Transformers

OMG! Just come back from opening night. Quite possibly the most gobsmakingly amazingest film... ever!

Ok ok ok, must learn to breath. Yeah, of course it had it's moments, like all action flicks, where all probability kind of breaks down in order to make the story fit to the visual effect that smacks you in the face!. You may say, "What the?! Why on earth would he do that?!" but then willfully claw your eyes out in shear gratitude at the splendid visual fest that you've been treated to.

Perhaps some of the lines were just a tad cheesy, not much, just a tad... but then you can forgive the film because you are sitting comfortably on the edge of your seat in a pool of your own bodily juices which you've just plain forgot because of the mindboggling extravaganza that is wrenching at your very being.

Yeah... I thought it was pretty good.

awww maaan! you guys got an early release? we still have like 4 days i think until we can see it.

Wow man, that sounds like it was good. I hope my experience mirrors that. Sans the pool of body juice.


-Z

Oh sweet! Nice one man, this is the only film that I'm really excited about seeing this summer, and I cannot wait! It comes out on the 27th of July over here in the UK though - anyone know why on Earth films come out like a month or so after they've been released in the US over here? Does my noggin in!

I'm gunna wait a couple weeks, cause I DO NOT want to see anyone dressed up, or I might lose it.

You've got to wait a month Iest?! Wow... I didn't think the UK was that behind. I guess it depends on the distributor - I'd say in this case it would be something to do with school summer holidays. It's the same here in Thailand sometimes, I think Open Season was around 3 months after the US release just so it would open during the kids holiday!

Just got to work and most people that saw the film were pretty stoked! Barring the guy that sits next to me... said it was pretty mediocre... Think I'm gonna slap him!

Oh my... I may just have to watch it again. Shame there's no digital release out here - all the digital screens are showing Die Hard 4... I mean, wtf?!

*Minor spoiler alert*

Just got back from it....OH MY SWEET GOODNESS

I can say with 100% absolute honesty, that it is the most perfectly entertaining movie I've ever seen. The action never stopped, they pulled all of the stops, the effects are insane, I enjoyed the lead actors' acting, all kinds of twists and turns happened and it was overall the most friggin awesome movie ever.

Starscream was amazing...the little robots (like the one they make from a camera, and the one made from a soda machine etc) were great additions...the big robots were INSANE and everything was....blah blah blah you get the picture.

My jaw was on the floor for the entire 2.5 hours. It is a great feeling to have all of my high expectations for this film blown completely out of the water.

http://www.flyingomelette.com/cartoons/tf/tfanim.html

Respect due to all the artists... it's just that it looked so much simpler back then.

Cause artists were lazy back then lol.

Man Tyson, now I really want to see it, but I have no friends as geeky as me..

LOL, do it lad, do it!

oh man i get to see this tomorrow.. can't wait!

Just got back from the movie
... Oh man was that amazing! .....


speechless

just got back from watching it.... speechless

can anyone point me to any 'making of' sites / interviews /etc (especially if they have vfx goodies)? thanks

-R

You can tell the vfx guys had a lot of fun making this.

OMFG TRANSFORMERS WAS THE BEST MOVIE I HAVE SEEN IN A WHILE.....

Please Tyson / Cameron: make a transformers challenge.... I bet anyone who watches this will be inspired to make one. I am, and I'm not even an animator, I still just wanna transform stuff. Before the movie I was inspired by that sony ad a lot, and I also wanted to do a transformer.

I think transforming household appliances / items should work really well especially cause you can composite those, and you can use their logo or the autobots logo when its done transforming.

Well, after seeing this movie, as I told Tyson earlier, I am writing this from a hospital bed. The doctors don't know when i'll be competent enough to dress, feed, work, ect. In fact, the only thing I can do is sit and type about how awesome the movie was. Yes. my expectations were met.

-Z

Hey you know grafi, that's actually really a great idea!

Even though everybody and their grandma has been doing transformers animations recently (even my old Sony spot counts I guess)....transformers never get old!

WOW that movie exceeded my expectations by a lot....good movie

Damn, I really can't wait until tomorrow night I had to work late tonight so I couldn't go on the premiere over here, but hey.. Tomorrow another day right?

E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y says it rocks, hope it will keep up against it

I think Ridey went to see a different film!

Yea I think he did too... haha

the coolest parts were the slow-motion transformations which were too little and to far inbetween. i think i counted two total. the rest were masked by explosions and motion lbur to the point where you couldnt see what was happening.

