I just saw the movie 30 minutes ago.
Good points... Shia LaBeouf's acting was phenomenal. Very good acting, very convincing. The CGI effects were breathtaking and the transformers menacing.
Problems with the film were probably a relatively weak storyline. I suppose the 2 hours of the film weren't enough to fit in the very detailed story and history of the transformers, how Cybertron was originally a Quintesson factory and how the transformers were originally united and stuff.
On to the transformers themselves. Given that the only transformer that managed to maintain their G-1 look was Optimus Prime, it didn't matter much as the other transformers made up for their changed looks with their unique personalities.
Peter Cullen was the voice of Optimus Prime, the original voice actor of the series. The problem with Optimus was that his trademark mouth guard was never present for the majority of the movie unless he was in battle. Optimus also never had his trailer to pull around, he basically drove around as a trailer-less truck. However, he still maintained his classic personality as leader of the autobots.
Let me get composed better with how the storyline went, if I can still remember. Condensed version:
The movie begins with an introduction to the Allspark, which is basically a giant cube floating around in space. It's responsible for bringing life to the transformers and their civilization and it's control will decide the fate of the universe because it has the power to make inanimate objects come to life into transformers. It then crashes into Earth, many years ago. The Decepticons and the Autobots were desperately searching for it's location and obtaining the cube will give the wielder power to end the Cybertronian War.
Megatron flies to Earth in search of the cube, but because he is a n00b at flying, his navigation instruments got screwed by earth's magnetic field and he crash-landed in the Arctic where he got frozen in place.
In present day, Blackout (MH-53 Pave Low Helicopter)
is flying to a military base in the middle East. The base there calls for the unregistered vehicle to divert it's course away from the base. Blackout ignores the radio transmission and continues on his way, when the base decided to scramble jets to escort it to land in the base and have it's 'crew' detained.
At that point, Blackout transforms and churns out a can of whoopass on the unsuspecting humans, blowing up tanks, people, trucks, glass and planes. He's immune to bullets and small explosives, because he's so badass. He then makes his way to the computer database to download secret military files about a secret project by Sector 7 of the government. In there lays the location of a frozen Megatron in a secret government lab. Before he could complete his download, the humans pull the plug which peeved him off and he began to blow up more stuff and people. Eventually blowing up the entire base with his cool blue energy beams.
The Pentagon then realizes that they have lost contact with that base and the only clue they had left was a digitized alien soundwave which they employed specialized computer scientist freshmen to decipher the code. One of them was a really annoying blond Australian girl. I hate her.
Somewhere else, Shia is presenting his class a show and tell session where he described his grandfather's history of exploring the arctic. He also mentioned how his grandfather got crazy and started mentioning discovering a giant monster frozen in ice who was obviously Megatron to the viewer. He then began to advertise his grandfather's belongings on Ebay to his friends so that he can get enough cash for a car. One of them is his grandfather's broken glasses.
Leter Shia's dad brings him to a small car sale where he encounters a 1974 Chevrolet Camaro
and buys it. Shia tries to impress Mikaela Banes (played by Megan Fox) who is a classmate in his school at a nearby park. He drives her home to her house.
At night, he hears the Camaro's engine fire up and wakes up thinking that his car is being stolen. He chases it to a local scrap yard on his bicycle to discover Bumblebee in his transformed form and shining the Autobot bat-signal into the sky with his front headlights to summon the rest of the Autobots. Shia then get chased by a bunch of scrapyard dogs and Bumblebee drove up to chase the dogs away. When Shia runs, he comes face to face with the Police where they take him into custody and his dad later has to bail him out.
In the Middle East, the survivors of the base raid by blackout are on their way through the desert looking for a radio transmitter when one of them gets impaled by Scorponok. They then make a run to a nearby village where they hold out a firefight and manage to get their hands on a cellphone from the locals to call the Pentagon. The Pentagon sends in a Predator drone to take a video feed of the enemy and then scrambles A-10 tunderbolts to rain hell down on Scorponok with their armor-piercing rounds.
Scorponok was badly damaged and retreats beneath the sands leaving behind a broken tail section.
Meanwhile on Air Force one, the 2-speaker CD player by the name of Frenzy
which is the size of a small child, is stashed aboard the plane and makes his way to the computer system to download the rest of the secret files and to also upload a virus into the system. The Pentagon detects this, and sends down agents to the computer system at the belly of the plane. There they find Frenzy and shots him, but Frenzy owns them by shooting out CDs at them. Silly Agents, they never wear Kevlar armor. As the plane makes an emergency landing, Frenzy escapes with the information and meets up with Barricade, where they both drive off.
At home the next day, Shia becomes paranoid of his new car and when he discovers his car back in the front yard, he makes a run for it on his bike. Bumblebee follows him around until Shia sees a police car, thinking the police will help him he makes his way to the vehicle. Then Barricade transforms
and corners Shia, threatening him to reveal the location of his father's sunglasses because Barricade also surfs Ebay to look for some lame glasses.
Shia wriggles out of the situation and runs and knocks down Mikaela who is on a motorcycle. With Barricade hot on their tails, Bumblebee comes into the fray, trips over Barricade and drives up to the two and offers a ride.
A crazy car chase ensues and ends up at a factory where Bumblebee throws out Shia and Mikaela onto the road before transforming to kick Barricade's shiny metal ass. Barricade then poops out Frenzy which chases Shia attempting to capture him.
In pure Ron-ness, Frenzy pulls down Shia's pants. Mikaela then finds an industrial saw and chops off Frenzy's head. frenzy's head crawls off. Barricade is nothing left but scrap metal at the distance and Bumblebee appears out of the smoke victorious and badass looking. With his vocal systems damages in the fight he briefly communicates with Shia with the use of his radio, playing radio stations.
On the way back Mikaela criticized why Bumblebee chose to disguise himself as a rundown Camaro. This peeved off Bumblebee and he throws them out again, before driving up and down scanning cars and coming back as a sleek Fifth-generation Chevrolet Camaro
Then... I just noticed I'm narrating the entire movie for you. Maybe you should just go see the movie lol.... I feel stupid now.
Anyway,
*Bumblebee gets his legs blown off before the fight even begins.
*You only see Megatron in the last 20 minutes of the 2 hour film.
*The Autobots get their butts kicked.
*The humans defeat the Decepticons.
*The Decepticons are after Shia's lunchbox.
*The military are quite stupid. Who maintains a dam without backup power?
*Jazz gets ripped apart by Megatron
*That Australian researcher is annoying. I mean she comes to the conclusion that the alien signal are from robots. I mean wth? It's so early in the movie and nobody has seen the transformers yet but she's like, "It can't be the Chinese or Koreans, so it must be a message from cybernetic futuristic space robot aliens attacking our military base". Seriously, it's stupid.
*Optimus Prime is badass and owns Bonecrusher with his sword. But for the rest of the movie gets beat up by Megatron.
*The immortal line of Optimus is said once more:
TODAY, ONE SHALL STAND AND ONE SHALL FALL*The ending was really really really lame. Megatron gets owned by Shia and his lunchbox while Optimus lies there defeated.
For me
Effects
5/5
Coolness
5/5
Story
3/5
Continuity
2/5
Nostalgia
4/5Overall
3.5/5I find it okay, but it's a sweet-sour feeling. I'm still not sure if I like it or not.