I Finally Saw Transformers
And HOLY SHIT IT FUCKING SUCKS.
Spoilery:
I lost count of the blatant product placement and the instants of offensive and often racist dialogue.
Are we supposed to feel compassion for Sam Witwicky? He’s a wannabe Anthony Michael Hall and an asshole AND a pervert. He’s nothing like the human character from the cartoon, Spike Witwicky, who is actually a great kid and helps the Autobots learn about Earth customs and different cultures.
Great racist moments from the movie:
- Bernie Mac: That mah Mammy!
- American Signal Expert (whoever the hell he was supposed to be): This technology is too smart for Iranian Scientists.
- Indian guy on phone was stereotypical and offensive.
Okay now for the other lame stuff:
Bumblebee is a Camaro, and an asshole, and a perv. In the car lot when Sam and his dad are looking at cars, there is a Yellow VW Beetle (which as some of you know is Bumblebee’s real vehicle form) and it’s put there as an homage to the original. But it comes across more like a kick in the crotch. In this movie, Bumblebee speaks through radio stations since his vocal chords were damaged in battle. Does he have to be so lame? I almost threw up when the car started playing “Who’s gonna drive you home” to tell Sam to offer the girl (I don’t care to remember her name) a ride home, followed by “Sexual Healing” when she was in the car, and “Baby Come Back” when she takes off (because the car dies - seriously what the fuck was Bumblebee thinking by intentionally stalling his engine?).
Let’s not forget the incredibly awesome moment when Bumblebee “urinates” on John Turturro. Aren’t Autobots supposed to, I dunno, be GOOD GUYS?
Also, how the hell can you sell/buy a car that appears out of nowhere and thus does not have a VIN or registration papers? I wonder how Sam got insurance on Bumblebee without all that info.
In the cartoon, Jazz, the jive-talkin’ Autobot is played by Scatman Crothers. In this movie he’s still “Black” but does he have to say “Whassup, Bitches?”
Before the final fight between Optimus Prime and Megatron, Optimus tells Sam that if he cannot defeat Megatron, Sam should shove the AllSpark Cube into Prime’s chest. This action would kill Prime and destroy the cube. Why does Prime want to sacrifice himself when shoving the cube into Megatron’s chest makes more sense?
The transformers the AllSpark creates from everyday objects are all seemingly evil. What the fuck is up with that?
I wanted all the human characters in this movie to die. The only cool thing about the movie is that the effects are pretty good. On the downside, every fucking battle is shot in “ShakeyCam!” so it’s difficult to see what exactly is going on.
There are parts in this film that are stolen directly from ET and Independence Day. Why do so many Sci-fi flicks mention that all modern technology was reverse-engineered from alien technology?
After the rest of the Autobots arrive on Earth by crash landing as meteorites (thus destroying a lot of stuff in the process - way to kill people, Autobots!), a character remarks, “This is cooler than Armageddon!” You know what’s not cool? Michael Bay and his referencing another shit movie he made.
The Decepticon that transforms into the boombox and later a cell phone was fucking ANNOYING. He basically acted exactly like those stupid-ass Pit Droids from Star Wars Episode 1. “Megatron! Megatron! Megatron!” and “Megatron Melting!” were his only English lines and everything else that came out of his mouth was so awful and derivative of stereotypical Japanese that he may as well have been voiced by Rosie O’Donnell saying “Ching chong Ching chong Danny DeVito.”
Half of Sam’s lines are: “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!” Sometimes, other characters use this line, too!
The Autobots are fucking stupid, by the way. The scene where they’re trying to sneak around the Witwicky house while Sam’s trying to find the glasses was extremely lame and annoying. The only good thing about it was Ironhide asking Optimus if he could terminate the parents since they were annoying - but, hello! Ironhide, you are also fucking annoying.
And then there’s the fact that the robot modes of the Transformers look absolutely shit. ARGH! I hate this movie. It’s worse than Van Helsing.
