AOE movie reviews

Money, violence, sex, computer graphics, scatalogical humor, racism, robots designed to be rednecks but given European accents, and maybe another sequel to the saga... what's not to love? TF m1, Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon and now Age of Extinction.
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Dominic
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Dominic »

Like the Autobots weren't asked to leave Earth by the government after the Decepticons issued a threat in the first place?
Agreed. Optimus more or less said that if they Autobots had insisted on staying, it would have been worse for everybody. (And, hey, only 1,300 died in Chicago. All things considered, that is not so bad.)

I think it makes sense Optimus would become a little disillusioned with the human race after that.
Disagree. Being "a little disillusioned" qualifies as taking that sort of thing extremely well.

Don’t even get me started on when they suddenly turn into spiteful, murderous monsters for the whole time they’re on Lockdown’s ship. Hound liquefies a random alien for spitting on him. Our heroes, everybody!
My word for that scene was Baypravity. It was badly placed humour, similar to the boyfriend having the laminated card summarizing the "Romeo and Juliet" law. Both were funny as isolated gags. But, they establish things about the characters and setting that the writers should have followed up on.

For example, Space Wolves (in 40K) engage in staggering acts of violence. But, Space Wolves are known to be kind of assholes. Drift killing a caged alien moments after making a call for finding inner peace is funny in terms of blunt irony. But, it undermines the image of the Autobots as nice guys.

I do not need likable characters. But, they characters should be presented and marketed consistently within the same book/movie.

Hound's and Drift's actions might be thematically defensible, as the movie was (sort of) running with the idea that humans and Cybertronians are not especially nice as a rule, even if some individual members are. (Note Yeager's line to Prime about finding treasure among the junk. I forget the exact phrasing.)

Hound liquefies a random alien for spitting on him. Our heroes, everybody!
I especially like that Hound is the one who initiated that interaction.

If I reacted that way to every animal that reacted with hostility after I had encroached on them (note the qualifier of me encroaching), my kill count for the last 10 years or so would include:

-more dogs than I care to think about.
-a comparable number of cats (including the 3 I have now, their predecessor, most of the cats my friends have owned, and most of the cats I have caught and found homes for).
-some Canadian geese.
-a red tailed hawk.
-a baby alligator.

(Adding animals that I just blundered across would up both the individual numbers and add a species or two.)


Two random thoughts:
-Crosshairs is the most overtly blood-hungry of the Autobots. But, he not only has the lowest kill count, his kills were the cleanest.

-Starscream comes across as more gentlemanly in "Reign of Starscream". His kills were either provoked or incidental. And, he specifically let several humans get away in one scene.


The movie similarly continuously glorifies these hateful, mean-spirited moments. Marky Mark’s friend Adrian gets fried in the first hour, and the scene tastelessly lingers on his crispy corpse for naught but shock value.
I really liked that scene. He was the first human character in any Bayformers movie that I wanted to see die who actually got killed. It was kind of rewarding to see him die. I really did not see it as hateful or mean-spirited. He was the character that died to prove the threat was real and got a measure of comeuppance (which is a reward for the audience).
Cade Yeager (which is an awful, awful name),
I dunno about that. And, the character did change over the course of the movie. He was a definite improvement over same, (who I wish got a messy death scene).
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Shockwave »

Wait, Starscream is in this? Didn't Sam kill him in DotM?
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Dominic »

Starscream is not in Bayformers 4.

I was referencing "Reign of Starscream", a sequel comic published by IDW back in '07/'08.

No joke, around the end of the movie I actually found myself rooting for Galvatron and Kelsey Grammar, because at least their positions were mildly principled (if only in their own off way) and they could articulate them with some consistency.
I meant to post this above.

Grammar's character, Attinger, initially struck me as being somewhat admirable (a sort of non-clown Simmons). I figured that one of the human bad guys was going to turn by the end. But, I expected it to be Attinger rather than the bastardized Steve Jobs character (whose name I forget).

