Right, you need every other officer "scouting the area." Bumblebee is the scout, by the way. I'm not saying a battle spanning a very large perimeter won't need multiple Autobots scouting, but to leave out the actual scout of the group means your excuse isn't something the writers intended or even considered. It's blattant laziness and there's no point defending it.

 

Bumblebee scene was a more friendlier take than what I'm use to.
It was a new take and i liked that lasers were finally seen. My vote is the forest battle. The entire 8 minute scene can't be matched. My favorite moment is Optimus, Starscream and Megatron inside the abandoned building. Everything that happened was magic.
If Bay ever made his version of a Cybertron battle, with lasers, that would be the best thing ever.

 

Isn't that just the opening to DOTM?

 

Still love the dialogue
"Is the future of our race not worth a single human life."
"You'll never stop at one. I'll take you all in."
Coming off of both Megatron's and Optimus' character motivations in scenes prior.

Megatron: My master I have failed you on Earth. The Allspark is destroyed and without it our race will surely perish.
Optimus Prime: You're world must not share the same fate as Cybertron. Whole generations lost.

There was so much weight in that scene. Which is funny because they moved so elegantly almost weightless. I loved it.

And the flow of the scenes has so much intensity and energy. The camera angles made me feel as if I was actually there. I just love it.

The forest fight takes it for me.

 

I think it was a more Bumblebee regroups with the other Autobots. Nest mentioned the Autobots split into two teams. During the Autobot are on the move on the highway scene.

 

They’re completely different: one’s an action scene that takes place in the middle of the film while the other’s an introduction that provides exposition for what’s to come in the film and subsequent sequels. In my opinion both are good in their own ways, but I prefer ROTF’s out of nostalgia  

 

Not really. The intro scene we saw was a taste of what we could have gotten. Bumblebee gave us a battle scene that many fans wanted to see. An up close battle between two factions. The only problem with that, at least for me, is all the changes they made.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself

 

It's weird that the Forest Fight starts off with Optimus and Bumblebee sending the Decepticons into a retreat, then having Bumblebee take the two nobodies to safety as Optimus calls after Sam, the guy the bad guys are after, to go chase down Megatron. I know that the intention of the scene is probably that Optimus took Sam because Optimus could protect him better and then Megatron followed them, but then the Autobots splitting up makes no sense and the whole thing is muddled by the fact that they start racing down what seems to be the direction Megatron went? There's some less than stellar filmmaking going on there.

And then in the actual fight it's not so much of an escalation or clear series of beats (as in "this happens so then this happens but then this happens") as much as it is Optimus losing/winning at various intervals because of whoever's punching harder. Megatron just kind of gets the drop on him because he starts looking for Sam in the middle of a bare knuckle (well, sword hand) fist fight? Plus in a movie where the Autobots are characters (which is admittedly not RotF) you really need a beat of them reacting to the death of their General/Superman/Jesus figure.

But making movies is really hard and they went out and filmed this. I'm in the middle of shooting an eight minute short that's doing it's best to kill me, I can't imagine pulling off something at this scale even at a less than optimal level. The punches feel real and visceral and the score is really phenomenal. These robots feel really weighty and powerful.

The Cybertron scene, on the other hand, actually hurt my eyes and I think the opening shot really says it all, it's just lasers in every direction. No lines are drawn, no clear goals besides "And then kill the next guy!" There's a way to do that scene where the Autobots are desperately trying to hold the line before the Decepticons do something that allows them to bust through and swarm their stronghold, forcing them to escape... As it actually exists, Optimus goes "Where is B-127?" like their smallest yellow robot is going to turn the tide and then they flee because... Recognizable Decepticons arrived? Like how are these three or four guys an escalation that forces them to retreat when it was just mayhem with everybody against everybody before? I'm less forgiving because the entire scene was animated, completely planned out beat for beat, and what they came up with was this droning and generic.

So the forest fight for sure in this contest. But the correct answer is the Highway Chase

 

Definitely Forrest fight. The opening of Bumblebee didn't feel intense to me at all. It seemed kinda rushed, so yeah. Forrest fight any time.

 

Bumblebee leaving wasn't the problem. He was taking Mikaela and Leo to safety. If you don't know what I'm talking about, rewatch the movie.

 

Forest battle all day any day.

A decade later, still the franchise's best scene.

 

I had to give it to the forest fight.

The Cybertron scenes in Bumblebee do little for me. They're not that interesting or exciting, and they're just shooty-shooty with a few moments of overpowered Bee and Optimus.

The forest fight, for as shit as the movie was overall, had weight both physically and narratively. It was a three-on-one fight with Optimus defending Sam. It had relevance within the plot and wasn't just a big action spectacle, it was the turning point of the film's story. (what little there was) Optimus went all-out, getting torn to shreds but managing to kill one 'Con and almost defeat two others. It was one of the few times he felt genuinely badass without just God-mode-ing it. And he lost. Or rather, he died, but managed to save Same, and his sacrifice felt earnest and even a little sad.

