The Energon Pub

Julie85 wrote:To me this is sad, because I really love ROTF. I think it was an awesome movie and I don't understand why everyone hates it so much. The only thing I hated about the movie was all the sex talk; it is totally unnecessary and inappropriate for a movie intended to sell toys to kids.

I don't take these awards seriously anymore. It's all just opinion.

Opinion by people in the industry which does tend to make it somewhat more informed than a bunch of people who aren't.

what people are losing sight of here is that in terms of an actual deep, profound and truly epic movie, TF2 really does fail.

The problem with Michael Bay, as exemplified by the TFLAM franchise is that if he has a choice between toilet humour and explosions, or character/plot development and exposition, he'll practially always go for the former. That's not any kind of good movie, just a fun juvenile light and sound show.

Someone here tried to compare the work of Nickelback to Micheal Bay, but the difference is that for all the hatred, Nickelback's stuff does stand the test of time in at least some cases. Bay's stuff simply isn't that good.

The first movie fell short of what the franchise actually deserved in terms of quality storytelling, and the second one was even worse. Calling it the worst movie of 2009 isn't a bad call at all, in fact objectively it's pretty spot on.

Sure it took alot of money in the box office, but so what, The Jerry Springer Show gets plenty of ratings to the point where it's not going off the air any time soon either- that doesn't make it a quality TV show, just proves that there are alot of that type of demographic around.

IMHO, that was the point of this Rassie. The film was that bad and such a high money earner that someone needed to point out that takings do not make a quality film.

If it earned peanuts, in line with the quality of the film, then it probably would have gone under the radar- but with its budget, takings and what was actually delivered, what do people honestly expect here?

Toruk Makto wrote:I have to say I disagree with most critics on ROTF.

However, I take back what I said about Roger Ebert after all he's been through, fighting cancer, losing jaws. The poor guy can't even speak! That being said, I liked the movie, however, there were parts in it that simply were not appropriate for this genre. Doggy love. Devy balls (This hopefully will become a joke among the fandom). Fart jokes. Dickbot. DID. NOT. WORK. Like I said, I think that Ebert had a difficult time finding a plot. I think this is because of flailing robot pieces, explosions (100+) and the profanity and sexuality. Ebert is used to old movies. I disagree, but that's okay. To every man his own.

He's entitled to his opinion same as everyone else. But he crossed the line when he said anyone who like it was unevolved. Which is an attitude I see a lot of people have.

I think Megan Fox should have gotten worst actress... She is easy on the eyes, but not a very good actor.

Ok, when I first saw ROTF, I HATED it. While the robot designs of the first movie had me sceptical when I did see TF1, I loved it. Mr. Bay actually gave us a great movie. I actually liked Bad Boys and Armageddon(apart from that whiney song) and love the Rock, so I had wanted to give TF1 a chance. I'm delighted to say I was right.

Having seen the trailer for ROTF and seeing how great TF1 was, I had deliriously high hopes for TF2. That may have been a problem. After the first half hour, I was ready to leave. The extremely annoying Leo, the awful head designs of the Twins and the college/parents scenes, need I say more. I came out of the film fuming. My friends in work the next morning couldn't believe how much I hated it as they all know I'm a huge TF fan. I didn't even look at a TF website for the next week. I was ready to leave the franchise after quarter of a century.

Then, I read IDW's Defiance and Alliance and really enjoyed them, especially Defiance (loved Prowl). I started remembering the good parts of ROTF - Prime, Soundwave, Megatron, Arcee, Sideswipe, the various battle scenes. Then an old friend who I'd not seen in a couple years arranged to meet me. We said we'd go to the cinema and when I asked what she wanted to see, she said ROTF. I was sceptical but could not refuse her (believe me!). In we went and I was surprised to find I actually enjoyed it second time around because my expectations were lowered. I realised it was a lot better than I remembered. They actually made Simmons likeable. Plus Movie Op, Bumblebee and Arcee are likeable. I hated their G1 incarnations and by many standards, I could easily be seen as a Geewunner.

I ended up seeing it 5 times in the cinema. While I would never call it a great film, it's certainly not as bad as the media says.

