Having seen Transformers 2:

I'll put a few first-impressions up about the new Transformers movie, rather then an actual review or anything like that. Before I start I'll just say this: Michael Bay, I am disappoint. I say this as a fan of the original Transformers movie you made, I am genuinely disappoint (tense mistake done deliberately). There was so much potential in this movie, and it has been actively squandered. WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. FURTHER WARNING: This was written in bits and pieces, some things may be poorly written.


1. The Underworld/Matrix problem: When you're making a fictional story of any kind in any media format you're asking the audience to suspend their disbelief about the story itself, and accept the presented story as a potential event.

This is rendered impossible when you're openly changing things. You may not think we'll notice, but we do. The NEST General? Yeah, he was in the first movie in the attack on the US base which was declared to have NO SURVIVORS. Maybe this was dealt with in a comic or something, but that does not help us movie goers. All I saw when he came on screen was "Wait, he's meant to be DEAD."

This is only one of a number of things. The whole "Last of the Primes" thing, "Only a Prime can kill me"? If you're going to throw that stuff in, at least EXPLAIN what a Prime is in the movie. In the original movie it was presented that Megatron and Prime were on equal footing, now apparently Megatron is the servant of a more powerful one of Prime's predecessors? You might want to try and clarify things, because the background you added in this movie just didn't mesh with what I could glean from the original movie. It just broke the immersion.


2. In the first movie there was no problem with the humans being the primary characters, it was expected. Excessive Transformer presence would just cost WAY too much to film, plus you needed to make the main character someone we could empathize with easily and understand, I.E. A human.

However, we now KNOW who the Transformers are, and your budget is way bigger so you can have more special effects shots. To me that just screamed "More personality to the Transformers", but instead you went the opposite way. You added more Transformers, the vast majority with absolutely NO personality, and filled even more screen time with humans or - at best - human-scale transformers. Yes, I get that it's good to have enemies it's possible for the humans to defeat, but they weren't interesting.

When we shouted "We want more Transformers in our Transformers!", we weren't talking about quantity, we were talking about Quality. Even those Transformers with previously established personalities (Ironhide and Rachet) were pretty much ignored for the vast majority of the movie outside of scenes where they're shooting stuff. Then the new Autobots introduced (there were new Decepticons introduced, but since they were just dragged in to Numbers-Up the final fight, it's kinda forgivable they're not characterised) were just used to show off new cars you had access to. Who was the dude with wheeled feet and blade hands? He looked awesome, he killed a Decepticon, and he only had ONE line in the entire movie. I didn't even get his name. Ar-Cee was apparently three motorbikes, but we never saw a scrap of personality on her (P.S. Having a human sized Transformer then NOT using her for human-sized interaction? Lost opportunity, just like point 3 mentioned below).

That University guy alongside Sam and Mikhala? Drop him. I have no interest in him having panic attacks. YES, I understand that he's meant to show how most people would react in that situation so Sam is made to look all the braver, but he was annoying, in the story he was pointless. The ONLY thing he did was fail at an attempt to ground how unbelievable the events of the movie are, and point them at the ex- Sector Seven guy. If you removed him, there would be no change. In fact, the movie could potentially be improved by there being more time to add character to more Transformers.

While on this topic, I would be remiss if I did not thank you for adding Jetfire. While his role was reasonably small and his character wasn't INCREDIBLY deep, he is a good example of what the movie needed. He was a newly added Transformer with CHARACTER. It didn't take much, just a couple of scenes showing what he could do, a chance to actually talk, and a return to the screen later on to remind us of him. That's all it took, and you could have made us WANT the Transformers to win.

Final point in this... well... point. The excess of humans is felt nowhere more then in the final fight scene. It didn't feel like Transformers, it felt like US Millitary Vs Decepticons (with the Autobots making an appearance).


3. The Twins. I wouldn't harp on about the 'hilarious' antics they engaged in or the negative stereotypes, I'll summarize my dislike with this: They are a wasted opportunity.

Here we have two relatively small Transformers who have an extended sequence in the company of humans, and yet they have NO personality beyond offensive racial stereotypes. Here was a chance for some actual personality, for some actual character and historical development. Make them smart-ass characters (preferably actually AMUSING ones), but keep in mind these people have been through a civilization-destroying CIVIL WAR. They're going to be hiding scars. This was a perfect opportunity, during their traveling sequences or while they're camping out, for Sam to talk with the twins about Cybertron or the war and learn more about them. HUMANISE them, make us want the Autobots to win for reasons other then self interest. We need to want the good guys to win for more reason then simple "The bad guys will kill us if they emerge victorious."

