doubt, that the chopper was shot down because his buddy was on it? It wasn’t actually escorted and the radar operator said, with much confusion and suprise, that the chopper was landing at the base. If they were expecting it to show up he wouldn’t have reacted that way.
Did you hit the john during Blackout’s actual arrival at the base?
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, but you’re incorrect. It happened the way I described it.
[QUOTE=Theobroma]
So why, why, why did they go the the giant unnamed city (which, if I remember the credits correctly, might have been Detroit)
[/QUOTE]
Although it might have been Detroit in real life, I thought the city was Los Angeles filmwise, since one scene earlier on took place outside the Griffith Park Observatory.
The Transformers came out after I was already an adult so I went into this knowing absolutely nothing about the original cartoon or toy line or whatever it was. All I knew was that shit turned into other shit (honestly, I didn’t even know it was robots until I started seeing the movie promos a few weeks ago. I always thought it was like trucks turning into helicopters or something).
Initially I found myself completely distracted by the myriad implausibilities/impossibilities in both concept and plot (I would still like to know how Bernie Mac was able to legally sell a car that could not have had any paperwork on it. Where did he find a title? How was Shia able to register it?), but after a while, I finally realized I was picking nits with a live action saturday morning cartoon and a lot of what was on screen was pretty fun.
Being a neophyte to this franchise, though, there was still a lot I didn’t understand and I’m hoping maybe someone here knows the answers to a few questions (if there are any answers, maybe there aren’t).
Who made these robots and why? Are they supposed to be evolved somehow? If so, how can robots evolve?
What does that cube have to do with anything? I know it supposedly gives them “power,” but how does it give them power? Who made it?
Why do robots from another planet transform into machines found only on earth? Can they transform into anything they want? If so, then why do they always pick the same things? Why be a Camero if you can be a jet or an armed helicopter?
Why do the good robots and bad robots (I forget their names…the deceptibots and the something or others) hate each other? That wasn’t really explained in the movie except that the leader of the bad robots somehow ruined everything on their original planet.
Where does the mass go when bigger things transform into smaller things?
The last question is specifically movie related: We see a whole downtown section of what looks like a major city decimated by giant robots with scores of wrecked skyscrapers and a full on firefight with the military yet then we’re supposed to believe that the existence of the robots s still a big secret at the end? WTF? There had to have been thousands of witnesses. There were even people with handheld cameras. How could the government possibly keep it all a secret?
I haven’t seen the movie itself, so this is based on the related comics - 4 issue prequel, 4 issue adaptation, 1 issue Target-exclusive prequel.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Who made these robots and why?
[/quote]
It changes from continuity to continuity.
In the movie continuity (as presented in the comics, anyway), they were gifted with life by the All-Spark. Whether this was an accident, or a deliberate choice by the All-Spark is not clear. The Cybertronians don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter to them - the All-Spark is the source of their life. That’s all that matters.
Camouflage. They don’t want to be noticed and interfered with by the natives, and avoiding the other faction’s notice is also a good thing.
Yes, as long as the mass is about right - they see something that strikes their fancy, and choose it. Bumblebee even changes the model of Camaro he is at one point.
Because their camo forms are chosen based upon the 'bot’s personality, their mass, their primary function (Frenzy, the 'Con’s espionage specialist, disguises himself as a CD player and PDA at various points), and just random chance in what they happen to run into when they’re chosing it.
Barricade’s as heavily armed as Starscream or Blackout, despite his choosing to disguise himself as a police car rather than a military vehicle, and it gets him better access to more locations - a police cruiser’s going to be less conspicuous in the middle of a city than an F-16.
'Cons tend toward more militaristic forms, simply because they’re more militaristic.
Megatron wanted the power of the All-Spark, and recruited the other 'Cons to help him. Since this would amount to absolute power over all Cybertronians, the 'Bots obviously didn’t want him to have it.
Other continuities are similar - generally, the Decepticons start out trying for power, and later on, after being defeated, they, or their descendants, the Predicons, go for revenge on the Autobots/Maximals.
Not an issue in the movie, as the camo forms and bot designs were chosen specifically to avoid the issue. (Frenzy becomes a PDA after his head is separated from his body.) The more recent TV series and toy lines have also tried to keep scale in mind. Ignored in the original cartoon, handwaved away in the IDW mainline comics.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Who made these robots and why?
