TRANSFORMER: REVENGE

[MBCE]

I just had to start a thread about this now so that I can gloat about seeing it than the other side of the world. It is so rare that we get a movie before the States and usually they aren't big movies like this.

So expect a lot of gloating whether the movie is good or bad! :twisted:

EDIT: Count down is 3 days

[quotemyname]

Note to self: Do not come back here until AFTER seeing the movie!

[MBCE]

TIME Remaining: 2 days!

[MBCE]

Time Remaining: 1 day!

[Cyroa]

Must...control...FIST OF DEATH...

[MBCE]

Today is the Day!!!!!

I could be really evil, head out and catch the first showing, which is in an hour, come back and fill the board with my gloating words!!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

However, as a mature adult trying to save money, I will refrain from breaking my plans and waiting until the last show which is at 9:15pm. The late show is cheaper.

When I get back, expect to hear various GLOAT, GLOAT, GLOAT, GLOAT :clap:

Don't worry, I like movies too much to give away any real spoilers, but I will gloat!

[Sacerdos]

The last line of Fanboys comes screaming to mind. :P

[MBCE]

The last line of Fanboys comes screaming to mind.

Never saw it so don't know the line. But to be clear, the reason for the gloating is that I live in Japan. As a rule, we get movies from Hollywood about four to six months after they are released in the States. Of course there are exceptions where the release date worldwide is pretty much the same, I'm looking at you Harry Potter!

So it is extremely rare that Japan would get a movie before the States, especially a big budget film like Transformers. I've got to gloat! :monkey:

[Dr Archeville]

It does make some sense that Japan would get TF first, since TF was born from a few lines of Japanese action figures.

[Sacerdos]

Never saw it so don't know the line. But to be clear, the reason for the gloating is that I live in Japan.

Yeah, I know.

Last line of Fanboys, said of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, as best as I can remember it.

"You know, I just had a thought. What if this really sucks?"

[MBCE]

:monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey: :monkey:

Okay folks! Here it comes!!! :rotfl:

It was a really cool film. The action, as usual from Micheal Bay, was high end. This time, at least in my opinion, it was funnier than the first, though a lot of the jokes were either cliche or pridictable. They add a pair of wise cracking, bumbling Transformers to keep the humor up. They were fairly entertaining to watch.

Megan Fox, of course, was very nice eye candy! :clap: I think they could have made her more important to the story, but they didn't.

Did you ever watch the TV show back in the eighties? Did you think Optimus Prime was a punk in the TV show, only to show how cool he could be in his short appearance in the original animated movie? Well, if so, then this movie is for you, as it puts Prime as top-dog when it comes to fighting Decepticons. He's not as weak as he was in the first movie, which was really cool. They even made Bumblebee a kickass fighter!

One cool thing about seeing it here in Japan was the fact that they gave us cards that can be used as proof that we saw it before any other general audiences did. A collector's item, perhaps, but it is written in Japanese which kind of limits the value of it a bit.

If you're looking for a good Summer movie to entertain you with explosions and FX, then this the movie for you. I give it a B. It was good, but it lacked that spark that makes me go WOW! Star Trek and Slumdog did that for me this year. Hopefully I'll have that feeling again later this year.

So, if you're looking for more information about the film, ask away and I'll try to answer without spoiling things too much. I say, if you like action, go see it. You' should enjoy it. I did.

Maybe I should go see it again this Sunday......

[Sandman XI]

One cool thing about seeing it here in Japan was the fact that they gave us cards that can be used as proof that we saw it before any other general audiences did. A collector's item, perhaps, but it is written in Japanese which kind of limits the value of it a bit.

You'd be suprised what some Japanese obsessed Americans will buy :P

[MBCE]

This is true. It is nice looking and all. I'll keep it in my colest somewhere I guess. I doubt that it will ever come up to the point of me selling it. I'm a pack rat. :D

[Dr Archeville]

Uh-oh.

So just how bad is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? The reviews are already pouring in, and they're not charitable. (The movie opens in the United States tomorrow but is already screening in the United Kingdom, Japan and elsewhere.)

Perhaps most scathing is the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, who writes: "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination."

