Transformers 2007

[Tyrant]

  This'll have to do:

 


   If you want to see giant robots pounding the crap out of each other, that's exactly what you're going to get.

[Bob]

That's kinda the point: No one was asking for Underdog, but a few were asking for Krypto.

Gee, I was asking for Underdog live action film......
..... and a live action Beavis and Butthead
..... and a live action Alley Oop
......and a live action Mark Trail

Then again, I DID have a lot of booze this weekend.

[J-Proof]

Dude - no love for Underdog?

I saw the preview and busted a nut! You have to look at who the movie is targeting and if it will satisfy the audience... When the powers that be started pre-pro for Underdog, I'm willing to bet they decided on the following:

"We'll make a movie to entertain little kids with a revisited classic idea."

Rather than: "Let's take Underdog and create a movie to satisfy a generation that has since grown up and probably won't reap as much enjoyment from it as the tons of little kids who would enjoy seeing a talking dog superhero."

Honestly - if you apply the rule to Transformers of just enjoying what's presented to you and considering who the target audience is, then you have to do the same for other revisited topics. For example: Who doesn't like Disney's animated Robin Hood? It's totally fun! Yet it departs from the original idea immensely, and it's kiddied-up a lot. So what?

[torgosPizza]

I saw the preview and busted a nut!

Ummm... yeah, I'm not sure you're using that phrase correctly here.

Unless you really, REALLY like Underdog. Hmm.

[Tyrant]

Honestly - if you apply the rule to Transformers of just enjoying what's presented to you and considering who the target audience is, then you have to do the same for other revisited topics. For example: Who doesn't like Disney's animated Robin Hood? It's totally fun! Yet it departs from the original idea immensely, and it's kiddied-up a lot. So what?

 Oh, I won't argue that point at all. I'm just really glad I'm not or have ever been an Underdog fan that I'd choose to see this movie for any reason other than the inevitable Rifftrax that will result.

  That said, I'm looking forward to the Voltron, Thundercats and G.I.Joe movies. Even if they suck, it'll be FUN!

[torgosPizza]

I can hear the "Voltron in Name Only" comments already. Directed by Peter Jackson.

DAMN YOU PETER JACKSON! Taking a mildly entertaining cartoon I enjoyed as a small child (which is nowhere near as good now that I'm an adult) and re-imagining it!

[Tyrant]

I can hear the "Voltron in Name Only" comments already. Directed by Peter Jackson.

DAMN YOU PETER JACKSON! Taking a mildly entertaining cartoon I enjoyed as a small child (which is nowhere near as good now that I'm an adult) and re-imagining it!

  So does this mean Voltron will be 8 hours long with the themesong performed by Enya?

[torgosPizza]

One can dream...

[Tyrant]

  I have to say that it would be really sweet to have an Epic giant robot drama on the big screen like that. Peter Jackson's the man!

[J-Proof]

Voltron directed by Christopher Nolan would be a great movie.... haha

We have to recognize that a ton of the anime cartoons we got here in the US were Japanese reject cartoons made for five year olds lol. The Pokemon card thing -- omg -- when that stuff got popular I just kept rolling my eyes. Grown men at the Art Institute walked around with those pikachu ears on their heads.... plush hats initially intended for grade school students =P

If they made a Voltron movie, they'd HAVE to reimagine just about /everything/ to give it just a little bit of an appeal =P

[Junkyard]

Actually, the Underdog movie may be good enough on it's own, but they would have done just as well to call it Crypdo.

[torgosPizza]

  I have to say that it would be really sweet to have an Epic giant robot drama on the big screen like that. Peter Jackson's the man!

Yeah... now, where can we get some giant loving robots?

[rocket9]

Voltron directed by Alfonso Cuaron or Alejandro Inarritu. yeeeeeah.

[Bob]

Wow, CNN hates it....

