by shajaki » Wed Jul 05, 2017 5:58 pm
- Motto: "A man who wants nothing is invincible."
Saw TLK.....
...
I have a pretty high tolerance for Baynanigans, but I don't think any of the other films are this polarizing. There is such a thing as "too big" y'know. Boil this movie down to one word?: Convoluted.
BAD
1. Galvatron to Megatron
No mention, whatsoever, of how and why. That was actually one of the only things I wanted to know going into this movie. That was a huge let down.
2. Prime and Megatron's Screen Time
It really felt that he was only in like, a quarter of the movie. Not that it needs to be in every scene, but there was like a 90 minute gap where I thought ".... where's Prime?" And in retrospect, Megs sure didn't seem to have much action either. After they bug out of the junkyard, I don't recall seeing him till the end when Cybertron is crashing down.
3. Cybertron, Unicron, and Quintessa
Such potential. And honestly, I'm not sure how to do it better for a big budget live action movie. In one sense, they tried to jam in more exposition than they could handle, but thankfully only went halfway. It seems that actually dealing with Unicron will be its own movie, which is good.
4. Hotrod is French
As said, I have a high tolerance for the "Movie-izing" of my favorite pop culture characters. But this is my limit.
Not red? Fine.
No flames? Fine.
No call back to original design at all, like back spoiler or silver piped arms? Fine.
But then you make him FRENCH??! That's it. That's my breaking point. And I'd have cared less about all of this, if they'd just not given him the Hotrod title.
5. Grimlock and the rest of the Dinobots
I actually loved the idea of them lounging around, acting up like eating cars, like junk yards dogs. It was funny. But where the hell were they when the s!@# hit the fan? Do they just suffer the same thing as the Hulk? His presence being automatic win, so black list him? They were shown running from the junkyard like everyone else, then gone for the REST OF THE MOVIE. Total bull.
6. New Decepticons Introuced, then ignored
At first, yay! A new team of baddies is PROPERLY introduced, making you think that maybe they'll be featured as much as the Autobots are. But then boo! They're only really used for one freakin scene. What was the point of that? All the baddies at the end (I can recall anyways) were generic, or Infernicus. And speaking of Infernicus, light him on fire and you got a Balrog from LOTR. That ain't a Transformer. Also, the strategy of the government making a deal with Megs.... I don't understand for the life of me. They could have achieved their goals without doing that.
6. Science
I'm not a physicist, but I do know that the mere presence of something in our solar system (like a planet, like Cybertron) would have catastrophic results to earth. Nevermind it crashing into earth (which parts of it do!!!) but it just being there could cause (at minimum) violent worldwide climate fluctuations. Maybe you could argue that it had little mass (it looked like more of a shell than anything) but still. To treat it as no more than a ship crashing onto the surface..... yeah... no.
GOOD
1. Hotrod's Design
If you pretend his name isn't Hotrod, he's delightful. He rather reminds me of an Eva. Particularly the head of the Test Type (Eva-00?).
2. Baby Dinobots
Totes adorbs. I want one.
3. Kade feels like the first useful human in a TF franchise
You want a human to be helpful? Augment him with TF tech. I bought that hook line and sinker. And even before that whole Knight medallion thing, his whole "off the grid underground TF helper" thing was awesome. Finally a good human, and Mark is done with the franchise.
4. Humans are less evil than they were in AOE
Humans in AOE were straight up assholes. They're still kinda in TLK, but they find their way back. I liked that.
5. Unicron retcons: why Earth?
After marathon'ing 1-4 before seeing 5, I honestly was questioning this. All of this stuff, always taking place on earth is pretty coincidental. And I know the whole Unicron/Earth thing isn't new (Prime right? don't explain, I haven't seen it yet) but yeah. It's a good way to explain a lot of nonsense.
VERDICT
Initially, I was pretty down on it. After a lot of thinking (mostly due to this review) I see there's good stuff. And I definitely need to see it more than once. But it is not the best of the franchise. Too soon to call it the worst though.
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