Yeah, I liked a few things:

1. That Barricade design and transformation was BADASS.
2. When Optimus was riding Dragonstorm coming down to fight Infernocus, I thought this scene was perfect tbf. Great music during it too

 

Optimus had a far better character arc in Transformers Prime than in TLK. That show was way darker than TLK too. You want quality TF stories? Look no further than Transformers Prime.

There you go. He should be showing up any minute now.  

But for real- @SPLIT LIP mentioned the London chase. My god, the London chase. All I wanted since part 1 was a longer chase scene between Bumblebee & Barricade. TLK finally gave it to us and... all I remember was feeling exhausted and wanting it to end. I’m not even sure if the movie as a whole had burnt me out by that point or if the chase scene was just bad. But I remember wishing it would end & then realizing they made me dislike the one thing I really wanted. I don’t know how they pulled that off.

As for things that were good?

 

I mean, it being so awful that it finally caused Paramount to reconsider what they were doing is definitely a GOOD Thing about it.

I still like most of the designs in the movie, especially Megatron and Barricade. Unicron's presence after all this time was pretty neat, I guess. Oh, I liked the WW2 stuff, hell, I would've loved a movie with just Bee and Hot Rod teaming up with soldiers to fight the Nazis and probably a few Decepticons too.

 

On top of that, Megatron straight up had to negotiate with the humans to get some Decepticons back. Since when does Megatron negotiate with lesser lifeforms? What stopped him from simply storming the place, killing all the humans, and letting ALL the Decepticons out of imprisonment? After all, Blackout alone (since he released Scorponok but Scorpy was just to tail the survivors of the attack) wiped out a major US military installation by himself. And Megatron is supposed to be even more powerful than that, whereas TRF sure as hell wasn't on the same level as the US Armed Forces or NEST in any capacity.

Megatron having to negotiate and the sole reason the humans even agreed in the first place was because they were going to betray him later anyway...like, TRF is a total joke.

lol I was already around but the sad truth is, I don't disagree - Optimus from TF Prime did have a better arc, if only short lived with the Orion Pax stuff, because there we got an Optimus who hadn't been really exposed to war and still thought Megatron was a good guy. The show ruined that by just turning the whole thing into a means of decoding more stupid coordinates and then BAM! he's back to being the same boring Prime.

Movie Prime degrades after DOTM because we're supposed to believe that a guy who has led a war effort for millions of years just up and decides to order all the Autobots to do the dumbest thing imaginable and split up with no plans to meet up, because Prime got betrayed by humans again. And then some idiot from Texas gives a fancy little 'one man's trash/another's treasure' speech and suddenly Prime is not depressed anymore? Oh, and then there's the part where he flies off like a dumbass at the end of AoE to take on the Creators...effectively just doing exactly what the Creators wanted by hand delivering himself to them, as that was the whole reason Lockdown was ever involved in the first place. Oh, and he literally died on the way there so great plan, Prime, you managed to screw up even that. It should also be noted that a lot of people around the time TLK was in theaters that despite being evil, they couldn't really figure out how Prime was being evil since he didn't exactly behave all that differently up to the point Bumblebee pulls a Cubix/Iron Giant to cheat death and a literal 'Martha' moment undoes inexplicable space magic mind control on Prime.

 

On the topic of Megatron, in a vacuum he was pretty great. He had a sweet design, incredible voice, and a badass alt mode. Problem was it made no fucking sense in context. He didn't fit the aesthetics of the other TFs at all, (he looked like a Dark Souls boss, which is absolutely a compliment, but nobody else felt even remotely similar) story-wise it's never explained how he came back from being Galvatron, and his role as lackey again was practically pointless. Megatron didn't do anything in TLK that Megatron needed to do. He could've been a random mook and changed the plot in no meaningful way.

Megatron was by far the most mishandled character in the films. In not a single movie is he actually the main villain. Arguably he was in TF1, but only at the end. The Decepticons overall were the villains, acting on their own, Megatron did nothing. After that he was just a yes-man.

Because this is a universe where handheld automatic weapons can fucking obliterate TFs.

TF1 made it so clear that only high-caliber, high-heat ammunition even stood a chance of scratching a Transformer, and even then only Blackout was actually straight-up killed by a full squadron of F-22's unloading on his ass with missiles. Even ROTF at least kept up that tanks were needed to really do damage, but ever so slightly over time normal guns became effective against the robots and it's

And that says a lot.

