Or "Sam's happy time". Or "Deep Wang". Or hanging stinkin' Nazi banners on Winston Churchill's estate.
Or just all of ROTF (but TLK is still worse. So, so much worse).
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Or just all of ROTF (but TLK is still worse. So, so much worse).
TLK at least gives so little a damn about being a good movie that it's almost fun to watch it be terrible. Like, it doesn't care, so I kinda don't care either. Sure, let's have every famous person is history be part of a secret society that's been doing Transformers stuff for centuries, because the Transformers have been doing stuff on earth constantly, for centuries. Why not, who cares! It's bad in kind of a harmless way (Winston Churchill's estate nonwithstanding)
AoE has the TJ Miller, Mark "Hate Crimes" Whalberg, (And the Cade Yeager character is no prize either) the statuatory rape card, and the most intermidible third act I have ever seen. Just an abrasively terrible movie.
AoE has the TJ Miller, Mark "Hate Crimes" Whalberg, (And the Cade Yeager character is no prize either) the statuatory rape card, and the most intermidible third act I have ever seen. Just an abrasively terrible movie.
Agreed on Bumblebee. A fantastic Transformers movie beginning to end, and probably the best live action film in the franchise.
But disagree about RotB. RotB is a Bay film without Bay. As a result it has all of the Bayverse's shortcomings and none of its redeeming spectacle or cinematography.
If I were to rank the live action Transformers movies...
Bumblebee
'07
DotM
That one time my friend and I played with our toys in the backyard
RotB
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Some of the Robot Chicken sketches
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RotF
TLK
AoE
So as much as it's fashionable to hate on Michael Bay, I'll still take two of his movies over RotB.
I always make a distinction between movies that are good and movies that I like. I accept that most movies getting Oscar nominations are good movies. However, I have no interest in watching most of them.
It's not quite so extreme, but I likewise think that Bumblebee is a better movie than any of the Bay movies. However, in terms of which movies I would enjoy sitting down and watching, it falls ahead of AoE/TLK, but behind the first three movies. It's a well written and told story, and it's well made. It's also kinda boring. I watched it once on my own, and then once with my family. I haven't ever felt any desire to watch it again since then. Meanwhile, I've watched the first three Bay movies several times, and would be happy to watch them again if I didn't have a ton of other things demanding my time. It's just a matter of time until I get to the point where I'll set aside other stuff to watch them again.
RotB falls somewhere between Bumblebee and AoE/TLK. It's not offensively bad like AoE/TLK, not good like Bumblebee, and not entertaining like the first three Bay movies. It's just kinda there.
It's not quite so extreme, but I likewise think that Bumblebee is a better movie than any of the Bay movies. However, in terms of which movies I would enjoy sitting down and watching, it falls ahead of AoE/TLK, but behind the first three movies. It's a well written and told story, and it's well made. It's also kinda boring. I watched it once on my own, and then once with my family. I haven't ever felt any desire to watch it again since then. Meanwhile, I've watched the first three Bay movies several times, and would be happy to watch them again if I didn't have a ton of other things demanding my time. It's just a matter of time until I get to the point where I'll set aside other stuff to watch them again.
RotB falls somewhere between Bumblebee and AoE/TLK. It's not offensively bad like AoE/TLK, not good like Bumblebee, and not entertaining like the first three Bay movies. It's just kinda there.
2007 remains great. It's slick, has a good amount of that new visual language that makes the live-action films so notable, and doesn't yet luxuriate in the worst aspects of Bay film writing. But that last does remain a heavy asterisk for this one.
Bumblebee is excellent. Bee and Charlie are the only reasons to watch it, and they are more than enough to bring the charm and the heart and the emotion. For some reason every other human character either bores me or turns me right off, idk why (Cena excluded). Shatter and Dropkick are very cool. I could have done entirely without the opening interlude on Cybertron and all the "see, this is how they should've always been doing it".
The rest is littered with stuff I want to like, some intriguing lore bits, and some amazing designs, and some cool performances from actors I like and am glad to see in my crash bang kablooey giant robots show. All drowning in a sea of stupid, adolescent humor and shallow plotting. ROTF, DOTM, AOE, TLK all basically have the same final battle, and they're slightly different flavors of never-ending and sloppy. Of these, DOTM is the least outright bad. ROTF and AOE are colored by me wanting them to be good so, so much for varying reasons, mostly for the roles they played in the franchise: ROTF was the big, hotly-anticipated sequel, and AOE was a sorta fresh start. TLK I had no expectations for, no reason to root for, and I was unimpressed anyway.
