Official TRANSFORMERS Thread

[The Stranger]

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u ever consider that maybe your brain was never plugged in to begin with?

As a perfect example of a cheesy big summer movie being severly affected by the director behind it...see Xmen 1 & 2 vs. Xmen 3.

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clearly you're missing my point. while the rest of us have the ability to kick back and enjoy a flick, you have to sit there and overanalyze it, just like a first year film student.

i took some film courses once upon a time, i stopped taking them because i did not want to turn into an elitist douche bag like you. =D

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so basically one should enjoy every popcorn flick no matter what?

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ummm, Transformers was a movie about alien robots. And we knew that going in.

[blackize]

So why aren't you pissed that there was like 30 minutes of goofy love story and that you could barely even see what was going on with the alien robots while they were fighting.

I'm all for going into stuff like this with low expectations, but you can't completely ignore how poorly framed the robot fighting was and how [censored] the love story was. That being said my low expectations were gladly surpassed.

[psuasskicker]

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and your whole argument doesn't really work cuz of all the Bay films the one that is most often trashed, besides The Island(which was essentially 2 movies in 1) is Armageddon..which I [censored] loved despite it being poorly made. It was the perfect example of a bad B-movie that achieved greatness. Great characters, funny dialogue, cool special effects, incredibly cheesy plot/story, awesome sequences that are both fun and enjoyable to watch. The kind of bad movie that can be watched multiple times on TNT cuz its not just all aboutgreat special effects.
The exact opposite of what Transformers is...great special effects and a solid performance by Shia...but not much else. Well MFox is hot obv and it has the whole nostalgia element going on.

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lol

You loved Armageddon and can't see that many think the exact same thing about Transformers? You really can't see the similarities?

Armageddon sucked...I thought it was trash. No good actors, bogged down by a love story, the effects were good for its time and those were fun to watch, but that's about it. But I can at least see why people might have liked it as a popcorn flick.

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So why aren't you pissed that there was like 30 minutes of goofy love story and that you could barely even see what was going on with the alien robots while they were fighting.

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Lots of people who absolutely loved this film - myself included - are. Rip out the lovie dovie sh*t and replace it with Starscream and Megatron beefing and it would have made the film 10x better.

Still was a wildly entertaining film, and totally a nostalgic trip.

- C -

[Blarg]

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u ever consider that maybe your brain was never plugged in to begin with?

As a perfect example of a cheesy big summer movie being severly affected by the director behind it...see Xmen 1 & 2 vs. Xmen 3.

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clearly you're missing my point. while the rest of us have the ability to kick back and enjoy a flick, you have to sit there and overanalyze it, just like a first year film student.

i took some film courses once upon a time, i stopped taking them because i did not want to turn into an elitist douche bag like you. =D

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so basically one should enjoy every popcorn flick no matter what?

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ummm, Transformers was a movie about alien robots. And we knew that going in.

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Haha! Well obviously he knew it too, so ... how did your post answer his at all?

[The Stranger]

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So why aren't you pissed that there was like 30 minutes of goofy love story and that you could barely even see what was going on with the alien robots while they were fighting.

I'm all for going into stuff like this with low expectations, but you can't completely ignore how poorly framed the robot fighting was and how [censored] the love story was. That being said my low expectations were gladly surpassed.

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actually I didn't love every moment in the film. The first few scenes in the Camaro, I lean towards my buddy, and say, "GRRRRAAAWRR I want more robot fighting!!!!" And there were plenty of other moments that had me rolling my eyes, while most people in the theater were laughing like idiots.

And the Autobots learned English from the world wide web? And they didn't say LOL once?

Anyway, my point is, also in response to Blarg's response to my last post. Its a movie about alien robots fighting each other. Don't take it so seriously. Of course its going to be goofy. Could the fighting have been done better? I don't know. I have no knowledge of such things. I know overall, I had a good time.

[CharlieDontSurf]

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and your whole argument doesn't really work cuz of all the Bay films the one that is most often trashed, besides The Island(which was essentially 2 movies in 1) is Armageddon..which I [censored] loved despite it being poorly made. It was the perfect example of a bad B-movie that achieved greatness. Great characters, funny dialogue, cool special effects, incredibly cheesy plot/story, awesome sequences that are both fun and enjoyable to watch. The kind of bad movie that can be watched multiple times on TNT cuz its not just all aboutgreat special effects.
The exact opposite of what Transformers is...great special effects and a solid performance by Shia...but not much else. Well MFox is hot obv and it has the whole nostalgia element going on.

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lol

You loved Armageddon and can't see that many think the exact same thing about Transformers? You really can't see the similarities?

Armageddon sucked...I thought it was trash. No good actors, bogged down by a love story, the effects were good for its time and those were fun to watch, but that's about it. But I can at least see why people might have liked it as a popcorn flick.

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So why aren't you pissed that there was like 30 minutes of goofy love story and that you could barely even see what was going on with the alien robots while they were fighting.

