Transformer (2007): BEWARE

[Menard]

Well.. Micronauts are the American equivalent of Japan's Microman. And Microman gave way to MicroChange. American version of MicroChange is Transformers. So in a roundabout way this a "Micronauts" movie..

You seriously need to get laid, dude.

[RCMerchant]

Well.. Micronauts are the American equivalent of Japan's Microman. And Microman gave way to MicroChange. American version of MicroChange is Transformers. So in a roundabout way this a "Micronauts" movie..

You seriously need to get laid, dude.

Chokes-spits coffee-
LMAO  LMAO

  No offense Acroyear...but ya gotta admit...that's really funny...!!!

[Jim H]

The one with the most screen time was that little guy who was busy hacking government files and shooting blades at everyone, and I have no idea who he was supposed to be.

I actually really liked that character.  A lot of people seem to hate him though.  Did his "voice" remind anyone else of Star Wars creatures and bots?  I would say the closest G1 character match for him are the various cassette tape figures Soundwave had, or possibly LaserBeak.

My feelings on the film are mixed.  Most of the problems other people had I also had.  The biggest single problem I had was the shift in narrative focus.  The movie is almost totally focused on the humans, with the Transformers distant tertiary characters.  I found that quite disappointing.  I've heard some suggest this is because people can't really relate to giant alien robots.  Well, it is a moot point as we aren't given ANY human characters to relate to, and there are FAAAAR too many of them, all poorly developed.  The script should have been trimmed by 20 pages at least, with a bunch of characters merged or deleted - especially the hackers and army guys.


Another disappointment was the Transformers fighting.  We get so little of it in terms of screen time.  I would say the Transformers actually fighting each other was probably 7 or 8 minutes of screen time at the maximum.  And in a movie well over 2 hours, that's very little.  And yeah, the Prime/Megatron fight was lame.  And Bay's style is still incoherent, and I'm someone who has enjoyed a number of his films (Con Air is probably my favorite of his).

Despite all the problems, I have to say Peter Cullen still delivers.  If anything, his voice is even better now, and while Prime's dialogue is at times corny and impossibly heroic, it fits him well and still makes him an effective iconic character who is very true to the original. 

Well, even with all the complaints, I did enjoy the movie to some extent.  I'd probably give it a 6 or 7 out of 10.

[soylentgreen]

I can tolerate Michael Bay films much more than most people(must be connected to my ability to enjoy the music of Philip Glass, long after others have fled!)  I actually enjoy PEARL HARBOR...mostly as a visual treat(the fashions, the locales), plus(like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, perish the thought) it truly is very much like the war films of the late 40's to early 60s...full of misty sentimentality and a perverse willingness to simplify history to afford just a little more good 'ol American spirit to shine on through.
Yes!  I did link PEARL HARBOR and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN together in some way. 
(For those interested, check out Jeanine Basinger's priceless book The WWII Combat Film and Lawrence Suid's invaluable Guts & Glory...both very useful for war film history appreciation.)

Anyway...TRANSFORMERS was both a standard Michael Bay film and a slightly effective nod to the simplistic sci-fi flicks of the 50s.  Of course, the earnest and sincere THE CORE did a much better job capturing the sense of those great mid-century doomsday matinee spectacles.  C'mon!  How can you not get a little thrill in the scene, while seeing no feasible way to make the inner-planet voyage and kick-starting the Earth's core, Stanley Tucci says "...but what if we could?"  Man, that's pure Atomic Age science-fiction nostalgia.

Shia LeBoof aside, the cast(like any Bay film)was alright-window dressing.  I think the success of the film rides on the sentimentality of audience members who were old enough to really appreciate the show.  Which, oddly enough, is an audience category a bit outside the usual target audience demographic used by almost all Hollywood studios....for theatrical releases, at least.

While there are definately a few folks who will go out and buy a vehicle because of it's connection to some sci-fi film(a certain Ford Falcon Coupe aside!) I don't really see the product placement for tens-of-thousands-of-dollars vehicles really doing much.  McJoyful Meals toys or whatever...kids will play with anything included free with a burger and fries. 

As has been said before-the films is light on plot, high on adrenaline.  Who doesn't dig giant robots fighting(even ROBOT JOX!)?  Like Lucas' added footage for the STAR WARS trilogy, it has a little too much camera work that distracts rather than focuses your attention.  I also felt a lot of detail was lost in the tempo.  The transformations seemed clever but happened in such a flash-bang manner, I couldn't really buy how a raletively small vehicle actually had enough material to form a giant robot.  And as long as you remember that any pulse pounding and heightened tension in a Michael Bay film is coming from the editing/light strobing and not from the drama itself, you'll be fine.   It's a tactic that worked well for him with 15 and 30 second commercial spots, and he does prove that you can, in fact, make an entire film with that dubious style.  Whether that film works or not, is continually up for debate.

