I was in Elementary school when The First TF movie came out in 2007. It was my introduction to the Transformers Franchise. I loved it, i still love the first one to this day.

Then..ROTF came out...okay so..i enjoyed this...i really did, but when i got older, it's my least favorite. but has good moments here, and there.

Dark of the moon. I loved this film to death, it was a packed house at Regal, i felt it was the second best of the bayverse.. Then AOE happen, then TLK. Age Of Extinction, when i saw it i thought it was the best out of all of them, cause the autobots had more screentime, and an arc. then i also enjoyed the TLK

Then i realized these films weren't very good to begin with. Now, if you love these films good for you, i do as well. Well the first one. But these movies..

They have no plot, the characters(Should i even call them that) are unsympathetic. They turn Prime, a great leader, a father figure..is a MURDERER! Should i say more? Let me know what you think.

 

Woo... You're a brave man.

*puts on Kevlar*

I have to agree with this assessment. I tried watching the final chapters of the first film after seeing EmGo's review of MPM Megatron and his comparison with TF07's Leader Class Megatron and it gave me the warm and fuzzies. So, I figured I'd pull the first one up on Vudu in HDR (stunning picture, btw) and I tried watching it and the battle scene and before I knew it, my son was hammering on toys and my wife and I were in the middle of a conversation and I looked over and the movie was over and we were like "Oh." That settled that for me.

Fortunately, the toys are good. Like, really good. Both original runs and SS, but aside from that, they've lost their luster.

And none of this is to say Bumblebee's a perfect film. It isn't, far from it, actually, but it was closer in spirit to what I've been looking for from these films all this time. On that alone, it breezes past the finish line, for me. But if we're being more critical than that, it had better characterization, it nailed the 80s almost perfectly and the CGI was much better than the previous film. The smaller scale, at first a turn off for me, does actually work better in hindsight. I think Optimus only being 15 feet tall helps humanize him and allows him to connect with humans more, hopefully in the next film, and Bumblebee being even smaller than that is a good thing. That said, getting too small with the scale will indeed impede any gains they hope to make. The next movie should be a little bit bigger, not massive, but bigger.

I don't want Bayhem, not at all, but I do think a bigger fight scene, maybe twice the size of the one in Bumblebee would be the sweet spot. TF07 was dazzle and spectacle, no doubt, but they destroyed blocks, while Bumblebee destroyed a dock. One actually does work better than the other. Not every city they meet needs to be torn to shreds and every one of Bay's movies involved some city (or large village in ROTF's case) getting destroyed and it's like "Do you KNOW how to fight out in the desert or something? Oh wait, you did and you still found a way to destroy a priceless relic of a bygone era and the village near it. How about a forest? Oh, that's right. One magically appeared on screen and then you jump cut to some other location with "movie magic!" So...huh. Guess not."

What the other films tried, and failed, to do was make their monsters grow like a bad Rita Repulsa reject directing a crazy film, while Bumblebee succeeded in a much smaller scale. His transformation punch, the chase, and chains with Dropkick, getting into a sweet, sweet throwdown with Shatter...it worked because you could see it and feel it was right there instead of feeling like your face is taped to an Imax screen for 2+ hours.

 

I've heard Bay Prime called a murderer before but disagree. This is a violent alien war. He needs to be violent.

 

Well, yeah, all wars are violent, but it doesn't mean all war veterans are blood thirsty killers. It's completely unnecessary to chop off heads like Prime does or say "I will kill you".

 

I doubt in a brutal violent war you have time to think about the most humane way of killing your adversary in battle. And emotions in those intense situations may make you yell something you normally wouldn't. A real alien war probably isn't going to be cartoon sanitized liked G1.

 

They know that. They just wanna ignore.

 

A bullet to the head would be much cleaner and faster than brutally slicing off body parts. I mean, for all you say it's an "alien war"...the means of execution aren't exactly that alien. At the end of the day, a gun's a gun and a blade's a blade.

 

The Bayverse remains one of my all time favourite movie series despite everything going against it, it’s a shame they were spearheaded by men who outspokenly hated the franchise like Bay and Shia.