His stated goal was protecting lives, an admirable goal even if he limited that goal to protecting American lives. However, during the escape from KSI labs, Attinger shrugs off civilian casualties. Deploying Galvatron and Stinger (untested weapons) was defensible by virtue of the situation being desperate. Similarly, threatening Yeager and his family was fair because they had deliberately put themselves in opposition to Attinger and his men. (Note that they did not become overtly hostile until after they had confirmed that Yeager was lying to them.)

But, Attinger shrugs off a significant number of civilians deaths (people killed by Galvatron) during the chase. Those were the people that Attinger claimed to be protecting, and they had nothing to do with the TFs beyond driving on the same roads.

In contrast, the Steve Jobs guy was motivated by avarice, but was not a monster. (For a summer movie, that is odd, as the populist view of that type of person would make it easier to depict them as a monster.)
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by BWprowl »

Sparky Prime wrote:Like the Autobots weren't asked to leave Earth by the government after the Decepticons issued a threat in the first place?
The point is, if he knew shit was going to go down, maybe they should have jumped in and saved the city before most of it got torched instead of waiting and hiding for a while just so the humans would ‘understand’ how serious the threat is. Optimus let 1,300 people die just so he could get in an ‘I told you so’. That’s douchey. (I liked DOTM otherwise, but this is still a sticking point.)
Considering the Autobots saved humanity from enslavement (and saved the sun in the film before that), being secretly hunted down by a black ops team is a bit of the opposite reaction you'd expect. I think it makes sense Optimus would become a little disillusioned with the human race after that.
As he demonstrates at the end of the movie, Optimus had the capacity to FUCKING LEAVE anytime he wanted. You could argue that he wanted to wait and gather the rest of the Autobots if he could, but flying into space, getting a spaceship or something, and coming back for them would have been more efficient than wandering around waiting to get murdered and screaming about it.
Hound and Bumblebee fell off the ramp of the ship when it was shot down and crashed several miles away, which is when Optimus decides to free the Dinobots for some more reinforcements, they didn't just leave them.
That scene missed me, my bad. And then you still have Crosshairs and Drift sitting on their heels while Optimus fights Grimlock, never once thinking to help or drive a few miles back to see if Hound and Bumblebee might need assistance with a city full of Decepticons.
Difference being Galvatron was supposed to be under the control of a human operator at the time, and instead was acting out on his own, purposefully smashing up some civilian vehicles.
…which is also what Bulblebee did. He flips a whole civilian boat out of the river to get smashed up by their pursuers, he did that of his free will as well. The shock value of Galvatron isn’t just in him acting on his own, it’s that the company’s big, special, world-saving weapon is killing people. The Autobots get away with the same sort of stuff (like blowing up a whole factory at the end) just because they aren’t supposed to be under human control in the first place?
Dominic wrote: (And, hey, only 1,300 died in Chicago. All things considered, that is not so bad.)
I really liked that scene. He was the first human character in any Bayformers movie that I wanted to see die who actually got killed. It was kind of rewarding to see him die. I really did not see it as hateful or mean-spirited. He was the character that died to prove the threat was real and got a measure of comeuppance (which is a reward for the audience).