The 3 problems with it as far as I can see are:

1. It didn't live up to the expectations set by the first film.

2. The humour doesn't work. Surprising, because I like the humour in a lot of Bay movies like Armaggedon, Bad Boys, the Rock and TF1(bring back Anthony Anderson for TF3 and drop Leo). Loved the parents in TF1 but they just didn't work in the context they were presented in in ROTF.

3. The Jetfire/Seeker backstory seems to be missing something.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Hopefully TF3 will restore the faith of the disenfranchised. I actually liked the leaked treatment from a few months back.

Evil_the_Nub wrote:

Toruk Makto wrote:I have to say I disagree with most critics on ROTF.

However, I take back what I said about Roger Ebert after all he's been through, fighting cancer, losing jaws. The poor guy can't even speak! That being said, I liked the movie, however, there were parts in it that simply were not appropriate for this genre. Doggy love. Devy balls (This hopefully will become a joke among the fandom). Fart jokes. Dickbot. DID. NOT. WORK. Like I said, I think that Ebert had a difficult time finding a plot. I think this is because of flailing robot pieces, explosions (100+) and the profanity and sexuality. Ebert is used to old movies. I disagree, but that's okay. To every man his own.

He's entitled to his opinion same as everyone else. But he crossed the line when he said anyone who like it was unevolved. Which is an attitude I see a lot of people have.

Except that when you have quotes like this:

Liftgate wrote:I'm not going to go into this nonsense too much, but if you're a person who thinks this movie is the worst thing you've ever seen, then apparently you HAVN'T SEEN VERY MANY MOVIES.

Then it does give that argument some merit, especially when you have some people who liked it trying to defend it as either being anything other than mindless and culturally worthless entertainment or by claiming it was the best it could be.

If people love it, fine, but treating it as anything more than what it is, is like claiming that The Jerry Springer show is the height of deep and profound intellectual discourse.

Windsweeper wrote:Then, I read IDW's Defiance and Alliance and really enjoyed them, especially Defiance (loved Prowl). I started remembering the good parts of ROTF - Prime, Soundwave, Megatron, Arcee, Sideswipe, the various battle scenes. Then an old friend who I'd not seen in a couple years arranged to meet me. We said we'd go to the cinema and when I asked what she wanted to see, she said ROTF. I was sceptical but could not refuse her (believe me!). In we went and I was surprised to find I actually enjoyed it second time around because my expectations were lowered.(my emphasis)

2 things here- you're talking about IDW here and not Michael Bay. The work they did with the Dead-Furmanverse IMHO was what should have been the movie-verse plot or something incredibly similar. What IDW have done with their movie-verse books is essentially taken a crap sandwich and made it fairly tasty, but that doesn't change the fact that the movies epically fail.

Plus you said it yourself, to enjoy the movie, you had to lower your expectations. That says it all, and it's something that everyone keeps saying when trying to sway the haters- essentially "just go watch it- it's total crap, but you just have to subject yourself to watching total crap, even though you might have standards with what you watch".

Now if people want to watch Jerry Springer, then fine, some people like mindless and trashy entertainment (and with the toilet humour for the sake of toilet humour at the expense of characterisation, ROTF does fall into that category). Did it make alot of money sure, but Jerry Springer and Big Brother had long runs too- in the case of Jerry Springer, it's still going when it has no redeeming features. But at the same time, people need to stop pretend it's something it's not- namely a quality and critically acclaimed film, or this film is anything remotely close to the pinnacle of what the most critically acclaimed Transformers film possible would view like.

Bottom line, for me is, why did we get Bay? Batman got Nolan, Superman got Singer, they all got directors with renowned flair and creativity, regardless of what you think of the product they delivered, they went for top drawer, and for me, it showed. Transformers, Bays had 2 attempts and he got worse by the 2nd. Transformers was ready and RIPE for the big screen, the world wanted it, so Bays mediocrity STILL made money. If something like UP can get so much praise and be so lovingly put together, why can't Transformers? What have we done wrong? The forest fight in ROTF WAS a good part, the 1st hour i wish i'd missed, and a lot of the rest. The script writers need to take some blame here too, thats if ROTF wasnt rewritten a zillion times and taken out of their hands. We want a film we can be proud of, not something with a few 'good bits' and the odd G1 reference to shut us up. Give us a film, show us some craft, no cheap gags and gimmicks.

Edit: Sorry. Posted in the wrong place.