Michael Bay's Transformer - My Personal Review

Before I watched Michael Bay's Transformer. I watched many times of the trailers and even pre-reviews to the trailers. From the first day I saw their design, I was upset. Then I told my friends that I will still watch it and bringing 10% hope to the theater. And hoping something would revive my hope (at least hoping the story would surprise and impress me). I promised myself, since it's not gonna be the "cartoon story", so be it, lets treat it as a new cool Robot Transforming movie with humans. However, I also can't ignore the fact that this movie is related to Autobots and Decepticons since they are revealing Optimus Prime & Megatron. Therefore, my review to this movie, has no reason to walk away without relating it to the 80's original cartoon, yet considering logical reasons behind the changes too. Another words, I try not to be biased and being fair to all. haha.. =)
What I'm about to say is totally came out from my heart and also from my brain which influenced by the nature of the CG and my profession. haha... =P

Well well well.. here we go.

Point No 1.

Overall Feeling. Well, to be honest, it didn't actually "blow me away" as what I've been expecting after hearing so many good comments from my friends and forums. I just feel that my heart didn't hit any Climax throughout the movie. It's like What I See (from trailer) Is What I Get. No doubt, I'm impressed by the transformation, and all sorts of special effects. I'm not trying to compare with other CG animations , to be honest, my overall feeling, despite of good animation of robot fightings and great transformation & effects, I didn't see anything that can make it memorable for an audience like me. Am I expecting too high? No no no... I'm a very easily-pleased kinda guy. A good movie is always carrying a good timing of climax to raise audiences hearts to the top of their heads and make them feel "WOOOAAAH!!!! ..... ".



Unfortunately, I couldn't get any of that Woaahh thingy in my heart or any part of my body. If it's a good story telling or overall good movie, my reaction would be something like what I felt when I watched Ratatouille. I'm not trying to compare, I know both genres are different. But the concept of appreciating a good movie is about the same. Of course, it depends what things "Woaah " you during the movie. If some audiences just carry the heart of wanting to see just special effects from the movie, then I'm pretty sure that audience will eventually gain the super "Woaah". I'm just trying to be fair to everyone. But for me, the "Woaah" wasn't with me coz I was expecting something else. I was looking for good story tellling, I was also looking for some technical and non-technical things that left behind my old knowledge of this movie. Lets share all these so-called knowledge together in the next point, shall we? =)

Point No. 2

First of all, to be fair to Michael Bay, I totally understand his plot which trying to make this movie as real world and not cartoony type. To be honest, I like the blending of their mechanics (robots) with the real world environment. CG Technical speaking, this movie works perfectly nice. And I'm very impressed by all the technical aspects. Lets just forget about Transformers from 80s, shall we? Take a moment to forget the old cartoons for few seconds. Come back to this photo-realistic robot fighting scenes in the movie. My personal 2nd view is that, there were too many humans (in the city streets) distracting the excitement of the fighting action scenes.



Camera views and movements are not my favorites too. Well, some are good, but mostly not. Camera positioning are sometimes too distracting, for example, suddenly change to inner view of a coffee house, suddenly change to a POV (point of view) of certain unimportant humans in the scenes. Not that those camera views are bad itself, I'm opposing this methods coz most of the time it looks like it's cheating a lot of animations from the fighting scenes. From the moment they start fighting angrily during the last quarter of the movie till the moment where Megatron was defeated, I couldn't feel much of the excitement from the actions. Part of it is because of the camera movement and changes position too much. And also because most of the action fighting time, Michael Bay uses a lot of close ups. It totally turn me off coz I feel like it's a cheat to me. (*My personal view and analysis).



I really honestly frankly don't feel much climax of the impact from the actions, either because of the above reasons that I mentioned, or it's because the killing of the Megatron is too simple and fast. Ok, I'm a bit greedy, I was actually expecting a lot of cool fighting between Optimus & Megatron. I was hoping at least the final boss-fighting could impress me more. Unfortunately, it didn't. However, I need to emphasize again, the fighting sequences a.k.a. 3D animations are super great! But the plot of the fighting was weak. Hope you guys can differentiate what I'm trying to say. =)

Point No 3.

The plot of the story makes the whole movie is about Human. The main focus has somehow diverted to humans by the confusing story plot. My first impression till the end of the story, is that, this movie is about US Military Goverment having a new evolved war with outer space so-called aliens. This impression very quickly reminded me of the old movies "Independence Day". Only difference this time is that, some of the aliens are good and protecting humans. Old transfomers has the same similarity, but at least the cartoon makes very clean and clear picture to the audience that THEY (transformers) are the main characters and focus. But this movie makes otherwise. As an audience, I couldn't feel the "power of the existence" of Autobots and Decepticons in this movie. I just couldn't. It made me sad.



Like I said, the movie plot goes too much on detecting the "aliens" and too much on lovey dovey human scenes. I know Michael were trying to balance with the "Hollywood Action Movie style nature". But I guess it's not going quite well into this Robot movie. It was just a turn off. And this reminded me very quickly of another movie - "Titanic", which apparently whole story is not about Titanic the ship, but 70% was about lovey dovey Jack & Rose's You Jump I Jump story. Well, frankly Titanic - the love story was heart touching, and made everyone forget about commenting the irrelevant of the story with the ship itself. However, it wouldn't work this time for this Transformer robot movie. It just wouldn't work, at least for me.

Point No 4.

This is not much of a big point, but I just want to mention about this small little matter that I observed from the movie. When Megatron awakes from the frozen sleep, why did he say "I Am Megatron" as his first words? This type of "self-intro" usually appeals in cartoon. If Michael Bay was trying to copy that style from the old Transformer style, then I gotta say, it's not working for me. It's just sounding ridiculous after he makes everything photo-realistic. This question mark is still wandering around in my head and makes me laugh until now. Why Megatron said that like? I know it's just a small matter to a lot of audience, but it just somehow bothers me and gave me little turn off after realizing partial was same from 80s original cartoon, but main partials were not. Kinda confusing. Was Michael Bay expecting all the audience to watch it as a brand new title or should the audience still can relate it back to the original? Man, it's making me having hard time. May be just me. haha....

Point No 5.

Why why why? During the ending credit, they still wan to mention so much about human? They were interviewing those people for real or what? Well, no matter real or not, it's still making people think that this movie is totally about US Military Secret Forces or US government. They were over mentioning too much about government thingy and make the whole movie (even until the ending credit) look like non-transformer. I was so so disappointed to see what I saw during the ending credit "interview" thingy. They didn't even mention about Autobots or Decepticons. Isn't Transformer is about Autobots & Decepticons? Isn't Earth is just a secondary "assets" to this original story? Why this movie is making it otherwise so much? I'm not being stone-headed, but ffrankly, if they want to change whole transformer story into brand new story with not much relevance, they should have named this new movie as some other names like Robot Attack, or Evolution Crisis, or Independence Day II.

I'm sorry if I offended anyone who loves this movie very much. I was trying to like it but I just couldn't. I'm just trying to be myself and being honest to myself. I can't force myself to like the movie even though 99% of the Eartians like this movie. hahaaa... Well, at least I shared my reasons here with some logical points. hahaa.. but of course, different people may have different opinions and thinking. Therefore, some of you may not agree with me. But it's sometimes good to conflict, so that this world is colorful. Otherwise this world will be just one color if everyone thinks everything the same. Don't you think so? hahahahaa..... ok lar.. i pen off now. Thanks for reading till this point. I know it must be tiring for you now. hahahaa... Thanks again, and stay tuned. I will share more stuff in near future. Tata! Take care my friends! =)

~End~