Transformers: Age of Extinction

[DraconianOne]

I hate myself for even starting this thread but I feel duty bound to point out that the Superb Owl teaser for Transformers 4 has Optimus Prime riding on Grimlock's back.



I hate myself more because, despite loathing the first three films, I find myself looking at that and thinking "Fuck yeah!" But I'll no doubt end up finding it as fucking awful as the ones that came before and then hate myself for wasting two hours of my life.

With this trailer, I feed people hope to poison their souls.

[Evildrider]

At least Mark Wahlberg is leaps and bounds better than Shia Ledouche and Megan Fox combined.

[Lakov_Sanite]

As long as he's fighting evil giant robots and not trees.

[shiznitz]

At least Mark Wahlberg is leaps and bounds better than Shia Ledouche and Megan Fox combined.

You insult Mr Wahlberg by even suggesting anyone anywhere could even imagine he isn't better than at least THREE people combined.

[Riggswolfe]

I genuinely enjoyed most of the first Transformers movie. There were parts that made me wince but in general it was fun, in particular I like the scene where Bumblebee calls down the other autobots and they come down as meteors. That scene was very well made.

The 2nd movie was god awful. The script wasn't totally their fault as I think there was a writer's strike but the directing and editing were awful as well. The third movie had some good moments but was still pretty bad. It was better than the 2nd movie but still not in anyway a good movie.

What would make these movies 1000000X better is to reduce the roles the humans play by 80%, redesign the robots so they are easily distinguishable (say what you want about how the 80s versions have aged but you can tell at a glance which character is which, I find that difficult to do in these movies with the exception of Optimus) and get Michael Bay's editor to stop taking cocaine long enough to get over his addiction to quick cuts during fights.

None of that will happen in this movie so at best it will be tolerable. In no way, shape, or form will I pay to see this in the theater or even VOD. I'll wait for Netflix.

[TheWalrus]

I will throw on my eyepatch and park my ship in a bay.

[Ironwood]

First one really wasn't THAT bad.  It's just it was a real launchpad for the other two which were, frankly, keech.

[K9]

Agreed, the first one was dumb, but it was dumb in a fun way that wasn't overly insulting to anyone with above-potato intelligence. Two was dire, I haven't even seen the third all the way through I think (if I did I have purged the memory).

I'm not rushing to see this one.

[KallDrexx]

I will say one good thing about #2, they had a few really awesome robot vs robot fight scenes that did not switch cameras often.  In the first movie a lot of the fights involved a LOT of camera switching for each fight action.  In the 2nd (at least in the optimus battle) they stayed on a single camera for a good 10-20 seconds which (imo) made the fight look better.

[Ard]

I'm going to say it.  I shouldn't.  I'm going to anyways.  I liked Transformers 3.  It was hokey, it's plot was seriously wtf, Nimoy was just odd, but fuck it, it focused mostly on the robots.  It's what I wanted Transformers 1 to be.  Transformers 2 however is something I wish I could take back having ever seen.

[Ironwood]

You can say it and I will defend your right to do so.  However, you're not right.  You're just not.

I will agree that it focused on the robots and the story COULD have been made interesting, but it just came off as 'curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal.'  I can't imagine there as a single kid anywhere surprised, let alone adults.

Also, wasn't that the one where they were INSIDE the sideways toppling skyscraper ?  I can't really remember, but it was a huge black morass of retarded.

The first one worked because of all the very cool Transformers bits.  The chopper landing and then wasting the base.  The aforementioned meteor shower turning into goddamn robots in disguise.  Starscream at the Dam.  Megatron chewing scenery like he was Agent Smith or something.

I could have done without some of the humans and, frankly, the scorpion under the sand was retarded, but it wasn't awful.

And then we get the half naked transformer with the tongue.  Jesus.

[Tannhauser]

I kinda liked the first one but hated the second one so quit the series.  I didn't watch Transformers when it was on, so I couldn't make out which robot was which.  The action scenes in 2 were terrible, I couldn't tell what was going on.  The first one I wouldn't mind watching again though.

[Lakov_Sanite]

If you didn't see the third you missed the giant transformer truck nuts

[Chimpy]

If you didn't see the third you missed the giant transformer truck nuts

Jesus christ why did you have to remind me?

I had blanked out about 99.99% of that piece of shit and now it is storming back. 

[Cyrrex]

Going to pick a nit here...in that pick up above, Optimus appears to be standing on or stepping over Grimlock's head.  Judging by that pic alone, his volume would appear to be roughly half that of Grimlock's head.  Grimlock is a T-Rex analogue of some kind, no?  And Optimus a big ass truck.  So in other words, I am supposed to believe that a T-Rex is something like 20 times the size of a semi truck.  That, or they somehow change size when they transform.  It pissed me off when the cartoon did that shit in the 80s (my brain decided to excuse Megatron for some reason), and it pisses me off now.

Or do I have some facts wrong?

Biggest peeve from these movies, though, tends to be the fact that you couldn't tell the robots apart most of the time.  That, combined with the editing of the fight scenes, made it look like whirling balls of scrap metal exploding for some reason.  Think some of this improved slightly in the 2nd and 3rd, only to be replaced by ghettobots and leg humping decepticons.

[Ironwood]

Oh God, the ghettobots.