 

@Autobot Burnout yeah, I think it’s safe to say that most people were expecting more from the Orion Pax arc. The show runners had said they wanted to explore what it meant to be a Prime, so it seemed like the perfect setup to do that.

And then nope- he’s just back to being Prime instantly. I still enjoyed the episode, but it was a colossal missed opportunity to flesh out their dry as cardboard Optimus.

 

This is what makes me laugh whenever people try to bring up Megatron being some kind of 'master' strategist that somehow planned every single plot of the films before he ever left Cybertron. The impossiblity of that on infinite levels aside, he's simply Fallen's bitch in ROTF, he's Sentinel's bitch in DOTM, and in AoE where he apparently manipulated the humans somehow into rebuilding him into an attempted copy of Optimus Prime (Because really, why the hell would Megatron want to be cast in the image of his mortal enemy?), you know who people gush over as the villain in that film? Lockdown, who not only isn't a Decepticon somehow but also is only supposed to be there doing his job and somehow thinks badly of the whole Cybertronian Civil War...even though as a bounty hunter one would think the war is good for business.

Only when the humans need to win, since otherwise what was even the point of KSI building the knock offs if something as simple as a couple of AK-47s could wreck a transformer?

Yeah, the fact normal weapons somehow become more effective over time for no apparent reason really underscored how trivial the transformers were becoming in their own film to the humans.

Oh my god, somebody else remembers the 'explore what it means to be a Prime' statement? It was getting to the point I was wondering if that had even been said at all!

 

Haha no, they definitely said that!

 

Yeah, I remember it, too. That, more than anything else, marks probably my biggest disappointment with the show.

 

I don't think it quite deserves the hate it gets. Is it a technically good film? No, not by a long shot. Is it the worst movie ever made? Certainly not. More than anything, I judge movies by entertainment value. And I've seen many less-watchable movies than TLK. And it's not like all Transformers media is high-art. TLK is a masterpiece in comparison to something like Sea Change (the G1 episode) or the Combiner Wars online series.

My list of good things are:

The First 20/30 Minutes.

The search for surviving Autobots, Cade rescuing the kids, the downtime at the Junkyard, and the fight at the abandoned town is some of my favorite stuff in the entire series. I love the bleak, lived-in (almost post-apocalyptic) vibe, and the scrappy characters like Canopy, Sqweeks, and Daytrader. I honestly wish the entire movie kept this feel instead of shifting to the clean Europe locations.

The Best Design Aesthetic yet.

I think TLK was peak Bayverse design aesthetic. The characters had the solidity and uniqueness of the AOE bots, but felt less cheaty than those designs. They did a great job beefing up characters like Barricade. Megatron's crew had some of my favorite designs.

The Best Live-Action Megatron

This was easily my favorite live-action Megatron. After three movies of Hugo Weaving half-heartedly voicing a Megatron that just came across more like a giant growling monster (and one movie where Megatron wasn't quite all there), this was the first time I felt like I was seeing the Megatron character on-screen. He had a great design, a great voice, and more of a presence than the other movies.

The First Non-Transformer Villain

I know there's some debate about Quintessa actually being a Transformer after all, but this was the first movie to attempt a villain that wasn't a traditional Transformer, which was fun.

Great Cinematography

In my opinion, this movie has some of (if not the greatest) cinematography in the series. What it lacks in storytelling, it almost makes up for in beautiful visuals.

Addressing Cybertron

One thing that bugged me about AOE (I even complained about it back in 2014) was the lack of acknowledgement of Cybertron's destruction. If the Transformers' planet had been destroyed, you think it would be a big deal among both Autobots and Decepticons (and even humans, to an extent), and have ripping effects in future movies (like Asgard's destruction in Ragnarok). How would the both factions of TFs cope with the fact that their end goal (restoring Cybertron) is now gone? I was glad that TLK made an effort to address this.

The Buildup

Okay, this might be cheating since it's not something in the movie itself, but I really enjoyed the buildup to TLK. They really did a great job on the viral marketing, and the set pictures and whatnot provided a lot of neat speculation. Transformers movies aren't just movies, for us fans it's a whole experience. And the buildup to the movie was a great part of that experience.

 

Yes, but not all Transformers media has a budget of 250 million dollars. In an industry where good writing has repeatedly proven to be a strong asset, the fact TLK crashed and burned in that department is more important than 'oh, but it's better than a cheap, crappy cartoon from the 1980s which the people behind that very cartoon admitted it was constantly a rush job and they didn't put that much effort into narrative quality.'

