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Transformers: Age of Extinction reviews

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The thing with MoS though wasn't quite as much as the needless destruction, it was that Superman didn't do much to stop it and was part of it for that movie. For Superman and what many people believe him to be/represent that he allowed it did not jive too well for a great many people.

Oh right, it wasn't like Supes was on the other side of the world destroying a part of the machine that's destroying the earth itself. He's supposed to be two places at once? ;)

Oh right, aren't the autobots SWORN TO PROTECT EARTH HUMANS /Optimus] from the decepticons except entire cities get ruined and uh...lives are compromised because....surprise attack?

OH BUT HE CAUGHT SAM FALLING OFF THE BUILDING 1345th TIME SO ITS OK ;)

half the people in chicago are dead but ITS OK, WE'LL ALWAYS BE HERE FOR YOU HUMANS BRO.
 
Oh right, it wasn't like Supes was on the other side of the world destroying a part of the machine that's destroying the earth itself. He's supposed to be two places at once? ;)

Oh right, aren't the autobots SWORN TO PROTECT EARTH HUMANS /Optimus] from the decepticons except entire cities get ruined and uh...lives are compromised because....surprise attack?

OH BUT HE CAUGHT SAM FALLING OFF THE BUILDING 1345th TIME SO ITS OK ;)

half the people in chicago are dead but ITS OK, WE'LL ALWAYS BE HERE FOR YOU HUMANS BRO.

To be fair, their irresponsible handling of Chicago is one of the reasons the Autobots are being hunted down by the humans in the new movie. And if rumors are accurate, a similar approach may be taken in Batman v. Superman.
 
so... is this a reboot? are we supposed to forget shia, bumblebee's relationship with him etc?

or is it a prequel or sequel?
 
To be fair, their irresponsible handling of Chicago is one of the reasons the Autobots are being hunted down by the humans in the new movie. And if rumors are accurate, a similar approach may be taken in Batman v. Superman.

Really? I LIKE IT

so... is this a reboot? are we supposed to forget shia, bumblebee's relationship with him etc?

or is it a prequel or sequel?

It's a sequel but rebooted. Shia and the characters from the trilogy aren't in it, especially since it's kinda unfair to ask Shia's character to keep coming back over and over again.


Holy shit.

So...I have screenings to the premiere of this in Philly tomorrow. Only I have tickets for the 6 PM and the 9 PM one.

I am heavily considering going to both. God help me.
 
I'm seeing this Thurs night on digital 3D liemax, and pretty psyched as I just want a visual spectacle of explosions and robots, etc...but holy shit at its 165 min runtime! Should have cut out like a half hour there Bay.
 
Really? I LIKE IT

The motivation of Titus Welliver's character is specifically that he hates Transformers because his sister died in the Battle of Chicago. The US government turns on the Autobots because of Chicago's destruction, so Attinger's group is hunting them down and the Autobots are on the run at the beginning of the movie. Optimus has a chip on his shoulder the entire movie because of it.
 
The motivation of Titus Welliver's character is specifically that he hates Transformers because his sister died in the Battle of Chicago. The US government turns on the Autobots because of Chicago's destruction, so Attinger's group is hunting them down and the Autobots are on the run at the beginning of the movie. Optimus has a chip on his shoulder the entire movie because of it.

wtf? I guess writers love for the government to be completely ignorant to things.
Not that I have a personal stance either way, but it's kind of annoying how in everything where you have heroes trying to protect something and flush away evil that they're almost always accused of destruction and being just as bad as the bad guys
.

This aspect was super fucking annoying in 24. Jack Bauer stops terrorist attacks and saves people time and time again yet he still gets blamed for stupid shit.
 
wtf? I guess writers love for the government to be completely ignorant to things.
Not that I have a personal stance either way, but it's kind of annoying how in everything where you have heroes trying to protect something and flush away evil that they're almost always accused of destruction and being just as bad as the bad guys
.

This aspect was super fucking annoying in 24. Jack Bauer stops terrorist attacks and saves people time and time again yet he still gets blamed for stupid shit.

At least in regards to AoE
the government is actually right, in the sense at least that they wouldn't have problems if the Transformers were all dead. Lockdown only comes to Earth because he's hunting Optimus Prime. BIG SPOILER AHEAD:


Optimus leaves Earth at the end of the movie to find "the Creators" because he knows that they're going to keep sending emissaries to Earth to hunt him down otherwise.
 
At least in regards to AoE
the government is actually right, in the sense at least that they wouldn't have problems if the Transformers were all dead. Lockdown only comes to Earth because he's hunting Optimus Prime. BIG SPOILER AHEAD:

Ah, this does make sense. Hopefully I get to see this Thursday afternoon; there is a 6:45pm showing but my gf works an hour away and she doesn't get out until 6:00pm, but I'm trying to talk her into getting out early :p
 
Optimus leaves Earth at the end of the movie to find "the Creators" because he knows that they're going to keep sending emissaries to Earth to hunt him down otherwise.[/spoiler]

Kinda stupid Prime is going to travel lightyears in space with his rocket boosters when Lockdown's hyperspeed ship was still working at the end of the movie, right?
 
