Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon Teaser

You're confusing Transformers with those mech suits in Avatar. Or with one of these.

The Nemesis is crash landed somewhere else in revenge of the fallen. Where isn't exactly clear. The ship in the trailer likely had an autobot aboard it from looks of it, so it's likely another vessel.

I thought the transformer on board looked like Alpha Trion.

Quantum of Solace was a dog due to the writer's strike as well.

In Trans2 aren't they in Washington and walk through a door to end up in Arizona? How does that happen, exactly? My brother the geography dude pointed out there's no Jordan-Egypt border for them to cross, which I wouldn't have known, but it's kind of obvious to even the dumbest person that you can't be on the east coast on one side of a door and then in the southwest desert on the other side without it being a magic door. I mean, I'm not looking for rocket surgery from these flicks, but come on, that's simply retarded. Nevermind your higher cognitive functions, they don't even care enough about your brain stem to pretend any of this makes sense.

Not for everyone. Keep in mind the biggest public complaint about Mission Impossible (the first one) was not that it didn't hew to the original series, or some of the action was over the top silly, or the acting was completely wooden. It was that the plot was confusing. A lot of people got lost during Inception and claimed it was too difficult to keep track of where anyone was, even though there were only three dream layers to keep track of for most of the movie: the car, the hotel, and the mountain (the other two layers you don't have to keep track of most of the time: the plane - the real world - and limbo).

Transformers could be better, of course. But there's no pleasing all the people who want "intelligent" action movies. Star Trek was a perfectly acceptable action movie that had a decent plot in it. It had flaws, but no moreso than basically every Star Trek anything, and the nit picky went berserk. Even Inception has its detractors, and frankly when you start nit picking Inception to the point of claiming its a bad movie (and not just a movie you happened to not like) I think its time to stop watching movies or get your own Youtube channel.

Different people like different things. I think most people will agree to that in theory, but in practice cannot conceive of people who are just so different from themselves that the very way they judge good and bad is completely different. They will acccept that some people will like rocky road more than mint chip, but cannot accept the fact that anyone could actually dislike mint chip.

I think to a degree there is an objective standard that can be used to judge whether a movie is crafted well, and by those standards the Transformers movies are crafted fairly well. They are fairly well shot, they don't play too many games with the camera, and the action is not hokey looking. The CGI tends to blend in for the most part, and the pacing of the movies beats are what you expect from an action movie. From there, it just very subjective as to whether there is enough story to carry the action, whether the transfomers are in the movie enough, whether Megan Fox has enough cleavage shots, all the things the popcorn buying public wants to see for their eleven fifty.


I'm sorry, did you say The Marine? I rest my case.

Die Hard is one of the best action flicks of the last few decades, granted. But I think its actually the Running Man that is the best movie to compare to Transformers. The Running Man is by no means a great movie. But it is what it is: a decent, watchable movie that is watchable because it very obviously isn't trying to be more than what it is. Its the most tongue in cheek action movie you'll ever likely see made, and it worked hard to be exactly that. I think the Transformers movies have to be judged on the same scale. They are not trying to be Inception, or Casino Royale, or Die Hard. They are trying to be what they are: big budget action movies with giant robots and the military fighting other giant robots while a kid, an optional squeeze, and the rest of the scooby gang provide the audience with an external point of view on the action.

You and I might know that most aircraft boneyards are in the Southwest, but the average person doesn't know that. I'm guessing the movie makers decided most people wouldn't notice few places in Virginia look like the Sahara.

Transformers is not the only movie to do that sort of thing, though. It is, admittedly, one of the more absurd transitions I've seen, given the radical change terrain. However, a similar one often happens when a movie shifts suddenly from a coastal scene to one with mountains in what is supposed to be seconds of real time. There are very few places where such a transition actually makes sense.

Uhh....it's in one of the novels or TPBs that takes place just before the 1st TF movie roughly when they show up. Or at least Bumblebee. We know Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, and Jazz all show up in 2007 cause we see them come in that movie.

I wasn't sure. I was thinking I was seeing Unicron (Bay's take on Unicron anyway) due to the "mustache" and all*, and thus why I thought it could be Nemesis.



*I've never read the original TF comics, so I'm not sure of any of that part of TF canon that Bayformers took pieces from.

