This is where I give my thoughts on the Transformers movie. Instead of regurgitating the same garbage about how great the special effects were and how it’s the “action movie of the year” and all.
Yeah, great special effects. Things were integrated pretty seamlessly into the non CGI parts. The problem is that the action is so cluttered and messy you can’t tell what the hell is going on 90% of the time. Robots engage in combat and instead of getting shots of the fight we get a down on the street view of their feet. They roll around doing… something… to each other but we can’t tell what they are doing or who is winning the fight. Seriously, loose about 75% of the shrapnel in the fight scenes.
I did enjoy the film. Mind you. Now, where to start. I’ve made a relatively random list here so I’ll just go with that. This isn’t organized in any particular order and it will contain SPOILERS so don’t read if you care about that sort of thing.
For starters, Bumblebee. He talks through his radio. I read somewhere that part of the reason they couldn’t make him a VW bug was because he’d be considered a rip off of Herbie. I certainly got a very strong Herbie vibe from that Camero before it started doing its Transforming thing. Also, they never explain WHY his voice box doesn’t work, Ratchet just mentions that “He’s been working on it”. The suggestion around the web is that Megatron damaged it but that doesn’t really fit with the plot considering Megs has been frozen on Earth for tens of thousands of years. I’d find it more plausible that he’s been hanging around alone on Earth for so long he’s simply forgotten how to talk.
Also the voice magically becomes repaired at the end of the film. Bumblebee’s had his feet lopped off and gets pointlessly dragged around the city by a chick in a tow truck and suddenly he can talk. I guess Ratchet found time to make repairs that he’s neglected to do for ten thousand plus years while in the middle of a crucial and large scale battle.
Yeah.
Anyway, someone should point out to the writers that Wreckgar is the one who spoke via TV and radio clips, not Bumblebee.
Then there’s Frenzy, probably the bot with the most screen time, second maybe to Bumblebee. I liked him a lot actually. The CD boom box is a good nod towards Soundwave as well. Were those ninja stars he was throwing made out of CDs? Pretty slick there. Still, he wasn’t very menacing. The larger bots can throw tanks and have impenetrable armor. Granted Frenzy is smaller and this likely a bit more delicate in design, but why is it he can’t rip the humans to shreds in seconds just by jumping on him. Particularly while he was fighting with Sam in that field. I guess one could argue that they wanted Sam alive so they could interrogate him but he can still talk with his legs disabled preventing a getaway.
Speaking of Frenzy, the creators of this film claim they didn’t use Soundwave because they didn’t want to use Mass Shifting. That is, where a large bot turns into a small device. Somehow though Frenzy is allowed to not only grow a huge spider body from his disembodied head but then later he can compact that body AND his head down to the size of a cell phone. Don’t even get me started on the Matrix Cube thing. Size of large house down to a one foot cube? And we can’t have Soundwave?
Oh yes, the cube. It’s generally only ever referred to as “The Cube”. This is synonymous with “Random Plot Device”. It’s generic and ends up being very Deus Ex Machina. It’s generally unclear as to what it is, Prime vaguely mentions the Matrix being in his chest, so it’s not that. It’s primary power is to creat advertising from random things. Like turning Mountain Dew machines and Nokias into killer robots and getting a whole slew of Autobots and Decepticons to turn the first 60 minutes of the film into an eBay advertisement.
It’s basically plot device to give the giant robots an excuse to fight. Then, due to some sort of genius I can’t even begin to fathom, it becomes a plot device to allow giant robots to tear apart a city. Let’s see, we’re the military, we need to protect this “The Cube” thing. The Decepticons are attacking our base, the one inside a dam in the middle of nowhere. How shall we handle this situation. I know, let’s put the cube in a sports car with a kid. Then, and this is the bet part, we’ll drive it to the center of a large heavily populated area!
BRILLIANT!
Let’s endanger the lives of millions of innocents! Instead of engaging in combat say, in the middle of the desert! The desert is hot and dry and uncomfortable, the city is full of product placement.