Dom, have you ever considered that you might be a fucking sociopath? Seriously, listen to yourself. 1,300 people dying is not a big deal, and if someone’s mildly annoying they deserve to get murdered and have the audience gawk at their corpse? Jesus. The guy was plucky comic relief, not any sort of antagonist, the audience isn’t ‘rewarded’ by watching someone like that die, that’s disgusting.
I do not need likable characters. But, they characters should be presented and marketed consistently within the same book/movie.
Characters need not be likeable, but there needs to be a POINT, something interesting in the story that makes use of that unlikability. They need to be interesting, and the Autobots and main characters here are NOT, they’re just assholes for the sake of assholes, angry, monstrous ciphers because Bay apparently thinks it’s ‘cool’. Nothing comes of it, no points are made. Just nastiness for its own sake.
Hound's and Drift's actions might be thematically defensible, as the movie was (sort of) running with the idea that humans and Cybertronians are not especially nice as a rule, even if some individual members are. (Note Yeager's line to Prime about finding treasure among the junk. I forget the exact phrasing.)
I think you’re giving the movie too much credit. The ‘treasure among junk’ theme was referring primarily to humans, the Autobots were never demonstrated to have an issue with that, and no distinction was made between the somewhat decent Prime and the cadre of monstrous douchebag Autobots he associated with in the movie. Indeed, cartoon main characters that they are, I think we’re ‘intended’ to like the Autobots, but the writing job on them was so botched that they don’t come off as enjoyable protagonists in the slightest, and nothing ever COMES of their bad attitudes.
I especially like that Hound is the one who initiated that interaction.
Isn’t that sort of dog-shooting scene typically used to establish how bad a *villainous* character is?
-Crosshairs is the most overtly blood-hungry of the Autobots. But, he not only has the lowest kill count, his kills were the cleanest.
I would argue Hound came off worse. Not just in the alien-shooting scene, but several of his lines during the confrontation at the tech company.
I dunno about that. And, the character did change over the course of the movie. He was a definite improvement over same, (who I wish got a messy death scene).
Sam at least started out sympathetic, and ‘grew up’ throughout the movies, doing his best to adapt to his new situations and changing his outlook based on them. Cade is just an unsympathetic manchild from start to finish, preferring to play with his electronics as a self-employed hobbyjob despite having a daughter to support, violently attacking a realtor just trying to do her job along with her clients, acting like he’s entitled to his house despite having no money to, uh, pay for it (seriously, how can he not have a job? He clearly has some impressive engineering chops, those jobs are in-demand, why the hell can he not at least get something part-time so he could actually provide for the mouth he has to feed? Christ, what an asshole.), aggressively trying to control his daughter’s life-choices with little to no input from her, not to mention his casually xenophobic attitude towards the nationality of his Tessa’s boyfriend (after being lambasted for the perceived racism in ROTF, Bay apparently discovered that you can insult the Irish all you want and no one will bat an eye). By the end of it, the biggest lesson he’s learned is “Maybe it’s okay to let this 20-year-old stranger bang my 17-year-old daughter”. Be nice if Optimus also told him to Get A Job before he left.
Shockwave wrote:Wait, Starscream is in this? Didn't Sam kill him in DotM?
I think Dom was trying to make a comparison between Starscream (a Decepticon) being less of a blood-thirsty murder-machine than the Autobots as portrayed in these movies.
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Dominic »