As of Tuesday morning, the movie was scoring 31 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer—and falling.

Following is a sampling of other early reviews:

USA Today's Claudia Puig: "This sequel to the clever and funny first Transformers not only is disappointing, it will give most people a throbbing case of metal overload."

Ed Potton, The Times of London: "It's like being hit over the head repeatedly with a very expensive, very loud train set. After two and a half hours in this bludgeoning company, you're begging Bay to put away the boys' toys and make a rom-com."

Winnipeg Sun: "Noisier, longer and even more lyrically lunk-headed than its predecessor, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen consists primarily of: Wicked giant robot cars pulverizing each other."

Not all the reviews were bad:

Jordan Mintzer at Variety: "With machines that are impressively more lifelike, and characters that are more and more like machines, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence."

Or, as Roger Moore at the Orlando Sentinel says: "Is it the worst movie of the summer? Possibly. Will everybody see it? Probably."

(Look for SCI FI Wire's review later today or early tomorrow.)

[MBCE]

Hmmmm, as usual, the critics forget exactly what the movie is all about.

It is s summer movie!!!! If you are looking for more than explosions, fast action, silly jokes, and beautiful eye candy, then summer movies are not for you.

This one was truer to the animation than the first movie. This time, it was robots vs robots. Of course that means a lot of CG, which was done quite well by the way!

Perhaps most scathing is the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, who writes: "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination."

As for me, I really didn't think the dog humping was all that funny. Jokes like that have recently fallen flat for me. I'm surprise that Roger Ebert would say that was one of the joys of the movie though.

USA Today's Claudia Puig: "This sequel to the clever and funny first Transformers not only is disappointing, it will give most people a throbbing case of metal overload."

Metal overload? Did they forget wha tteh titel of the movie was? Transformers. It means metal changing into robots. Without the metal, there's no purpose for the movie.

Ed Potton, The Times of London: "It's like being hit over the head repeatedly with a very expensive, very loud train set. After two and a half hours in this bludgeoning company, you're begging Bay to put away the boys' toys and make a rom-com."

Bay only makes movies with boy toys. If you're seeing one of his movies, expect it to be geared to the young boys in us all. And you want a master of explosions to do Romance? Are you crazy?

Winnipeg Sun: "Noisier, longer and even more lyrically lunk-headed than its predecessor, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen consists primarily of: Wicked giant robot cars pulverizing each other."

Obviously, someone didn't watch the original cartoon when it was on Tv. That's all it was about. Robots fighting robots. I have no idea why they decided to ruin the story with people in the first film. At least this time they had more fights between robots.

Jordan Mintzer at Variety: "With machines that are impressively more lifelike, and characters that are more and more like machines, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence."

Yes, the CG was much better and impressive. Again, if you like explosions then this is a fairly good film.

Roger Moore at the Orlando Sentinel says: "Is it the worst movie of the summer? Possibly. Will everybody see it? Probably."

Bold statement about it possibly being the worst movie of the summer. Summer's just beginning. There should be tons to choose from for the worst movie and I really don'T think Transformers will be among them.

What I would like to see is their review for the first Transformers movie to compare. Did they think Transformers was that much different?

[MBCE]

Wow. It's a wierd feeling to be talking about a film like this. Don't get to do that very often. :D

[Warmonger]

THe reviews seem good to me. I hated all the humans in the first film and boring human angle. I'm glad they corrected this with more robot fisticuffs.

[Ecalsneerg]

My friend's summary of why I should go see this was: "Giant robots fighting and Meghan Fox." No critic can convince me that is not awesome.

The metal overload comment annoys me, because some people may suffer from overload from other types of music. Just because your typical critic isn't a metalhead... Well, that and I've heard Linkin Park again did a lot of the soundtrack, and they aren't metal.

[angrydurf]

I think metal overload was in referance to a lack of the meatbags getting involved not so much the soundtrack.

I'm pretty torn actually as Giant Robots are awesome especially when fighting. On the otherhand I loath Bay on principle and was really unhappy with how the transformers looked for the most part in the first film. I'm not a decepticon fan to start with but it seemes like very few of them are actually transformers but rather just robots which while still kinda cool is not Transformers for me. I mean where are the robots in DISGUISE .