Then, the plan gets even better here. After getting to the city. We’ll make the kids carry the “The Cube” across several city blocks and up into a tall building where helicopters will pick him up and take him away (never mind that two of the Decepticons can fly and will tear and helicopter to shreds in seconds).
Also, while in route to the city, we’ll not question why we’re suddenly being escorted by a hodgepodge of trucks and cars and semis and tanks.
This is where the bulk of the Decepticons show up. Pretty much out of nowhere but as my wife pointed out, they were all military vehicles. The implication was that the were evil and had infiltrated our military a lot without us even knowing. Good theory and I’m going with that. Brawl gets called Devestator for some reason during the one and only mention of who these guys are. When you hear reports that the Decepticons have zero characterization they are not exaggerated. At least the Autobots got ranks and functions and a few lines. Bonecrusher literally appears for the sole purpose of getting killed by Prime (and to sell out of scale toys). That scene in the trailer where he destroys the bus is like 50% of his on screen tine.
Brawl gets a bit more screen time since he gets to be a major player in the city fight that shortly follows. Blackout is about the level as Brawl except all of his good fighting scenes are at the movie’s opening. Barricade actually gets some lines and I’m pretty sure survives for the sequel. Megatron escapes from captivity and jabbers wit Starscream a bit but Megatron’s comments about failure completely without context and is meaningless in the film. I really wanted Starscream to swoop in and screw up Megatron’s attempts to take the cube from Sam on the roof top. I really wanted him to be traitorous, he was right there watching.
sadly, he did nothing.
Instead he just gets saved by Prime from a fall. One thing I’ll never get in movies is how people survive from falling great heights just because they get caught. Guess what, falling 20 stories onto the concrete isn’t going to be much different than falling 10 stories onto the hard metal plates that make up the hand of a giant robot.
As for the Autobots. Their characterization also comes entirely from their introductions with the exception of Bumblebee. Jazz is some sort of hip hop break dancer robot with a lot of bad ass potential who gets killed way to quickly. Ironhide wants to kill everything with his big guns but can’t because “he’s a good guy and good guys don’t kill parents and Chihuahuas. Ratchet is the team’s medic who is apparently completely inept at actually medic-ing anything since he can’t fix Bumblebee’s voice, nor is he around to repair Bumblebee’s detached feet, nor is he capable of repairing Jazz.
I can ALMOST forgive the Jazz thing since Jazz has been ripped in two but Frenzy was able to live on as a head alone so I’m less inclined to go that route.
Bumblebee is a the bumbling but noble screw up that means well.
Prime is a bit of a confusing mess of characterization. On one hand, he’s a pretty smart and rational leader type. He’s powerful and such. On the other hand, he strikes me as a bit of an idiot in one particular scene. That is of course, the backyard scene.
This whole scene was generally lame and seemed way out of place. The Autobots are trying to hide from Sam’s parents. Instead of staying put in the alley, they get impatient and go troop around Sam’s backyard destroying things and causing Sam’s parents to think there are Earthquakes. What was the point of all of this other than the make the Autobots seem like a bunch of impatient children who can’t listen? Why is Sam so concerned about his parents seeing the Autobots? They won’t believe him? And was that stupid Masturbation joke really necessary? Kids are going to see this.
Speaking of kids seeing this. As funny as it was, Bumblebee’s pissing scene was possibly one of the stupidest scenes in movie history. Seriously. You just got through doing jokes about dog pee and leaking lubricant. Do we really need to have a giant robot “pee” on the federal agent? With the camera on the viewpoint of the federal agent? Actually this scene is likely symbolic of the movie’s creators pissing on the audience.
HA HA, WATCH US PISS ON YOU BECAUSE YOU’LL LOVE ANYTHING!
July 6, 2007 at 9:30 am
Excellent write-up!
July 6, 2007 at 9:36 am
Thanks, I’m rather hally with the way it came out. It also is a good strong step back in the right direction of Lameazoid’s original purpose of pointing out how dumb and flawed things are even when they are “good”.
