First, I want to warn you that this review contains descriptions of the movie that would be considered “spoilers.” So, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might not want to read any further.
Second, I want to state that it is far easier to criticize than create. Despite some of my comments below, I enjoyed watching this movie and had a good time watching my Transformers on the big screen. With that said…
Things I loved…
I loved the interactions between Sam Witwicky and Bumblebee. This is one area that the movie did pretty well. Watching Sam follow his car to some industrial complex and witness it’s robot mode from a far was fun (even though the “bat signal” trick that made me groan a little). Despite the cheesy dialog between Sam and Mikaela, I laughed quite a bit as Bumblebee “encouraged” their courtship with his antics. This kind of unspoken character development of Bumblebee was something that was missing from the other Transformers. However, the capture of Bumblebee happened too early and the emotional response from Sam seemed fake. It felt like it was a bit rushed.
Peter Cullen’s reprisal as Optimus Prime’s voice. Pay that man whatever he asks. My inner child is happy. Even though I still think Frank Welker would have done a great job as Megatron, Hugo Weaving’s awesome character voice fit in perfectly. I was pleased with the voices of the Transformers. Hearing them make references to Ebay was quite hilarious as it fit into the storyline in a believable way.
Blackout is one bad mofo.
Except for the very end of the movie, I felt the robot dialog was appropriate and fun. The few lines that Megatron had were just perfect and sent me back to the cartoon in my head. From his initial declaration of “I AM MEGATRON” to his various catch phrases during battle, I felt it was classic Megatron dialog and made me smile every time.
Things I didn’t love…
SPECIAL EFFECTS
I do wear glasses when I go to movies, but I have pretty good vision when I’m wearing them. However, most of the fast action scenes involving robot-to-robot combat were so fast I had a difficult time enjoying it. It’s not that I don’t like fast action, I just couldn’t soak in all the FX eye candy and the detail of the Transformers when they are being whipped past the camera at such a close range with motion blurs.
The absolute best action sequence of the whole movie was Blackout’s initial attack on the military base in Qatar. Hands down. It had all the right elements: bold, disguised entry into the scene; dramatic transformation that let you soak up the full glory of what a Transformer is; a dead-on job of portraying exactly what would happen if a Decepticon landed in the middle of a military base. Blasters firing, tanks and helicopters flying in the air, humans being vaporized. In fact, I much prefer the lumbering movements of Blackout to the ninja-like movements of the rest of the Transformers. I realize that they have super advanced kinetics, but you take away from the feeling of sheer brawn and force when these towering robots can hop around like ballerinas.
A MOVIE ABOUT ROBOTS OR WITH ROBOTS?
I suppose the biggest let down for me was that the Transformers seemed to be more like huge special effects rather than key characters in a story about them. The only Transformer I started to feel a connection with was Bumblebee, mostly due to his extended screen time and the amount of interaction he had with Sam Witwicky. You didn’t get a good sense of the other Autobots on a personal level. I realize they are giant robots–I suppose I was hoping for a bit more depth with a few other Transformers.
I expected more dialog and character development between the Transformers. There was rarely a time when the Autobots were alone and had any real conversation with each other. This problem was even worse with the Decepticons. I longed to hear Starscream’s whining and Megatron’s verbal abuse of his 2nd in command. Alas, this happened only once and it was all too quick (“You let me down again, Starscream”). Perhaps having a movie that spent most of it’s time focusing on virtual characters was too big a risk for the director and producer to take. However, I think it would have paid off in the end. Honestly, I don’t care so much about Sam Witwicky. I do care about the relationship between him and Bumblebee and enjoyed watching it develop on screen. But my fascination is more tied to the robots and their interaction with humans and other robots, not the other way around.
OTHER RANTS (Just being picky now)
Optimus… please stop telling us your going to sacrifice yourself. We get it.
After all that preaching about mass displacement and justification for Optimus Prime’s different truck form, you go and displace a few football fields full of mass when Bumblebee transforms the enormous Allspark into an over sized lunch box.
Sector 7 was a total joke and took away from the mystique of the movie. Bad casting.
I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more Transformer skirmishes. I wanted more smaller fights between Autobot and Decepticon and a final epic battle that felt like it took place over more than just a single city street. You have huge, super advanced robots armed to the teeth. Lets spread out a little and give the audience a real feeling for the kind of destruction that should have been caused.
Why were all the robots created by the Allspark automatically violent towards humans? Why did it heal Frenzy but not Bumblebee? Why did Frenzy swear in English before he died when he had spoken an alien robot language the rest of the time?
SUMMARY
Believe it or not, I did enjoy this movie. I also hope there is a sequel because now that the groundwork has been laid and all the explaining has been done, we could have a movie that really focused on Transformer character development and perhaps more epic battles.
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