I saw the movie for the first time this evening. I am thinking about going to see it again tomorrow night.
I thought the movie was really good. I enjoyed it a lot. I would probably rank it with DotM right now as my favorite TF movie.
The standout star of the movie absolutely was Mirage. I loved him, and he got a ton of screen time and lines, and he even had a nice character arc throughout the story while keeping it fun. I am so glad that we got him, and I really hope that sequels will use him as well as they did here.
also, I am totally on board with all the SS Mirage figures we could get: Porsche, Lambo, F1 car, hologram style, end-of-movie rebuild, and trash truck if we are really feeling bold. Of course, most of those could have just been holograms instead of actual alts, but it still rocked. We also need an exo-suit toy of him.
Primal was my 2nd favorite of the movie. Ron Perlman really nailed him. You can tell he learned some stuff from PotP, and had much better direction here. His voice really added gravitas to all of what Primal did. I really liked him. Well done.
Scourge would be the 3rd guy that stood out to me in the movie. Peter Dinklage did a great job as his voice, and he certainly got some great money shots. The opening scene of him coming out of the woods to confront Apelinq was awesome, that was so cool! I also appreciate how it took Mirage, then Noah, then Prime, and finally lava to get to him. He was a cool villain for sure.
The rest of the cast was pretty good too. There really wasn't a bot that was bad. Maybe a few under-used, like Rhinox and Wheeljack, but they are still there for sequels, and pretty much everyone got a stand out character moment. I personally loved how they handled Wheeljack.
Plot of the movie was good, it was definitely breakneak speed, could have used maybe 10 extra minutes to slow some stuff down a smidge. But there really wasn't a lag in the movie at all.
I love how Prime just has bots around the world, so Wheeljack was already prepping for their arrival, and Stratosphere was an uber. Which, BTW, winning line from Mirage: I'm walking to peru
I think it ended up being a good movie. It was certainly strong, and I would argue that AOE is the only movie that came close to the level of characterization of the cast. There was a strong bot cast, and some good humans, and some good moments as well.
I loved it, glad it's finally here, and I will gladly see it again.
PS: for SS, on top of what we have coming so far plus what is leaked to finish the main casts, we now need a corrupted Airazor, Apelinq, Stratosphere, All the Mirages mentioned above, Exo-suit Noah, maybe a battle damaged Scourge with his face revealed, Scorponoks, maybe some retooled Freezers (3 pack maybe?), Haslab Unicron, and I'd still like Transit even if he ended up a deleted scene.