Review: Dim 'Transformers' thuds with
Human side missing from Michael Bay movie

Reviewer: Overlong work is "Herbie Goes to War"

By Tom Charity
Special to CNN
     
(CNN) -- The most expensive toy commercial ever made, "Transformers," Michael Bay's live-action film about the surprisingly durable Hasbro product line, is long, loud and altogether less than meets the eye.


Optimus Prime, a good Transformer, looms over the landscape in "Transformers."

1 of 2  A blockbuster for 8-year-olds -- and, I guess, those older boys who never grew up -- "Transformers" will buzz its youthful demographic (the effects are incredible) but leave the rest of us wondering if Hollywood could possibly aim lower.

For the uninitiated, the Transformers are sentient machines from outer space. To pass undetected on Earth they assume the form of everyday consumer objects -- mostly, here, American trucks and cars -- but in their true configuration they are colossal robot warriors with the firepower to match.

The Autobots are the good guys, led by sanctimonious Optimus Prime. Then there are the evil Decepticons, led by Megatron, whose role is basically to blow stuff up.

Despite their name, the Decepticons show themselves first, with a devastating (and oh-so-topical) strike on a U.S. military base in Qatar. It's not the massacre of the troops that troubles the Pentagon so much as a stealth hack attack on their computer network. Could the Iranians have developed such cyber smarts? And where's "Die Hard's" John McClane when you need him?

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., high school geek Sam Witwicky (rising star Shia LaBeouf) is the befuddled new owner of a beaten-up yellow Camaro with a matchmaking streak. Like a certain VW love bug, the car starts and stalls at will, and likes to select golden oldies as romantic cues. It's only when Sam sees it slip away one night and transform into an Autobot named Bumblebee that he realizes this must be more than a quirky optional extra.

A filmmaker who has profitably plundered his own arrested adolescence in movies like "Bad Boys," "The Rock" and "Armageddon," director Michael Bay got his fingers burned two years ago with the relatively sophisticated sci-fi flop "The Island." It's obvious he's not going to be caught overestimating his audience twice.

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Even so, Bay is the wrong man for the job, something producer Steven Spielberg should have known. Bay's penchant for designer machismo and piledriver action (not to mention wholesale product placement) doesn't sit well with the Transformers' appropriately juvenile comedy and a sub-Spielbergian suburban teen romance. Innocence and wonder -- the type of human traits fundamental to Spielberg's vision of childhood -- are not in Bay's tool kit.

Megan Fox, for example, who plays Sam's high school crush Mikaela, looks and sounds exactly like the 20-year-old FHM babe she really is. Mind you, unless they're moms, all Bay's women look and sound this way (just ask Scarlett Johansson).

But it's military hardware that really revs his engine. Bay shoots weaponry in an orgasmic rapture, always in slow motion and against the sunset. Not surprisingly, the military was happy to play its part when it came to supplying props for what often resembles a teenage recruitment film. Even the movie's theme -- hollow words about victory through sacrifice -- is pitched to this constituency.

Setting about the action sequences with real vigor, Bay seems to imagine he's remaking "War of the Worlds," or maybe embarking on "Terminator 4." And to be fair, the Transformers in motion are something to see -- as with several of this year's event pictures, the effects guys have surpassed themselves.

But the illusion is shattered whenever the 'bots start talking or the action stops. Bay tries to gloss over the infantile plot, but it would take a lighter, wittier touch to square the movie's pedestrian script with its excitable vision of impending auto-geddon.

At least John Turturro, who shows up at the halfway mark as an unsympathetic government operative, seems to have understood that "manic" is the only appropriate response. First he's stripped to his underpants, then a monstrous machine relieves itself all over him.

After 144 minutes of "Herbie Goes to War," I knew just how he felt.

"Transformers" runs 144 minutes and is rated PG-13

[torgosPizza]

Yeah, I stopped caring about what CNN has to say when they aired 24 hour marathons of Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

I like how the headline for this piece is "Human side missing..." So, the fanboys want less humans, and the idiot  CNN "critic" wants more humans.

You just can't win.