cosmicherosa
king of life
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Harry: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31867
Quint -- http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31868
Harry has seen the ShoWest TRANSFORMERS Presentation!!!! Twice!!!! NICE!!!!
Hey folks, Harry here... Ok - so I've seen the 20-25 minutes of TRANSFORMERS footage that Michael Bay and folks unleashed on SHOWEST tonight. Only - I've seen it twice and at the Drafthouse. The footage has the most finished look at the robots that is available thus far... but things like the voice work, the eyes and other tweaks - are still yet to be put in place. Having said that... I really liked what I saw.
In particular - the two Desert sequences. The first featured a group of grunts headed to a camp to cycle back to the U.S. It's a bit cheesy in that idealized look at the American troops that still pass out Chocolate to kids in a region - that long for the kid they have back home that they've never held and that are quirky in that quirky way. It happens to be the kinda cheese that I like. As these guys are settling in, we cut to the base's command center which has picked up an unidentified bogie that ain't sqawkin'. I love the military banter here - which on the page when I read it, fell as flat as a tortilla - but intercut with images of the coolest friggin military hardware in the world... I couldn't help but dig it. These new Ospreys just look massively awesome.
Now this is obviously the BLACKOUT scene that we've seen hinted in the trailer. After the copter lands - and begins the Transforming - the **** hits the fan quick. I need to be clear about something. I love the original TRANSFORMERS movie, cheese and all. But I'm not a chapter and verse Transformer guy. What I am though, is a Giant Robot Geek - and this sequence with BLACKOUT... is Giant Robot Geekgasm material. The sounds it's energy weapons make are so awesome as to make the hairs on your legs tremble with their sub-bass sonics. It's killer. Mind you - the Robot voice stuff isn't in place, so I can't judge any of that - but BLACKOUT is blowing the **** out of stuff left and right. He seems to be on an information scouting attack. Loading in all the military tech files and info on hand through the military system. And doesn't seem to want to leave survivors to tell the tale. The scene didn't play to completion obviously - and after a particularly awesome shot of troops being annihilated... the screen went black for a sec - before going to the next segment.
The thought hit me. Can you imagine if this happened? What if in Qatar - 350 troops or so and an entire base just suddenly got wiped out by a Giant ****ing Robot? The film played it for keeps - the attack is ruthless and intense. Me likey.
The next sequence seemingly feels like nothing to do with the first segment. It's in suburban America - and Shia's character has pulled up in Bumblebee with the tanned, slightly sweaty chested babe character. This scene is much more in keeping with the Transformers that I know. First off - it featured Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, Ratchet and Iron Hide. It was playful and familiar from the Robot side - and from Shia's side too. He's terrified of his parents finding out about the Giant Robots outside - and is apparently looking for a pair of glasses that Optimus wants - that we know are not glasses, but some robot something. It could be the Maltese Falcon as far as we know, but most importantly - Optimus wants em.
The scene played out fun. I'm not a big fan of the Optimus mouth animation, I feel it distracts from the eyes - but this is actually a discussion that production is currently having. My vote is - a robot doesn't need lips - it has speakers. However, the animation on Bumblebee, especially a very nice "shh" moment works. And the kill the Taco Bell dog moment is geekily kinda awesome.
However the biggest moment of this scene - is when the Government Agents show up on scene led by John Turturro, who just rocks. He comes in and he's just... completely vibrant. A fully realized fun character. Think - a southern Jeffrey Combs from THE FRIGHTENERS - just not as overplayed. Reined in a bit. His scene with Shia's family makes me hope for a some nice tough Turturro action later.
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Then the final scene features our grunts from the first section - high tailing it through the desert trying to find a way to communicate with their army to come get them. When Scorponok attacks.
This sequence is very cool. In particular - Tyrese shines here. They run into a village as the team begins laying down fire on Scorponok - while that scorpion robot throws all sorts of **** at the village. When Tyrese finally gets a connection with the Pentagon and the military aerial backup comes - it gets really fun. This is the stuff Quint saw filmed live - I'm sure he'll report on it from SHOWEST.
Here's the thing though. The robots kick a certain amount of ass - even in these low key scenes. None of this was Robot on Robot action. These will be the small scenes in this film - and they were satisfying. And the effects kicked ass even if they were nowhere near finished finished. All having tweaks left to be done.
I'm very curious to see how it all fits together. The highest complement is... it looks like a Transformers movie. Watching Giant Robots doing there thing was just exhilarating.