At least in regards to AoE
the government is actually right, in the sense at least that they wouldn't have problems if the Transformers were all dead. Lockdown only comes to Earth because he's hunting Optimus Prime. BIG SPOILER AHEAD:


Optimus leaves Earth at the end of the movie to find "the Creators" because he knows that they're going to keep sending emissaries to Earth to hunt him down otherwise.

1393218205000-Ferrell-lego.jpg


Do it, Bay. Redeem yourself
 
Hi I'm dummydecoy and I fuck up spoiler quotes because thanks Obama

YOU HAVE RUINED TRANSFORMERS FOR ME FOREVA *curls into ball, rolls down hill*

This is code for fix your goddamn spoiler tag
 
I just can't stand these movies anymore. I love Transformers, I have all of my old toys in the closet and two of my Optimus Primes out in my office, I grew up with the cartoon and comics, but after three of these Bay movies I just can't watch them anymore. I don't even think I'll see this new one at all, maybe someday out of the RedBox for $1 just because I've seen the rest of them, but I'll probably get a headache afterwards.

I guess I'm just not the target audience for Bay anymore.



Wow, that really is uncanny. I mean Holy Shit.
 
It's fun to imagine what the growing Chinese audience thinks of America from the exposure they get from these movies. Do they think that living in the US is action packed with lots of fast food, cars, and dudebro military/government operatives? Just like over the past few decades it has been ingrained into the general US populace pop culture that Asian person = probably knows martial arts from the exposure to popular Asian movies.
 
What exactly did Del Toro accomplish? Another robot movie with shit characters and a shit story?

Im not saying that Pacific Rim was Citizen Kane but you have to admit that its way better than anything Bay did with the Transformers. IMO Pacific Rim was the best live action Saturday morning cartoon of all time, with all the good (and cheese) that implies.

I mean, at least you can fucking see whats happening in Pacific Rim.
 
I don't really want to humor the comparisons here but I will say the one thing Transformers can stand to learn from Pacific Rim is the general vibe. I'd say that should be counted less as a weakness of Transformers and more as a strength towards Rim since it's a Hollywood problem in general where movies turn the knob towards the most cynical spectrum possible and treats the audience with general contempt by hammering a barrage of low-brow common denominators, which in Transformers' case doesn't even celebrate or embrace the wholesomeness of the source material that put it on the map.

Rim being a good movie or not, it was a movie that knew it wanted to be a distinct mecha movie with marketable designs and it had an optimistic "fuck yeah" vibe about the entire ordeal, and reveled in the idea of robot rock-em-sock-ems. It even found a good role and message to portray for it's deuteragonist without any semblance of romance and ended up having one of the best breakout characters among the cheese fest.

So yeah, I don't want to delve into "who did the better movie" but I do like to see a more optimistic take on Transformers, something more familiar that can rekindle the spirit of the original I grew up with. Bay probably has the visual talent for it, but I doubt he'd have the soul.
 
Im not saying that Pacific Rim was Citizen Kane but you have to admit that its way better than anything Bay did with the Transformers. IMO Pacific Rim was the best live action Saturday morning cartoon of all time, with all the good (and cheese) that implies.

I mean, at least you can fucking see whats happening in Pacific Rim.

Eh, when it comes to characters and plot PR is just forgettable. I guess Del Toro did handle things somewhat better, I don't have to suffer Bay's embarrassing notions of what comedy is at least. And regarding your second sentence, nearly every set piece is set at night or in darkness, so Del Toro doesn't really let you see all that much, but for different reasons. :P I do love GDT's eye for aesthetics, but PR really isn't something to prop up against the Bayformers.

If we want to discuss which movie nails on how to be a live action cartoon, then that would be Speed Racer.
 
If Pacific Rim had been made by Michael Bay, I think it's pretty obvious that Tendo the hispanic guy would've been the butt of a lot of jokes calling him "beaner" and asking him when he'd be caught by the INS and deported. And Idris Elba probably would've been playing Dance Dance Revolution and confronting his grumpy grandma in a wheelchair. And the two wacky scientists would've been... well, they still would've been wacky, but instead of being a kaiju groupie, Charlie Day's character would be suspected of masturbating to kaijus, cause that's just hilarious. And there'd probably be a wacky sassy black guy with a pug who's riding his bike through Hong Kong before randomly getting stepped on by a giant kaiju.

So I think what we got from Del Toro was actually pretty good.
 
I'm not gonna be dragged into a PR VS TF debate.