They could have at least used Stan Bush’s “The Touch” as a theme song instead of that Screamo shit over the end credits.
I had to watch the first two episodes of the original Transformers cartoon to get the bad taste of this movie out of my mouth. And it only somewhat worked.
July 25th, 2007 at 8:04 am
I quite liked it.
But then, I’m not very cerebral.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:27 am
I thought it was good, though I didn’t quite like the blatant product placements and pro-military vibes either, not to mention Optimus’ clumsiness.
I went home and watched the original movie again, and it has way more depth to it.
July 27th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Dude I fell asleep like 3 times.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
If my eyes were not transfixed to the screen in absolute horror, I would have fallen asleep, too.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Take it easy there big boy! Sorry that it wasn’t what you wanted.
Sounds like they changed a little bit too much compared to the orginals.
I truly feel bad for the fans…but i’d like to hear what other true fans had to say, cause the guys behind me were practically crying from joy!
July 30th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Mike, it’s not that they changed too much - it’s that they put no fucking effort into the storytelling nor the acting.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
as an asshole and a pervert, i’m slightly offended by your criticisms of Sam.. wait a minute, he’s a teenager, so how can you count being a pervert against him.. as for the storytelling, alien robots land on earth, some good, some bad, learn how to imitate earth machines, then fight each other… i think they hit the major story points.. i don’t understand why you would expect or want emotional complexity, i thought its success was in filling the spaces between the fight scenes (which were awesome but very difficult to follow because of said ‘ShakyCam’) with peurile, adolescent chatter and sometimes witty, other times lame jokes and, i agree, often with blatant racist stereotypes… i had my issues too, especially with their robot modes, which were weak, but it’s too bad you spent so much time in the theatre analyzing and critiquing rather than just trying to enjoy what it did do right.. would you have been more pleased if he had just made the cartoon into live action… i think more time storytelling would have cut the effects and fight time, and the acting and dialogue in such a movie is not intended to express some ineffable human condition but to get out of the way of the robots.. it’s too bad you didn’t enjoy it because it is a fun movie–granted, i won’t argue that it is good, but it is FUN, the same fun i had playing with my transformers as an eight-year-old, unlike the kind of fun i would have poring over cars at a car show now or arguing whether Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is insidiously evil or the only cure for the enforced mediocrity of communism.. the transformers are a line of children’s toys, and i’m happy they put the effort into incredible special effects that made it seem like these inconceivable giant metal things were actually running around carson city or whatever it was called.. the acting, the jokes, the dialogue, i don’t understand why anyone would take any of it seriously..
August 15th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
While I will agree that overall the vibe of the movie is supposed to be “FUN” I can’t accept that no effort was put into the writing of the dialogue. When Sam’s detained and the cop asks him, “You eyin’ mah piece, Fiddy?” I just nearly threw up in my mouth.
Many people are taking it easy on this movie and I cannot conceive why. Saying, “Come on, it’s Transformers, what did you expect?” doesn’t make it forgivable that this movie is terrible. Let’s look at other movies based on comic franchises that are not just good for cartoon/comic movies, but good for movies. And they also capture the feeling of the original source material:
TMNT
Batman Begins
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman: Return of the Joker
The Iron Giant
Hellboy
I can forgive re-imagining of characters as long as it improves upon them. Transformers by Michael Bay makes zero attempt at this. The film reads as if written by a hyperactive 13-year-old.
I honestly did try to enjoy the movie. In fact, I kept forgiving the lame dialogue and bad acting thinking, “Okay, any minute now this movie is going to kick and and kick some serious fucking ass.”
And it never did. Sorry. You could take the Transformers out of the movie and replace them with anyone and it would not effect the supposed funness of the movie.
They could have easily gotten rid of some of the human story elements, because really no one wanted to see a movie about a boy and his car robot. Everyone wanted to see robots transforming and shooting things up. But if they’re forcing so many story lines (you’ve got the Army guys, The FBI guys, the Secret Service, Hackers, Some fat black guy who loves DDR) together, I think it’s only fair to expect one of them to at least not suck.
