07.07.07
Clever Transformers Movie-Related Title Here
So, that robot movie. I did indeed catch it with Pez last night, and he had an overall favorable impression of the film. Despite what I’ve put after the jump– which, it should be noted, contains huge and massive spoilers– I also liked it as well. But, you know, it did have some little flaws…
For those of you not particularly interested, tomorrow I’ll have an update on Metal Rogue and a couple of other things as well.
I’ll freely admit to being a movie snob. I also will freely admit to cringing throughout about the first hour of this movie, because whenever there weren’t robots on the screen (which would be the point of the movie, after all) there were embarrassments on the screen. Seriously, what was with the bit about the garden and the glasses? And did the script writers seriously think that, in the middle of a supposedly family-friendly film, a joke about masturbation was really either necessary or appropriate? If the editor had not been asleep from about after Bumblebee vs. Barricade through to the actual picking up of the glasses and escape from the house, I probably would have been happier about it.
Now, that said, it had some awesome moments. The chase scenes, which I tend to gravitate towards, were quite well done. Bumblebee had some excellent characterization as well– almost more than the actual humans. Also, aside from Jon Voight, Bernie Mac, and maybe Josh Duhamel, the human actors were largely bad and/or miscast. This could be the result of a bad script, or bad direction, but literally those were the only three human characters I genuinely did not want to see die.
As for the machines themselves, I noticed right off that all of the good guys were American-made cars, and all of the bad guys were black or grey. I wasn’t as big into the whole Transformers thing back in the day, but I seem to recall that the Decepticons did, indeed, have awareness of color. There were some nice touches, of course, in the revamped character design– Pez picked up on the “To Punish and Enslave” inscription on Barricade, and having Bumblebee throw Bernie Mac into the Beetle was a little gag, too.
Overall I was sort of ambivalent on the whole thing. It certainly wasn’t the worst movie I’ve seen, and I did find myself engaged enough in the fights (which were way too difficult to follow thanks to some questionable camerawork) to make the session largely worthwhile. I figure that folks who knew more about the original setup would get quite a bit more out of it than I did… kind of like how people who hadn’t read the books might be a bit off-put by the Harry Potter movies. Ah well.
Ismail Saeed said,
07.07.07 at 10:04 am
Heya,
So I was curious and I read bit by bit while glancing away, so that I’d dodge spoilers but see what you thought that wasn’t spoilery.
> And did the script writers seriously think that, in the middle of a
> supposedly family-friendly film, a joke about masturbation was really
> either necessary or appropriate?
While I don’t know the joke in question, I’m not too alarmed at this. Consider this exchange from the 1984 Ghostbusters, also generally good for families:
“Nothing was wrong with our system until dickless here turned the power grid off.”
“They caused an explosion!”
“Is this true?”
“Yes it’s true. This man has no dick.”
(That may not be verbatim, but the important parts are)
> I seem to remember that he Decepticons did, indeed, have awareness of
> color.
Yeah. I imagine they were much harder to tell apart.
As for knowing about the original setup… I’ll see what I think when I go. :)
If you’re curious about the original setup, though, look for “More than Meets the Eye” parts 1-3. I don’t know if they’ll be fully represented on Youtube or not… More than Meets the Eye was the series premiere, and it was three episodes long (episodes 1 and 2 were to be continued)… the numbers may be confusing on Youtube since it may say “More than Meets the Eye 2 part 2/3″ etc.