I’m talking here about the new 2007 live action film. Not the 1986 cartoon movie.

The short version: It sucked.

The long version after the jump: Warning… spoilers ahead.

The good:

1. The CGI. The interactions between real and computer generated was very well done.
2. The comedy. It was far more entertaining from a comedy perspective then I had thought it would be.
3. …. I believe thats all

The bad:

1. The new ‘organic’ Transformer design. They were all long, thin and pointy. With very little flat plating to show off their colors actions scenes were difficult to follow. The characters blurred together and as they rolled around you had little clue as to who just hit who. Frenzy was just terribly designed.
2. The Transformers’ transformation animations. They were overly complex. Everything little thing that could move did. Also the animations seemed inconsistent. I tried to closely follow each transformation and it looked as if each time was a differentt animation. It could have been the angle or the like but without seeing the movie again I can’t really say.
3. Optimus Prime’s facial movements. Actually all of them. Things would turn and move for no apparent reason. Their mouths appeared to bend as if it was flesh.
4. The character development. There was none. Not given the amount of characters. The movie was about the humans and even then there was little outside Sam and the girl. You get maybe a dozen lines out of all the Autobots besides Prime and pick up little from it. The Decepticons are even worse. You get nothing of the relationship between Starscream and Megatron except a single line after Megatron is woken up. You don’t get Starscream’s megalomaniacal attitude at all. Bumble Bee doesn’t get a voice till the end of the damn movie and the buddy buddy relationship between Sam and him doesn’t develop the same as Bumble Bee and Spike’s did in the show. Jazz dies with hardly a word except a few stereotypical hiphop lines. Megatron has this outright hatred for humans  that comes out of nowhere. I don’t recall how long he was supposed to be stuck in the arctic but given that it was more than a few hundred years how would he know of them and why would he care? They offer little resistance even in present time. The Transformers just didn’t get any real development. Their lines were short, sweat and often dumb. The individual personalities that made the original decent was missing almost completely. The reusing of names irritated me too.
5. The comedy. It was cute at first but they went overboard. The first urine scene was cute… the second was stupid. The Autobots hiding from the parents was unbelievable. How exactly did the parents not here 5 several ton machines walking around and talking in the back yard? The Bumble Bee trying to help Sam get the girl scene was a bit much also.
6. The techno babble. Being a technical and otherwise educated person the techno babble drove me nuts. Part of the plot revolved around analyzing the signal the hacker left while searching the government databases…. an audible signal. They used MovieOS to fully embellish it. It wasn’t even a passing view of MovieOS… it was several long shots. This is nitpicking but they had a $20 Logitech camera to do video chat between the USA and Qatar and the image was fully real time, full screen and high res.
7. The ending. Jazz gets ripped in half. A couple Decepticons die and Megatron eats it… by Sam pushing the Cube into his chest. Besides being retarded that gave Megatron less screen time than Barricade I believe. The sequels were obviously set up with the left over Transfomers being dropped into the ocean, Starscream getting away and Prime sending out a signal that they are on Earth and any Autobots who are out there should come hang out.

The Transformers universe is fairly rich. Even though there are lots of conflicts between particular versions (like names, character alternate forms, terminology, history) the writers could have picked on and expanded on it… instead they created their own and it seems pretty clear they weren’t fans or simply cared little for consistency. The general public wouldn’t had known the difference if they used more appropriate names and characters or ideas from the series but it would have pleased the fans and helped keep reviews like this one from being written.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 5:46 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.