Maybe it's my imagination, but for such a high-profile, high-budget tent-pole studio film, I didn't see all that much tv advertising for TRANSFORMERS.  Yeah it was all over nerd-forums on the net for over a year, but tv is still a studios easiest exposure.  There was a small burst right before release, but nowhere near what I would've expected.  That ridiculous I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY(which looks poised to set gay rights back by about 15 years!) has been on non-stop, in-you-damn-face, no escape rotation on almost every channel for weeks...the film doesn't even come out for another two weeks!  And I KNOW the only men going to see that film are going purely to Jessica Biel's ass(Don't you guys have an 'internet'?).

Which(in along-winded way) leads me to my ultimate thought.  For all the 2 hour and 20 minute spectacle of huge robots Clubber Langing each other while taking the horror of speedway/spectator tragedies to a whole new level...I couldn't stop thinking about a one minute trailer I saw before the film...

It's a home video of some guy's going away party, interrupted by some roar, a news flash about earth rumblings, something exploding out of midtown Manhattan, pandemonium..."It's alive...It's huge!" and culminating with the head of the Statue of Liberty bouncing off buildings(with a clear hollow ring!) and bouncing down Seventh Ave.
No title, just a release date...1-18-08.  Anyone else see this thing?
Some people are insisting it's a Godzilla film...others, that it's a Lovecraft Cthulhu story(wouldn't that be awesome!).

[Ash]

That J.J. Abrams trailer was for the movie titled "Cloverfield".
Here's the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloverfield

Good luck trying to find the trailer online.
Paramount has had 99% of them yanked off the Internet.

But I do agree, it looks awesome!  

[ulthar]

Good or bad, in a "film" sense, Bay's TRANSFORMERS has done what it was supposed to do.  It was NOT made to be thought provoking sci-fi, a tribute to the animated series, nostalgia for those that grew up with same, etc.  It was not supposed to make us think, or even really entertain us.

TRANSFORMERS cost 150 million dollars to make.  That is quite an investment.

As of today, 8 July, 2007, TRANSFORMERS has earned $152,600,000 in the US and Canada box office and another $93,600,000  overseas.  That's a total of 246.2 million dollars, globally, for a profit of nearly 100 million dollars.  That's after only one week.  That profit figure will only continue to rise.

It has done the one thing it was supposed to do:  make money.

[Andrew]

It has done the one thing it was supposed to do:  make money.

Though I am sure that the investors and studio only think about the profits, surely there were people involved in the production who really love knowing that people went to the theater and enjoyed the film.  Some of the CGI artists, actors - you name it.  They might be making a fair living wage, but something that really makes them love their job is entertaining people.

[Neville]

I saw this film yesterday (don't ask me why) and although I agree that this is exactly what should be expected from a Michael Bay movie, this doesn't serve as an excuse for the atrocius script, the crappy music, the overacting nor the barely comprehensible action scenes.

You know, I even like two of Michael Bay's movies, namely "The rock" and "Bad Boys II", but the man seems lazier every summer. Every shot of this film that didn't have robots on it could have been stolen from any of his other movies. It's not that he shoots everything the same way (after all, so do Michael Mann and Ridley Scott), it is that he doesn't care if it is a film for kids or grown ups, if it is an action film or a sci-fi one.

Maybe what makes me criticise him harder every year is that when he was working with Jerry Bruckheimer I was more forgiving. After all, the scripts were bad and lacked any sophistication, and Bruckheimer's sense of what an action film needs to be seems on the same level. But now he's working with Steven Spielberg, and he has a genuine oprtunity of making better films. Or at least, not so bad ones. "The island" had possibilities, and the first minutes are quite good. And here the story had some good points, like making the hero a teenager, as it used to happen in Spielberg's productions during the 80s. If Bay had just asked for a real script this time, instead of the usual amalgamation of testosterone, racism and silly humour... or if he had cared to make shots longer than 2 seconds... but I can see myself thinking "Maybe next time" and falling into the same trap next summer.

[ulthar]

Though I am sure that the investors and studio only think about the profits, surely there were people involved in the production who really love knowing that people went to the theater and enjoyed the film.  Some of the CGI artists, actors - you name it.  They might be making a fair living wage, but something that really makes them love their job is entertaining people.

That's a fair point, and I'll hide my 'defense' (as it were) behind the excuse that for these people, they are not responsible for the whole.  The individual work on ANY film can be outstanding, but the director and producers ultimately give the overall project cohesion.  Pixar works so well, in my opinion, because of the strong leadershp of John Lasseter.

Many times on commentaries, I've heard directors or animators say "we did not think we had time/money to do x correctly, but John always says "do it."  These guys know how to write a story and execute it visually.  They are true to the art AND their movies make money, but they could not do it without Lasseter's willingness to take risks.