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Lots of people who absolutely loved this film - myself included - are. Rip out the lovie dovie sh*t and replace it with Starscream and Megatron beefing and it would have made the film 10x better.

Still was a wildly entertaining film, and totally a nostalgic trip.

- C -

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Yes but all I have said is Armegeddon is trash...but its is great trash because of the stupid yet brilliant plot(the dirty dozen in outer space meets the right stuff), the distinct characters(no good actors? come on..Bruce Willis, Owen wilson, William Fichtner, Billy Bob Thorton, Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, Michael Duncan Clark, Peter Stormare,Jason Isaacs.) The roles in Transformers are terrible short of Shia and Bumblebee(Optimus is mainly there for exposition is seems) and not distinct at all...except maybe for John T's just because he plays it so weird...but the special effects and nostalgia are really good so you enjoy it...BUT IT IS STILL TRASH JUST LIKE ARMEGGEDON. I'd argue the latter has more humor, better actors, better bad writing(in terms of defining characters/scenes/etc) better constructed scenes etc...but that is besides the point.

Like you said...its awesome cuz there are robots fighting robots--but the movie still sucks as a whole. Doesn't mean u can't enjoy it..but some people simple want/hope for a little more than a couple of cool scenes of robots fighting robots. And certain directors would have been able to achieve that...Michael Bay was unable to cuz he sucks.
But he got the robots fighting robots part right so the movie is a success.

[djoyce003]

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Not that your stupid but that you should expect more from a movie...even if it is simply a mindless summer action flick.
Like I said..I get that people like the nostalgia factor and the special effects are really amazing...but the movie as a whole still is pretty bad and if people view this as a great example of the perfect summer movie then summer movies are going to really start sucking even harder.

Otherwise ever summer we'll only get movies like Fantastic 4 2, Transformers, POTC 3, SPiderman 3, etc...aka poorly made big budget special effects shows.


Also Bay helped develop the screenplay with the writers for well over a year..so he had a lot of input into the screenplay.

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I think some people take this way too seriously. I saw this movie and was great. I wanted to see:

good special effects [x]
cool transforming robots [x]
a reasonable story line [x]

Look folks. This movie was about good special effects and transforming alien robots. There isn't going to be a great, meaningful story line. The story line was good enough for what they were attempting here. It was certainly a 100x better storyline than spiderman 3, and much harder to come up with one that's meaningful.

I didn't WANT to think a lot at this movie. I wanted to sit back and enjoy the ride, and on those fronts, it delivered.

Also, who cares if you couldn't see every fighting move. Do you think a real fight is like that?

[blackize]

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Also, who cares if you couldn't see every fighting move. Do you think a real fight is like that?

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Oh I see. They were going for realism in a movie about giant fighting robots from another planet going after a cube that creates life.

[Blarg]

This thread has started to remind me of talking about those cheesy old kung fu flicks, where you had magical flying guillotines, guys dressed in gorilla suits but still wearing sneakers, and the most preposterous and useless dialogue imaginable. I used to see these in Chinatown way back in the day, and everybody talked all the way through the dialogue scenes because they knew they just didn't matter. But when the fighting scenes came on, you could have heard a pin drop and there was an aura of hushed reverence. If people came out with criticisms, it was of the fight scenes, not the dialogue or the plot, which they knew were going to be crap going in.

I think you can enjoy the heck out of a movie and still realize it was basically crap. It's also fair to wish it could have been a bit better even in the parts you know are going to be crap going in. After all, combine the excitement with even halfway good writing and directing and acting, and the movie gets not just a little bit better but way, way better. It's cool to see that. Unfortunately, you can't expect it, but hey, it would be nice.

It's not being a spoilsport to point that out. That's one of the things that probably keeps American movies generally of a way higher calibre than the total garbage that the Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks used to be. Seriously, they were the most fun movies in the world at the time, but I don't think anyone wants our movies to have standards as low as that. You look at lots of those movies and you see they've completely surrendered to being total crap and they're not even going to pretend to try to be any better.

That's what happens when audience expectations are basically zero aside from the thrill scenes, and fairly low even there. When people will watch and praise absolutely anything, the movies never have to meet any real standards and it's pretty much a race to the bottom. There's no penalty for sucking and zero incentive not to. Pretty much as long as the projector doesn't catch fire in the middle, you can't complain.

I can enjoy crap with the best of them, but I sure don't mind a little extra effort. It's well, well worth it to not have the movie industry just be completely careless and settle at the very bottom of the barrel.

[CharlieDontSurf]

This is really an argument less about the type of movie and more about the directing.

Some here have argued that it doesn't matter who directed Transformers...its just a dumb movie about robots who fight so who [censored] cares as long as it looks cool. That is the problem I have...even a dumb movie about robots can be [censored] unreal if the director does a great job. Michael Bay is not that type of director...but as long as people are fine with just getting special effects n [censored] blowing up...there will be fewer and fewer "great" summer movies that go beyond just being special effects cuz studios have learned that they don't need to bother...people will settle for less. hence FF4, Silver Silver, Xmen3, etc etc