transformers rotf : you bet it was a fall

*spoiler alert (i don't think it's possible to spoil anything since i'm probably the last person on earth to have watched it)

so i finally managed to catch the movie last night. i just have to say, i was a bit disappointed with it. i didnt really lived up to expectations. i mean, yeah there were some occasional awesome, and funny moments, but overall it was overshadowed by over-everything.

i'm not an avid Transformers fan like my buddy nash, i'm not good in math, and i am probably just a Geek Breed Level .1 Less Than A No0b, but i'm gonna sum up the whole movie with this :

overdone + overdosed + oversized + overhyped + overacting + over-exaggerated + over-'Bot'ted = OVERKILL. watching it at iMax makes it ten-fold. the over-excited Cinas at the back of us were not helping subdue the whole experience.

my personal opinion is that Michael Bay has probably gone syok sendiri with this one this time. i mean, yeah, he tends to overdo things for dramatic effect in almost all of his movies. and he is a genius when it comes to CGI and blowing things up. that is his trademark. but this time i think he went a little bit too much on overdoing it.

i enjoyed some parts though. i appreciate that the action already start 5 minutes into the movie. and it never stopped from there. i loved the brilliant CGI spectacle - the best i've seen in a science fiction to date. it was a visual feast! i can appreciate the beauty and art of making and having such extravagant special effects. but i would've loved it even more if he'd tone it down a bit. i know it takes a lot of manpower, hours, money and pots and pots of coffee to render just a frame of the CGI. but he could've saved a lot omitting a few scenes and a few bots, really.

there were a lot of redundancies. like the 2 smack-talking twin Autobots, Skids and Mudflap? i dont really see their value to the movie. i think they had more scenes than Bumblebee. kesian Bumblebee. and the Constructicon/Devastator/Idon'tknowwhat'sitcalled scene? a total disappointment. i was expecting some big battle with all the Autobots, but heh, just sucking the lives out of that two obnoxious twins. what was it really there for anyway? just to chip off the tip of the pyramid? the US Navy's weapon thingamajig could've done the job. i think Fallen could've done it himself while waiting for his coolies to retrieve that matrix key thing from Prime's chest.

oh, and that WhoreBot? what the heck was she there for? drama? hell, prime died. that's all the drama we need. they might as well have casted Natasha Henstridge and it would've made some sense. well, some. come on, sam has got a hotter girlfriend, if you want to create a scandal, find someone hotter (if that's possible), someone with much bigger boobs, and bigger lips, not a blonde piece of plank that can't act.

and i think that there were too many Robots that look very much alike. i can't tell which is friendly and which is the enemy, and the battle scenes were going on hyperfast and it was hard to make out anything. they all just look like jumbled up junkyard. when the giant robots were fighting, they speed it up and yet they can go ridiculously slo-mo when Megan Fox was running, or airbrushing a bike at an impossible position, or when she heaves a breath. go figure. and most of robots? they kinda look like Gundam robots, to be honest.

and what's with the whole energon business? like seriously damn decepticons, BILLIONS and BILLIONS of stars in the universe? you want to blow up our sun? there are other stars bigger and brighter than sun. and while we're at it, there are eight more planets in our solar system, all of which are inhabitable, why the fuck Earth? i know that the whole movie is not at all logic, but why can't Bay inject at least some sense into it? like, come on! have some respect for the audiences' intelligence.

as for the actors? what can i say? they served their purpose. Shia to just run around, Megan to make pants tight, Tyrese and Josh to look macho for the ladies, the only other person that were really acting it that movie was John Turturro, that disgruntled ex-sector 7 dude. even with pretty lame script, he can make it look good. and i don't know if anybody realized it, when the hell did Mikaela had time to change clothes it that movie anyway?

all in all, i still think the first one was way better. i loved the first one. i practically made a standing ovation the first time watching the first one. genius as he is, i hope Michael Bay takes the all the critics to heart and not be too ambitious for Transformers 3.


edited the very next day : absolutely love this review. thanks su-yin.