Transformers!

[Technoid]

WTF!?! F@£$#¤% you Michael Bay!!

[schmosef]

I guess you saw it?

[Dr Mordrid]

Biggest Tuesday opening ever....

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Hollywood's box office record books have been transformed.

The sci-fi adventure "Transformers" had an unprecedented Tuesday haul of $27.4 million in its official debut, beating a record of $15.7 million set last year by "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

"It's the biggest Tuesday ever," said Mike Vollman, spokesman for Paramount, which released "Transformers" along with fellow Viacom Inc. unit DreamWorks. "It's playing very broadly. It's the kind of summer movie that's drawing families and we're very excited for its progress going into the rest of the weekend."

Directed by Michael Bay and based on the Hasbro toys that debuted in the 1980s, "Transformers" chronicles a war between two factions of giant shape-shifting robots that bring their battle to Earth. The human cast costarring alongside the computer-generated robots includes Shia LaBeouf, Tyrese Gibson, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel and John Turturro.

"Transformers" opened Tuesday in 4,011 theaters nationwide. It also played in preview screenings at 3,050 theaters starting at 8 p.m. Monday, bringing in $8.8 million.

"They had great preview numbers and it's an incredible total for a Tuesday, which is just not known as a big box office day," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "The timing on this movie was perfect, with the holiday in the middle of the week. This film has six days plus a preview to stretch its legs."

"Transformers" is positioned to join the ranks of this summer's blockbusters, "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "Spider-Man 3" and "Shrek the Third," all of which have surpassed or are about to cross the $300 million mark domestically.
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A brisk Fourth of July week would help Hollywood recover from a monthlong downturn that followed a huge start to summer in May.

"This could be the movie that transforms the summer back into the blockbuster we were hoping it would be," said Dergarabedian.

[RhinoZ]

Hmm, I want to hear what got Technoid so ticked off about?
Care to share!!

[High_Jumbllama]

Too much minor funny. The CGI (especially transforming and reformatting) was excellent. There needed to be more decent character development with both the autobots and decepticons. There was but one comment between Megatron and Starscream.

Very enjoyable overall.

[schmosef]

i said it first: "no character development!"

[schmosef]

there's one thing that especially didn't make sense in the comic book adaptation. i'll wait until i see the movie (friday) before I ask about it here.

[GT98]

seems like the only people who didn't like it are Transformer geeks, who are expecting too much anyways...but overall it sounds like a pretty soild action adventure movie, which it is...when i first heard of the concept, I thought it was going to suck donkey balls, but it seems like that isn't the case...

[Technoid]

Well I, AM a total die hard Transformers Freak and I went to the movie expecting crap but at least a action movie....

Did I like it? Yeah
now on to the critique:

From a summer action movie point of view first viewing: 6/10
The see again factor is unfortunately to low.

From a I like intelligent action movies with tight scripting POV: 4/10

Face it, the script had holes large enough to ram the titanic through.
The most convincing characters where the soldiers from quatar.
Why do they try to incorporate the absurd teenage love story??!?
Secret government agency's that think that they can do anything is so cliche
As said before, character development is nil.

From the Die hard TF nut point of view:3/10

Frenzy behaves like a fricking gremlin
The autobots a race of mechanoids with life spans well in excess of 100 thousand years can't muster up 10 min of patience.
ILM just gave up, removed all textures and went with the wireframes to make michael bay accept the character designs.


Theres more specific thing I have a gripe about but that would spoil things for those that hasn't seen it.

Will I get it on DVD? Yup

best Line:
"I don't take orders from agency's that don't exist" (I probably remember it incorrectly )

[Jon P. Inghram]

The action scenes had the advantage of being absolutely realistic and plausible compared to Die Hard 4, which ought to win an Academy award for sheer absurdity.

[High_Jumbllama]

seems like the only people who didn't like it are Transformer geeks, who are expecting too much anyways...but overall it sounds like a pretty soild action adventure movie, which it is...when i first heard of the concept, I thought it was going to suck donkey balls, but it seems like that isn't the case...