July 6, 2007 at 11:21 am
Nice write-up. I think I can address a few issues, at least.
Also, they never explain WHY his voice box doesn’t work, Ratchet just mentions that “He’s been working on it”. The suggestion around the web is that Megatron damaged it but that doesn’t really fit with the plot considering Megs has been frozen on Earth for tens of thousands of years. I’d find it more plausible that he’s been hanging around alone on Earth for so long he’s simply forgotten how to talk.
More than a suggestion, really; the prequel material covers it firsthand. Before the Allspark was sent off into space, Bumblebee and some Autobots held off Megatron on Cybertron. After the cube was launched and Bumblebee prevented him from getting it then and there, Megatron made sure he could “tell no one about what he’d done” or some such.
Also the voice magically becomes repaired at the end of the film. Bumblebee’s had his feet lopped off and gets pointlessly dragged around the city by a chick in a tow truck and suddenly he can talk. I guess Ratchet found time to make repairs that he’s neglected to do for ten thousand plus years while in the middle of a crucial and large scale battle.
I figured that it was simply the Allspark that repaired it, much as it repaired Frenzy’s body, when Bumblebee was doing stuff with it.
Speaking of Frenzy, the creators of this film claim they didn’t use Soundwave because they didn’t want to use Mass Shifting. That is, where a large bot turns into a small device. Somehow though Frenzy is allowed to not only grow a huge spider body from his disembodied head but then later he can compact that body AND his head down to the size of a cell phone. Don’t even get me started on the Matrix Cube thing. Size of large house down to a one foot cube? And we can’t have Soundwave?
It was just Frenzy’s head that became the celphone, so that part doesn’t bother me, and as noted, he used the Allspark to regrow his body.
But yeah, having the Allspark do it and no one else is BS. I heard some speculate it was a “test” since no critics called them on it, to see if they could get away with it.
Regarding Soundwave, that’s who Frenzy was going to be, but over the course of making the film, he obviously became decidedly un-Soundwave-ish, and they wanted to retain the character; he’s been cited as the “Boba Fett” of TransFormers, Soundwave is, and I think they’re more keen to use him in a sequel.
It’s generally unclear as to what it is, Prime vaguely mentions the Matrix being in his chest, so it’s not that.
At the start of the movie, they describe it as basically the source of all life on Cybertron, though they themselves don’t fully understand it, any more than we do.
Then, the plan gets even better here. After getting to the city. We’ll make the kids carry the “The Cube” across several city blocks and up into a tall building where helicopters will pick him up and take him away (never mind that two of the Decepticons can fly and will tear and helicopter to shreds in seconds).
The Autobots were helping hold off the Decepticons, I don’t think anyone but Megatron even realized Sam had the cube at the time. The fact that the helicoptor Sam was running to wasn’t Blackout (I thought for sure that it would be) says they did their job, I guess.
Barricade actually gets some lines and I’m pretty sure survives for the sequel.
That’s a big question mark for most. We see him confirm that he’s on the way, but he doesn’t show up for the final battle? But then, someone said something about one of his doors being on that ship at the end. So I don’t really know there.
I really wanted Starscream to swoop in and screw up Megatron’s attempts to take the cube from Sam on the roof top. I really wanted him to be traitorous, he was right there watching.
sadly, he did nothing.
I still need to watch it again, but the way I heard it was that after some fancy flying among those other jets, he manages to sort of “tag along” and contribute some shots of his own on Megatron during the fly-by…
Instead he just gets saved by Prime from a fall. One thing I’ll never get in movies is how people survive from falling great heights just because they get caught. Guess what, falling 20 stories onto the concrete isn’t going to be much different than falling 10 stories onto the hard metal plates that make up the hand of a giant robot.
Never quite got that either. Easiest for me to figure that maybe Prime was moving his hand enough so as to not outright stop the fall at first, but sort of slow it down a bit. If that makes any sense. Having a little bit of give, basically.
I can ALMOST forgive the Jazz thing since Jazz has been ripped in two but Frenzy was able to live on as a head alone so I’m less inclined to go that route.