 

No, but you do think about the quickest and most effective ways to take down a target. Grappling with them and hacking their body parts off instead of going for the kill shot immediately isn't how soldiers are trained because it's a waste of time and unnecessary.

Soldiers are soldiers because they can think under fire, and remain calm and objective despite the hectic and terrifying situations of war. That's what they're trained to do. The Autobots fight like they have the skills to fight but none of the training or discipline of actual soldiers.

While most soldiers would probably agree, any commander worth a damn isn't going to spout outrageous, nonsensical bloodlust quotes like "GIVE ME YOUR FACE" or "YOU DIE" like some sort of maniacal infant.

Let alone someone with the age, experience, and otherwise commendable self-control as Optimus. Someone who speaks that softly with such dedication out of battle should honestly have the composure to not blurt out insanity whenever his blood gets pumping. It's another thing you don't do in battle because it's unnecessary and unnecessary things can get you killed.

The best Optimus takedown ever of the Bay films was, and still is, Bonecrusher, because it was quick and relatively clean. Optimus took cover behind a pillar and when Bonecrusher reached for him he disarmed him quickly and then immediately decapitated him with relative expediency. No comments about wanting to rip him apart or tear out his guts and he didn't spend pointless amounts of time taking chunks out of the guy before killing him. It was brutal for sure, but efficient. (unlike Shockwave who was weak and already had a severe head injury and Optimus deliberately took the time to punch chunks out of him and rip his eye out through his throat like a psycho instead of just beheading him and ending it)

And this is giving Optimus the benefit of the doubt that guns aren't always insta-kills (pretty much just when the plot demands it) and that melee combat is most effective. In TF1 he was exactly as brutal and violent as he needed to be to dispose of the enemy in that situation. From ROTF-onwards it was simply gratuitous.

 

Moments of brilliance, moments of utter stupidity. Fairly consistently good musical score that has produced some outstanding tracks for future leitmotifs. Some cool new characters like Lockdown.

 

I had just graduated high school a year before the first movie. I thought it was awesome then and I still do. The movies get wayyyy too much hate and honestly a lot of the complaints I hear sound like they come from over protective parents “omg attractive women! Robots are too violent! ;___; won’t someone PLEASE think of the children!”  

People always say the plot is difficult to follow... but I’ve had no problem with it. It’s pretty basic stuff, guys.

 

Well a movie based most famously on a franchise of children's toys, sold to (largely boys) between the ages of 7 and 11, I would not consider it unreasonable for a parent to look at that content of the movie and decide their child won't be watching it. And honestly, some of the camera angles used on Megan Fox and Rose Huntington-Whitley were really sleazy.

You're confusing a plot that is complex and can lose people if they miss a detail, and something that's just terribly plotted and self-contradictory at times with a bad habit of pulling shit out of its arse at inopportune moments.

 

2007 movie then: a good entertaining movie with cool CGI
2007 movie now: boring first half movie, don't need to watch it again

ROTF then: good popcorn flick, quite tiring at some parts tho
ROTF now: boring second half, but weird enough to be entertaining

DOTM then: boring first half, but superb finale. Slightly better than ROTF.
DOTM now: unnecessary first half, still superb finale. Slightly more entertaining than ROTF.

AoE then: Surprisingly more entertaining than 2007 movie with some cool new addition.
AoE now: Super fun movie to watch when I'm bored.

TLK then: garbage movie with headache inducing aspect ratio.
TLK now: won't even watch the movie again.

 

This all the way. Also thank you!

 

A written argument might be nice. This doesn't help anyone.

 

Not trying to be rude or anything but, are you talking about what I said?

 

First movie was alright as far as Bay movies go but I don't think it holds up as much as I remember it (weird to say that about a film from '07). DOTM and AOE are decent-ish Independence Day-like blockbusters. ROTF was garbage and I didn't bother to see TLK.

Still don't really care for the Bayverse look of the Transformers. I've warmed up on some but overall I was on board with the changes in BB. The Bay versions of Optimus and Megatron are probably my least favorite incarnations of them.

Overall, there's scenes I enjoy going back to every now then but I'd prefer to movies to more follow in BB in terms of being more smaller scale adventures.

 

yes. take it with a grain of salt by this point...