And another nitpick that I thought was annoying: there’s a telephone in the room where the hot Aussie hacker chick and Jon Voight (and the rest) are holed up. They’re trying to build a microphone. Heaven forbid they use the one conveniently preassembled for them.
On a related note: radios are made out of wires and physics. How exactly did the Decepticons destroy them all?
I saw it last night and thought it was a homerun. The compelling thing about the Transformers for me has always been the ridiculously blatant product pimping underscored by a ‘story’ that could have (and might well have) been written by a PTSD Nam vet. It’s a story about a vicious civil war and the good guys are usually losing. If you replaced the robots with people, you couldn’t show this movie to children. You probably couldn’t even show it in U.S. theaters.
Those absurd toys and their ridiculous television show have always had a certain darkness running under the surface of their story, and I thought Spielberg and Bay really got that and brought it out. I hope the sequel takes it farther, the way the original animated film just tore the mask off. That they were able to reinvent and magnify the product placement is just irony squared.
That bugged me, too.
They could use the radios, but unless your telephone is hooked up to Sally the Operator, your calls will be routed via a computerized switch, which would have been knocked out by the Decepticons’ virus.
The size changing Cube was another thing that pulled me out. There was no way that Sam could have picked it up, much less run with it.*
Another thing that bugged me was Optimus Prime always sounded like he was doing a narrative voice over. Perhaps if they had varied his voice, but it was ALWAYS THE SAME VOLUME. - BTW, was it the same VO actor who had done the cartoons?
I think they called it “Mission City” A name I could buy for a fictional western city.
Otherwise, Giant Robots fighting each other = ++Good.
Yup, same guy. From IMdB:
On a related note, Starscream’s voice should have been ramped up in post-production. He needed that high-pitched, edge of insanity voice that Chris Latta did so well.
I left Transformers wishing for a Battletech movie. I was never in to Transformers as a kid, so I went into this completely blank. I mostly enjoyed it (A-10’s, AC-130, hell yeah!), but the movie’s appeal to your inner 13 year old was mostly lost on me, since I don’t have those childhood memories. Big robots fighting is still cool. I just would have preferred it be a little less Saturday morning cartoonish, thus the desire for a Battletech movie.
The 8404 clan was equally disappointed. I was just really hoping he was going to come back with a really kick ass paint job, no more rust spots, you know, fully restored. Even Kiddo thought he was more cool as the old Camaro.
While I agree about Bumblebee, what can you do when running a 2.5 hour GM commercial?
Battletech would be a terrible movie unless they changed the storyline. And the technology. And the culture. And the background. And the robots.
Frankly, it was illogical gibberish start to finish.
Ummm…you aren’t basing your assessment on the crumby TV show, or comic book, are you?
'Cause, there’s more to it…
What I meant was that the telephone handset contains a microphone. It’s the bit you talk into.
Oh.
Nevermind.
Having never seen a screen play for it, I think it would be hard to say that they have to change the story line. Regarding the technology, culture, background, and robots, you’re busting on that in a Transformers thread? Pot… Kettle… Kettle… Pot…
I might be confusing Battletech with something else, but I recall them having a a vast galaxy-spanning civilization (with numerous nations) which had produced no improvements or understanding whatsoever in science or technology for eons despite using ridiculously primitive engineering principles and having had considerably more advanced technology and records previosuly. Furthermore, there is an invasion of psychotic nutball clones who attack, but who were so dumb they forgot about things like disease resistance, the fact they they were outnumbered 10 million to one, and that their advantage in training and war machines was only moderate. Despite this, the clones, who somehow never have sex for no good reason whatsoever, keep winning, while taking casualties far in excess of their population. Meanwhile, throughout the entire galaxy, still no one anywhere creates any new developments in science or technology. Pointlessly weird religious fanatics hang around earth’s communcation arrays. Meanwhile, despite their odd and completely illogical in-game statistical advantages, the mechs are in fact quite weak and most designs are a poor investment for your military.
OK, the background material might not make it onto the screen. Still, it makes Transformers look like Hard Sci-Fi, and Transformers is the show with elderly robots with beards. 
Well, it wasn’t the lamest Bey effort I’ve seen.
I saw it last night and loved it!
Funniest thing happened. There is scene where they are demonstrating the cube’s power by making a phone into a tiny robot. At the very moment that it turned I got a phone call. I had my phone in my pocket on vibrate and I swear I must’ve jumped 10 feet when that thing started vibrating right at that moment. For a split second I thought my phone was coming alive!!!
You know, if you read through that paragraph, a lot of that could apply to the Star Wars universe too. That made some pretty good movies (and some not so good, but through no fault of the universe). A movie couldn’t try to fill the backstory of hundreds of worlds fighting for hundreds of years. I honestly haven’t read much of the Battletech stuff, but to me it’s sort of a cross between sci-fi and medieval times (not the proper noun). The mechs are knights. There are feudal lords, fiefdoms, and all the intrigue that goes along with it. There are really big, cool piloted robots fighting each other. It’s kind of like the ultimate combination of swords fantasy with sci-fi. I think a movie based on following a small force could be really sweet. That said, a movie could also be a really horrible Uwe Boll kind of thing.
Also, according to Wiki, a company does have the movie rights and they have been working on concepts or something. It sounds like it hasn’t went very far though.
Anyone care to comment on the movie’s appropriateness for a 5 year old? QKid is DYING to go see it, but the PG13 rating makes me nervous. Is there any content that seems like too much for a little guy? What other movies do you think it is similar to?
The action is pretty intense, but most of it involves robots smashing buildings; the violence against actuals humans is implied rather than shown. In terms of subject matter and language, there are a couple of masturbation jokes, and the word ‘shit’ gets thrown around a lot, for a PG-13 movie anyway.
There’s one masturbation joke, and it’s pretty funny. “Shit” shows up a lot in PG-13 rated films, but the word famously appeared once in the original PG-rated animated film- a usage so famous that one of the chapters on the DVD is actually titled “Swear Word.”
I went with my friend and her son(who is five.) He is a transformers nut. He was a bit terrified towards the end. It is very loud and fast moving.
We decided any attempt to convince him he wouldn’t like the movie would fail. We took him to the movie. He didn’t like it and will return to watching the original cartoon movie 20 times a week.