Transformers 2 is not a movie worth seeing. Actually...it's not even a movie. It's about 5 seconds of cheesy, over-colored CGI.

Now...I hated the first movie. I also did not grow up watching Transformers. T1 was my first experience with Transformers, T2 being the second. Basically, I'm an unbiased, uninformed viewer just goin to the movies to watch an entertaining piece of cinema.

Let's go into depth as to why the movie is garbage...

The acting from the first film was already complete garbage, and in this movie, even as Megan Fox herself brooded about, there's more CGI action and less dialogue/acting (which says a lot since there's very little CGI amazement). Not only is there less dialogue, but it's still just as garbage. The parents of Shia LeBouf shouldn't have even been in the film. They were so god **** annoying. The mom's attempt at being funny failed, and Shia LeBouf's father wasn't a convincing father; he was a convincing step father who would have raped his son.

Shia is a garbage actor; nothing else needs to be said. Simply put, he is a young Nicholas Cage or Ben Stiller; he acts the same in every film he is ever in. Now, before anybody says, "Leave Nick and Ben alone! The Rock and Tropic Thunder were awesome movies!", you need to realize that, yeah, those two movies were good! But not the acting on Nick and Ben's part! Megan Fox is still the mouth-breathing malignant tumor to acting as she was in the first film. We got some Mexican loser who might as well have been a ham sandwich, because that's about all his worth is in the film. He does nothing important. John Turturro and The Twins are the only badasses in the film.

So that's acting; non-existent, and garbage when it, unfortunately, is.

The Transformers

Remember X-Men? Remember how in the first two films there was equal time spent on each character? So you could pick a favorite? Distinguish their fighting style? Their motives?

Don't expect that type of character development for the Transformers, the REASON you're watching the travesty to filmmaking. You'd think that, ever since the waste that was the first film, they'd explain some character origin of the Transformers the second time around since they didn't the first? Well, you'd be wrong.

Here's the summarized character origin flashback:

"Being a Prime is a title, and Optimus is the last living one."

That's it. Nothing on MegaTron, or Bumblebee, or anything else. The Transformers are from their own planet, have parents (or at least, successors), and yet miraculously, none of them exhibited any emotions except for being robots, which is the stereotype they OUGHT to have avoided, but fulfilled instead.

The CGI

Michael Bay

Summary

Instead of go on and on, I'm just going to summarize the film...

"Hi, I'm a generic military man. When we captured and killed a decepticon, it said an overly cliche, 'The Fallen will rise again.' Instead of ignore his words, or treat it as a bluff, we just take his words as the verbatim truth, and LAWL, who woulda thought that a Decepticon, conveniently named The Fallen (wtf kinda original name is that?), would actually rise up later oooooon?!

Hi! I'm Sam Witwicky! (wtf name is that?) I'm going to college! Woooo HOOOOO! For some reason, I still maintain my EXTREMELY unrealistic relationship with Megan Fox, I get caught "cheating", and yet, not even 30 minutes later we're making love by the fire! So much for a believable breakup!

Anyways, while back at college, wouldn't ya know it? MY PAST CATCHES UP TO ME AND THE DECEPTICONS ARE COMING BACK! NUUUUU! So I drag Loser Mexican, Mouth-Breathing Abortion Megan Fox, and fantastic and famous actor John Turturro with me.

We then go to the Smithsonian (as a nod to another terrible actor: Ben Stiller) and find a Decepticon, whom, apparently is too old to function, and he switches sides! How convenient!

We're in Egypt now for some inadequately explained reason, and who knew? MegaTron, Destroyer, and The Fallen find meh! NUUUUUU! So the military drops off the dead body of Optimus (oh yeah, Optimus dies. Spoiler alert), and I run through explosions to deliver him the cocaine of youth.

While on my way, I am hit by an explosion's shockwave, and am knocked unconscious...

*the following DOES happen and is not an exaggeration*

While Shia LeBouf is asleep, he has a vision about the past Primes, who say, and I quote:

"Place the spark inside Optimus' chest. It is, and always has been, your destiny."

