Probably right on that...

 

I wish they had shown Optimus (and Bonecrusher) transform without sucking in the camera to show their guts twist and turn. felt like they cheated with the transformation by not showing them transform fully on screen.
Optimus' engine block and truck grill obviously did not form his feet like how it was with the toy

hopefully the second film will have that

 

That's because the toy and movie model don't follow the same transformations. The truck's front splits to form part of the arms and part of the legs (hence the red forearms, compared to the toy's blue).
Every single toy use cheatsy transformation that didn't match what was on screen, really.

 

Well, the transformations in the movie itself were cheated (by ILM's own admission) and different in some way every time so they looked good for the camera, so the toys can be forgiven for having to go their own way to achieve somewhat the same results.

I do think some tricks were missed in the movie. You have characters that change into cars and yet there wasn't much by way of car chase spectacle. Bay was always excited and going on about robots transforming at 80mph and what finally showed up on screen was robots transforming at 80mph and little else more. We know he can do major car chase fight scenes from his other movies, but when there comes this golden opportunity to have vehicles which are characters too crashing about and becoming robots for a few blows and then changing back to vehicle and so on (kinda like how Starscream kept switching while taking out the human jets) it was barely touched upon. I really hope we get something more like that for the sequel.

The other totally missed trick was not having the Autobots talk in alt mode. So many times it's been said we had to have less TF screen time because it's expensive to do the CGI, and yet all Bay needed to do was get some real world cars driving about and talking to each other over inter-Autobot radio. It could've added far more to the TF's character development by giving them that, and given some more interaction with human passengers. And it's not like TFs can't talk to each other in alt mode, as evidenced by the Decepticon roll call before the final battle. TFs talk in alt mode all the time in every other series. It's just one of those TF things. And not utilising that for character moments and saving CGI costs while providing more TF scenes seemed like a big oversight by someone that's supposed to be a professional storyteller.

 

They also left out some transformations that could have been used or done properly.
When Prime said, "Roll Out!" to the others, (in the scene where BB pisses on Simmons) it mainly foccuses on BB while the others you can barely see transform behind him due to the way they filmed it. Also Prime never transformed from robot to truck.

 

After a year and a half of people posting their reasons as to why it was a disappointment, not enough cowbell is probably the last reason available at this point. Not to mention that this is a clone thread #157

 

Who ever said Micheal Bay was a professional story teller? I think you're giving him a little too much credit.

 

Well, I was trying to be kind.  

His mind works on the 'brum brum bang bang' principle and yet there wasn't much of that in the film. And when you have characters that are sometimes cars and also fight, you'd think that a huge motoring battle scene would've been obvious. Bumblebee and Barricade was mostly hiding and running and a little bit of cars and then we were cheated out of the fight because that scene focused on Sam in his underwear when the fighting happened. The little bit of Prime and Boncrusher was nice, but not exactly what I'd have expected for after hearing Bay enthuse about his transforming battles at 80 miles an hour. I'd have expected a scene to rival the freeway fight from the Matrix sequel.

 

I was very pleased with the movie. I think the Autobot designs were well done, without being total slaves to conventional G1 design. I like how the Decepticons were given a very evil alien feel. The only bot I had issues with was Starscream... he just looks too awkward. I thought Megatron, Blackout, Barricade, and Brawl were really well done. Frenzy and Bonecrusher, I could take or leave.

I feel that there was too much screen time given to human actors. Not that I wanted it gone entirely, but there were too many main characters introduced. The hacker chick was cute and all, but her and Andersons parts could be totally removed. If that time was spent on some more bot time (maybe even just some Decepticon bickering), then the film would feel more about the Transformers and less about waiting for the Transformers to appear.

I have hopes that will be less on an issue with the sequel.

 

While ILM did the great job they always do on a project, I've got to agree that the later transforming just wasn't all it could be.

The first time Blackout transformed that pretty much hit it on the money for the sort of mood they were going for at the time. The sort of we want to get you interested but we don't want to give it all way yet. Later in the film though when the people just getting reintroduced to Transformers were caught up to speed it would have been better to pull the shots back for a much better look. And yea for a director that really understands all the little bits to a great car chase it did seem a bit short on one of the things he does really well.

Wasn't too crazy about the Starscream flip either because I've never been a skate or X-Games fan, but hey to each their own I guess.

 

Very few disappointments with TF1:

-- Autobots, except for BB, didn't get much screentime
-- Except for Megatron and a few lines spoken by Barricade and Starscream, all the Decepticons spoke in Cybertronian with subtitles, where the Autobots spoke in plain English
-- When the DVD came out, there was no "Deleted Scenes" to see what was taken out and why

 

There really is no more ground to cover. Those of us who don't like it have explained why at great length across the internet. Bottom line is, it's a Michael Bay film. That means it can be entertaining if you expect nothing more than explosions, but please don't try and convince me that it's a good film. It's like The Matrix: kinda fun, but utter rubbish.

 

Both Frenzy, Bonecrusher and posibly Devastator/Brawl had voice actors.
I too was also disapointed with no Deleted Scenes on the DVD