They could have had genuine personality, so their scene opposite Devestator would be actually be interesting rather then just making me think "just get on to the proper fight". Yes, comic relief is important, but this movie went overboard with reasonably poor attempts at it. Did we need to have scenes of one dog humping another? No. It had no purpose. Did we need to have scenes of Sam getting attacked by transmogrified cutlery and his mother having a breakdown at the house? No. They could have shaved five minutes and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars off the budget by removing those scenes, and possibly used that money/time to add to actually purposeful events in the movie.


4. The Robo-human. Yes, I know it's a "tribute" to the Pretender Transformers, but did it have ANY purpose other then trying to add a quickly forgetable "Is Sam going to cheat" subplot? (SPOILER: It turns out Sam ISN'T going to cheat on his girlfriend. There's a shocking surprise). There were a large number of things like this. Really it was just an excuse to add another hot chick to the movie, and to be honest I found her quite unappealing. If you removed that character from the movie and replaced her with, oh, I don't know, an actual FULL sized transformer, it would seem more interesting and threatening. Her presence didn't add anything to the movie, if anything it detracted. Surely if the Decepticons were capable of making their alternative forms passable as humans, they'd do it for more then Infiltrating a university they have no interest in.

Yes, I know Sam's there so they MUST have interest in it, but if you listen to the dialogue you see she's already at the University for a day or two before Sam arrives, or Sam even knows he has the McGuffin.


5. Optimus Prime power up? Really? Bay, you're moving a bit towards the side of Transformers that's complete crap. I realise the idea of silicon based life having defined 'rules' we can understand is a bit of a cop-out to reference, especially when it's shown they can alter their structure so radically, but the idea of Prime WEARING THE WEAPONS of another Transformer and suddenly becoming more powerful just seems like crap to me.

Just to add insult to injury, that final fight sequence was incredibly badly paced. Optimus comes back, the big bad evil guy teleports in, steals McGuffin, starts end of World, Optimus 'powers up', handles it in a matter of half a minute, relaxes and has a smoke. There was nothing to establish just how fearsome the Fallen WAS aside from people going on about it, and a few fuzzy smack-downs. If you MUST have Prime power up, have Prime try to handle him unaugmented first, to show just how powerful this bastard is. Having Prime suddenly come back with weapons from another robot attached and easily handle

On the topic of Prime, sometime more I want to say. His dramatic sacrifice fight scene was quite impressive to watch, but the end of it was quite poor in my view.

Prime has fought like a Demon against three or four Decepticons for a good couple of minutes to allow Sam the chance to escape. Good! Awesome! That's the Prime we know. Then he dies to a sneak attack from behind by Megatron. No, sorry but it lacks drama. Yes, it establishes that Megatron is a sneaky prick, we know that already though, so it doesn't need establishing. What would be more impressive is Prime fighting like a Demon against the Decepticons present (except Megatron) and emerging victorious but damaged, then an undamaged Megatron kicking the crap out of him. Keep in mind, in the first movie we watched a Megatron recovering from centuries of freezing kick the crap out of Prime, after tearing an Autobot in two. Megatron is meant to be TERRIFYING, the moment the Autobots saw him hanging around in the first one they started shouting about falling back

6. The Fallen is the weakest main villain I've seen in a long time. Despite Megatron seeming all subservient (friggin' MEGATRON being subservient! Actually, to get more personality out of it I would have liked to have seen more push and pull in that relationship, Megatron sees it as a partnership, Fallen disagrees, that sort of thing) the Fallen never seems like a genuine Villain. It's obvious they were going for a Darth Vader/Emperor thing, with Megatron being the Darth Vader fought so often through the series, and the Fallen being the Emperor who's so dangerous at the end. But they missed, it just felt like he wasn't DOING anything. He shows up at the end to be essentially a video-game boss fight and to show how badass Prime is. We've spent all this time supposed to be fearing Megatron, and now this rather unfearsomely designed Robot swans in with his stupid beard and we're supposed to be afraid of him?

When he was beaten (SPOILER: THE BAD GUY DIES) I feel no elation, no joy that the threat is passed. I really feel nothing like that, all I feel is disappointment.

Disappointment. I suppose that's where I'm going with ALL of these points. I was just disappointed by the movie. I had high hopes, and I was let down.


Wow, this ended up alot longer then I imagined.