And then I (Shia LeBouf) woke up, turned my Cocaine of Youth into a gigantic dagger...spark plug...thing...and insert it into Optimus' chest...

yada yada Optimust comes back to life conveniently enough

yada yada Optimus fuses with this plane decepticon to form super Optimus

yada Optimust yada rips off the face of The Fallen and impales him with his fist yada

Film ends."

Seriously, wtf is that ****? THE MAIN VILLAIN OF THE FILM HAS 1 FIGHT SCENE THAT LASTS ALL OF 1 MINUTE AND HE DIES MERELY BY BEING IMPALED THROUGH THE CHEST?!"

Oh, btw, spoiler alert =)

Did you watch Transformers the old Gen 1 Cartoons, or read the old Gen 1 Comicbooks?

I stand by my previous comments - it was a great Transformers Episode - Transformers Transformed, stuff blew up, Giant Robots smashed stuff.

All of that = Win.

Antigoth said:

Too much Shia for my tastes though.

You are right, it was a travesty in filmmaking. The twins were funny in some parts but really annoying. The only good stuff in the movie is the above mentioned John Turturro and one live... "Fine I'll take you all on!" not a bad fight scene.

Only one point to make, since you mentioned you did not watch the original cartoons. Jetfire (the old Decepticon) was neutral, joined the Decepticons, and then left to join the Autobots... so it makes perfect sense in the movie.

Ender Dragon said:

He wasn't neutral per se. He was created by Shockwave when he stole the Matrix of Leadership, so he was technically created a Decepticon, but the Matrix imbued him with a sense of honour/goodness so he wasn't comfortable doing Decepticon things, he defected to the Autobots where he wasn't trusted for a while until he proved himself and was formally initiated into the Autobots by Optimus Prime by the Right of Autobrand.

(Gotta love those Transformers annual comics)

I'll say one thing about Transformers 2. It paints the Autobots in a much better light than it did in TF1, which had every single Autobot (yes, even Prime) getting their arses handed to them by the Decepticons. Seriously, Jazz gets murdered in 6 of his 10 seconds of screen-time, and Optimus gets b*tch-slapped by Megatron until plucky young human hero Sam saves the day. Ironically enough this is actually closer to the truth than generic american/english audiences would like to consider, since the Autobots weren't trained warriors at first like the Decepticons were, hell Optimus was a medic before he became Prime.

Now in TF2, just before Optimus dies, he's whoopin' pretty much every Decepticon on earth at once, Megatron, Starcream, the Constructicons, he's fighting them all single handedly and winning . The little kiddies would love that since they want an invincible hero but seriously, Prime's good but he's not that good, he can at best fight on even ground with Megatron, any other remotely powerful Decepticon (Starcream) jumps into that fight then Prime is shanked.

That being said, it was a movie worth watching once then never again, especially since in a 2.5 hour long film, there was a straight hour where there wasn't a Transformer shown on screen besides the geriatric Jetfire who didn't fight anyone, just farted when he tried to shoot a missile, the twins weren't even shown outside their vehicle modes. I didn't want an epic story of human triumph, I wanted to see giant transforming robots beating the ever-loving hell out of each other.

Antigoth said:

I'm not sure if I specified...

Cowboy Bebop the movie. Anybody seen it? Anybody who is a fan of the series? Anybody who is NOT a fan of the series? What did you more than likely notice about the movie:

IT'S ENJOYABLE. And not just to fans of the series, but to average joes who just randomly watched an anime movie.

What movies such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, any fighting video game-turned-movie (including Dragon Ball Evolution) fail to realize is that just because you make a video game movie doesn't mean anybody will care (as in, including the people who play them).

Spiderman? X-Men 2? Iron Man? All comic books, ALL million dollar-making summer blockbusters. They took something generally revered as "nerdy", and made it appealing to just about anybody (Dark Knight anyone?).

Although not all video game movies get as much production value as Marvel's movies do, that doesn't excuse them from poor writing, cheesy acting/action, and the whole plethora of wrongs that happen that make me, an ARDENT fan of not just Resident Evil, but it's chronology, gag and rip on people who approve of the RE movie franchises.