But they all suck. The whole movie sucks. It’s just a big fucking car commercial. No one who grew up loving Transformers, who actually remembers anything about the feel of the series, would in their right minds like this movie. The jokes were aimed at the stupid teenagers who kick chairs and talk on cell phones during movies.
The Autobots aren’t clumsy morons
Frenzy isn’t Jar Jar Binks
Sam Witwicky is an asshole and has no redeeming qualities and is thus an unfit candidate for protagonist
Other glaring errors are pointed out elsewhere on this site and on the web.
I can’t even think of this movie without getting angry at how completely badly they fucked it up. What’s next, a GI Joe movie where Cobra Commander is an Iraqi? I wouldn’t be surprised.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Oh, to follow: It does look like you do agree with me overall that the movie was not good. You were just better able to overlook the bad and enjoy the robot battles more than I could.
August 18th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
yeah, cobra commander as an iraqi sounds about right in the world of big-budget corporate hollywood in bed with the industrial media complex.. and your follow is true, i wouldn’t think to evaluate transformers on whether it measures up to the standards of any ordinary film student or hard-core transformers fan–i loved transformers as a kid, but i put them away for the past 20 years or so, so i wasn’t coming into the movie heavily versed in transformer mythology–the only transformers i had seen in the past 20 years was about five minutes of beast wars, which made me want throw up, and about 10 minutes of the original series–now that was bad dialogue! but you’re wrong to accuse the movie of being terrible.. i thought it was fantastic–i loved it–it hit my sweet spot.. the movie had enough great lines for me, like ironhide wanting to kill the parents, sam’s mom calling it his ’special time’ or whatever and sam saying on the chopper, “bought a car, turned out to be an alien robot, who knew?” and the tangled subplots just set up bits of peripheral action and kept us from getting bogged down in one or one set of character’s storyline–believe me, you don’t want to have to watch michael bay focusing on one set of character relationships–i’ve watched the island and it’s not pretty–and if not for the fragmented storylines, you never would have had the chance to write “Some fat black guy who loves DDR”.. it was very oriented at ADD moviegoers like me with a joke here, an explosion there and then a long, crazy fight scene, whether they actually connected logically or not–and they could have easily lost that scene at the police station and nobody in the thetre would be any worse off.. but it’s weird that you would criticize sam for being an asshole when that is one of the few elements that gives anybody in the movie any realism (that at least i can relate to).. as much as i could have gone for two hours of just the robots duking it out, i can understand their (bay, studio, etc) need to at least attempt a story, which i, personally, thought served the purpose of introducing the conflict and establishing a setting in which they could make teen-level jokes and animated fight scenes.. it’s not unprecedented for licensed transformers series to branch out (i.e. beast wars), and the original series was targeted at 5-10 year olds, so stepping into the realm of adolescsents actually presents a level of sophistication that is perhaps not what the truly dedicated tranformers fan base was looking for, but then it could easily have become a direct to DVD cult classic, which is not what the company that owns the transformers licensing rights would have wanted.. also, i would have liked to see bumblebee be a bug, but i can’t help it if i also think the camaro was infinitely cooler–the old one and the new one.. and that mustang was nice, too.. i have more to say on this, but i need to be up early tomorrow.. more later…
August 19th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I did not go into the movie with any preconcieved notions of literary expertise, so I figured the dialogue was meerly aimed at tween boys. Yes, it did remind me of a 1960s teen movie that had blatant product placement, but I imagine that was an homage to the blatant commercialism of the original series.
I do have a response to your comment about the final battle scene where Sam uses the All-Spark on Megatron. With all of the trash-talk and dirty jokes, I found it embarassing that the writers would try to inject a moral dilemma. I think that Optimus feared Megatron could survive the overload and use the All-Spark. Expecting 13 year olds to be able to make that kind of connection is unrealistic.