You could take any one, or set, of them and put them on a Bay film and the result would probably still be formulaic crap that has SOME entertainment value but no real "presence" or "soul" or whatever you want to call it.  The end result is Bay's unwillingness (I'll assume, for the sake of discussion, he is CAPABLE) to have and implement an artistic vision for his projects.  It is THAT that I was responding to - not the quality of animation, photography, editing, sound design, etc.

When I see people writing comments like "this movie did not know what it was - sci fi, action, thriller" and "this movie did not know who it's target audience was supposed to be - kids, teens, etc" I conclude only that Bay was taking a somewhat of a shotgun approach and wanted to hit has many chances to put behinds in the seats as possible.  That said, I have not seen TRANSFORMERS (and don't plan to), so I am speaking more in general terms than about this particular movie.

In short, I guess I am accusing Michael Bay of listening to and caring more about the investors and distributors than those individual artists you mention.

[AnubisVonMojo]

The reviews for this movie are intriguing me more about seeing it that it's role as another box office juggernaut for the Summer '07 movie scene. The fact that Tomb reviewer Brother Ragnarok, a man whose cardinal rule in life is "F*ck Michael Bay in his stupid worthless ear", actually enjoyed the movie enough to give it a 3 1/2-out-of-5 rating kinda scares me at how good the movie may actually be... however, as I've said,  it's gonna be DVD for me good sirs.

[Torgo]

I actually enjoyed it.

I thought I would hate it. While it's far from a perfect film, it does deliver the giant robot action quite well.

*** out of ****.

[Torgo]

Good or bad, in a "film" sense, Bay's TRANSFORMERS has done what it was supposed to do.  It was NOT made to be thought provoking sci-fi, a tribute to the animated series, nostalgia for those that grew up with same, etc.  It was not supposed to make us think, or even really entertain us.

TRANSFORMERS cost 150 million dollars to make.  That is quite an investment.

As of today, 8 July, 2007, TRANSFORMERS has earned $152,600,000 in the US and Canada box office and another $93,600,000  overseas.  That's a total of 246.2 million dollars, globally, for a profit of nearly 100 million dollars.  That's after only one week.  That profit figure will only continue to rise.

It has done the one thing it was supposed to do:  make money.

Don't forget the almost 50 million dollars they probably spent on marketing as well.

Studios should include that in a movie's overall budget.   

[akiratubo]

I saw it today.

It was good up until the Autobots showed up.  Not that the Autobots ruined the movie, mind you.  It's just that !@#$ing JOHN TURTURRO showed up shortly after that point.  !@#$ing JOHN TURTURRO.  I didn't know !@#$ing JOHN TURTURRO was going to be in the movie.  Why on earth !@#$ing JOHN TURTURRO is allowed to keep acting movies, I don't know.

!@#$ing JOHN TURTURRO was by far the worst (and most unnecessary), even though all of the human characters were bad.  Maybe two or three of the guys who escaped from the Qatar base were ok.  That's mainly because, despite being the first characters introduced, they were so underdeveloped they never got the chance to be annoying.

If Michael Bay would quit trying to inject comedy into his movies, they'd be a lot better.  He's good enough at pointing a camera at exploding things but he can't direct comedy.

Some of the human characters and scenes needed to be deleted to make more screentime for the Decepticons.  They just showed up and died.  Blah.

The final battle wasn't too good.  It was mostly shots of people reacting to the robots fighting, rather than shots of the robots fighting.

And, damn, does Michael Bay get all his knowledge of how black people act from Mantan Moreland movies?  Scratch that, Mantan Moreland was allowed to have far more dignity than any of the black characters in TransFormers.

All in all, I didn't hate TransFormers.  It started well but got pregressively worse.  I walked out a couple of minutes from the end, when the dumb kid and his girlfriend were making out on top of Bumblebee while the other Autobots watched.  Ick!

[BlackAngel75]

I'll keep it short and sweet.  I like the Transformers.  I was in total awe of them.  And when I heard Peter Cullen, the ORINGINAL voice of Optimus, I almost cried (I s**t you not).  I thought the dialouge was funny, a little kiddie, but it's not rated R.  I do agree that Section 7 guy was unnecesary.  I'm hoping that when the next one comes that my avatar will be among the robots

[Mr. DS]

Alright so I finally got around to seeing this on DVD.  I'm with the "let down" lot in this thread.  I will give the film's action sequences credit which were flat out pretty awesome when you could make out who was fighting who.  However the frickin' dialog in the film absolutely killed me.  I couldn't stand the lead kid who I wish would have had his mouth nailed shut by the end of the film.  The plot just seemed to build up way too much in the beginning and by the time the action came around the film was almost over.  That and so much could have been cut like the whole military wondering around the desert.  I have to give the film a C+ at best.  Maybe a very low B-.