I can't believe that anyone who thinks this movie was good is a legitimate G1 fan. That aside, when I see comments like "this is my favorite movie ever", it just boggles the mind. In all seriousness, this is one of the worst movies ever made. Just like the first one (which I actually bought just to show off the capabilities of my blu-ray player and LCD TV), the acting is downright WRETCHED, the character models are way too over-articulated to the point where you can't tell who the hell is who (PS michael bay; super articulation does not automatically equal good character), and the story is just a complete and total flop with so many discontinuities, plot holes, unexplained things, and just sheer lack of creativity in so many scenes ("hey Prime got the matrix" <TELEPORT IN USING MYSTICAL TELEPORT POWER> "I'll take that bye --> this scene, among dozens of others had me wondering "WTF just happened?"
So far, those complaints can be applied to both michael bay movies. Let's expand on the atrocious nature of this film in particular:
WARNING - BIG SPOILERS AHEAD
1) The witwicky characters are all just horrible and I didn't think they could get any worse, but this movie somehow managed. The mom - are you kidding me? If anyone on earth thinks anything about her was funny in the slightest, you need your head checked out. Appalling. The dad, meh, whatever, pointless. Megan Fox is also incredibly pointless. "Oh man she's so hot"; sorry, but that's where it ends. Her off-screen personality is really what makes me disappointed that she's even attached to the Transformer franchise. "Oh Transformers are awesome, I'm in the new movie, I love transformers." People like her who wear the transformers franchise tag remind me of the same people that think the best Final Fantasy game ever was FF7. How bad is it when Sam, who is just so bad, actually comes off as the one semi-decent character in this film? And his Mexican roommate - all I've got to say is someone involved with the movie obviously had to get their kid in it somehow. This guy makes Jar Jar look like Boba Fett.
2) The Fallen - the entire concept had fail written all over it. First off, if you're going to build off an old idea, go back a little further than something that originated out of the Dreamwave era, much less something that comes out of a spin-off comic book where Grimlock is a tank (War Within, if I recall correctly). I mean fine, originally an interesting concept, but hardly a character so awesome you make a movie about it. Secondly, if you're going to make Megatron COMPLETELY UNCHARACTERISTICALLY SUBSERVIENT to someone (which is like the most rookie thing you could ever do to Meagtron), at least make the character look intimidating! Unicron was intimidating. The Fallen looked like a complete joke; why mighty Megatron exhibited Soundwave-quality loyalty to an average-sized anorexic transformer that looked like he could transform into a rake is beyond me. And by the way, when Megatron flew from the ocean and ended up on Saturn or wherever the hell it was in two seconds, I thought he flew into the movie "Aliens". I know these are supposed to be "alien" robots, but I think bay is closer to the Alien movies than he is to the Transformers franchise.
3) Prime saying "got any last words" and then blasting a helpless transformer in the face. Yeah, that's the heroic Prime I grew up with. I had to laugh at this part thinking to myself, "I seriously wonder if whoever wrote this has ever even seen an episode of transformers." Again, way to completely undo a character trait that has been prevalent for the last quarter century.
4) The twins. Man, I don't even need to expand on this because it's obvious, but all I'll say is to the few people trying to say they liked them, oh please, stop kidding yourselves. A transformer calling a human a pussy... who the hell left that in? And I thought Jazz died in the last one, but apparently his personality chip is inserted in every new transformer. You know, I talk to people about this sort of thing so often - when I have a kid, I'm not going to let him/her watch any cartoons except all the 80's stuff like transformers, g.i. joe, voltron, he-man, ninja turtles, smurfs, care bears, etc. You know why? Because every modern day cartoon/movie is plagued with "Yo dog, chiggity out my ipod, word up, yo true dat, pimp dat yo" ghetto-esque nonsense. The twins in this movie were a prime example of that crap. Seriously, go watch a couple of newer cartoons or movies then compare it to something like the 80s transformer movie - the old stuff has a sort of "classiness" and sophistication to it that has been snuffed out by this modern day "style over substance" garbage.
5) OK so you finally got Frank Welker in this one... and you STILL MANAGE TO SCREW IT UP!!! For the love of God, why the hell could you just not let him do the ORIGINAL SOUNDWAVE VOICE!!?? Instead, you have him do the unsynthesized version, which is basically just Doctor Claw. So bravo michael bay for once again managing to evoke classic nostalgia - unfortunately I didn't come to see a transformers movie to remember the good ole days of Inspector Gadget.
6) "Alice". Ok, yeah he even managed to throw the Pretenders in there - but who are we kidding, there's a reason the Pretenders were the beginning of the end of the original toy franchise - it's because the Pretenders sucked. That aside, they especially suck when all you do is rip off the movie "Species" [Anyone ever get the idea that bay has no originality whatsoever?]
7) Constructicons. Admittedly, one of the things that actually got me excited about the film. And what an incredibly botched concept that turned out to be. One of the best things about the G1 constructicons was that they had outstanding personality - all of them and even Devastator himself. To be honest, I didn't understand what the hell was going on with these things at all, especially when they were in Devastator form yet somehow fighting elsewhere in individual robot mode (and not just later on, I'm talking back to back scenes). One of the few things that I thought was cheap about the original cartoon were the hordes of Insecticon clones or Scourge clones (or Seacon clones if you ever watched Masterforce)- always thought it was the ultimate lazy way to be able to let characters get killed without actually losing any characters. It's extremely disappointing to see that the movie did this with not only the Constructicons, but also with the Decepticons in general. Now there are just tons of them that get squashed at every interval - even the first movie avoided that cheapness. And the Devastator components not even having their own individual robot modes? What the hell, that was never even a concept with transformers. In fact, that was Voltron! Overall, Devastator looked like a completely incapable ignoramus, and I began to question his awesomeness the second I saw him getting beat up by "the twins" (a battle that seemed to have a scene missing or something, since one second it's making it look like the twins are going to do something big, then the next clip they're gone and Devastator is awkwardly climbing a pyramid king kong style). And let's not forget "oh look where the balls are placed, scrotum, oh I get it haw haw haw! Also, I was excited to hear Welker "voiced" Devastator, until I realized that meant nothing more than doing the grunting noises that weren't even discernible among the consistent sound of grinding metal.