Quint -- http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31868
Quint sees the TRANSFORMERS footage, too! But at ShoWest!!!
After a delay of about half an hour, a representative walked out and was very coy about showing us something special. Then he introduced Michael Bay, who came out to plug the release date, tell all the middle-aged to elderly theater owners that TRANSFORMERS was going to make a gagillion dollars and then left the footage to run.
It was 3 complete scenes, with incomplete effects in some areas and some temp sound, but they were very close to being finished. There was only one obvious temp CG shot and some wires that hadn't been removed yet that I noticed.
SCENE 1
Starts with a pair of military choppers flying over the desert. The burn in said it was Qatar, in the Middle East. On the chopper are Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Zack Ward and a couple others. Standard grunt chit-chat here. Kind of funny, kind of showing of each of their characters. One of them speaks Spanish and English, flowing from one to the other, sometimes in mid-sentence. The others give him a hard time about it. "You know we don't speak Spanish..." etc. Didn't really come off as scripted, so that's a good thing.
They land at a base and we see them interact with some other soldiers, Duhamel trading candy to an Iraqi kid for some kind of backpack thing.
Then the ominous chopper is seen. Black. Angular. The audio was even distorted when the rotors were spinning, sounding otherworldly. Very cool little touch, I thought.
Aaron from 24 is in charge of the control tower on the base and is alerted of the bogie by his radar guy. He orders it to deviate from military airspace. No response. He then sends some recon planes to check it out. They get a visual and report it back as one of theirs, but the aircraft number is one that was shot down in Afghanistan. Aaron from 24 says it must be a mistake, but one of the younger soldiers says he doesn't need to recheck because on of his friends was on that chopper when it went down. There's no mistake.
The chopper lands. The sun is going down and the military surround it. We get a glimpse of the pilot, the shot from the trailer as the electrical glitch goes over his face. Then the ****er starts transforming. For the love of god, all that is holy... it actually made the transforming sound from the cartoon. My little geek heart went pitter-patter.
The blades fold up and giant pieces start to shift. One detail I liked was that the army goes right at the thing. They don't watch it transform. Right when it starts to shift the guns start blazing, bullets bouncing off of Blackout as he becomes a giant robot. Bay hid the beginnings of the transformation with military jeeps, so you only catch glimpses at first... until you see him stand.
He lays waste. I'm telling you, this scene was huge. And the old fogey theater owners? They erupted in applause as he started blasting away army guys with his arm cannons. Can you imagine hearing a predominantly 50-60 year old crowd that applauds a giant machine killing US Army?
Blackout seemed to have a variety of different weapons. There was one arm cannon gun that seemed to shoot rapid fire mini-gun style, then his arm would move a little a bit, reconfiguring, and it'd be a plasma/EMP charge. You get a glimpse of this one in the trailer when Blackout first attacks and the blue-ish bubble of light erupts at his feet. Then there was one like a 4-shot missile, where they got all cork-screwy.
This ****ing thing wiped out a dozen tanks, 2 dozen parked jets and squished or blew up a ton of army men. He almost steps on Tyrese, who gets some kind of video evidence of the decepticon. Blackout notices and goes in for the kill when Duhamel hits him with a grenade launcher. Tyrese gets away, but the robot doesn't take much notice. He turns and Skorponok jumps off his back, digging into the sand and disappearing.
Blackout makes for the heart of the base, rips the roof off and reaches in to grab the server. Wires immediately connect from the robot to the machinery.
Aaron from 24 sees that the big ****ing robot is accessing all the secure files, looking for something. Imagery flashes on a computer. He yells for someone to cut the hardline, but they can't. So Aaron from 24 grabs an ax from the wall and does the job himself.
SCENE 2
This one was Shia LaBeouf centric and offered the first look at Optimus Prime and the autobots.
This scene was more humorous than the previous one. It starts with LaBeouf's parents on the phone to him, bickering lovingly back and forth. He's about to be grounded if he isn't back home very soon. Then we see a parade of autobots come down the street, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Ironhide and Optimus in automobile form.
LaBeouf runs out and gets to the door. His dad is waiting for him. It's a profile shot of the two of them talking through the screen door and in the background we see Optimus stand. His transformation was blocked by a house, but when he stands, he's taller than the house, so his head and shoulders come up. LaBeouf notices and tries to keep his dad from seeing it.
To make matters worse, Bumblebee pokes his head around the side of the house, only a couple feet away from LaBeouf. Optimus walks to the yard and LaBeouf really starts to get panicky. You can see Bumblebee making "Shh" gestures and waving Optimus back as LaBeouf's dad ends up going back inside, none the wiser.