What's this got to do with Transformers?

No. I have not seen the cartoon. Ever. I saw Beast Wars...if that counts? But no, I have never seen Transformers, and had no idea it had a comic book series.

Ergo, I'm not saying, "It sucked because it didn't follow the show/comics", I'm saying that I, an unbiased, uninformed viewer (although I guess that's unfair since I thought the first film was utter trash and a half), SHOULD be able to go in, sit down, watch the movie, and be thoroughly entertained.

And don't say, "Well, isn't it good as just a mindless action movie?"

No, because there wasn't much action! (but it was extremely mindless! =D)

No, you know what IS mindless action? Megaman NT Warrior is mindless action. Every episode is Megaman beating the Hell out of some virus, and then when he meets his match, inevitably, he will fuse with a friend of his to make a new, super duper Megaman, and beat the opponent. While that might SOUND like transformers, the action in Transformers was hard to distinguish. It looked like paint sploshing together and metal clanking against the walls. It didn't even give off the optical presence of being action. It was but mere noise.

I don't know if Transformers have distinctive fighting styles, or if they're basically Gundams (guns and the occasional swords for some reason), but if they were meant to fight, it sure as Hell passed by me.

And as has been said, it's a movie to see once (if at all), and never again. There's no replay value. Hell, the ending of the film IS THE SAME AS THE FIRST FILM! WHAT KINDA S--T IS THAT?

Smazzy - Nice... but rather than Youtubing it, I'd rather just pop the DVD in. (Yep... I've got the TF:tM DVD)

~~~

Shinji - Why I'm refering to the G1 Comic/TV shows - They all end remarkably the same. They all have bad voice acting, bad animation.

I mean seriously - they got the same Voice Actor who played Prime in the original cartoon to reprise the role for the movie. When they were scripting / shooting the first transformers, they even asked Fans to write in their favourite lines they thought Optimus Prime would say.

While the G1 Transformers Comics were produced by Marvel - in no way shape or form were they well written, or well drawn. (The DW/IDW Transformers Comics are a different story all together at least in terms of Art.)

They were a Comic book based off of a toy line, designed to help shill the product. The reason why so many transformers die in the original animated movie was to help Hasbro transition from the G1 line to the G2 line. (If they're dead, that means Timmy has to buy new toys!)

When you compare Batman / Ironman - Batman has had writers such as Frank Miller & Neil Gaimon - visionary writers in the Comics industry.

Ironman has been one of the staples of the Marvel Universe, with a devoted fanbase, and at the core of the book, a tale about characters - or a character - Tony Stark.

For Ironman...Jon Farveau is a fan. He wants to tell a story, and be true to what ole'shellhead was about.

Batman Begins and the Dark Knight went where Batman fans had longed for Batman to go. Somewhere dark, and serious.

While the Adam West Batman we all remember as BAM! and POW! there is so much more to the Batman genre.

Ultimately Batman/Ironman are two really great properties that are about characters.

Look at the Incredible Hulk - even with Ed Norton as Banner, it was a fun "Hulk Smash!" movie, but I'm noticing you're not citing it in the same breath as Ironman.

Ultimately Transformers is exactly what the original Transformers was - a vehicle to shill toys to little kids. (And a few adults who are trying to find new Transformers that compare to the old ones.)

~~~

Side note - the fact that they're already starting to do TV spots for GI Joe, and we're over a month away from the release of the movie - it's going to suck, and suck hard, and they're hoping for a Gonzo opening weekend to try and recoup the costs as much as possible.

Antigoth said:

As much as that would be awesome, we're not related.

Antigoth said:

You mean in a movie, right? Cause i just got done reading my 1986 copy of The Dark Knight Returns and he does some pretty dark stuff in there, lol.

And there is something just dark about someone the president has to call superman out of retirement to hunt down..."

but if you mean in film, then yeah. Beetlejuice was more of a cocky prick than a dark knight, and the other batmans were just terrible.