For about two years I avoided listening to the audio commentary on Transformers because alot of folk around here said that it wasn't any good. But taking a dare, I decided to listen to it yesterday when I couldn't get any sleep. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I didn't hear this man stroking his ego, "My Penis is longer than yours" character that was described in one review, just a guy who's extremely serious about his work and isn't exactly shy about saying that his stuff is better than others (and who on earth isn't that way about their work?). I did get good laugh at how he just makes fun of
Live Free or Die Hard and their lack of a real F-22 Raptor.
Yeah, there are semi-lengthy pauses between his commentary, but that's either because he really has nothing to say about the particular scenes where the movie's audio comes back up or that's the way its added on the DVD (something similiar occurs with the double-commentary track on
Resident Evil Apocalypse, where they put together Milla Jovovich's and Odeh's with Sienna Guillory's commentary, which were so obviously separate from each other. The are pauses aren't so long from where Milla and Oded Fehr stop talking and Sienna Guillory starts talking, though).
It was refreshing to hear things that weren't covered in the featurettes on the second
TF1 disc, particularly his tale of going to the "Transformers School" @ Hasbro and the outburst this one Japanese artist (one he admired, I believe) had against a design they made of Optimus that was a "disgrace to the Japanese", which was described as "Fat and ugly" by Bay, or even the Death Threats he got from
TF-Fans
(LMAO), the hacking attempts made on his computer and ILM, and the always hillarious "protesting at the wrong office" tale. I got a good laugh at how he got Megan Fox to kill Frenzy in the lethal manner we see in the movie. It reminded me of something my parents would do when they wanted me to get something done and done right, and I would end up doing it just to prove that I could, becuase I didn't want be stuck in one place all damn day long.
I never heard once that he "hated cartoons", in general, or that he didn't consider Anime a cartoon. Just that he had a great facisination and respect (or something in that wording) for Japanese Animation and that it was extremely different from most animation here in the states. I also don't see/hear a man with absolutely no respect for the franchise he's covering either; no, simply a guy who wasn't keen on the idea at first, but was convinced, overtime, that this idea could and would actually work in the medium that is the live-action film. Michael Bay has more respect for the
Transformers than most people are willing to give him credit for, even if he has a hard time grasping the concept of people actually fangasming over something like it.
He goes into the technical aspects of the film pretty well. from the Special Effects (Especially on the subject of shading vehicles or how make characters like the Transformers seem unlike the plastel animation of George Lucas' films and incredibly real), sound creators mixers, camera work, and stunts. Its varying enough that it doesn't sound like something he said already in the featurettes on the second disc (which was something that bothered me with the
Blade Runner: The Final Cut Audio Commentary). His tales of his connections with the Army and the Pentagon, or even what a Warthog sounds like when its flying overhead, were really interesting, and hillarious when he makes fun of
Live Free or Die Hard again.
More or less, he seems like he has a great respect those who he works with and I think he does. He sounded like such a fanboy when he starts talking about Steven Spielberg and his involvement in this film, particularly when he said he showed him the rough-cuts of the film and Steven was giving him High-Fives every other time. In the end of the commentary, I enjoyed how he described the test-audience's reactions to the first film when they did a screening for it. That was really neat.
Overall I give it a solid
4 out of 5.