The point is, if he knew shit was going to go down, maybe they should have jumped in and saved the city before most of it got torched instead of waiting and hiding for a while just so the humans would ‘understand’ how serious the threat is. Optimus let 1,300 people die just so he could get in an ‘I told you so’. That’s douchey. (I liked DOTM otherwise, but this is still a sticking point.)
It is not like the Autobots were sitting around in Bayformers 3. They boarded the ship to avoid a worse situation. And, then, they went to Chicago. Florida to Illinois is not a short distance. The Autobots had to get to Chicago before they could save it.

My point in referencing the 1,300 casualties was just accenting how few deaths there were considering the scale of the attack. (I have worked in places where it would be expected to find that many people milling around at any given time. I live in a city with at least triple that number of eligible voters.

…which is also what Bulblebee did. He flips a whole civilian boat out of the river to get smashed up by their pursuers, he did that of his free will as well. The shock value of Galvatron isn’t just in him acting on his own, it’s that the company’s big, special, world-saving weapon is killing people. The Autobots get away with the same sort of stuff (like blowing up a whole factory at the end) just because they aren’t supposed to be under human control in the first place?
I am pretty sure that Lockdown defined where the factory fight happened. And, were there people on that boat? (I really do not recall.)

The guy was plucky comic relief, not any sort of antagonist, the audience isn’t ‘rewarded’ by watching someone like that die, that’s disgusting.
The guy was an obnoxious asshole who arguably caused the problem that he and the other characters were running from. (He narced and called the Feds.) So, yeah, comeuppance (which is typically rewarding for audiences).


Characters need not be likeable, but there needs to be a POINT, something interesting in the story that makes use of that unlikability. They need to be interesting, and the Autobots and main characters here are NOT, they’re just assholes for the sake of assholes, angry, monstrous ciphers because Bay apparently thinks it’s ‘cool’. Nothing comes of it, no points are made. Just nastiness for its own sake.
I want to customize a Hound as an ork trukk.

I think you’re giving the movie too much credit.
Oh, I am not giving this credit without qualifier. I was saying "maybe that is what they were going for". I am dubious as well, but was throwing the idea out there.

Isn’t that sort of dog-shooting scene typically used to establish how bad a *villainous* character is?
Yup.

I think Drift's actions were a bit worse. But, yeah. Hound came across as a bad guy. (In case it was not apparent, I was being sarcastic when I said I liked what Hound did.)

I would argue Hound came off worse. Not just in the alien-shooting scene, but several of his lines during the confrontation at the tech company.
Which lines? Threatening humans in that scenario was okay. Am I forgetting something?

Sam at least started out sympathetic, and ‘grew up’ throughout the movies, doing his best to adapt to his new situations and changing his outlook based on them.
Sam regressed after the first movie. He was a whiny bitch in the second movie and a pushy little asshole in the third.


I think Dom was trying to make a comparison between Starscream (a Decepticon) being less of a blood-thirsty murder-machine than the Autobots as portrayed in these movies.
Yup.

Bay had Hound and Drift descend in to 40K levels of malignancy....for laughs. That is fine if the characters are supposed to be monsters. 40K has funny orks. It has made main characters out of Dark Elves (a species assumed to be inherently evil on page). But, those hilariously violent orks are consistently portrayed as monsters. The slapstick murders are not one-off "lol" scenes. They are part of a string of atrocities. The Dark Elf main characters are supposed to be butchers who engage in recrational torture.

Bay's Hound and Drift were lovable doofs one minute, mentally broken the next and then engaging in slapstick murder for one-off gags.

This is the same problem I had the the "Romeo and Juliet" card. Romeo and Juliet laws are fine. No problem with somebody knowing about the law, especially if it protecting them. But, carrying around a laminated copy of the law on a business card makes the character come across as a creeper....for the sake of a one-off gag. (It was a funny gag. But, the writers seemed to forget what it implied about the guy.)
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by BWprowl »

Dominic wrote:It is not like the Autobots were sitting around in Bayformers 3. They boarded the ship to avoid a worse situation. And, then, they went to Chicago. Florida to Illinois is not a short distance. The Autobots had to get to Chicago before they could save it.
And then they gloat about it when they get there.
I am pretty sure that Lockdown defined where the factory fight happened. And, were there people on that boat? (I really do not recall.)
The Autobots would clearly have been capable of finishing the fight without destroying the factory (and they were the ones who did so, it was no side affect of an attack by Lockdown). The boat was just cruising down the river, it at least had the same sort of implied occupants as the cars that Galvatron smashed up (technically no human deaths were actually shown there either, but the implication is obvious).
The guy was an obnoxious asshole who arguably caused the problem that he and the other characters were running from. (He narced and called the Feds.) So, yeah, comeuppance (which is typically rewarding for audiences).
Tessa and even Cade (who admitted it later) were fully in favor of calling the Feds. He made a mistake. A stupid mistake, but not a mistake worth getting murdered over.