What's dumb about that? It's not complicated by any means, but anyone who says Robert Patrick is not downright hilarious needs to have their head adjusted. Few of the characters are mere spear chuckers or cannon fodder and there's one exchange in the woods between the "dumb grunts" that's worth the price of admission. Dumb movies don't do that sort of thing. Yes, it's an action movie, but the cinematography is cool and the stunts are great and the explosions generous. In short, everything you want in an action flick. Plus brains. It's like the cinematic equivalent of the hot chick who likes to read Science Fiction novels.

Which is exactly how I tried to enjoy the Bayformers, but the sheer dumbness kept dropping me out of it. When I'm deliberately not thinking about a movie's story, it takes quite a lot to get that puzzled look on my face.



I think the best movie to compare transformers to is Iron Man. IM has all the cool toys, the explosions, the kinetic action scenes, even not-quite-as-giant robot analogues, but would anyone actually claim it's dumb? Sure, you can quibble with technical things that simply aren't physics-ly possible, but so what? It's a comic book action movie. But at no time does it ever make you say, "Why the hell is this happening and why the hell am I watching this?"



Oh yeah: no way ANY action movie is more tongue-in-cheek than the awesome Flash Gordon.



Admit it: that movie is so powerful that as soon as you saw that image you immediately heard Freddy Mercury sing, "Flash! Ah-ahhh! Savior of the universe!"

I would grant you that if they hadn't shown the outside of the building right before that. I thought the DVD had skipped scenes, honestly.

A spectacle has to look spectacular in order to be worth watching. Michael Bay's Transformers are far too over-greebled and busy in design. This makes them look terrible in general, and really bad in action sequences involving multiple robots - especially when the action sequence is poorly lit.

Any way, was that supposed to be Alpha Trion on the moon? Or a really small Unicron?

I don't really count Flash Gordon as an action movie per se. Its... I don't know what it is, but it couldn't be any more 80s awesome if Freddie Mercury swooped down at the end and started singing Another One Bites the Dust over Ming's ring.

the both of you have managed to somehow bring Flash Gordon into an argument about the awesome of action flicks, and tie it to Transformers. you are both now my heroes.

Say my name! Say it!

kazaam!

FLASH! Ah-aaaaaaah!

Jagi?

Well I can easily run my claws through this one hehe. This sort of thing happened plenty through out this film and the first actually. This happened to be the ONE INSTANCE you noticed what I like to call Simpsons geography. (referring the scene in the simpsons movie where Bart says four neighboring states which are no where near each other.) In first film the building sam runs into during the final scene was takened from multiple locations. The inside shots were from detroit while outside was from somewhere in PA. None of this was in LA, but since we are dealing with a fictional city called Mission City , we can't assume Faux LA wouldn't have these things.

In beginning of ROTF the highway in the shanghai battle was shots from LA not china. I'm sure this sort of things happens tons more but those are some quick examples that come to mind in just these too films.

On other hand to further justify the Simpsons geography...this isn't our earth but rather another dimension. May be this alternate reality which the timeline had giant alien transforming robots visit and build some sort of device to cover caused the pyramids not to be build in the same place as they were on our earth. May be due some odd reason there's sand dunes near the museum. (hey there's some giant canyon in middle of Iowa in Star trek heh.) Or may be we just say it's a freaking movies not a geography test and what is in same spot as real life isn't terribly important if it makes for a cool shot. Or you end up sounding like This!



There's a whole list of errors in the First film too. (Such as Mikaela identifies Bumblebee's engine as having a "high-rise, double-pump carburetor" but the engine shown has no such carburetor. ) Movies screw up techincal aspects all time as they're often off on subjects because written by writers not experts in said fields. (such as they flip big switches to kill the power in movies...there's no such BIG SWITCH to take down buildings as conveniently as that. They make all kinds of screwy things happens with guns. If you know about said areas watching movies can be extremely jarring.) Besides the explosion from space that could be seen all across the planet with sun light over every country shown in Armaggedon was far more jarring than anything shown in transformers heh.

Like the Wacker Drive sign in plain sight in the Dark Knight heh. Unless Gotham is the DC Movie verse's gotham in it's place......

daddy?? is that you?

The day Shonuff starts disliking Transformer clips is the day I look into nuclear shelters.