after a failed attempt at watching Transformers at a midnight showing last night (all eight theaters at Harkins and all seven theaters at AMC were sold out hours before midnight), i was able to finally catch a showing with RobRob (
@r0br0bles) and Neil. i enjoyed the movie
a lot. definitely worth watching it in a theater over a measly cam download. watching it with the imax experience may cause nausea with some of the camera work, haha. it's michael bay. if you're gonna complain about loudness and too many explosions.. then i would suggest not watching a movie about giant robots going to war. anyway, on to the movie.
it's not a perfect movie. far from it actually. but like i said, i thoroughly enjoyed it. to the max. major. but here are things i liked and disliked. (by the way, this contains
no spoilers, so you can feel free to read even if you haven't seen the movie)
CONS: now onto the movie's flaws.. comedy was actually a driving force in the movie. while it may have been needed to keep the audience entertained.. it was a lot more than one would expect,
almost hitting the excessive mark, but doesn't get too out of hand. i do get a bit annoyed when comedy is thrown in unnecessarily, like during an intense battle scene, but it's hollywood. speaking of comedy, i don't know if i was too fond of the twins, mudflap and skids. they were.. funny.. i guess? i dont know.. i think it wouldn't have made much of a difference in plot if they were not even included in the movie and ironhide and ratchet accompanied sam the whole time instead. oh, that random decepticon pretender girl was random as hell. and for devastator having such an epic 'coming alive' scene, he was severely underused. the whole section in the middle of the movie when they pick up jetfire felt incredibly long. once the movie was finished, i can see how the whole jetfire thing was needed, but it still felt draggy at that part. also, the plot was finally cleared up at that point. it took till the middle of the movie to finally explain what the heck was going on. but it's ok, jetfire's character makes up for that flaw, haha. megatron and fallen actually seemed pretty weak to me. megatron especially in comparison with his performance in the first film. i think if megatron wasn't under fallen's authority, he could have been so much stronger. the
biggest thing that i didn't like about the movie was the faceless autobot characters: jolt, ironhide, ratchet, sideswipe, and of course the female, more curvaceous arcee, chromia, moonracer. ironhide and ratchet only got 2-3 lines, arcee only got half a line, and jolt only helped out near the end for about 2 seconds. there was almost no character development to them, especially with sideswipe's awesome introduction at the beginning of the movie.
PROS: the witwicky parents. as comical and almost cartoon-like as they are, they are
hilarious. the mom especially. much more comical than she was in the first. and the dad -- he took on quite a role towards the end. showing actual emotion rather than being a funny guy. the scene between sam and his dad (and mom) during the last battle scene was so emotional it almost had me choke. but dad/son relationships in movies always get to me. i liked how there were a lot more characters in the movie, both in the human aspect and in the robot aspect. the fight scenes were much more detailed and engaging than the first. notable ones include the forest fight between optimus vs megatron and starscream. intense. another is of course the last battle, but emphasis on bumblebee's fight with rampage. man, when bee puts his helmet on, that guy goes crazy hardcore. jetfire's character is awesome. and old-man transformer with a great sense of humor. the
music. if you read my previous entry, you'll see that i was a bit disappointed at how there were no hero/autobot themes. and that it was great as a compliment/addition to the first score. turns out i was right, because they used a lot of the cues from the first film for familiarities sake, which would be too redundant if included in the released score. so i was very happy to hear some familiar cues throughout the movie, took me by surprise. oh and megan fox. how do you miss this one. i thought she looked better in this film than she did in the first (i was actually ehh with her in the first film). i liked how they toned down her make-up a teeny bit from the first, she looked less artificial. but still artificial of course.. i mean, she looks hot face down in sand with explosions all over the place, but its hollywood, and who's gonna complain about that?
so i did end up liking the movie a lot.. and everything said here is simply my opinion.
on the subject, check out this TIMBALAND produced track by Elijah Kelley using the Transformers Movie Theme:
CLICK HERE
awake
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