vengeance is upon you

[Yami CJMErl]

So I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday at the local IMAX. Short story: it's awesome.

Elaboration: It's awesome, but it has its' problems. Anyone who likes giant robots beating the metallic shit out of each other will get their wish in spades. Optimus Prime himself actually gets no less than three kills in the film: he shoots a steam shovel Decepticon in the face, he tears a helicopter 'Con's face IN HALF, and he rips off the halmet/mask of another robot, then stabs said baddie...in the face. However, the humor...it's amusing at best, but really only effective if you either (1) focus on the fact that there are giant freaking robots beating each other up, or (2) if you like humor that seems to have been largely ripped from Adult Swim. Case in point...

- Mojo, the chihuahua from the first film, is a horny little bastard.
- The "Twins", aka Skids and Mudflap, talk / act in a VERY stereotypical "gangsta" style, making them perfect targets for political-correctness watchdogs. It's more amusing if you know that Skids (the green one) is voiced by TOM KENNY.
- Speaking of Tom Kenny, he also voices Wheelie--a tiny little spy-con who isn't actually all that bad...until he starts humping Mikaela's leg.
- Devastator, the absolutely MASSIVE Decepticon combiner-monster, has a pair of wrecking balls in an..."autonomically suggestive" area. Shades of Conker's Bad Fur Day?

Fortunately, I personally think of them as little more than minor hiccups in an otherwise awesome movie.

[Segaholic2]

So you're a retarded 5-year-old.

[Crowbar]

I saw it in the IMAX last night too! I also thought it was awesome. I didn't actually even mind the comic relief parts.

It's pretty much a model Summer Blockbuster.

[Rob-Bert]

Christ, and I thought Bumblebee's piss joke in the first movie was bad enough. Hearing about these is just insulting.

[j-man]

Saw it at the BFI IMAX on Monday. I'll be honest, I still haven't decided whether I liked it or not. To the general public it would be bewildering, but to the Transformer nerd it's either going to be everything you want or just fuel for another interweb nitpick session. I'm leaning dangerously towards the latter. What the hell were the Autobots doing the whole time? And Jolt didn't even talk!

But Jetfire was brilliant. Worth the admission. And the forest fight scene was the tits, with Prime giving some serious shit before he (temporarily) dies! Not to mention the Matrix of Leadership (FINALLY) and the council of the original Primes. Top stuff. So, the mythology was bang-on, and there was a definite fantasy element missing from the first one.

It's one of those films I think you have to see twice. I'm still not sure what happened in the last half an hour.

[Crowbar]

I'm really confused by the critics' reactions to this compared to the first film. I don't see how this can be getting worse reviews than the first, which had about 40 minutes of entirely unwanted human subplot filler at the beginning and not many actual Transformers even when they did eventually show up.

It's like people went into a film about giant transforming robots not actually wanting to see a film about giant transforming robots.

Or are people just that butthurt about Mudflap and Skids?

[Zeta]

People REALLY hate Mudflap and Skids. I mean, really.

Also, while this has more giant robots, more time is spent making Sam into the Chosen One, the Messiah of Robot and Humans alike. Which is kind of offensively stupid.

[Zeta]

Also, it's really unfortunate they ruined the Twins, since I think their designs are really appealing and the closest the movies have gotten to the animated and comics-style Transformers designs, where they're obviously made of car parts and cutely-boxy.

[G.Silver]

40 minutes of entirely unwanted human subplot filler at the beginning and not many actual Transformers even when they did eventually show up.

I thought the human elements in the first movie were there to make the movie seem more relevant to, you know, humans. The original cartoon is no different, I mean, I don't think any big TF fans really wanted Spike in there, but yet there he was. The movie just fleshed out the human situation to something that was a bit more realistic than a desert full of construction workers and the occasional mad scientist. There were a lot of things I didn't like about it, but in terms of execution, I think the slow buildup to the arrival of the other Transformers is the best thing about the movie.

[Rob-Bert]

I thought it was an indication of poor pacing. Not to mention, the execution in question is pretty appalling. My idea of establishing the human element was certainly not Anthony Anderson making an ass of himself on camera.

[Esrever]

The endless parade of human characters in the first film was also just a practical budgetary consideration. In the cartoons, the transformers WERE the main characters. But in the film, they couldn't be, because they were incredibly expensive special effects that they could only afford to have on screen for less than half the film. Besides, if the budget only allows for a finite number of minutes of giant cg robots... why "waste" any of those minutes on dialogue or character development when you can have MORE PUNCHING instead?

I don't know what their excuse is this time, though. They had all the money in the world to work with.

[Zeta]

Yeah, the inherent flaw with these movies is that in the cartoons, the main characters were the transformers and Spike was just their human sidekick/mascot.