DUDE U LEFT UR HIGH FRAME-RATE GOGGLES AT HOME?

poor ridey

i agree with you, ridestowe.

i had no problems with the story - they did a great job trying to make the premise of the cartoon as realistically viable as they could.

***********SPOILERS************** (if you haven't yet seen it)

the first 2/3 was boring. BORING! it opened ok, with that helicopter in the desert, and then we didn't see another transformer fight until just about the end. They could have put SO MUCH more action into it!

I'm not complaining about the transformers themselves. That was some of the best 3d stuff we've seen in years! It was flawless, and I too am extremely excited to see some making-ofs.

Dang, though... I would classify that movie more as a comedy with action elements than an action movie. That scene when Shai jumps into bumblebee and Barricade (the cop car) begins chasing them, and heavy metal music starts playing like its gonna be some kick ass action scene - the whole audience cheered cuz we thought we were gonna get to see a fight. They drive down an alley or 2, turn a corner, the music fades away, and no action scene. Not even a decent car chase. (not to mention the whole idea of the 2 robots trying to get to Shai first was torn directly from terminator 2).

That scene of the robots all standing around being funny outside Shai's bedroom window was longer than any fight in the movie (there were actually only 2 fight scenes - Optimus killing that other robot with his glowing sword thing, and the end scene). And during the final "big" fight, everytime robots actually started fighting each other, Michael Bay cut away to show us more army men running around, or random shots of people running away, or Shai reaching for his girlfriend's hand. I wanted to see robots fighting! When Peter Jackson had Kong fight a Trex, we got a 20 minute fight scene where the camera never once strays from the fight! And in the middle of the movie!! (and that's not even counting the fight with the villagers, the brontosaurus stampede, the bug pit, those lizard things that lead to the trex fight, or anything that happens in new york!) Transformers could have used some of that. Transformers had enough action to fill about 15 minutes of King Kong.

And it ripped alot off Terminator 2. Not only the aforementioned idea of a good and bad robot trying to get to the protagonist at the same time and the protag having to decide which is the one to go with, but that scene with the pictures! Sample dialogue:

"This picture was taken (on Mars 25 years ago/in a police station in 1985), and this picture was taken (this morning in Qatar/today in a mall). We know you know something. What's going on?"

It completely ripped off Independence Day when we see Megatron the first time, almost shot for shot. When the president is informed that Area 51 is real and is taken there, and they have a alien spaceship hooked up to hoses and spewing smoke everywhere, even though it hasn't ever been turned on. The president walks in, says something to the extent of "oh my god... what is this?". In Transformers, it was the secretary of state and Megatron, but everything else was identical, so much so that when it's released on dvd, I'd happily edit the 2 scenes as a split screen to prove it. They're almost identical.

Ratatouille was a million times better. So are any Indiana Jones movie, any Star Wars movie, any Terminator movie, the first Pirates movie, Equilibrium, Speed, Twister, the Matrix, all the Lord of the Rings movies, King Kong, Sin City, and tons more. Braveheart, Apocalypto - great action movies. It's like Michael Bay doesn't know what that means anymore, or maybe he thinks it means tons of footage of army people preparing for battle or running from things. His 3 minute sequence of the air force people running for their jets at golden hour with backlit lens flares should've ended with some text on screen saying "US Air Force - Join now!" (in fact, I'll edit that out when it comes out on dvd and put the text on myself, to demonstrate).

Anyway, I don't think it COMPLETELY sucked, it just wasn't that great, and was really boring for most of it. I left saying "I want to see Ratatouille again"

I thought it was a fun movie. Clay and I ditched out of work and took a long lunch on tuesday to watch it.

I went in with low expectations, really... I went in knowing it was a bay movie, so i couldnt take it super serious. I knew that it would have a LOT to do with the human element. I just wanted to see some giant robots fighting and what not.

It delivered that. Giant fighting robots.

Granted, I wish there would have been the following

MORE giant robots fighting. They could have taken out that little decepticon, frenzy i think was his name, and built more on the others.

I would have personally liked more of the starscream/megatron backstabbing rivalry going on, but that wasnt there. . . not so important

take out the entire group of young hackers (especially anthony anderson... it did NOT need to be in the movie. you could have had everything else the same and taken out the young hackers thing and had time to put in more battles between autobots and decepticons or the starscream/megatron thing... this was kinda a bummer.

Build more on the characters of the Robots. If the only humans in the movie were the boy and the girl and the main millitary group from the begining i would have been happy. we didnt really need anything else.