Did it suck? No.
Did the characterization or lack of suck? Yes. There was far more characterization in the original cartoon movie.

Leaking coolant, he wants to mate with this female, the non-human swearing as it falls . . . . . . Those jokes have been done so much they are annoying not funny. Almost no one in the movie industry understands subtlety any longer.

[Gurm]

Saw it at lunch today, but the real question is... will I let Logan watch it? He's been bugging me like CRAZY. I think that seeing it bigscreen is right out, but it might be ok smallscreen. Then again, I keep forgetting that he's only 6.

Other parents... what do you think? The only REAL piece of violence-against-humans was the Scorponok-stabbity thing. Oh, and the "Megatron flicking humans like bugs" thing, but that was pretty zoomed-out. There was lots of explosions and robot fighting, but that's really nothing new for any kid nowadays.

EDIT:

I'm torn, really. My criteria for Logan are:

- No bloodiness. No deliberate or malicious violence between humans. Stabbing, beating, etc.

- Minimal swearing.

- No creepiness. Creepiness makes Logan freak out. Even if it's not scary. This movie's creepy scenes were just funny, like "oh look it's supposed to be creepy now!"

So I'm torn - I kind of want to take him to the drive-in, where he'll be sleepy anyway... *sigh*

[Dr Mordrid]

Margie, Erik (9) an I went with son Chris, his wife Beth & son Kaden (4.5) to todays matinee.

Action: 9/10. Lots of action, virtually non-stop.

Robots modeling/texturing: 9/10.

Robots animation: 7/10, a tad too much motion blur in some scenes but acceptable.

Characterization: 8/10, in a 2.5 hr action film with so many characters about all that can be done. Attempting to do more gives you the first Fantastic Four film. See Funny section.

Suitability for young ones: 8/10, non too bloody military violence, but scenes of threat. Like there wouldn't be in an actioner? Kaden handled them fine, cheering & dancing during the battle scenes.

The only marginally uncomfortable part was when Shia LaBeouf's screen mother asked him if he had been masturbating when he was slow to answer his door. Went right over Kaden & got a giggle out of Erik. The only one squirming was Margie

There was also a scene where a robot took a "leak" on an annoying character. Funny IMO.

Funny: 8/10, lots of humor, especially a scene where the Autobots are waiting for Shia's character to get something from his house and his parents cause comic troubles; "His parents are annoying! Shall I terminate them?"

We found it did a lot of the humanizing without excessive backstories. It's also necessary to balance the action, which otherwise would be exhausting.

Overall: a solid 8.2/10.

At our eMagine showing it got applause. Even my wife, who had missed the craze, liked it and wants the DVD.

[MultimediaMan]

Saw it last night with my son Luke (6); This was a full DLP cinema with a fairly powerful sound system.

Loud: Luke doesn't like too loud too much. The Scorpion Decepticon was by far the most "directly violent" part of the movie: it impaled a human and under no uncertain terms ended that persons's life. Not bloodily, bit the violent thrashing left no doubts.

Blackout was a close second during the initial assault.

There was no time for any character developmenti n this movie, so nearly all characters were fairly glossed over; only Sam, Mikaela and Bumblebee had much in the way of background information. The rest was monolog or narrative. I hope any future installments of this movie franchise will rectify that.

Special effects were stunning, but rushed. There were too few moments we could view the action at a rate which would allow the viewer to appreciate the amount of time and effort the special effects team took to put this movie together. The smallest details were present; scratched paint, dents, windshield wiper streaks. Amazing attention to detail.

[Jon P. Inghram]

- No creepiness. Creepiness makes Logan freak out. Even if it's not scary. This movie's creepy scenes were just funny, like "oh look it's supposed to be creepy now!"

So he won't be watching Alien any time soon? I remember when I was a little kid my parents rented Alien and let me stay up and watch it. When the scene where Dallas is crawling through the vents came to a rather shocking end with a screeching alien and microphone feedback, somebody who had quietly crawled up behind me (I was sitting on the floor) grabbed me from behind right at that instant and went "BOO!" or something to that effect.