This is just from the first flick and the previews so I hope I'm wrong. Most likely it'll be a netflix it movie as getting the baby looked after is a rare enough comodity that it must be hoarded :)

[MBCE]

Well there was a lot of robots joining. They were in pretty much disguise this time around which should solve your grievences about it.

As for music, I didn'T get a very big feel of "metal" style of music. Fast paced BGM like most action movies, but no real "metal" Linkin's theme song didn't come into play until the credits so unless they did a lot of instrumentals in the movie it didn't seem like they did much in the movie. But I could be wrong. I wasn't paying that much attention to the music.

Oh, that's right. You guys can see the movie now! I look forward to hearing your take on the movie.

Hope I didn't ruin things for most people. Enjoy it.

[Warmonger]

So I just got back form seeing it.

Wow I think the best way to summarize this is: If you liked the first one, you will like this one as well. It essentially the smae movie but with much more of everything thrown in.

Meaning more Giant Freaking Robots duking it out. More Transformers. Finally the Autobots weren't shivering in a corner waiting for the humans to come save them. They fought the deceptacons toe-to-toe and won.

It also means more uninteresting acting, more terrible romance, more dumb jokes that I might have laughed at when I was 13. More groan inducing one liners, and more plot holes. More veiled stereotyping.

Overall Grade: B

[angrydurf]

So A+ on Giant Robots Fighting.

but over all a C- to D for the continued lack of being Transformers once again the Decepticons were mostly just robots not Transformers. A central gripe I hold over from the first movie.

[quotemyname]

Warning! possible spoilers!

I am assuming everyone reading this has already seen it...

Like I said... I willfully avoided this thread until after I saw the movie.

I liked it.

That being said... I confess it is difficult for me to dislike many movies. I found Transformers: Revenge to be just as chaotic as the last one. Some of the transformers didn't get as much screen time as they should. (why were the twins in so much of it? and the motorcycle chicks? where were they most of the time?)

Oh well... The redeeming factor was meghan fox - very much so. Her level of eye candy is hard to attain... And there was more slow motion running scenes than bay watch. If you are a fox fan, WATCH THIS!

A lot of the action (about half) is well choreographed. The other half is far too chaotic for it's own good. In those crucial moments, it is difficult to tell if Ironhide is Ironhide, or just another nameless decepticon. (and aparently they brought in loads of these).

I have heard complaints of not being able to get into or connect with the characters. Well I didn't have that problem. But then... Maybe I am just the right sort of college age for this stuff. I have already resigned myself to not seeing spike in the series, so I am past fighting that battle. Shia LaBeouf did it well enough for my tastes. Granted I am pretty easy to please, but still. Sam as a character is not a moron, and that is very thankful. I would like to see him get some of the wierd ass powers that Spike had during the cartoon (being able to predict desasters etc... But hey... Maybe in the next one...)

All in all... I liked it... But then, I saw it for free with my brother. I would pay to see it, but not more than once. Casual fans should enjoy this. Hardcore robot fans will enjoy this even more. Those somewhere in between or below this point on the scale will likely be lost.

[N/A]

Two Things:

First:

Sam Witwicky = Spike Witwicky. Ron Witwicky = Sparkplug Witwicky.

They're not working on an oil rig in this continuity, hence the lack of mechanic nicknames.

Second:

Megan Fox is overrated.

And hilariously full of herself. Apparently she's her own biggest fan.

[quotemyname]

Okay I can see that now.

More gripes that I have been stewing over the past few days (which could be a spoiler):

Gripe 1: In the final scenes during the battle between all of the giant robots...Why god why did sam's parents show up out of nowhere riding in a the middle of a construction vehicle?!

Gripe 2: Why is there a giant 'parking lot' for retired aircraft jets OUTSIDE THE NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM? I have been to the national air and space museum many times. Its in the middle of Washington DC. If you have never seen that much green grass in Washington DC I challange you to show me where? Aside from in front of the white house or Washington monument, etc. (I didn't see any tourist attractions). It just so happens that I have also been to the museum that DOES have all of those retired jets. While the name escapes me currently, I do know that it lies in the state of Arizona...