The Horror, the horror.

[Cyrrex]

I thought of another thing that bothered the shit out of me.  Devastator.  There may have been some pretense (I can't clearly recall) of it being created out of a few different construction vehicle, but then it turns into some big...thing.  Not a giant robot clearly made out of five individual and recognizable vehicles, but some big confusing shape that seemed to be more worm-like than humanoid shaped.  Talk about a missed opportunity.  Probably the thing I loved most about the Transformers back in the day were the combiners - Aerialbots, Constructicons, Stunticons and Combaticons.  Seems like such low hanging fruit, if only they could do shit right, which to a large degree includes making them coherent, recognizable shapes.  Let Menasor loose on London, and presto. 

[Ironwood]

Nah, Devastator was used for a scrotum joke.

It was fucking lame.

[Ard]

You can say it and I will defend your right to do so.  However, you're not right.  You're just not.

Why do you even care that I liked a movie?  I have problems with that given my statement was completely objective.  I'm able to shut my brain off for stupid shit, that's pretty easily documented over the course of my posts here.  The third movie worked for me in a way that none of the others did.  It's not like I'm contributing to any of this since I saw it via netflix, and I don't really have any expectations from the new movie, other than that I won't be seeing it when it comes out, much like all the rest.  I was mostly just surprised that I actually liked the third movie enough to second guess myself and go back and watch the second movie, which I really regret having done.

[Ironwood]

I care that people think Tracey Emin is an artist too, if it helps.

[Cyrrex]

Nah, Devastator was used for a scrotum joke.

It was fucking lame.

Yeah, it WAS lame.  That's kinda my point.  Something that should have obviously been completely awesome, and it pretty much wasn't in any way.

[Hoax]

I only saw Transformers #1.

I liked the Megan Fox fixing the car scene. That one fight scene you could sort of see. When Bumblebee transformed while putting him into the driver's seat. Everything in the final fight where Megatron was being a badass plane transforming and fucking shit up and ripping bitches in half.

I didn't like black transformers talking jive. The dog peeing on transformers. All of the fight scenes that were impossible to follow. How much time was wasted with the stupid FBI or whatever guy and general human interaction bullshit. How human's were relevant in fights between giant robots.

[Ironwood]

Well, in fairness, if you didn't like Jazz, he really got his due at the end of the film.

 

[TheWalrus]

That part actually sucked. I really liked Jazz as a kid. I hoped they'd find a way to revive him somehow. Don't they backup software?

[Trippy]

Latest trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubGpDoyJvmI

[Lakov_Sanite]

'Murica!

[Ironwood]

Latest trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubGpDoyJvmI

That looked good.  It's probably not going to be.

Also, Prime's back to normal truck ?  That's pretty awesome.

[NowhereMan]

I knew nothing about this and am kind of disappointed it isn't about transformers landing on pre-historic earth and just fighting each other/dinosaurs. The movie seems less ridiculous as a concept and way less interesting.

[Riggswolfe]

That looked like shit. Way too much stuff with humans. Humans turn on the autobots because? Independence Day rip off saucer invasion. That guy with the shaved head is going to be the annoying scenery chewing government agent of the movie.

[SurfD]

So.  Just finished watching the early bird screening at work.   Was pretty much everything I expected it to be.  Bigass summer blockbuster with largely paper thin plot, where lots of shit blows up.

One thing I will say.  This is probably one of the few times where at least the trailers actually managed to give away almost nothing about what is going on.   Pretty much everything in the trailers is simply a tease, and generally turns out to not be what you thought it was.  Other then the Dinobots, who are just bigass, kickass dinosaurbots.

If I had one major gripe about the move it would be:

[jgsugden]

Due to my misspent youth watching the cartoon, I've been looking for some reason to believe this would be worth watching.

Sadly, no.  It isn't even going onto the end of my 200+ long Netflix disk queue.

[Maven]

After reading this 500-page dissertation from Something Awful on the Transformers film trilogy, painting Optimus Prime as a blood-thirsty villain and Megatron as the sympathetic hero, Sam Witwicky as an audience insert and metaphor for the ineffectual man-children Millenials, and its gushing, overwhelming love of what Dark of the Moon accomplished ...

...it provides a reasonable alternative perspective even if not all of it was intended when they made it or even an accurate analysis. However, I do like that Dark of Moon had some serious subtlety in some of its composition, and I wonder if they maintained that.

[Merusk]

Just saw this with my son because he's still big into the movies. At nearly three hours make sure you hit the bathroom after the first hour. Take your kids out after the CIA is chasing Marky Mark and the funky bunch, nothing good happens there for a good 15 mins.

The pandering to China. Oh dear lord, the pandering.  It was so transparent where the scenes were going to be cut and pasted to make it "Rah, Rah, Beijing" and how they were going to work it so the Chinese underling in the US version is the woman in charge in China.

Dinobots don't show until the last 30-40 mins. Boo. They also set up for the 5th movie which will be Prime in Space vs. The Quintessons (though they aren't mentioned by name.)

As for Megatron:

[SurfD]

As for Megatron:

[Merusk]

And the turtles would have been aliens unless Hasbro said "uhh. No"

Michael Bay cares not for the rules of your silly universe.  Even when they're referenced in the movie he disobeys them in.