I've been meaning to post up my reaction to his movie but never really got the chance to do so do to work. I watched this movie with my friend Andrew and his associates for his birthday at Studio Movie Grill-- which was my first time officially there. The environment seemed somewhat seedy for a movie joint and I wasn't all too impressed with their entré options. I tried to choose something that they couldn't/shouldn't be able to fuck up too badly and it seemed I made the right choice. Couldn't say the same for another group participant who apparently got sick shortly afterwards.
*BEWARE OF SPOILERS BELOW*
There, I said it.
Synopsis:
The plot seems to take place 100 years after the 3rd installment of the movie, changing the scope and contiguous nature of the movies up to this point. Before, the movies primarily revolved around around the Witwickies-- the closest allies to the Transformers, and more specifically, the Autobots. This movie is a complete game changer, refusing to acknowledge any dealings they had with them, as if they were living in some alternate universe and had never even dealt with them before. Instead, Optimus ventures our with a completely new human family while vaguely alluding to "human betrayal", possibly being sold out by the Wittwickies. Again, it is not clear.
In this movie, all the previous Autobots (save for Bumblebee) were snuffed out as expendable characters reuniting the audience with a sense of lingering sense of confusion and uncertainty-- particularly with these Godawful replacements-- Hound, a retired old veteran, Crosshair, a duplicitous and somewhat misbegotten autobot, Drift, a samurai-like autobot with a terrible Engrish voice (*cringe*), and some others. Brains comes back though to instill catharsis, luckily. He's probably my favorite of the bunch, along with the Dinobots. By the way, who the hell are they again? Oh yeah, we don't know because there was never any clear introduction to who they were or why they were captured-- at least not in the movie unless I missed something.
Anyway, the human characters played by Mark Wahlberg, apparently discovers Optimus Prime's remains after a 100 years of dormancy. The storyline is essentially about their struggle to overcome the many and varied villains that seem to be out to get humans/autobots (namely Autobots).
Graphics: 5/5
The movie itself was...graphically intense and amazing-- as to be expected. The details of the CGI to the sound effects worked perfectly together to create a realistic experience of giant robots duking it out with one another.
Music: 3/5
Nothing as memorable as the first few series for some reason. It served an utilitarian purpose. This may have less to do with the actual quality of the music and more to do with the quality of the movie itself.
Plot: 1/5
"Okay, what the fuck is this shit?"-- is what I kept on asking myself. I kept scouring the movie and its many pretty flashy CGI searching for a tangible/cohesive plot but could find none. This installment, by far, was the worst of the 4 Transformers. Not only does it completely do away with the previous three movies' motifs/plot, it relegates the culmination of "graphically vivid yet plotless" movie to a whole new height. At first, I -thought- by watching the movie that the autobots had been rejected by humanity due to the many and varied clashes against Autobots and Decepticons. When I saw the preview and saw those huge ships coming for Prime and his crew, I assumed these were tied to Megatron-- especially when I saw the Dinobot spewing flames. I assumed this was a struggle against Decepticons and Autobots and, perhaps, Mark Wahlberg was a descendant of the Wittwickies.
Nope. Totally wrong. He has nothing to do with them! In fact, as I said before, the movie makes no mention of them. They were one of the most important figures in the movie and all of a sudden, the movie disregards its main protagonist of the previous three series without even explaining what happened to them. I felt that truly weakened the story. Not to mention, I was confused who was the main character in the story; it did a poor job fleshing out Wahlberg under than "Oh the GOVERNMENT is after him and wants him/his daughter/her boyfriend DEAD." Oh yeah, there's Megatron too who kinda gets thrown into the fray as Galvatron before disappearing towards the end.
There's just... too much happening and not a clear enough direction of where it's all going to but SOMEHOW-- almost 3 plus hours later-- it ends on an equally confusing note: the "creators" of Optimus want him dead. Huh? I thought the 'creators' for all Autobots was Cybertron. Is there some other progenitor that we never heard of? Why am I not surprsied?
Overall Rating: 3/5
Pretty pictures and long movies do not make a movie great. Having a cohesive plot that makes sense does, however. I'm pretty disappointed in their meandering storyline but thought the graphics were amazing. Not much more than visual porn for graphic enthusiasts.
Not the best movie I've seen. Also, not the worst. I figure that overall it's on-par with the Dark of the Moon.
Not going to go too much into the movie for those who haven't seen it yet, but I will say that they got some good voice actors, good face-time with the bots such that you actually care about them and Ponies have officially invaded the Transformers franchise.
I'm still not sure about Grimlock's robot mode looking like a samurai or mongol hordesman. And "Strafe"? Really? You couldn't just remove the second head and call him Swoop? I am, however, pretty intrigued by Slash and Scorn though.
