A little background here…I seem to fall squarely between Sean and Chuck as far as the Transformers go. I clearly remember holding my first Optimus Prime in fourth grade and thinking,
</Keanu on>
Woah.
</Keanu off>
However I was just over the age where I watched the shows consistantly, if at all…I had moved onto different fare such as Voltron and Robotech, so I am not as steeped in the lore as Sean is.
That being said, I was excited about the movie but didn’t get to see it in the theatres due to family events. Based on your guys discussion and this rewatch I marched a few blocks and picked up a copy and watched half on the train ride home and half after the wife and daughter had gone to bed.
First impressions/reactions: Overall I was impressed with the quality of the narrative. I thought Shia LaBeouf was truly excellent, believable and empathetic in his portrayal of Sam. I won’t do a complete character analysis of all the actors, let’s just say they all did a tremendous job save one (see my nits and nats below).
To discuss the effects is to belabor the obvious and well covered ground. They were excellent and even outstanding at times. Kudos.
Nits and Gnats
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I’m sorry…but I found having two completely drop dead gorgeous women completely distracting. Every time Maggie Madsen (the NSA chick…no, I didn’t remember her name either) walked on the screen it pulled me out of the moment. I am not saying beautiful women cannot be smart, what my problem is that she occupied the screen because she was gorgeous. If you are going to have a goddess level woman like Megan Fox in your movie…let’s just say multiple models is distracting and doesn’t drive the narrative.
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Autobot slapstick. I will never, ever, ever forgive Michael Bay for having Optimus Prime say, “My bad” after stepping on Sam’s Mother’s roses. Ever. It destroyed the rest of the scene for me. I couldn’t accept these leviathans trying to hide as anything but ridiculous and nonsensical. I love humor, but the best humor comes with respect of the subject matter. Having Optimus Prime say, “My bad” diminished him somewhat and left me wondering if anyone understood what he represented.
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John Turturro. <blink> What the hell was he thinking? Seriously? I am a John Turturro fan and I thought he was just awful in this. I can appreciate the “make a cheese sandwich out of the cheese” sentiment of Chuck’s, but there is a line. I have a personal feeling that Michael Bay couldn’t control John as an actor and John thought, “You know what…I am going over the top on this…who cares…this isn’t Shakespeare” and Michael Bay couldn’t reign him back. Trust me on this, I have been in enough theatre productions where one of the leads refuses to take direction believing their way is the best way and ultimately ruin a production. John should have played this completely straight, rough and serious.
Overall, I think this was an excellent movie. I am looking forward to my own rewatch where I can watch this on a screen larger than my laptop. They had an excellent attention to detail (Megatron flicking the person was priceless) and a story and characters I cared about.
Thank you guys for getting me to go pick this up. It was awesome.
) Kind of like the All Spark which shrunk down into the rubik’s cube so Sam could run with it… Truth be told though, as much as I am about nostalgia and respecting the past, Megatron’s plane was way more cool then the gun ever was… LOL
Star scream:cool: pones all other transformers.