Overall though, it was a fun movie to watch. I am not going to get rabid over the crits i have because really it did pay off what i expected. Though, a nude scene with Meghan Fox would have been not bad at all.

huh, i got that weird debug message too...

Yea not sure what that weird debug message is all about...I got it to! Posts have still showed up though....CAM?!?!?!?!?

Just saw the movie... I thought it was freaking awesome.

I loved the shot when the autobots are trying to hide outside the house. hehehehe......

The battles were intense!!!!!

My only complaint was that they zoomed in too much on the robots when they were transforming... I couldn't really see what was going on, except a lot of little pieces moving.

I hope they make a second, but the killed all the bad guys........

~Mechis

I saw it again today. OMG.

During the city fight where Ironhide is battling Starscream and he is doing barrel rolls while firing his cannons the animation is just un-freaking-believable. The part where he has to jump into a dive roll and risk the entire fight just to avoid squishing the lady screaming in the street is so brilliantly done. On the drive home I couldn't turn on the radio, I didn't want to lose the visual of Optimus Prime giving his ending speech with Linkin Park playing in the background.

Gawd this movie rocks.

Haha speaking of which, did anybody else love the Linking-park (and the other rock band, which I don't know) tie-ins during some scenes?

I mean, normally I hate it when "pop" music is thrown into a movie...but when the music started playing in those scenes I found it to be perfect for the mood

I went to the cinema last night to see the new Die Hard Film, and there was a trailer for transformers at the beginning, maaaaaan it's looking awsome! First time I've seen the trailer on a movie screen - I was seriously sweating because it just looks soooo good - I cannot wait till it come out over here!!

Prepare your man-nappies Iest!

I finallllllllly saw it last night!!!! zomgz! I loved it! Very entertaining.

For the past 3 years I planned on using that Battle Without Honor or Humanity song (Kill Bill I soundtrack) for my senior reel lol... It's the song playing when Bumblebee changes into a new Camaro. Even though it has been used for a bunch of movies and tv spots since, I still love that song!

I was surprised they used that song too until I got the gag about how Bumblebee is all yellow and black, like the Bruce Lee/Uma Thurman suit in Kill Bill.

You could still use it, that song rules.

ha that reminds me of Bill's Halloween party when Anthony wore the Bruce Lee suit and everyone was like "OMG ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE UMA THURMAN FROM KILL BILL?!"

just got back from seeing transformers. The smile never left my face.

and whoever mentioned it was right, it is very inpsiring to do some sort of transformer

I've seen it 3 times now...

saw it last night, me being the jerk I am have some problems, its a bit corny, but its a kids movie so thats cool, I REALLY liked the fight scenes, but they were really up close so all I saw was closeups of their mechanical parts, cool, but you never got a good view of the fighting. Acting was corny, I love Shea LeBouf, he is hilarious in Even Stevens and I-Robot, but this was just in poor taste. I heard Bumblebee was the closest to his original self back in the day, and thats cool, I liked the humor they had, but the subject they discussed in his bedroom, that just makes it awkward for any kid to see this movie with his parents

All in all, the transformations were whicky, and some parts were confusing, like as to why the spark turned all the appliances into Decepticons rather than Autobots considering Bumble turned it in the small cubey thing.

I think my favorite was the little decepticon, he was a sneaky little bastard.

Really enjoyed it overall, but there are always parts of movies I'm like, why isn't tyson doing the 3d, hype doing the comping (HELLO BRIGHT WHITE BACKGROUND WHILE IN CAR= LAME) and Richard can Direct, cause Michael Bay can't. I SAID IT.

I've seen it twice now !

The first was in Norway, and Frenzy had SO MUCH DIOLOGUE in the subtitled version. I can undertand most of it, and he curses......alot. He is one angry little toaster.

The effects were 100% flawless. Even thought my CG skills are still at an intermediate level, I can be a real b*****d of a critic sometimes when it comes to CG effects. I couldn't say a thing against them. ILM are gods. Period.

There are two sequels that have been green lighted according to wiki. They are thinking of having an aircraft carrier character and involving dinobots (or whatever they're called.) I would like to see starscream again, he just resonated bad ass awesomesness. Though my favourite model wise was blackout (I love jolly greens to bits, God knows why.) Ironhide was the hardest to animate apparently, and each frame took 38 hours to render (again according to wiki, not sure how far I trust that info tbh.)

Loved it. Adored it. Want it.

I know everyone wants a yellow Camero now, but everyone else is lame, so it's ok if I want one.