All the autobots stand around LaBeouf and Megan Fox, talking. Optimus steps on a giant potted plant in the middle of the courtyard. "My bad..." Ut-oh... Honestly, as much as I hate that ****, hearing Peter Cullen say it made the pill a little easier to swallow.
His little rat dog comes out and barks at the robots, then it goes up and pisses on one of their legs, causing the robot to lift his foot and try to squish the little dog. LaBeouf stops him... I think it was Ironhide, who know has his arm cannons trained on the dog. "You have a rodent problem. Do you want me to terminate it?"
The Autobots urge LaBeouf to retrieve "the glasses," which they need in order to find the energon cube, it's in his room, so up he goes. Optimus tells the group, "Autobots, recon." And they watch the house as LaBeouf goes upstairs. After a moments searching, he sees Optimus' face in the open window. He jumps and then sees Optimus is holding Megan Fox. He puts her through the open window and into the room with Shia and enquires about the glasses.
Here'll be a big point of contention with fans. During this whole exchange, Optimus' face guard was down. He looked a little... odd. His face was a little long. But you can see the edges of the face guard on his cheeks, so it's pretty obvious it shoots up when he goes into action.
LaBeouf tells the autobots to keep a low profile and we see Ratchet accidentally step on his neighbor's fence and bumps into some power lines, sending him crashing to the ground, causing the whole block to shake. The parents think it's an earthquake.
A parade of Sector 7, government SUVs race down the street, stopping in front of his house. John Turturro, Jesus himself exits the car and quickly walks to the front door, incessantly pressing the doorbell over and over.
The parents answer the door and in walks Turturro being his quirky badass self. Government guys surround the house, looking for any signs of something... they obviously know a little bit. But how much?
No autobots are around, obviously they pulled back. Turturro is told that they can confirm direct contact and he holds a machine up to LaBeouf. It goes off the charts and Turturro's eyes go wide, a great grin on his face. His guys grab the kid and his parents and the scene ended.
There was a little more humor in the search in the room, including his mom interrupting and asking if he was *********ing. Sounds a little ridiculous and it might be, but LaBeouf was reacting so funnily that I didn't mind it too much.
SCENE 3
This essentially the whole Skorponok sequence, the one I saw them film in White Sands. Skorponok burrows under the sand and his tail comes up, sharp, right behind Duhamel, like in the trailer. Tyrese sees it and shoots the tail, shouting a warning. Skorponok burrows again, this time coming up behind Zack Ward and piercing him straight through, then dragging him down beneath the sand.
There's that slow-motion shot of the troops running and the decepticon jumping up behind them.They get to a small middle eastern town and the remains of the troop hold off the surfaced Skorponok, who shoots many projectiles out of his pincers, blowing this town to ****. It dodged the incoming fire from the grunts, rolling out of the way and getting quickly back up to retaliate. There was one particular shot I liked, a close up of the Skorponok's face as it reflexively shielded itself as it is being shot, these metal slabs shooting up to protect its face as bullets ricochet off.
There's a whole bit where Duhamel gets a cell phone from one of the townspeople and calls into a switchboard trying to gain communications with the pentagon. Of course, the guy on the line is an ******* and demanding a credit card to complete the call, so Duhamel has to run back outside and get Tyrese's card.
Eventually they get some arial support and everything I described in my set visit happened. They line up the robot, surrounding it and pointing their laser sights on it, so the jets can pinpoint where to unleash their load. They hit with missiles and raking fire from giant machine guns. Surely that got him, right?
No siree. It's not happy, but it's still moving. Tyrese is in communication with the pilots (on the cell phone) and tells them to use the 105 rounds and they attack again, this time successfully. Skorponok is mangled, but he still works enough to dive under the sand and retreat, leaving only his twitching, severed tail.
CLICK HERE TO READ MY SET VISIT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS SCENE!!!
That's it. I liked what I saw... but it really only solidified my theory that we're really going to be seeing Michael Bay's giant robots being badass and destructive. Cullen as Optimus and that glorious wah-wah-wah sound as Blackout transformed were great, but I don't know if they'll be enough to satisfy die-hard fans. But, I think the movie looks like a blast, one of those huge movies where every single penny of the outrageous budget is up on the screen, showing you something you've never seen before, at least at a level you've never seen it before.
It'll be a fun ****ing movie. I have no doubt. And it's going to make a mint. No doubt in my mind.
-Quint
