Transformers

[Wulfa_Jones]

A feast for the audio/visual senses, Transformers is pretty fantastic looking. It's like nothing I've ever seen, but something I've always wanted to see - giant robots beating the hell out of each other.

However, the tone is sometimes a little uneven with some rather silly humorous parts that often weren't as funny as they thought and sometimes distracted from the action. Action films can be funny without having to resort to what amounts to a poor comedy sketch. The dialogue was a little chunky in parts - suited for the cartoon - but not for a live action movie, the use the "more than meets the eye" phrase being rather sickly.

The action scenes are amazing and of the sort I've only witnessed in anime movies and to see it in a live action setting was pretty cool. However, due to the realistic design of the Transformers, it is sometimes a little hard to know what is going on in a fight scene as it often ends up being a blur of metal and moving parts.

Good to hear most of the character voices being at least similar if not the same to those of their 80s animated counterparts, but it's a shame they didn't try to replicate Starscreams screech. I know the actor who did his voice (and Action Forces Cobra Commander) has passed away, but I'm sure they could have got a voice actor to do something along the same lines.

So for all its flaws is it any good ? yes it is. Some of the sequences where just amazing to watch ? the initially attack on the military base, the fight in the desert town, the motorway chase and the final city battle are all spectacular. Worth seeing most certainly and I can?t wait for the next part of the series, which I?m sure will be more fun now that we?ve got past the often tiresome origin story

[Mithfânion]

So for all its flaws is it any good ?

No it wasn't, I thought it was a deeply disappointing film in many ways. Not even the blurry actiosn scenes were wortwhile because the way Bay shoots his camera you have no idea what is going on, who is fighting who, you only see scraps of metal.

And that only scrapes the surface of what was wrong with this film.

[Bond]

For people who only know how to subtract, The Transformers is one to avoid. For people who know how to add, The Transformers is not to be missed.

[Phellim]

It was definitely better than I expected, but my expectations were very low going in to it. I wasn't crazy about the tv show either, although I liked the 3D version with animals (Optimus Prime was a gorilla, I think, or was that something else?).

There was some immature humour, a lot of explosions, fights, and chase scenes, and a shallow love story between two people who barely say a word to each other through the film. So? Sounds like most action movies to me.

[James Carmack]

I wasn't expecting much, so I felt I got a pretty good romp out of it, even if it did take over an hour to assemble the Autobots. VG Cats (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=241) did nail the movie right on the head, though.

Lennox and his boys made me groan with their ate-up berets. (And were they supposed to be SF or Rangers? SECDEF confoozled me. Even if they were the latter and not the former, I saw 82nd patches on the left sleeve. If they weren't SF operators, then they should've been wearing maroon berets, not black ones. Obviously the combat controller is the exception.) It's one thing for glorified civilians like that Sector 7 agent to have an ate-up beret, but come on. You'd get chewed up and spit out at Bragg with the berets those boys were sportin'. You might say, "Why does it matter?" Try living on an airborne post. It'll matter.

What do you all think of that enigma wrapped in a mystery: the Mexicajun Figueroa? Is his kind not the stuff of myth, like the Sasquatch or the unicorn? I say the writers couldn't decide between having a Hispanic or a Cajun, so they decided to mix the two. You'd think he'd at least slip some Creole into his Spanish. Ah, well, I can't fault him for his praise of gator meat. Maybe not the most succulent meat, but good eatin' all the same.

Random Guy: "There were robots, too, you know."

Really? Where? :P Seriously, though, I can remember wondering why there was only the one token human back in the day. Now I know. Would that I could tell my childhood counterpart, back when he was watching the G1 cartoon. "There's a reason, my boy. Trust me."