[/quote]
In the original TV series, these guys. In the Marvel comics, this guy. In subsequent TV series, apparently, the latter is taken to be the creator of the transformers. His (and his arch nemesis’) degree of cosmicity varies, apparently, from continuity to continuity.
Here’s the wiki which doesn’t quite answer your questions but makes several relevant comments. It’s not clear whether the movie’s Allspark has the same origin as the other continuities’, nor whether the nature of its powers is the same.
Someone above in this thread says this is what the movie claims.
:smack: Just repeat to yourself, “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.” 
(In other words, I don’t know, and I’m betting no one else does either, including the writers.)
So I’m just shootin’ out Wikipedia articles here, but that’s somewhat helpful isn’t it?
Look here. (The rest of the article is interesting as well if you want to see how different versions of the story treat the character.)
The writers of the series actually claimed they were going to have all the robots retain the same mass in both their states. They even changed Megatron’s character for this reason–he used to transform into a smallish pistol type weapon, but in the movie he transforms into some kind of jet. So does the movie not remain consistent with this?
:dubious: You got me. That sounds pretty crazy.
-FrL-
Thanks to Tengu and Frylock for the help but with regard to the changing mass question, while I guess the bots in the movie were reasonably within the scale of what they were transforming into, the cube still transformed from a house sized obelisk into a lightweight, portable unit about the size of a boom box. The density couldn’t have been compressed because Shia was carrying it around like it was made out of styrofoam. Does the cube change sizes in the cartoon?
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The last question is specifically movie related: We see a whole downtown section of what looks like a major city decimated by giant robots with scores of wrecked skyscrapers and a full on firefight with the military yet then we’re supposed to believe that the existence of the robots s still a big secret at the end? WTF? There had to have been thousands of witnesses. There were even people with handheld cameras. How could the government possibly keep it all a secret?
[/QUOTE]
Rounded them all up and shot them. Or called in Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith from Men in Black.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Does the cube change sizes in the cartoon?
[/QUOTE]
The All-Spark in other continuities is generally not given physical form - it’s a light show, made up of the Spark (life essence) of every Transformer who ever has lived, or will live. All very mystical.
Wherein lies the easiest way to explain away the All-Spark’s size issues - the cube isn’t its real form - it’s just the interface with the three-dimensional physical world, for an entity which isn’t.
[QUOTE=Leaper]
Well, at least with cars, transforming didn’t violate the laws of conservation of mass quite as egregiously.
A boombox or a microscope on the other hand… They better be a DAMN big boombox/microscope!
(Don’t get me started on the casettes. :))
[/QUOTE]
As I said earlier, if the stupid cube can change mass, why CAN’T alien robots shrink down to the size of a boombox???
[QUOTE=CynicalGabe]
As I said earlier, if the stupid cube can change mass, why CAN’T alien robots shrink down to the size of a boombox???
[/QUOTE]
Because the All-Spark is something from before this universe existed and doesn’t abide by its laws.
I should note that historically, the Transformers line came from two products that were merged, plus a few random toys from other product lines.
The Diaclone figures were powered armor defending the earth from alien invaders. The Autobot Cars, Optimus, the Decepticon Jets, the Dinobots, all Diaclone. Also the Insecticons. (The Deluxe Insecticons were an off-line product, as was Omega Supreme, Sky Lynx, and, most famously, Jetfire)
You could tell a Diaclone toy because it had a cockpit with space for a driver in it. Little figures with magnetic feet.
The other product line was Microman, designed as toys at 1/1 scale that turned into robots and equipment. The concept was that the 3 and 3/4" toy was life-size. Megatron (Toy version of a gun from UNCLE), Soundwave, Perceptor (Remember the Tank mode?), Bumblebee (Penny Racer/ChoroQ toy) and several others were Microman toys. Anything that had to shrink in disguised mode probably came from Microman originally.
[QUOTE=Terrifel]
Transformers may very well be the perfect Michael Bay movie. The man has finally found the precise formula with which to express his creative soul, and his joy is evident in every frame of the movie. This is the film of a man at peace with himself. Transformers takes us on a journey to the heart of Michael Bay’s personal universe, and that heart is made of giant robots pounding the crap out of each other until they explode.
[/QUOTE]
Saw the movie, the only thing in my mind now is
Michael Bay, please please please seek out and befriend one Mike Stackpole.