ROTB manages to avoid the stupid, adolescent humor for the most part, but has all the narrative weaknesses of the Bay era films, right down to an interminable final battle, and plays it so safe it's actively boring. But it's not in the same badness conversation as the rest of those. However, it's still a massive fumble after the gift-wrapped "here's what ELSE your franchise can be" that was Bumblebee.
Currently ROTB's biggest sin is utterly failing to interest me in more, especially when it was suddenly revealed to be a backdoor pilot for one of the most "stop trying to make fetch happen" ideas in a goddamn GI Joe crossover film.
Bumblebee is excellent. Bee and Charlie are the only reasons to watch it, and they are more than enough to bring the charm and the heart and the emotion. For some reason every other human character either bores me or turns me right off, idk why (Cena excluded). Shatter and Dropkick are very cool. I could have done entirely without the opening interlude on Cybertron and all the "see, this is how they should've always been doing it".
The rest is littered with stuff I want to like, some intriguing lore bits, and some amazing designs, and some cool performances from actors I like and am glad to see in my crash bang kablooey giant robots show. All drowning in a sea of stupid, adolescent humor and shallow plotting. ROTF, DOTM, AOE, TLK all basically have the same final battle, and they're slightly different flavors of never-ending and sloppy. Of these, DOTM is the least outright bad. ROTF and AOE are colored by me wanting them to be good so, so much for varying reasons, mostly for the roles they played in the franchise: ROTF was the big, hotly-anticipated sequel, and AOE was a sorta fresh start. TLK I had no expectations for, no reason to root for, and I was unimpressed anyway.
ROTB manages to avoid the stupid, adolescent humor for the most part, but has all the narrative weaknesses of the Bay era films, right down to an interminable final battle, and plays it so safe it's actively boring. But it's not in the same badness conversation as the rest of those. However, it's still a massive fumble after the gift-wrapped "here's what ELSE your franchise can be" that was Bumblebee.
Currently ROTB's biggest sin is utterly failing to interest me in more, especially when it was suddenly revealed to be a backdoor pilot for one of the most "stop trying to make fetch happen" ideas in a goddamn GI Joe crossover film.
Though, it also does feel like two different movie plots smushed together (but not nearly as awkwardly as how AOE felt like 2-and-a-half different plots smushed together).
That's my biggest issue with it. Bumblebee set a new standard of what a Transformers movie could be, and I was so excited to see where things could go from there.
And RotB just ended up being a Bay-less Michael Bay movie.
The comparison I go to is DotM. DotM's climax is a nearly hour long battle through Chicago. And they filmed a good chunk of that on location. The behind the scenes stuff for that movie is really cool, because you see what kind of filmmaking went into that fight.
Maybe the movie isn't that great (I still genuinely like it), but it is technically and cinematically impressive.
RotB, on the other hand, has its climax happen in a grey CGI Dragon Ball Z wasteland. And it feels like 90% of it was filmed in front of a green screen.
Yup, it falls right into the same "are they STILL fighting" final battle mess as the Bay movies. But you're right in that despite the Chicago situation also sapping interest as it goes on, at least the layout and landscape give them SOME stuff to play with (also, Chicago is a pretty cool city). ROTB was just wide open space and not much variation. Having so many characters they needed to create little moments for didn't help them either. It's like Endgame and its rubble landscape, except you don't care half as much about 80% of anyone fighting.
It's kind of impressive that they took a setting as visually interesting as Peru, and turned it into a grey CGI wasteland for that fight. A giant Bay-style clusterfudge in the Peruvian countryside could have been really cool, as evidenced by RotB's cool Peru scenes before that final fight.
We fans complain about the long, messy fights in these movies, but when talking to casuals it's those long, big robot fights that they go to these movies to see.
Well, that and the sexualized women.
These same people considered the Bumblebee movie boring because there weren't enough big robot fights in it (or because Charlie wasn't hot enough for them).
Well, that and the sexualized women.
These same people considered the Bumblebee movie boring because there weren't enough big robot fights in it (or because Charlie wasn't hot enough for them).
