It was depressing leaving the theatre last night. For the most part, I enjoyed the hell out of Transformers, but the third act brought up the notion to me that they could have hit a home run with this film (for general audiences, geeks, TF nostalgic persons, and TF faithful).
I've been following this movie's development for three years; last night I finally got to see Transformers is all it's Michael Bay-influenced glory.
Quick shot: Plot holes everywhere, muddy quick-cut camera work, busy designs... Lots of humour and heart, lots of references to the original, LOTS of asplosions. The good and the bad.
Quicker shot: Best movie I've seen this year... (of it's genre, at least)
You can really tell the way Bay made this film. Sure there was a script, but it looks like he filmed it how he wanted and the bots were added almost as an afterthought. Their dialog was, more often then not, one-sided. Either Sam was talking at them, or the bots were giving some form of soliloquy (or in the case of Bumblebee, nothing at all). There was no back-and forth or development of relationships other then with Bumblebee.
What gets me is that they could have fleshed out the bots so much more with so little effort. There were a few scenes where it was just robots on a relatively static background - here they could have expounded on, say, Starscream's rivalry with Megatron (there's only a single "you have failed me again" line from Megatron in the movie; in fact Starscream only has one line in total). I wanted more banter between Autobots and Decepticons; I wanted to hear their hatred of each other.
I thought we left quick-cutting action like that behind a few years ago. The camera was always so close to the action, where a wide shot would have suited so much better. We're lead to believe that each frame of CGI took 38 hours to render... and then they go and add a metric tonne of motion blur. I say: what's the point? When we DID get wide shots, the images were flawless.
Huh?
It's confusing to me: I liked a lot of the things I thought wouldn't like, and vice versa. Frenzy was funny and vicious; I'd have to check, but I think he actually got the most screen time - definitely the most number of appearances.
The love story mostly worked; don't see what's so special about Mikaela other than her obvious hotness. She got a bit of development early-on, but then she was just along for the ride.
Autobots sneaking around Sam's parent's backyard is classic. Bumblebee peeing on someone... no so much.
The "essence," if you will, of Transformers is in there somewhere.
"WTF" Moments
- Where's Barricade when all his buddies are being blown up?
- Bumblebee can talk all of a sudden? (Ratchet did hit him with a red beam of light at one point, though)
- Optimus Prime and Megatron are brothers? Red Herring. Needed some setup and more pay-off than a single line.
So what would you have done, tough guy?
- Ditch the Qatar base survivors thread (irrelevant);
- ditch the virus/hackers thread (not overly significant) OR have them face-off with some Decepticons of their own;
- spend more time introducing the Autobots when they first arrive and meet up
- show Starscream leading the other Decepticons in the Allspark search (Barricade/Frenzy & Blackout/Skorponok did all the hunting). That would lead to more development of the 'Cons and let them be differentiated more.
Where to from here?
Well I'm going to have to see it another time (or two) for a start. I need to see if the annoying bits are as terrible as I first thought.
All told, it was a nice Introduction Movie. It was a glimpse, a taster. A sequel should have Sam (if Shia LaBouf isn't a supamegastar by then), but actually centre on the 'bots - show us some motivation, character and actually build up the mythos (for the third film!). Mikaela is an optional accessory, of course.
DON'T have our military being so damn tough. We need to be scared of these robots!
They left open little doors to things like the Matrix of Leadership (Allspark & Chest Cavities), Megatron's "spark"/soul may be contained within the remaining fragment of the Allspark...
They need to clarify the whole "scanning" thing. The seem to be able to transmogrify themselves instantaneously into any (similarly-massed) object; why not just do that instead of transforming?
I thank Michael Bay for helping to re-shape Transformers for the big screen, but he's not welcome back for a second run. A Sequel needs to tone it down, take it's time, flesh things out, and leave room for a stomping great third film.
I'm starting the clock now; I want Transformers 2 in June, 2009. Get on it! :)