Indeed, TLK tried to do things to cover up the obviously lacking script by putting in big name, expensive people in when they didn't really need to. Was Anthony Hopkins really necessary for what amounted to an exposition machine? They could have gotten the guy who narrated The Stanley Parable for a lot less and had the same effect, the only thing the role needed was an old English guy.

 

The thing is the Autobots gave up on saving Cybertron years before DOTM happened. By ROTF Earth was already their new home. And there weren't any Decepticons in AOE (excluding Galvatron who was barely Megatron) to acknowledge Cybertron's destruction.

 

Yeesh this thread took a dark turn.

Opinions are very bad, everyone. Don't express them or you'll be crucified.

 

Unfortunately, that's how fandoms work some of the time. And it's not how I intended for this thread to go either. Kudos to the members in here who are trying to keep things focused.

I will have to agree with those saying that the film has some good ideas behind it at least. The dystopian landscape of the Dakotas and a ruined Chicago (Again!), with Autobots in hiding and Cade helping them out, is something I enjoy, and I wish the entire film had been more along that as well as the stuff with Creators, Galvatron (Or at the very least, have an explanation or show the transition to TLK Megatron), and Nemesis Prime.

That opening battle is chaotic, but it does give the impression of brutality on the part of ancient and medieval warfare I find without going into R-rated territory.

I really like how the Decepticons in this film are minimally damaged by human weapons, like in Stonehenge, where Megatron, Barricade, and Nitro Zeus get bombarded and barraged by multiple tanks, and yet they aren't seriously damaged. I also like how, even if they get killed quickly, some of the Decepticons get killed by the efforts of Autobots rather than just humans. Onslaught gets killed from Crosshairs and Drift working together, Mohawk's head gets blown off by Bumblebee while in a state of confusion, and Grimlock kills Dreadbot. In fact, that's something I like about the last three films (AoE, TLK, and Bee), in that it's Cybertronians (Both with and without human assistance) or Cybertronian weaponry (Like Cade's alien gun in AoE) that kills the Decepticons and other alien antagonists.

 

I thought the fight scene between Optimus and bumblebee was nice.

 

I agree with almost everything.This movie had huge potential.I liked the backstory...even the Witwiccans story because it makes sense someone kept an eye out so the public wouldn't know about TF untill The Fallen revealed himself.The battles were short and goofy more than ever and everything is fast paced,that was the only thing that hurt it...and Optimus VS Bee..they could have had a Sentinel VS Autobots type battle but instead it was just Bee and he didn't have much time to react to it anyway so I think that's why any of the movies is better than this because those would have handled things better but I love TLK as it's fun and a little magic,I just don't consider it on a ROTF level.I loved the references and all the little stuff and random interractions...that felt fresh so as I said there are many great things about this movie and it was exciting when I saw it but it needed more focus on anything..because this time I felt there was no focus except on the history of TF scene and the submarine scenes.I expected something bigger and intense as opposed to rushed but in the end I still appreciated it a lot and it was the most nostalgic out of the 2 new movies..great to see past characters and stuff..

 

I appreciate you making this thread and those who are willing to discuss disagreements civilly.

I actually think DotM had my favorite overall set of toys. I loved the mech tech gimmick with all the extra ports for stealth modes...

I felt the same about the chase. I really wanted more Transformers chase scenes, but when I got done with TLK it felt too long. It was like half the movie was the human couple running around the city looking for stuff.

I highly recommend the ignore feature. This thread has been pleasant for me.

 

I guess Joe DiMaggio as Nitro Zeus (stupid name though) was entertaining.

 

You can't control people's opinions. And when you make a thread about a film that is nearly universally reviled you can't honestly expect that to not be the majority of discussion. I doubt you'd be complaining if a thread about everything you hate about TLK suddenly broke out into positive discussion.

For a lot of people, myself included, there isn't a lot to like about TLK. And it's hard to separate what we do like from what we don't because the film is so fundamentally flawed.

You can't just throw up a "no haterz allowed" sign and expect discussion to go your way. That's not how an open forum works.

I agree. "We were brothers once!" was kinda cool and a throwback to TF1, but it means absolutely nothing and wasn't explored upon. It would have been awesome if, like, Optimus and Megatron had any sort of relationship at all in these films, but alas it's again the curse of superficially cool ideas marred by the total lack of any substance whatsoever.

The film was such a waste. Like I said, it's hard to separate good form bad when every good thing is ruined because it doesn't mean anything or go anywhere. It's fluff in a void of crap spiraling down constantly.

 

It really isn’t this deep. He’s simply asking things that people liked about TLK, nothing wrong with that