I'm fine with him dying as far as the narrative is concerned. It generates pathos, makes the threat more 'real' that Cade's buddy gets killed by the Decepticons, that's fine. The way the scene lingered over his corpse, showing it off, is what really pushed it into 'tasteless' territory for me. We don't need to see that.

I want to customize a Hound as an ork trukk.
I'm actually torn, since Hound's toy still looks pretty cool, but I'm so disgusted by the character that I'm actually not sure if I want it.
I think Drift's actions were a bit worse. But, yeah. Hound came across as a bad guy. (In case it was not apparent, I was being sarcastic when I said I liked what Hound did.)
The worst part is that Drift is an alleged former Decepticon, so just having HIM be the bloodthirsty, morally reprehensible one COULD have highlighted the differences in the factions, or pushed the theme, or SOMETHING. Hell, had he actually been somewhat decent, it would have been a nice contrast between him and the supposed 'good guy' Hound. But instead they're BOTH horrible, and Drift's Decepticon past isn't even mentioned besides. It's a tremendous writing failure.
Which lines? Threatening humans in that scenario was okay. Am I forgetting something?
Threatening enemy humans in that situation is fine (I say this particularly as someone who LOVES the idea of humans with their own mechs as antagonists and thinks it doesn't get nearly enough use in the franchise), but cracking casual asides about murdering them after they'd all put their hands-up and while Optimus was trying to be upstanding about it all was just tasteless (I'd have to rewatch the scene to get specific lines).
Sam regressed after the first movie. He was a whiny bitch in the second movie and a pushy little asshole in the third.
Sam at least was trying to get a job. And being 'pushy' is nothing compared to Cade chasing innocent people off his lawn with a baseball bat just because they were willing to pay money for the house that he, uh, wasn't, and was even stealing electricity for besides.

I just have no sympathy for deadbeats, alright?
Bay had Hound and Drift descend in to 40K levels of malignancy....for laughs. That is fine if the characters are supposed to be monsters. 40K has funny orks. It has made main characters out of Dark Elves (a species assumed to be inherently evil on page). But, those hilariously violent orks are consistently portrayed as monsters. The slapstick murders are not one-off "lol" scenes. They are part of a string of atrocities. The Dark Elf main characters are supposed to be butchers who engage in recrational torture.

Bay's Hound and Drift were lovable doofs one minute, mentally broken the next and then engaging in slapstick murder for one-off gags.
This is exactly the point, yes. The Orkz are funny. But the Orkz aren't intended to be 'heroes'.
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Dominic »

Forgot to mention this above:

I am okay with Prime having integrated boot-jets. No reason to figure he could not have been upgraded between movies. The bigger problem is the power and range of those jets, or that he only used them just then, or that they worked at all (relating to Prime's miraculous healing after scanning a new vehicle mode).

The boat was just cruising down the river, it at least had the same sort of implied occupants as the cars that Galvatron smashed up (technically no human deaths were actually shown there either, but the implication is obvious).
Must of fogged out for the boat thing. Okay, Bumblebee is a brutish murder mech as well.

(Aside: Lockdown comes across as better than the Autobots. All of his violence is purposeful. He even manages to be civil to humans for the most part.)

I'm fine with him dying as far as the narrative is concerned. It generates pathos, makes the threat more 'real' that Cade's buddy gets killed by the Decepticons, that's fine. The way the scene lingered over his corpse, showing it off, is what really pushed it into 'tasteless' territory for me. We don't need to see that.
I almost saw his death as an apology for some of the obnoxious human characters in previous movies (fat ass from the first movie, roommate from the second movie, you get the idea). Tessa was the next most annoying, and she was still (if only a bit) more tolerable than Sam.

The worst part is that Drift is an alleged former Decepticon, so just having HIM be the bloodthirsty, morally reprehensible one COULD have highlighted the differences in the factions, or pushed the theme, or SOMETHING. Hell, had he actually been somewhat decent, it would have been a nice contrast between him and the supposed 'good guy' Hound. But instead they're BOTH horrible, and Drift's Decepticon past isn't even mentioned besides. It's a tremendous writing failure.
The "former Decepticon" angle has only shown up in Hasbro content as far as I know. Bay may not have even known about it.

