Transformers wasn’t something I grew up with… my son did. I have no preconceived notions about it. I will likely see it now based on the trailers vs. the little I knew of them from buying toys for Aric. Looks like a decent action flick.
I pray there is not some wise-cracking side kick robot there to provide the comic relief?

Wow.

i was never into Transformers, but this looks to be a good popcorn movie. I do not expect any deep character work, but it is a movie about giant robots from space based on a children’s cartoon…not exactly going to be Citizen Kane. I am also curious to see how well the trek writers can make this very dorky franchise into something that works with the general movie audience. But since it is a Michael Bay movie and not a JJ Abrams movie there is going to be a lot more gratuitous action (unlike the Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman MI3 which de-emphasized action over character compared to previous MI films)

Looks like a fun movie

Not every movie can be Citizen Kane, AP.

Wow, this looks like unmitigated crap… visually impressive crap, but crap nonetheless….

I don’t have any knowledge of Transformers either. But it reminds me of ID4, Mindless summer action romp.

“visually impressive crap”
Nicely put and my thoughts exactly! Amazing how they can edit and score a trailer to make even a dogshit premise like this look interesting!

As cool as this flick looks to me, if Kirk were to encounter the Decepticons he would have finished them in ONE episode.

Michael Bay, well then the movie couldn’t possibly be crap right? The transformers do have a photorealistic look for most of the shots. Shy Lebarf, can we transform him to a cancer cell and do the radiation treatment to eliminate this annoying young man?

And this relates to Star Trek……????

Can’t get into it. No matter how hard I try, it’s still Transfomers, that stupid japimation cartoon……

Don’t diss japanimation, old chap, sounds prejudiced. If we’re doing that it’s still a stupid commercial Hollywood flick. I believe the relevant criticism would be that it is still an adaptation of a stupid cartoon (which i quite liked).

Oh and it relates to Star Trek by being a sci-fi flick written by the same screenwriters, adapting an existing franchise and as AP points out it is interesting ” to see how well the trek writers can make this very dorky franchise into something that works with the general movie audience.”

Doesn’t require a massive leap to see the relevance.

God! The snobbery on display here!

A lot of us in the 30-ish age group grew up with Transformer toys and loved those cartoons. The film will probably sell very well to us on nostalgia alone, before kids get involved. The comicbooks, which were often very excellently written, did well enough in the UK that they were outselling 2000AD at one point in the 1980s.

Transformers took a toy franchise basic concept and turned it into something very effective in both animated and comicbook form.

And, indeed, Japanimation/anime is often more ‘mature’ in terms of writing and characterisation than many ‘grown up’ TV series. Try watching the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex for starters!

The great irony is that Michael Bay’s live action film will probably be less mature than the cartoons or comics!

Reminds me of Independance Day from a few years back.It’s got that same heavy handed treatment with a weak story.

Yawn.

And Anime is unwatchable.

Really Stanky?

Guess millions of other people must be wrong!

To dismiss all anime as as ‘unwatchable’ is as ignorant as saying all books are unreadable or all comedy is unfunny or all painting is degenerate!

i have a soft spot for big action machinery, big tanks and guns. bay is not a director known for nuance, but he certainly can assemble a stylish action sequence. so bring it on!

Crap. Too bad Michael Bay is a talentless idiot. The robot desing is terrible. This movie only appeals to we, the kids who grew up with “Transformers” toys, comics, and cartoons. What is this shit?

PS: The idea of 50 foot robots that need to hide themselves from humans is a ludicrous concept anyway. Huh?

Crap. Too bad Michael Bay is a talentless idiot. The robot desing is terrible. This movie only appeals to we, the kids who grew up with “Transformers” toys, comics, and cartoons. What is this shit?

PS: The idea of 50 foot robots that need to hide themselves from humans is a ludicrous concept anyway. Huh?

What they SHOULD have done:

http://home.comcast.net/~themichaelsmith/TransZ.mpg

Wait. Check the shelf, did someone grab the Tom Cruise “War of the Worlds” and retitle it? I’m sure many people will love this flick, precisely because it’s loud and confusing and doesn’t weigh you down with logic, continuity or humanistic characters. If you took all the original pieces from Nemesis and put Michael Bay in charge… you’d get Nemesis.

re: Post 14- This is exactly on point. I am a decade older, but a former co-worker whose in your agegroup was really excited with the advanced trailers that came out last year.

I can relate, but not with the material. So it’s all good!

If done with a serious approach, there are plenty of anime projects that would work well. (I’m using anime loosely.) Hell, they’re making Speed Racer and that was one of my standard jokes for years… Now I’ll switch to “Why not make StarBlazers into a movie…” (which I’d love, by the way.)

crap is right. I grew up with the transformers. THEY DID NOT TRANSFORM that way. As usual a rehash is not true to what the original creators had.

crap is right. I grew up with the transformers. THEY DID NOT TRANSFORM that way. As usual a rehash is not true to what the original creators had.

And I am sick of seeing their toys on the shelves taking shelf space away from other things like Battlestar Galactica.

That new yellow Camaro is pretty sweet. Much better looking than the retro Mustang.

Gobots go botty.

By the time Transformers came out I was about a year too old to get into another toy franchise.

Geez. Can you imagine what the postings are like over at the [fictional] TransformersMovie.com?

As long as there are complaints about the transformation sequence, I want to add my complaints about the size of the nacelle balls on the Transformers. Way out of scale. Never that big on the original. And the color of the front bumper? Don’t ask. And the way that the first one appeared to bump around like it was a model on strings? Sheeesh. That’ll start a fight.