How do we destroy Devastator? Oh yeah, insert ultra magical mystical top secret "Rail Gun". Yeah, it doesn't have to be Shakespeare, we're just here to sell toys anyways. Seriously, these have to be the worst writers of all time. What is it that qualified these goons to write for this movie over any average transformer fan that would NO DOUBT do a better job? And transformers franchise aside, how about movie script writing in general? Here's the mindset this entire endeavor has been plagued with: "don't worry about super crap story, audience pay attention to big shiny robot."
9) All of a sudden humans own Decepticons with M16s. And I'm talking, own them perhaps more so than even the Autobots do. In fact, I'm now wondering why the humans even felt the need to keep the Autobots on earth. I mean, when Soundwave enhanced the antennae (PS: I only found out it was Soundwave after reading these forums - when I saw it in the theater, I thought it was Megatron because you can't tell any of these damn things apart) and The Fallen announced to the world that if they didn't turn over Sam the Decepticons would conquer earth, the response from the people of earth should have been resounding laughter. I mean, all it takes is a small army unit that can go head to head with the entire Decepticon army, much less a gun that can destroy Devastator in a single shot.
10) The matrix, something that I always thought was pretty cool, was turned into something utterly pathetic. I've come to realize that when you hear about something that was once cool making it into this movie series, you should actually be worried about how bad it will be ruined.
11) Okay, Wheelie. Yes, it's oh so important for Wheelie to be put in the movie, and ironically enough he was one of the things in the movie that was actually not too terrible. When I was trying to figure out who the hell this transformer was supposed to be, the voice almost made me think it was Rumble, even though it was a little too mafioso. But in all honesty, if it were Rumble, it would almost cause you to think "oh man, they actually kind of almost got this one right a little", but of course not. Me Wheelie say terrible michael bay. But this made me think a little about the voice casting in general. If some transformers can talk like this, or the twins, or whatever, what was the big problem not letting Welker do Megatron, or even letting Welker do Soundwave's voice properly? It seems like we're anal retentive voice casters on one side of the coin, and on the other side it's like, "oh just do whatever, who gives a ****."
12) Speaking of voices, I don't understand the Bumblebee thing. Didn't his voice get fixed at the end of the last movie? Yet all of a sudden he has to communicate through the radio again? Was that such an awesome concept to whoever that they thought to themselves, "oh man, we should never have given him his voice back, this is cool and we're onto something. Ah screw it, we'll just carry on and hopefully people won't remember or care." And i can't exactly remember what it's from, but this "speak through radio clips" thing has already been done. Maybe I'm thinking of Wreck-Gar? Anyways, it's not original, but at this point what do you expect. Also, referring to Bumblebee as "B"... incredibly annoying, especially when it's said over 100 times in a one minute scene. "We really want the audience to know that it's okay to call him "B"." Thanks, got it.
13) Quick, we've already butchered combiners, pretenders, threw a half-baked version of jetfire in there that doesn't make any sense, what else can we half-ass real quick to sell an extra toy? I know! How about Powermaster Optimus Prime! ugggh...
14) And finally, the one aspect of the movie that I actually really liked. I thought Ravage was great. He moved like he used to, he crept around like he used to, he had his guns in the right spot. Hell, he even ejected from Soundwave! Too bad Bumblebee kills him with like zero effort, and just on the side while he's busy fighting someone else. And the whole time I was looking forward to Soundwave getting in the fray a bit more, but I'm not sure if he died or what.
That's it. I know there are countless other things I'm leaving out, but I'm too tired to think at this point and quite honestly I just want to forget I even paid to see this monstrosity. In fact, I feel like watching the cartoon movie or some old episodes or something just to get this bad taste out of my mouth. In fact, this is the first time I have posted here or even read through these forums and I just had to vent some of my frustrations at the ruining of this once fantastic franchise. I saw way too many adorning responses on here and felt the need to vocalize what I thought would be the obvious dissent that I can only hope a lot of other old school transformer fans were experiencing. Just because something has the label "Transformers" on it does not automatically make it worthy of praise, and the more undeserved adulation is conveyed, the longer we're going to be stuck with garbage. Michael Bay is the single worst thing that has ever happened to the transformers franchise and I can only pray that the rumors about him not wanting to work on another one are true. If there is a third one, hopefully it's from someone with a lot more creativity and appreciation for nostalgic justice. And hopefully they can get a real writer like David Wise or Flint Dille and properly reboot this thing from scratch.
Just one final thing. I see many of you saying "oh it's not for die hard Transformers fans, if you're a Transformers fan you're going to be disappointed, otherwise it's great." Well my question is to those people saying that, if you're not a fan of transformers to an elevated extent, why would you even be on this site? You know, I like cupcakes just as much as the next guy, but I'm not about to create an account on the Betty Crocker website and start blogging about them.
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I wish they would have shown him more towards the end. Hehe, seeing him swear allegiance to the "Warrior Goddess" was so cute. I would love to see him around Mikaela again if there is a TF3 in the future. Did they put out his Toy Trunk yet? I'm not sure if they have or will but he would be great as a remote control/transformable toy trunk. 
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