Cade chasing innocent people off his lawn with a baseball bat just because they were willing to pay money for the house that he, uh, wasn't, and was even stealing electricity for besides.
Bay's singular narrative gift is his ability to reach audiences by reflecting the zeitgeist. Everybody has at least heard stories of predatory loans and associated foreclosures, or of people losing steady work and then losing their home.

Yeager was probably supposed to be a reflection of that.

(Aside: Bay's visceral movie style would probably go over really well in Bollywood.)

This is exactly the point, yes. The Orkz are funny. But the Orkz aren't intended to be 'heroes'.
Another thing to recall is that whenever Orks or Orcs (the spelling varies by setting) are shown from the point of view of a human (or transhuman), their antics are always conveyed as "bad". Even the funny stuff is described as being notably callous.

It is okay to have not nice heroes as well.

Every so often, Games Workshop will introduce a character who is moral in the sense of them being consistent and believing they are doing the right thing, even if what they are doing would be questionable for readers with millenial frames of reference. Commisar Kyogen (from "Execution Hour" and "Shadow Point") is a good example of this. Abnett's Commisar Gaunt is another.

The problem is that Bay made Hound and Drift in to blood-hungry killers for the sake of slapstick. He made Lucky Charms a creeper for the sake of a laugh-line....and gave no on-screen indication that he had thought about it beyond that one scene.

Bay does set-pieces. Some of the scenes are legitimately good. But, the scenes do not flow consistently together as a movie.

(Aside: Part of me wonders if Hound on the bridge was the result of scenes initially being meant to be in a different sequence, or something similar. Maybe Hound was supposed to be dead after the fight, and his survival is the result of sloppy editing, similar to Barricade surviving a scripted death in the first movie.)
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Sparky Prime »

Dominic wrote:Disagree. Being "a little disillusioned" qualifies as taking that sort of thing extremely well.
Being too litteral there Dom. I just meant it's understandible Optimus would've lost his faith in humanity given what's happened after the Autobots saved the world.
BWprowl wrote:The point is, if he knew shit was going to go down, maybe they should have jumped in and saved the city before most of it got torched instead of waiting and hiding for a while just so the humans would ‘understand’ how serious the threat is. Optimus let 1,300 people die just so he could get in an ‘I told you so’. That’s douchey. (I liked DOTM otherwise, but this is still a sticking point.)
With Simmons sitting there talking about "When people ask you where you where when they took over the world", I think they realized what would happen by sending away the Autobots, yet they did it anyway. Seemed like it was a lesson they needed to learn for how short sighted the decision was. Besides, like Dom said it would have taken the Autobots a while to get from Florida to Chicago. They arrived pretty much at the same time Sam did with the former NEST guys.
As he demonstrates at the end of the movie, Optimus had the capacity to FUCKING LEAVE anytime he wanted. You could argue that he wanted to wait and gather the rest of the Autobots if he could, but flying into space, getting a spaceship or something, and coming back for them would have been more efficient than wandering around waiting to get murdered and screaming about it.
Optimus being able to fly at the end of the film does not mean he could leave whenever he wanted. The previous films showed he needed external tech to fly, which he doesn't have in this film. And his ability to fly at the end of this film supposedly was part of his Knight upgrade when he took the sword, which admittedly I don't think the film made clear at all.
That scene missed me, my bad. And then you still have Crosshairs and Drift sitting on their heels while Optimus fights Grimlock, never once thinking to help or drive a few miles back to see if Hound and Bumblebee might need assistance with a city full of Decepticons.
As I recall, Optimus did communicate with Hound after the crash, telling them to hold tight until they could get there. And it seemed to me the Dinobots helped them get there faster by running over a moutain which would have taken the Autobots longer to drive around.
…which is also what Bulblebee did. He flips a whole civilian boat out of the river to get smashed up by their pursuers, he did that of his free will as well. The shock value of Galvatron isn’t just in him acting on his own, it’s that the company’s big, special, world-saving weapon is killing people. The Autobots get away with the same sort of stuff (like blowing up a whole factory at the
end) just because they aren’t supposed to be under human control in the first place?
I don't think they blew up the whole factory, the explosion looked it was was outside, just where they'd been fighting with Lockdown.
Bumblebee doesn't shoot at civilians purposefully like Galvatron does. Did you remember seeing any people on the boat 'Bee flips? Because it looked empty to me, docked alongside the river bank. Unlike Galvatron who clearly smashes up cars driving along the freeway.
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Re: AOE movie reviews