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I don't think flattening either demographic to have one overriding opinion is really helpful or remotely accurate. "Casuals" get bored by long and drawn-out but directionless battles too. And if I had a dollar for every time fans sexualized a female character I could afford multiples of every HasLab.
Say, what's Sam up to these--
www.cp24.com
...oh.
Well, how about bringing back Mikaela and giving her a role more like the UK comics?
...or maybe bring in Sam's older brother, Spike, who was away at college during the first movie...?
Actor Shia LaBeouf arrested after alleged fight during Mardi Gras in New Orleans
Actor Shia LaBeouf has been arrested after being accused of hitting two men early Tuesday morning during Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, police said.
www.cp24.com
...oh.
Well, how about bringing back Mikaela and giving her a role more like the UK comics?
...or maybe bring in Sam's older brother, Spike, who was away at college during the first movie...?
He really hasn't been the same ever since the Allspark shard
What if I told you that DOTM's Chicago battle is actually good? It's not just an hour of unstructured Bayhem. It's a boss run. It's a series of boss battles with all the major Decepticons, one at a time. So if you can remember all the major Decepticons (and everyone here should be able to do that), you can track the Autobots' progress retaking the city. It's structured. It's measurable.
Bumblebee - a labour of love.
'07 - Bayesque but comprehensible and obviously crutinised by someone who cares.
ROTF - TLK - They kept throwing crap against a wall to see what stuck.
ROTB - Really should have been it's own trilogy: Beast Wars, Optimus Prime (stealing from Crisis of Command), Unicron (Bridging them)
'07 - Bayesque but comprehensible and obviously crutinised by someone who cares.
ROTF - TLK - They kept throwing crap against a wall to see what stuck.
ROTB - Really should have been it's own trilogy: Beast Wars, Optimus Prime (stealing from Crisis of Command), Unicron (Bridging them)
RotF sucked and AoE and TLK are where Bay isn't even trying anymore and just doing whatever he wants to amuse himself (I'm convinced of this, he only did them as part of a contractual obligation because Paramount agreed to make his passion project Pain and Gain).
I feel that because RotF, AoE, and TLK are so bad, people lump DotM in with them... but it's not that bad? I have it as my third favourite live action movie, second of all of Bay's outings. Like you said, that final fight is long, but there is a point to everything that's happening.
And given that Bay intended it to be the finale to his movies when it was made? It has a sense of finality to it. Optimus finally decides he's ending the War, now. He beats his traitorous mentor, after earlier being willing to surrender command to him. He finally has enough of Megatron. It's a pretty good ending for this version of Optimus' story.
Factor in Megatron having a neat little arc of getting his ass kicked, bringing in his former enemy as his partner and getting sidelined, and then deciding to stop being a sad sack... and Sentinel being pretty compelling for a Bayverse antagonist... I dare say... DotM is good*?
It's kind of funny that, of the two of them, Megan Fox ended up as the more stable and reliable one.
*it's a sliding scale to be sure
Let's just start over. They had the right idea with Charlie and then Noah. But the former is done with her story and it's better to leave her happy, and the latter got lost in a Bay-lite movie and at the end got sucked into the GI Joe space. But trying to recapture anything with two leads whose professional lives have kind of been messy is more work than it is really worth.
I see what you mean, but in the watching of it, it never really feels purposive like that. Perhaps because each seems disconnected from the others, and the momentum never actually feels like it mounts. AOE actually seems a bit more straightforward because it's just battle through drones, get to Attinger, kill Attinger.
I do agree though that this is still several steps above ROTF, which is absolutely "how much time do we have to fill?" "yes".
DOTM seems way more complete than ROTF and it is. It seems like the last time he was actually trying something.
The ending to that movie is really funny if you imagine it's just Frasier Crane.
I really enjoyed Transformers '07 , Dark of the Moon, and Bumblebee as far as the live action movies go. Revenge of the Fallen wasn't horrible if it were a standalone movie and not a sequel to '07. AoE and TLK are just bad movies that I can't even bring myself to watch anymore. I'm kind of indifferent about RotB.
07 was okay as a summer action flick. ROTF was a slog, DOTM was okay but still not great, and AoE was physically painful to sit through. I still haven't cared enough to watch TLK or ROTB.