Revenge of the Fallen First reactions from Japan premiere coming in...

[Mr. Earle]

Yea the friendship between Sam and Bumblebee was probably the best thing about it IMO.

And yea there should be at least a half decent plot in every single movie ever made, regardless of genre. But we can't say this movie hasn't got a decent plot yet, because none of us have seen it. All we have heard is a pretty un specific "review".

I heard that Spielberg proposed the idea to Bay. He said he wanted the movie to start with the story of "a boy and his first car". And it was cool that they kept the rest of the Autobots for later. When Prime first transforms its like you re standing in front of Jesus (only he is mechanical and he has swords ).

Thank god for Spielberg then. Damn it Bay has such a low IQ, yet he is wealthier than whole countries!

 

[GhostPoet]

This just in! ----BREAKING NEWS---
A random person says the movie sucks!

That is all.

 

[CrashNburn]

I am only mad that the Imax is longer than the theatrical because the closest Imax theatre is 400 miles away

You shouldnt be that mad...the word going around is that it's only just under a minute longer.

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

Come on man, that's just a dumb comment.

You can't compare Batman and Transformers, end of.

Don't you know EVERY film is now compared to TDK for no reaon

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

The comparison makes sense. People said Batman was silly based on Superfriends and Adam West. They said it was dumb to expect anything more because it was about a guy who dresses up like a bat. Now people say the same thing about Transformers. Supposedly it doesn't deserve a quality adaptation because the concept and cartoon was silly.

Same argument.

 

[protocida]

I like Transformers better than The Dark Knight.

 

[Golgo-13]

I want to hear something about the score. Is it a rehash from TF1? Original? What.....?

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

The comparison makes sense. People said Batman was silly based on Superfriends and Adam West. They said it was dumb to expect anything more because it was about a guy who dresses up like a bat. Now people say the same thing about Transformers. Supposedly it doesn't deserve a quality adaptation because the concept and cartoon was silly.

Same argument.

They are both way different franchises to compare them. Sure they both were campy and silly in the 80's, but so was most cartoons, comics etc at that time.

Batman got darker in most media forms in the late 80's and stuck to that tone(minus Forever and Batman & Robin) to this day. Before the film in '07, Transformers was still pretty silly in most media forms. Even the film kept in some sillyness because it's adapted from a kids show that's used to sell toys.

Transformers are robots from space, Batman is a guy who dresses up because his parents were killed, both concepts are even different.

Everyone feels that all films should live up to TDK standards like it's a perfect film, it's not, it has it's flaws. Transformers cannot present itself like TDK has. Transformers is not dark and will never be.

 

[Ace of Knaves]

@messiahdecoy

No it's not.

It's not that it was a cartoon and was silly. It's that Transformers is SUPPOSED to be more action focused. It's about giant frickin robots at war on earth!

So you want a cerebral Transformers film in the same mold as the recent Batman films, is that what you are saying?

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

@messiahdecoy

No it's not.

It's not that it was a cartoon and was silly. It's that Transformers is SUPPOSED to be more action focused. It's about giant frickin robots at war on earth!

So you want a cerebral Transformers film in the same mold as the recent Batman films, is that what you are saying?

Well it doesn't necessarily have to cerebral as a detective movie but it could be cerebral as a mild cyber punk movie being that these are living machines fighting for human trust and energy to fuel a million year civil war. You can embellish and reinforce the source material using the best the comics had to offer like the Dark Knight did rather than simply transfer the sillier elements of the show. That would be what Joel Schumacher and Michael Bay did.

 

[Ace of Knaves]

Yea that's fair enough, good points.

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

Well it doesn't necessarily have to cerebral as a detective movie but it could be cerebral as a mild cyber punk movie being that these are living machines fighting for human trust and energy to fuel a million year civil war. You can embellish and reinforce the source material using the best the comics had to offer like the Dark Knight did rather than simply transfer the sillier elements of the show. That would be what Joel Schumacher and Michael Bay did.

Batman came from a comic book, Transformers didn't. Even TDK changed major things from the comics. Joker had white skin, he didn't have cuts in his face(for most part), he fell into chemicals, Two-Face didn't get burnt from a fire, he never dated someone called Rachel(plus she was never even in the comics) and you could go in other things about characters.

