We went to see Transformers at the weekend - I wasn’t particularly hopeful that it was going to be that good, despite the trailer doing quite a good job of selling it, but I went along anyway just to see. The first half was actually pleasantly surprising - some good, well proportioned action scenes and some semi-Ferris Beuller styled comedy. Cheesy, but it knew it and went with it, and it worked as a fun film.
For me where it all fell apart was when all the major big robot action kicked in. Sure, the robots looked great, but there were several things that spoiled it for me. Mostly it was action fatigue and lack of imagination - the film was way too long to justify itself and after the twentieth time you see giant robot A take chunks out of giant robot B in generic action film situation C it all gets a bit samey. The director seemed to be trying to keep it interesting by using the most exaggerated MTV cuts, excessive camera-shake and motion blur, but really it just got to the stage where that was pissing me off. Yeah, I get that it’s fast-paced action already, thanks - I don’t need yet another headache-inducing sequence where I can hardly see what’s going on, really. Maybe you can keep the camera pointed at one place for more than half a second for once, huh? What it really needed was some imagination, not just bigger explosions and faster cuts. When it came to the action, that’s what this film lacked the most - I think any 8 year old could have thought up the set pieces they came up with, and they certainly made as much sense as that. With dull, predictable and repetetive ‘boss fights’ and woeful attempts at giving the robots themselves characters, the last 45 minutes were a major letdown.
Yeah, big dumb fun films can be enjoyable, but they have to know how far they can go. Chop this film down in length and actually come up with some interesting climax set pieces instead of an incredibly lazy ‘robot city fight’ and it might have been good, as it is it’s very forgettable.
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I really liked the film, I was surprised by how funny it was at times.
There were a few annyoing things about it
- some of the actions scenes were a little too busy
- I thought it was corny how he got all annoyed with the girl about her juvy record… I mean c’mon a juvy record wouldn’t turn me off Megan Fox at all
- the signal processing scenes were ridiculous… only one hacker can hack this signal… then they give it to him and all he does is zoom in on the signal and see a little transformer head floating around, he clicks on in an voila… no one else in the whole pentagon zoomed in on the signal and noticed a transformer head swimming around?
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Haha, I had a hundred nitpicking issues but kinda ignored them in the face of the larger problem. Here’s some of mine:
- Why the hell do they think it’s a good idea to head into the middle of a city when they know there are big robots after them? They know they’re being chased, but even though they start in the Nevada desert they decide to head into a heavily populated area, real smart
- Why does sam (the squishy, puny human) have to run several blocks on foot with the cube thing with the big robots egging him on when one of the robots could have got it there in a tenth of the time? I know it’s a film maker trying to create suspense, but come on, lets try not to be quite so transparent.
- A few blokes spraying a bit of dry-ice immobilises a robot that flew through the freezing vacuum of space to get here? Um, yeah.
… and so on. I can forgive a film being dumb (and this one was very, very dumb indeed), but it was the lack of imagination in the last segment that killed it for me. I was actually quite bored during that part despite all the robot chunks flying about.
Favorite bit - the mini evil transformer created from a mobile phone. Aww, his little chaingun was so cute!
July 24th, 2007 at 4:18 am
I hate excessive motion blur myself - makes me sick
July 24th, 2007 at 7:01 am
I saw it in Thailand and some of the Thai people where confused by all the action. We came out and one of them was on the phone, “Something about robots fighting or something.. I didn’t really understand.”
Translation. Poor director, poor script.
Favourite bit - The cannon dude wanting to exterminate the rodent dog.
July 24th, 2007 at 8:52 am
This movie has not appealed to me in the slightest. In fact, there’s rarely any movies that appeal to me whatsoever, anymore. I’m glad you watched it so I don’t have to
August 6th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Some tough critics here. I thought the movie was awesome from start to finish. The action kicked ass, the girl was hot, the gags were funny, and the transformers themselves looked great. What more do you want?