If it makes you feel any better, there’s a toy with a bio saying that after a lot of work, Ratchet’s able to fix Jazz. In the process, he decides to get a flashier color scheme that basically are his G1 details on his current body.
Bumblebee is a the bumbling but noble screw up that means well.
He didn’t feel bumbling to me. Not compared to the original, the spy who always gets caught because he has to take a teenage boy with him wherever he goes.
–LBD “Nytetrayn”
July 6, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I actually missed the very start talking since my wife wanted butter and salt on her popcorn. I kind of figured at least one of my issues were addressed here. When I got back all I got for a summary was “They are looking for the cube”.
Final Battle Jazz, or whatever they are calling his recolor is a beautiful toy BTW. I can’t wait for it.
My wife actually was naming the vehicles after the movie while calling it a glorified car commercial and called Jazz a Porsche of some kind. Close but not quite.
July 6, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Great review! The best movies are the ones where you can sit down and nit pick all sorts of strange things. I do agree with those special effects, next time I go I will sit in the far back and maybe, just maybe I can figure out what the heck is going on. I liked the bug next to the Camero at the Used lot, that was a neat wink and help transition the Camero better. The Autobots reminded me of the Gorgonites from Small Soldiers. As for Jazz dead, and frenzy alive, I remember Prime dead from a few wounds and Ultra Magnus repaired from blownupness in the last movie. I hope the next movies will go way more into depth of the Transformer characters.
The real question is, what the heck is with The Bad Robot preview?
July 6, 2007 at 9:46 pm
My thoughts on the film are forthcoming. In short: it needed to be about 45 minutes shorter in the beginning, the camerawork sucked badly at times, and the machines were often better actors than the humans. Still not a bad film.
July 9, 2007 at 12:38 am
wow… transformers 2 on 2009! got me thinking what storyline they’re gonna do with that.
August 4, 2007 at 1:24 am
Where to start. Well, a very entertaining movie, Ididn’t feel that it was true to form for die hard fans. Although it’s already been said, my biggest gripe was the lack of character development on the decepticon side. If I hadn’t been surfing for info prior to the movie’s release, I wouldn’t even know who the hell scorpinok was, not that he had all that big of a part anyway. (just a note, I’m pretty sure he survives for the sequel, he lost his tail, but definately made it back into the sand.) My second gripe, too much comic relief!!! seriously, we’ve just recovered from 2 piss jokes to find a government agent wearing a rediculous superman shirt with his secret assignment designation on it. STUPID! Frenzy (aka soundwave, who I’m also pretty sure survived for the next one) was plenty of believable comic relief. I would have liked to see more of Jazz, and was very sorry to see him go, but it was believable. Would have liked to see more between Megatron and Starscream than a single insult. Since no one else has said it, I will.. Optimus never came off as a flame job kind of guy, I really didn’t like the flames, but since they were just basically scanning the first vehicles which “tickled their fancy” I can let that one go as well. Maybe in the next one he’ll decide to scan a more suitable semi. The action sequences were way too poluted, After about the third time that I have seen the movie, I still say WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Oh well. I was really hoping for more, as I truly grew up on Transformers, and even as a child remember thinking “What would Prime do?”but I did, nonetheless enjoy the flick.
October 25, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Bumblebee’s voice box was damamged in the war on Cybertron thought whether or not from Megatron I can’t remember. It’s mentioned in a Transformer’s movie book that goes over the characters in detail.
January 1, 2008 at 6:17 pm
dude that was so childish. all your doing is pointing out the bad stuff. You cant make everybody happy but i hate critics. They are full of shit. Quit acting like you didnt like the movie and covering it up with this critic attitude. You make me sick.
January 1, 2008 at 6:20 pm
plus they couldnt have much character development in this movie because 1,there are so many transformers and 2, there needs to be plotlines and character development for the next movies. Thats why i dont get why people hated that there wasnt enough character development. Look at the facts.
January 2, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Thank you for your mature and reasoned pair of comments, Robert. We really appreciate them.
Rob