Transformers HAS to be aimed towards kids because they are the demographic. Hasbro makes it's money from the toys. The cartoon is what everyone remembers the Transformers from, not the comics. Sure the first film had it's major weaknesses and I'm sure this will too, but at the end of the days it's not Batman. It does not have the same director or writers, so there shouldn't be a moment to think it will be the same as TDK. Bay is the right guy, he knows action and that's what people want from Transformers.

 

[Mr. Earle]

I certainly dont want Transformers or any other franchise to lose its focus and copy TDK because it was successful. TDK succeeded for a million reasons and its tone is on par with the material.
TF is all about robots transforming into human vehicles. I think its focus needs to be action, CGI, some humor, etc. Not grimdark. And i think that Bay has caught the essense of it and he deserves credit for having the guts to go with the new radical designs. I know i love them and cant go back to the cubic robots. The faces especially are amazing btw!

That said, TF could use a deeper plot (in TF1 at least. We dont know about the second yet). I am not saying make it a Shakespearean play, but it could analyse some themes, like the death and destruction that comes from war, or worse in this case, a civil war, etc.
Also, it would be wise for Bay not to think of us as idiots. I rolled my eyes into my brain when they presented us that hot Aussie chick and that black guy as top hackers working for the goverment. And while some of the humor was good, most of it was bad. And the worst part is the robot humor, because you know that each frame costs time and money and you wish they had spent it on something better. We didnt get any character development for the decepticons, but we sure did get the "oops...my bad" scene. That scene wasnt funny and it felt like it lasted for a century!

My god the Twins are gonna be so bad...

 

[protocida]

Your, sir, have no sense of fun.

 

[Mr. Earle]

Your, sir, have no sense of fun.

Dont get me wrong, i liked TF1. It was a fun movie. I had more fun with it than with Ironman which i found boring.
For example, i laughed a lot during the scene where the blond chick visits the black guy at his house. Both the grandma and the dance jokes were good. But you just cant pass this guy as a top hacker. He could have been Sam's neighbor or something!

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Batman came from a comic book, Transformers didn't. Even TDK changed major things from the comics. Joker had white skin, he didn't have cuts in his face(for most part), he fell into chemicals, Two-Face didn't get burnt from a fire, he never dated someone called Rachel(plus she was never even in the comics) and you could go in other things about characters.

Transformers has a long history of comics it doesn't matter if it was pre-dated by the cartoon. When making an adaptation you are not barred from using the comics because the source material didn't originate in comics.

The Heath Ledger design for the Joker works because it melds perfectly with Heath Ledger's interpretation of the character. The acid/fire change to Two-face was superficial. I didn't say everything had to be exactly the same for an adaptation. I simply stated that if your going to make changes, embellish and reinforce the best that source material had to offer (much of which could be found in Transformer comic books) rather than transfer the silliest elements the way Joel Schumacher did.

Transformers HAS to be aimed towards kids because they are the demographic. Hasbro makes it's money from the toys. The cartoon is what everyone remembers the Transformers from, not the comics. Sure the first film had it's major weaknesses and I'm sure this will too, but at the end of the days it's not Batman. It does not have the same director or writers, so there shouldn't be a moment to think it will be the same as TDK. Bay is the right guy, he knows action and that's what people want from Transformers.

Not true, there are plenty of PG-13 movies with children toys. That means a movie aimed at people at least in high school offers toys aimed at five and six year olds. At the end of the day you can use the best the comics had to offer the way TDK successfully did in a Transformers movie. There's really no reason not to other than lazy storytelling.

People don't know what to expect from a new franchise. You can give them more than empty spectacle and loud explosions and they will have a memorable movie going experience. You can't keep people's attention with 2 hours of explosions, you need to tell a story. It doesn't matter if the movie is about ninjas, pirates, zombies or robots. You can craft a great story around the action sequences like the Empire Strikes Back or Raider of the Lost Ark. There's no excuse for anything less when you have decades of beloved comic story arcs to draw from.

 

[CEREBRAL....]