The problem with the Cybertron battle is it's working off of no pre-established characters or stakes, because it is establishing the characters and stakes. It's quick, vocal, and pragmatic but hardly exciting or gripping in its action or significance.

 

Optimus was waiting for Bumblebee so they could escape Cybertron as he was appointed to scout the new planet. That was always the plan for Optimus and was probably going to happen in the next few minutes, but the Decepticons arriving there just sped up the process. Do you remember the part where Optimus had said he found a planet? Menaing, he had everything researched knowing they'll need to escape.

 

Oooh yeah. Which one? Bonecrusher vs Optimus or TF3 that included the Dreads?

 

Pretty much this.

 

Oh I caught "I found a planet that's well hidden; Earth." That's actually a big moment that contributed to my tuning out because what the hell does that even mean? Usually there's something on Earth, or they just crash there, and there's even the potential explanation of "We could be well hidden on Earth," which would make sense because Earth is full of cars and planes and they turn into those, plus there's radio signals and frequencies that could mask their transmissions if you want some soft sci-fi gobblety gook. But no, Earth, the planet itself, populated and hanging out in the middle of space with no other valuable targets or potential hidey holes (other than Saturn's moon, I guess) nearby, is "well hidden". Maybe it's just remote but that's A) not really well hidden, and B) not what he said.

Plus "Where is B-127?" is a great chance to cut to Bumblebee doing something recklessly heroic and scout-y or maybe resourceful, to establish his character before he loses his memories and becomes a lost puppy dog, but instead we cut to him just driving over from another point in the battle with no clear holdups...? It's just not a very well conceived scene in general.

I was talking about Dark of the Moon, but now that you bring it up... Both.

 

And my favorite still

 

This is such a phenomenal action scene I still can't get over it and it's been 8 years. It has all those things that a lot of movies these days don't go in for like reversals and dramatic irony and a sense of danger and stakes. Notice that the scene is not about driving faster and shooting harder, it's "Oh no! The Decepticons are on their tail!" but then the Autobots decelerate and get behind them so they can start lighting their asses up, and in the process they get one, but then the others start creating hazards and road blocks to slow them down. Plus there's the bit where they're in a standoff with Ironhide and Sideswipe (one of the few times we ever get good medium closeups of the robots, which is how you would treat an actual character in the same situation) and we realize the Decepticons still have weapons before the Autobots do. What's that sensation called? Oh right, tension. Imagine if Optimus had actually had a reason to believe Megatron was down for the count before looking for Sam in the forest fight, and then we saw him rising up and getting ready to strike before Optimus could realize what was happening. The whole thing would have been 10 times more effective and memorable.

On top of that, we get a refresher course on who Ironhide is and how he's a badass right before Sentinel dispatches him to establish what a threat that character's going to be moving forward.

Good shit. Dark of the Moon is perpetually underrated by non fans and fans alike

This one goes by a lot quicker than I remembered, but it does do a lot; firstly, it establishes what these robots fighting is going to look like on the big screen and it's really bold and visceral (in a way that you can sort of over play and I think even the good movies do sometimes), it shows that Optimus Prime is the Autobot you want around because he will ruin a bad robot in a fight, and it also removes him from the battle for a while so it's a big fist pumping moment when he does join the fray later (something Dark of the Moon repeated very effectively with all the Autobots). Again, very well staged and put together

This is way better than the Bumblebee Cybertron scene. Like, it's not things I know (TM), and they're not really going for the same effect, but Dark of the Moon accomplishes it's (different, to be fair) goals much better. In Dark of the Moon Cybertron is kind of alien and strange, we don't really see much of the individual robots, but they assign goals and motivations to the ships instead (assisted by the context of Optimus Prime's narration). We're hoping that the Ark will escape, and afraid that it'll be shot down in it's attempt to. Even though we are seeing Cybertron for the first time, there's still a huge amount of unknowns and mystery to it's going ons. Which is a valid, very Spielberg choice.

Bumblebee, on the other hand, wants to throw us right in the middle of the action and make us fear for the characters, but it's hampered by the poor choices I've outlined above and the fact that the goals of a tense, Saving Private Ryan type opening and a "LOOK EVERYONE! IT'S ALL THE THINGS YOU REMEMBER! AREN'T YOU HAVING FUN???" fan service sequence are in a sort of direct conflict with each other as far as how they want the audience to react to what they're seeing.

 

Good post, these were all better scenes than the Cybertron battle in Bumblebee. It felt too much like a cartoon to me. The Bay movie aesthetics feel more realistic to me.