/ducks and runs

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I, too, remember the original Transformers fondly, and must grudgingly admit I want to see this picture.

I also agree with Dom. Anime in most forms is much more mature and violent than most R-rated U.S. films. If you can find a non-Americanized copy of the original Transformers film, you’d be surprised at the level of violence in the film… as well as the inclusion of some well-placed explatives. And other works of anime, such as the film ‘Akira’ continue to influence the works of modern filmmakers. The Wachowski brothers were heavily influenced by anime and graphic novels when designing ‘The Matrix,’ for example.

StarBlazers… talk about something with multi-film adaptability! “There are only 200 days to save the Earth!!” What a blast from the past. The only thing that bothered by about StarBlazers (and many of the action-anime) was why did the heros always wait until they were almost completely destroyed before finally using the ultimate weapon (the Wave Motion gun, Voltron, etc…)? They must have taken a page from Picard and Riker’s tactical manual… maneuver around, take a dozen shots, fire one phaser blast, maneuver around some more, take a dozen shots, fire one more blast, repeat as necessary…

Here is a short list of films I would much rather spend my money on before this rabble of nonsense…

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Hostel: Part II
Ocean’s Thirteen
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Evan Almighty
Ghosts of Cité Soleil
Live Free or Die Hard
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Hairspray
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
The Simpsons Movie
The Bourne Ultimatum
Rush Hour 3
Mr. Bean’s Holiday
Halloween
Balls of Fury
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Resident Evil: Extinction
etc.

You get the idea…

Aaron R.

Personally, I can’t wait to see the new Gatchaman movie.

I liked Battle of the Planets/G-Force/Eagle Riders very much, but Gatchaman hasn’t yet been issued uncut on DVD in the UK.

The death of Optimus Prime was probably one of the bigger character death moments in my childhood, alongside Spock. It was also far more dramatic than James Kirk’s death a few years later!

I’m looking forward to reading the upcoming Star Trek manga. I read a sample in the latest Tokyopop preview!

As for heroes not using the ‘ultimate’ weapon until the last minute in anime . . . usually that involves the good guys dying. At that point things tend to get kinda mystical!

Like most of Micheal Bays movies The Island, and Pearl Harbor. Utter garbage. No reasonable plot,idiotic characters and unbeleivable action sequences that at times defies the laws of physics. I give the Island one credit though it did make you think about identity.

I’m not expecting much with two writers are famous for writing films with lots of explosions for people who have Attention Deficet Disorder.

“The Transformers did not transform that way.”

That was a cartoon. This is a live action movie and the need for a little more realism is expected. Both the cartoons and the movie fake it though, they never could make it work logically. It;s kind of like the car that transforms into George Jetson’s briefcase.

So it’s a boy and his super-dog. “Get the bad guys, Rex! Get ‘em!” Except the dog is a robot.

I am really, really, bored with the FX driven films, I think the Star Wars prequels really soured me that way

#21 TroyPo43

Nice clip. I think the ORIGINAL well-known, established, and obviously well-liked design ethic of the Transformers would have served this movie fine, as proved in your video link. I personally don’t like the new overly “reimagined” designs seen so far, just as I didn’t like say, the reimagined Sony “Godzilla” design compared to the well loved “Toho Studios” one. While both films have great effects, I just think the designs are inferior. The actual quality of some of today’s “blockbusters” aside, I await the DESIGN of the “new” TOS-era movie “Enterprise” with great interest, and not a little trepidation…

I’m looking forward to this film. Even more though, I am looking forward to the new HE-MAN movie! That one will rock!

I’m always open to something new until I see it. If I like it, great, if not, I just don’t watch it again. I played with Transformers as a kid in the 80’s, watched the cartoon, read the comics. The movie was even the first movie I was allowed to go to by myself with my friends.

Anyway, that was 20 years ago, and I can’t understand the outrage over the design change of what was basically an advertisement to sell toys. The new movie looks great (except that it’s a Bay movie, so we’ll see), and I think that if they put the exact same blocky designs onscreen from a 20 year old cartoon it would look stupid as hell.

I say get over it.

#40 Sithmenace

Like a lot of things in life, design is an “apples and oranges” situation. No-ones preference is more valid than someone else’s preference, and yours is as equally relevant as mine, and in this case I was just expressing mine. To put this into context, the “Transformers” franchise means nothing to me, as unlike yourself, I was not of a young age group to get into either the cartoons, toys, or other related merchandise, but can see how I may have been, had I been younger. However, I have recently read how LOTS of fans of that obviously popular property, while looking forward to a live-action blockbuster treatment, are also extremely unhappy that the new designs are so far removed from the original “blocky” ones. I just happen to be of the mind that obviously popular, long established designs needn’t necessarily be changed too much or reimagined from their original much loved look, just for the sake of change. As I say, it’s all highly subjective, but nowadays, just about any design, old or new, can look fantastic if the special effects utilised are indeed special. In this particular case, I’m sure that “Transformers” fans in general, as well as newcomers would have been just as likely to enjoy this movie had it showcased the original, well-known, “blocky” designs that previously appealed to such a wide range, IF it had been as lovingly well done as the clip shown on post #21… In my own estimation, one thing that “blocky” original cartoon design ethic version of a “Transformer” did NOT look in that short effects proposition, was stupid. I thought it was mighty fine in fact.