^^well said...

i just dont understand why can't people who dont like the movie and have a legitimate grap about bay's version be able to express it w/o someone saying "o it's just a cartoon..u dont know how to have fun, or what are you looking for a shakespearean play"

i mean Bay turn'd this movie into his own version and if he wanted to do that..then don't use any of the source material..use your own creation....

hope number 2 is a big improvement...but there's things that i have read that i'm not plz with already (soundwave not tranforming or even using the voicoder....f'ing bay)

 

[Jake Cassidy]

The report says that Sideswipe is cool. That makes me happy.

 

[Occam's Phaser]

The movie is not done yet. Bay probably reused some animations from the 1° movie while the new ones aren't finished.

Thats what Im hoping, reused the animations as a quick media to throw on the canvas to see what it will look like etc. or not who knows

It's bad wording on the part of the original reviewer. It's not reused animation. It is reused character models. Basically, it costs a lot of money and takes a lot of man hours to construct a detailed CGI character such as the robots in Transfromers. Understandable considering that each has thousands of complex moving parts. It seems that, to save time and money, Bay has populated the larger battles (and in the case of the forest fight, an apparently unexplained reappearance of Blackout) with mulitiple characters that share the same design.


But it still costs money and takes time to animate those reused character models and render them for the final scene. So he's not going to do that just to have robot place markers in the film that will be swapped out for original cgi creations at a later date.

 

[J.Howlett]

Messiah,

95% of the people who know anything about Transformers know that from the cartoon series not the comics...and let's all be honest about it, the cartoon isn't great. It got quite repetitive in the end. Not saying I still don't like it, but facts are facts.

Bay's reinvention of Transformers was a good thing...its his narrative skills that you can call into question.

Listen, I love the first film a lot, knowing all its flaws. But, it's flaws are not really in the storytelling department. It has a theme; it's just heavy handed. It's flaws come from the fact that Bay had 150 million dollars to make a live action Transformers film and that's just doesn't work. So what does he do? He overcrowds the film with humans, because he really has no choice. If you cut out Rachel Taylor and Anthony Anderson, it's a better film. That subplot really should've just been Jon Voight's character trying to figure things out. We really don't need the hackers, especially since Sector Seven tells us everything we need to know once they arrive.

Yet, I still give Bay a pass because of the nature of the material and the fact that 150 million isn't enough to make a real Transformers film. I mean, he basically shot around the robots until we got the major action sequence in the end...which still delivers, two years later.

Now, contrast that to this new film. We can already tell, with a bigger budget, that Bay cut down the humans significantly and upped the robots...and decided to tell his own version of existing Transformers lore. I really don't see what else anyone wants. We don't know what the character development is going to be like yet....but with a film like this, you shouldn't expect too much. This type of film is more plot oriented than character oriented.

You can have some character development in Transformers but from whom, Prime or Sam? If you character development between the robots, that's even more money they have to spend and then you get into the territory of not making any money off this film theatrically because it cost too much to make.

A really, real Transformers film has to be an animated feature.

 

[lukedoggwalker]

soo.. any other reactions from the film?

 

[Alex The Great]

aaahhh.....Everyone arguing about the movie based one a couple reviews....:facepalm

 

[Grommers]

A couple of things, there are somethings I wish Bay didn't change, however some make a whole **** ton more sense. He's given a lot of the transformers a lot more character and personality, which is an addition to it to me. Beast Wars was one of my favourite transformers shows because of the character development.

It really makes these dudes feel alot more alive.

So, the fact that they "reused" designs or transformations or whatever..hey, if i had to choose between those reused and more time for character development, or not reused and no time for character development i would choose the first option, sure it sucks, but sadly, very few people in the world have a limitless budget.

I hope they do a half decent job introducing the characters, I thought thats something transformers 1 lacked.




Anyways whoever created that thread about his "review" never talked about the positive things, he's clearly not a good writer because you usually back-up your first sentence, so I wouldn't really take much as to what he says to heart.

 

[Avengers-Report]

Is there another review besides the one of the front page?

 

[chaseter]

Who cares if they reuse animations? It is either spend money and time redoing those or spend that money and time else where I could care less if Bumblebee transforms the exact same way in one shot