Hey U Guys

How could it fail? With A budget of hundreds of millions, perhaps the most well known action director at the helm and with a property whose mythology, nostalgia and pure geek factor is second to none, Transformers 2 should have been epic. It wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

Hey U Guys has already reviewed the film but I felt I needed to post this to get my feelings written down and see if I could change my opinion of it, because I really really really wanted to like the film, in fact I wanted to love it and feel that all of my Transformers expectations were met.

This is why I went to see it at the IMAX in London (twice!) as I wanted the complete visual experience and see what the film had to offer in the biggest way possible.

I am a huge Transformers fan and fondly remember watching it with my friends (one being Jon) on Saturday morning in the 80's, I owned the toys and recreated scenes with them, and then there is the 1986 animated movie. I love that film with a passion and remember crying when Optimus Prime died.

So I have a bond and a deep love for Transformers; something that has been tarnished since walking out the cinema after watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and here's why - with a few spoilers so beware.

For me Michael Bay has not learnt a thing from the last movie where the action was hard to follow and the characters had little to no personality. He followed that up in ROTF with a bigger mess of unwatchable action, comedy that would be more suited to an American Pie movie and the introduction of new characters that were so gob-smackingly wrong for this film.

I'm not saying I wanted to watch a masterpiece of directing, acting or storyline as there is only so much you can do with a Large Robot action movie but with such a huge archive of transformers Lore to pull from I’m amazed of the rubbish this movie has produced when in the hands of another director it could have been amazing.

My main issues with the film are listed below, see what you think and comment if you agree or disagree, I’m really interested what others think as people did clap in the cinema at the end and I’m still thinking, Did I miss something?

Skid and Mudflap: The Twins. These were ridiculous creations to promote the release of a new car line by General motors and they produced the most annoying performance of the movie with racially stereotyped personalities and an awfully realised look with bug eyes and goofy teeth (one gold!). I saw one quote that summed them up perfectly "Car Car Binks", how true that is! The Twins storyline was pointless, their story arc should have gone to the appallingly underused Rachet and Ironhide and these Transformer veterans should have gone on to fight and beat Devastator, not a stupid cannon from a boat miles away - what a cop out!

Deceptigirl. What were you thinking Bay?! It was a terrible mistake to make a transformer change into human form as it completely ruins the mythology of Transformers. To have a robotic tale protruding from her arse and then mouth was ridiculous and very annoying to watch, utterly pointless and stupid and the attack on the car was probably the worst CGI action scene in the movie, too fast and completely unrecognisable.

Devastator. Although I’m glad this robot made an appearance in the film, again due to the terrible close up filming it was hard to watch. The build up to Devastator was wrong, you should have seen each individual robot fighting and getting all but defeated then have them form up to create Devastator. Instead you first see the vehicles and a close up mess of the formation to create Devastator. After that the shots of Devastator climbing the pyramid and pulling it to pieces was fantastic, using the cranes from vehicles and it’s suction weapon to remove the blocks of the pyramid from a distant shot is how I wanted to see it, and the rest of the movie, I will not talk of the Testicles…..

Decepticons. The desert scene where a dozen or so extra Decepticons arrive was strange, a real chance to introduce some old school Decepticons like Rumble Laserbeak, Thundercracker, Thrust, Dirge to name a few but they went with a generic looking Transformer to save costs. Another wasted opportunity.

Action/fight scenes. The thing that should have made the film stand out. I think almost every fight scene was ruined by the intense shaking camera and close up shots, I couldn’t work out what was going on. I haven’t a clue how Optimus Prime takes out the huge robot in opening scene or how he defeats the Fallen, it was a complete mess to watch and ruined the experience for me, although I was happy to see Optimus tear open a Decepticon’s head in two with his bare hands and stab others through the face with his Sword - a bit brutal for Optimus in my opinion but cool nevertheless.

Autobots. What the hell was/were Arcee? Three motorbikes all called Arcee? I didn’t have a clue. Also Sideswipe, an underused character who killed off an unknown Decepticon at the start in another messed up, puzzling scene.

A plus point. The IMAX showed off the Forest fight amazingly at times, a full screen battle Royale with a mouth watering fight of Optimus vs 3 Decepticons, at times the fight was shown in full scale where you see the size of the robots as they would be in real life punching scraps of metal of each other and this was a joy to watch and pure geek heaven, the camera was pulled back far enough so you could see the entire robot vs robot fight in all it’s glory and it worked, it really worked but then at times the camera would zoom in all over the place and before you know it - Optimus is dead.

And this brings me to my theory as to why I think the action scenes were so crazy and shaky and close up and a complete mess: Budget.

I believe Transformers cost so much money to make they had to make cuts in the CGI used, it showed in the lack of actual transformations you saw. In fact I can only really count on one hand the amount of times your saw a robot change into vehicle form or vice versa, other times it was done out of shot or behind scenery, like with the twins changing from Ice-cream truck to Chevy's, or with hideously close up transformations where you were prevented from seeing the money shots, the reason why we all love Transformers, the reason we fell in love with the toys and cartoon, WE WANT TO SEE TRANSFORMERS TRANSFORM, CLEARLY!

The Comedy too was annoying, oh boy - I despise this type of comedy. The Witwicky’s dogs humping, twice! Sam’s mum getting high, the little Decepticon Wheelie humping Megan’s leg, the swearing (this is a kids film right?) Sam’s comic sidekick Leo, the farting, all very cringy and just added to my fury.

Sam’s out of body experience and chat with the Primes was ridiculous.

What I did like from the film was the intriguing use of the Fallen character. I don’t mean I liked him in the film, in fact I hated him. I didn’t like “we’ve been here before” storyline, he was greatly underused, produced no real threat and to me the Fallen was not a transformer and could have been from any robot sci-fi movie.,but what I do really like about the character is that in Transformers mythology he is connected to the almighty Unicron who was his master. Now that would be amazing to set up the third film if it were to happen, the arrival of Unicron and maybe a setting set on earth and cybertron, in fact just remake the cartoon and get Christopher Nolan to Direct.

Also the introduction of the excellently voiced Soundwave and Ravage was a nice touch, I liked the inclusion of the changing sides Jetfire character, but not his voice which was stupid. This all showed that the writers really looked into the history of Transformers characters and added some vintage material to film but I wish they had tried harder as it could have been something amazing.

That’s my take – what did you think?