All I want to know is how many dinobots are in this movie. Duckroll said only 4, is that really it, or did he miss some? I'm secretly hoping for 5 dinobots.
 
If Pacific Rim had been made by Michael Bay, I think it's pretty obvious that Tendo the hispanic guy would've been the butt of a lot of jokes calling him "beaner" and asking him when he'd be caught by the INS and deported. And Idris Elba probably would've been playing Dance Dance Revolution and confronting his grumpy grandma in a wheelchair. And the two wacky scientists would've been... well, they still would've been wacky, but instead of being a kaiju groupie, Charlie Day's character would be suspected of masturbating to kaijus, cause that's just hilarious. And there'd probably be a wacky sassy black guy with a pug who's riding his bike through Hong Kong before randomly getting stepped on by a giant kaiju.

So I think what we got from Del Toro was actually pretty good.

You forgot the scene in the hangar where one of the Jaeger's pistons is broken so Mako takes off her jacket to reveal her midriff and then I don't know, tightens it or whatever.
 
If Pacific Rim had been made by Michael Bay, I think it's pretty obvious that Tendo the hispanic guy would've been the butt of a lot of jokes calling him "beaner" and asking him when he'd be caught by the INS and deported. And Idris Elba probably would've been playing Dance Dance Revolution and confronting his grumpy grandma in a wheelchair. And the two wacky scientists would've been... well, they still would've been wacky, but instead of being a kaiju groupie, Charlie Day's character would be suspected of masturbating to kaijus, cause that's just hilarious. And there'd probably be a wacky sassy black guy with a pug who's riding his bike through Hong Kong before randomly getting stepped on by a giant kaiju.

So I think what we got from Del Toro was actually pretty good.

This description, holy shit. Amazing.
 
I understand the desire to watch robots beat the piss out of each other, but what I don't understand is why people are willing to endure what the majority of these films entail. The human characters/drama/humor/who fucking cares is fucking painful. People say shit like, "Cool robots are what these movies offer, and cool robots are what I get", but in reality you get no more than twenty minutes of CG Transformer fight scenes and then two and a half hours of Shia Labeouf or Mark Whalberg phoning it in with worst script a sentient being could possibly conceive.

These movies are the definition of RedBox. Get them for a buck, enjoy the robots at your leisure and fast forward all the bullshit. Better yet, all the good shit is probably on YouTube in less than a day. (I'd even wager it's all already in the trailers) Anything is better than going to the theater and actually paying to sit and watch these fucking movies in their entirety.

If you have children, they might actually enjoy the movie. And that means if you don't want to go watch a Disney movie like Frozen you have this as a choice.
 
You forgot the scene in the hangar where one of the Jaeger's pistons is broken so Mako takes off her jacket to reveal her midriff and then I don't know, tightens it or whatever.

Yeah, probably. And when they're doing their stick fighting in the dojo, it would somehow end up with Mako on top of Raleigh, with her crotch right over his face. Cause that's just how martial arts fights tend to end. And Raleigh would stutter and stammer with a LaBeouf-esque "Ummm, uh... Mako, this uh... I ahhh..." while she keeps rubbing her crotch right over his face, over and over again.

Cause that shit's HILARIOUS dawg!
 
That's Real Steel.
Which is better than both Pacific Rim and Transformers.

I haven't seen it. I don't really think being a better movie or not is that important to me. I prefer movies like Pacific Rim as a general preference when it comes to being a better idea executed haphazardly compared to a terrible idea executed alright (and as a side note, in Pacific Rim's case having Mako Mori as an actual superb female lead also keeps me invested). If Real Steel is the former I'll check it out eventually.
 
Yeah, probably. And when they're doing their stick fighting in the dojo, it would somehow end up with Mako on top of Raleigh, with her crotch right over his face. Cause that's just how martial arts fights tend to end. And Raleigh would stutter and stammer with a LaBeouf-esque "Ummm, uh... Mako, this uh... I ahhh..." while she keeps rubbing her crotch right over his face, over and over again.

Cause that shit's HILARIOUS dawg!

http://www.fanmail.biz/31733.html

If you mail him now you might be able to get these notes to him in time for Pacific Rim 2.
 
So far as the Superman comparison goes - Optimus Prime isn't Superman, but he and the Autobots have historically ALWAYS been about stopping humankind from being hurt/affected by the Transformers' presence, and also about being as pacifist as a military commander from a race of alien robot trucks can be.

So in the movie, when he helps destroy cities (in a way Superman in Man of Steel NEVER indulged) as well as gleefully murdering any Decepticon that crosses his path? It could feel, to those paying attention to Transformers over the past few decades, a little weird and jarring.
It's supposed to be.





Michael Bay's Optimus is the hero that modern America deserves.

Zack Snyder's Superman is the one it needs.
Basically this.
 
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