If Bay wanted to make the next Star Wars, Battletech has boatloads of material that would make for epic space opera, and most importantly, shitloads of giant robots pounding the crap out of each other, tons of comic relief potential, and just awesome stories.
Hope I didn’t miss the answer as I skimmed the thread, but how did Megatron learn English? He was comatose for 70+ years, well before the world wide web, where all the others learned from. Yet he unfreezes and immediately speaks.
[QUOTE=D_Odds]
Hope I didn’t miss the answer as I skimmed the thread, but how did Megatron learn English? He was comatose for 70+ years, well before the world wide web, where all the others learned from. Yet he unfreezes and immediately speaks.
[/QUOTE]
Not certain, but it seemed to me that when one of the decepticons learned some bit of information, all the rest did as well, I guess through some sort of network they have. Probably how Megatron knew English, and probably how the Decepticons were able to figure out that Megatron crashlanded on Earth to begin with.
OK, saw it this evening. I returned home with a bit of a headache and feeling a bit dirty, like, now that I think about it, I always do after a Michael Bay film. I guess that makes it sound like I hated it, but I was sufficiently entertained. Shia LeBeouf did a pretty decent job, John Turturro stole the show as usual (I don’t know what possessed him to take a role in this thing but he was a hoot), and with some qualifications I’ll get into in a minute, the Transformers themselves were magnificent, visually at least. I was basically sucked in from the moment the helicopter-robot thing started hurling tanks around.
I don’t suppose there’s any point in criticizing the story much, being based as it was around an original concept that itself was pure product placement, with about six more layers of product placement layered on top. The introduction of the different robots was mostly handled well, and since I never saw any of the original series, I don’t care how close they might have been to the original characters: they looked badass and the FX were mostly fabulous. I did have the impression, however, that there was a lot more characterization that could have been done to differentiate one from another, and once they finally spoke in their utterly ridiculous Saturday morning cartoon-episode voices and dialogue (yeah, I know they had to at some point), the movie pretty much fell apart for me.
Most of the stuff I hated, and there was much, I lay at the feet of the director. Aside from the aforementioned, the humans mostly had no more characterization than the robots. As some others have noted, the huge urban battle was shot and edited in such a way that it was almost impossible to follow; it didn’t help that Bay felt it necessary to whip the camera around all the time, apparently for no reason other than to show off the technical difficulty of the CGI. A lot of the comedy (robot pee jokes, what a riot :rolleyes: ) fell flat.
Oh yes, and jeepers, but does Bay have a military fetish. I’ll admit it was kinda fun to see the CV-22 Osprey, F-22 Raptor and AC-130 amongst the other hardware (is this the first time those airframes have shown up in a Major Motion Picture?), but I had to laugh a bit at the military’s apparently enthusiastic cooperation with the filmmakers: “See, folks, we may be in a spot of trouble in Iraq at the moment, but if a race of alien robots happens to show up, there’s nothing to worry about. We gonna come here, we gonna conquer, and we gonna kick some.”
Anyway, more or less a fun ride, but I don’t think I’ll be adding this one to my DVD collection.
On the subject of hot Aussie hacker chicks and Fourier transforms, I think the point was that the Decepticons had cracked the DOD’s encryption so fast that they had to have a quantum computer. Since she was a signal processing hot Aussie hacker chick, Fourier transforms to quantum mechanics was a mathy way of saying “get out of your 20th century analogue mindset, yo.” I thought this was actually a nice touch, though they screwed it up a bit.
For those not in the know, modern encryption hinges on the fact that it’s very easy to multiply two numbers together and get one big number, but devilishly difficult to do the reverse. (Grade school kids can work out what 4357*7351 is, but it takes a bit of work to suss out what you’d have to multiply to get 32,028,307.) All of this is different with a quantum computer. Using quantum circuits you can quickly factor numbers. This makes modern public key encryption more or less useless. My problem with the exchange is that she says something along the lines of “they hacked your system in 10 seconds; it would take 10 years to complete a brute force attack.” I would think that the reasonable assumption was that they had an inside man, not that they had a quantum computer.
Regardless, I thought it was a fun movie. I agree that it would have been nice to have some long (hell, medium) shots on the robots so they weren’t just a mass of moving bits.
Also, I thought the updated Camaro was lame. Give me slightly rusted Bumblebee any day. That new model just looked like every other plastic car on the road–at least the old one had character.