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Dom wrote:I figured that one of the human bad guys was going to turn by the end. But, I expected it to be Attinger rather than the bastardized Steve Jobs character (whose name I forget).
Put me in the same boat. I was actually pretty shocked that Tucci didn't bite it instead.
Prowl wrote:That scene missed me, my bad.
You can hardly be blamed. At one point, I was convinced Hound had died off-screen.
Dom, have you ever considered that you might be a fucking sociopath?
Dom has some weird ideas when it comes to civilian casualties in war. I think sometimes he thinks too much about the big picture. (He would make a great politician!)
not to mention his casually xenophobic attitude towards the nationality of his Tessa’s boyfriend (after being lambasted for the perceived racism in ROTF, Bay apparently discovered that you can insult the Irish all you want and no one will bat an eye)
Okay, get this. The guy is clearly legitimately Irish (going by the one or two interviews I've seen) So why the hell does his accent keep slipping back and forth in the movie? Sometimes mid-sentence? It's terrible.
Dom wrote:And, were there people on that boat? (I really do not recall.)
Does Bumblebee check? Does he even care?
This is the same problem I had the the "Romeo and Juliet" card. Romeo and Juliet laws are fine. No problem with somebody knowing about the law, especially if it protecting them. But, carrying around a laminated copy of the law on a business card makes the character come across as a creeper....for the sake of a one-off gag. (It was a funny gag. But, the writers seemed to forget what it implied about the guy.)
My problem with this entire recurring gag (and it's recurring, there's very specific emphasis placed on the fact that she isn't 18 yet throughout the entire movie) is that if she was apparently only one year older, everything would be hunky-dory for everybody.

Really, her entire character is just glossed over, she has no agency and is literally treated as an object for most of the movie. "I'M NOT HERE TO HELP YOU SAVE YOUR DAUGHTER; YOU'RE HERE TO HELP ME SAVE MY GIRLFRIEND." Uh. Can't she be both? Or neither, and just be defined as A PERSON instead?!

Shit like THIS is why there need to be females in TF and they need to be treated as important individual characters, because the more pervasive "females who aren't just a male character's daughter/girlfriend" exist in any form of fiction, the less bullshit like this will come up.
Prowl again wrote:The way the scene lingered over his corpse, showing it off, is what really pushed it into 'tasteless' territory for me. We don't need to see that.
Hey, he was metalicized, not squished. You're acting like he was a victim in Starship Troopers.
Dom again wrote:....and gave no on-screen indication that he had thought about it beyond that one scene.
I don't think Bay thinks about anything beyond the scene it's in. He certainly doesn't remember the rest of the movies, given that things completely contradict stuff in them.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Shockwave
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Re: AOE movie reviews

Post by Shockwave »

Sparky Prime wrote:Optimus being able to fly at the end of the film does not mean he could leave whenever he wanted. The previous films showed he needed external tech to fly, which he doesn't have in this film.
But he originally arrived on Earth without a ship. And so did several other Cybertronians in both of the first two movies. Spaceships for Cybertronians didn't become a thing in these movies until DotM.
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