Holy crap, Transformers 3 didn't suck!

[RickZarber]

Just got back from the premiere. Still kind of blown away.

I mean, it's not a great movie. It's still full of flaws. But it is so much better than what we have previously been given.

Shakey cam? Still present, but no longer omnipresent. Nice slo-mo tracking shots are more the order of the day, especially when it comes to robot fights.

Annoying characters? Sam's parents are kept down to three scenes in the whole movie. Annoying racist Autobots? Gone. There are now two little mini-auotbots, but they're just dumb rather than grating. John Turturro? Somehow more eccentric than ever, but yet much more restrained. Not quite sure how that works, but I didn't feel like punching him for most of this movie, so there's that.

Horrible "comedy"? Kept to a minimum, comparatively. Maybe only 5 or 6 whole scenes of the movie are devoted to the kind of clumsy dreck we endured for most of movie 2. Ken Jeong has a few scenes that I found painful (that whole sequence, really), but it's over fairly quickly. And even better, there's some comedy bits that actually work! Crazy, I know.

Shia Labeouf? Actually has some character progression as he goes from whiny bitch from the other movies to ballsing the fuck up and caving in some skulls.

WTF Plot? Mostly fixed! Sure, there are still planet-sized plotholes, but at least it is constantly moving in one, unified direction, and without randomly dropping plotlines.

Plus, you've got Leonard Nimoy, Alan Tudyk, Frank Welker getting more than one line as Soundwave, and freakin' John Malkovich. (Have you ever seen Bored to Death? Malkovich is basically Ted Danson from that.)

And to top it off, some of the action scenes are actually flat-out spectacular. Optimus Prime kicks the required amount of ass. And rips away the required amount of faces. Go see this movie in IMAX if you can.

My only real issue with this movie is the almost (and it's an important almost!) completely useless female eyecandy. Shameless panty shots, long lingering glances at slightly-parted lips... Ugh. Spends most of the movie in need of being rescued? Check. However, actually has at least an attempt at a personality, which still rates an improvement over Megan Fox. Just not much of one.

Anyways, I was pleasantly surprised, and I hope people will give this movie a chance, as it actually lives up to the dumb summer blockbuster ideal. Why couldn't we have had it like this for the other two.....

I think this fills my thread-starting quota for a while.

[Magus]

Haha, I like how your spoilers are not really spoilers but just "spoilers" about how characters killed other characters without actually listing which characters are killed.

I may end up seeing this by accident because it may be playing alongside Super 8 this weekend. We shall see if it is better than the first two (not too high a wall to scale, I'd say...)

[Fifthfiend]

Are all the fights still shitty incomprehensible cgipiles?

EDIT: For purposes of calibration - what did you think of Revenge of the Sith as compared with Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones?

[RickZarber]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

Are all the fights still shitty incomprehensible cgipiles?

I'd say it's about half and half. Whenever they brought in the slo-mo, it looked amazing. But also, I saw this in 3D IMAX and had to sit in the 4th row, so my opinions on what was distinguishable might be kinda skewed. (Though actually, this is the first 3D movie I've ever seen where I was glad I saw it that way. Perfectly naturalistic use of the technology; nothing came flying out of the screen at you. And there are some crazy camera movements of diving through things then twisting around and looking at other things that fly by and oh what's down there? that really made it work.)

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

EDIT: For purposes of calibration - what did you think of Revenge of the Sith as compared with Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones?

That's a fair analogy for TF3, as I do think RotS is a cut above the others, but it only completely works if I hatehatehated Attack of the Clones. Honestly, I'd take any of the SW prequels over the first two Transformers movies. I'd probably have to see this one at least one more time to hold it in proper perspective.

EDIT: Yeah, I guess it's good to keep in mind that I'm not claiming this is a terrific movie or anything. It's just the first Transformers film where I came away feeling like the positives outweighed the negatives.

[phil_]

We had an "early" showing of this today. Nine people came. I had to stay for an extra two-and-a-half hours at work for nine people to watch this. And now we have an earlier show so we can fit in three screenings. Meaning I have to wake up and go to work two hours earlier.

Fuck this movie.

[Magus]

Originally Posted by RickZarber

EDIT: Yeah, I guess it's good to keep in mind that I'm not claiming this is a terrific movie or anything. It's just the first Transformers film where I came away feeling like the positives outweighed the negatives.

One question, if it's not too much of a spoiler: does the transforming Mountain Dew vending machine that fires cans of Mountain Dew at people* make a come back in this film?

*I believe he was called Carbonator. Not sure if this is canonical to the greater Transformers movie-verse at large.

[RickZarber]

Heh, nope!

In fact, most of the minor (or smaller) characters from the previous films are notably absent here.

Returning you have Shia, the parents, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Josh Duhamel, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Wheelie, Megatron, Starscream, and Soundwave. And I think that's it. Everyone/thing else, including formerly dropped plotlines, have vanished without a trace (or even a mention).

[Lumenskir]

My problem is, once I see "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," I can never see it for the first time again.

[Aerozord]

I dont know Rick, by the sounds of it your expectations were set so low thanks to the first two movies that even a movie that would qualify as bad by normal movie standards would be considered good in comparison to the other two.

[RickZarber]

Difficult to say. That may be the case, and it may take time/repeat viewings to put it into perspective. But even without relation to the previous movies, I was having a good time through most of this film's (admittedly overlong and slightly bloated) runtime. And that's all I really ask for in a popcorn flick. The other two had me cringing too much to even allow that.