In the movies, Spike is the main character, and ALL of the Transformers are Spike's sidekicks/mascots/slaves.

So it's really like a standard action movie with giant robots fighting randomly in the background. It'd be like if you watched Diehard and for totally unexplained reasons saw Voltron beating the shit out of Big O in the distance.

[Crowbar]

The endless parade of human characters in the first film was also just a practical budgetary consideration. In the cartoons, the transformers WERE the main characters. But in the film, they couldn't be, because they were incredibly expensive special effects that they could only afford to have on screen for less than half the film. Besides, if the budget only allows for a finite number of minutes of giant cg robots... why "waste" any of those minutes on dialogue or character development when you can have MORE PUNCHING instead?

Yeah, I know it was a technical issue for the first one, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't say it was bad for it.

Was there really a comparable amount of human-time in the second though? I really didn't think so. Somebody who's a bigger nerd than me should do a count by screentime.

[Radrappy]

The movie was absolute trash but I don't think I've laughed or cheered so hard before in my life.

[Baba O'Riley]

It'd be like if you watched Diehard and for totally unexplained reasons saw Voltron beating the shit out of Big O in the distance.

Could that happen? Is there some conceivable way this could be made?

[Isuka]

We'd need six tons of awesome, nine thousand gallons of testosterone, four of Anadrol and a $250 million budget to contain it all.

[Arcade]

So, if you can take the "US rules the world" and the "We hate muslin people" crap, I heard the movie is good...

[Dr. Watson]

Oh sweet Jesus, this move was dumb. I mean, i've seen plenty of Bays movies before and i thought i knew pretty well what to expect but God damn. The fact that i kind of enjoyed it anyway makes me think that perhaps its for the best that i've never taken an IQ test, since i cant help but fear that the results would be really damaging to my self esteem...

And what the fuck was the point of having Soundwave being played by his original voice actor from the cartoon since his voice didn't sound a bit like it did in the cartoon anyway? With Soundwave sounding the way he did in the movie, they could at least have had him say the line "I'll get you next time Optimus, next time!" as an in-joke.

[Yami CJMErl]

And what the fuck was the point of having Soundwave being played by his original voice actor from the cartoon since his voice didn't sound a bit like it did in the cartoon anyway? With Soundwave sounding the way he did in the movie, they could at least have had him say the line "I'll get you next time Optimus, next time!" as an in-joke.

Frank Welker has gone on-record to say that he didn't like having his voice altered in the old series, as it made Soundwave somewhat hard-to-understand. This reasoning is also why Bay decided to not use a vocoder on Welker for ROTF.

As such, Soundwave actually DOES sound like his G1 counterpart, only sans vocoder. Don't believe me? Look up the old G1 episode "Roll For It" for proof. Go on, I'll wait.

[G.Silver]

Ouch, that's too bad for Welker but Soundwave is so famous for that particular vocoder, it's not the same at all. I'd trade him for an impersonator (if not Welker himself, the Dr. Claw voice has certainly turned up in plenty of places, Jak & Daxter springs immediately to mind) with the vocoder any day. I wonder if the same applies to Optimus' VA for the movie, I could recognize him, but it didn't really sound right to me.

I see Welker also did Megatron and Devestator in this one, do they sound like their originals as well? It's strange that he wasn't on for the first movie, considering he's done Megatron for both Robot Chicken and Family Guy. Why not the official movie as well?

[Yami CJMErl]

Well, one has to take into account that the VAs themselves have aged 25 years since the cartoon debuted--which might explain why Prime sounds somewhat less "cowboy-peppy" in the movies than he does in the old cartoon, but it's still unmistakably Prime to me.

Also, Welker isn't Megatron in ROTF, Hugo Weaving reprised that role like he did in the first film. Welker did Soundwave (who is G1 identical sans vocoder), Devastator (I don't think Welker VA'd him in the old cartoon, and movie Devs doesn't actually speak--I wouldn't have known he HAD a VA if not for the credits), and "Reedman", that wierd razor-thin robot formed from all the killer Bakugan drones that Ravage horked up when stealing the AllSpark fragment (I saw the movie again today, and listening closely, this guy kinda sounded a liitle bit like the original G1 Ravage, who I believe Welker also voiced).

Welker DOES voice Megatron in the games for both movies, though, so that might be where you got confused.

[Green Gibbon!]

I sure am glad there aren't any nerds here!

[Team Mecha]

Good, I hate that freaking candy.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

I give that response an 2 out of 10.

Anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting this adaptation.

[P.P.A.]

I sure am glad there aren't any nerds here!

This needs to become The GHZ's main motto.
Instead of "Poop jokes enabled" or "creating communities", for example.