Damn.
I mean, I went into the theater expecting crap. I just wanted to hear Peter Cullen as the voice of Optimus Prime; figured, no matter how badly Bay screws it up, there'll still be Pete's incomparable Texas twang for the first time in twenty years. The hero of my youth, none of the succeeding Prime voice actors could compare.
I wasn't expecting a pretty darn decent action movie to go with it, but that's what I got. Alien invasion, military mayhem, an excellent portrayal of President Bush, the problems with having a black-book government agency that's so secret they can't actually exert half the authority they believe they can, and oh yes, Megan Fox, who registers something like one million Scoville Heat Units and made me forget what Eliza Dushku looks like.
As expected, the movie concentrates on the human characters -- Optimus and his homies get a fair amount of dialogue, but the script belongs to Shia LeBoeuf, Megan, and the rest. I was disappointed at the total short-changing of the Decepticons; they get hardly any lines or characterization. In the good old days, the banter between Frank Welker as the supremely confident Megatron and Chris Latta as his snarky, reflexively traitorous second-in-command Starscream could carry whole episodes; Hugo Weaving and Charlie Adler have maybe two brief exchanges. Prime and Megatron likewise theoretically share a complex backstory, having once been co-rulers of their world, but this too is pared down to a bare minimum of their standard exchanges (one shall stand, you know the drill) and a set of last words that hint at what could have been.
Given, however, that Shia, Megan, and Peter have all signed on for two sequels, I look at this movie as the equivalent of the first Fantastic Four: now that the characters have been established, future pics can devote more time to plot. I hope.
--Sam
"Are you Username Ladiesman217?!"
I mean, I went into the theater expecting crap. I just wanted to hear Peter Cullen as the voice of Optimus Prime; figured, no matter how badly Bay screws it up, there'll still be Pete's incomparable Texas twang for the first time in twenty years. The hero of my youth, none of the succeeding Prime voice actors could compare.
I wasn't expecting a pretty darn decent action movie to go with it, but that's what I got. Alien invasion, military mayhem, an excellent portrayal of President Bush, the problems with having a black-book government agency that's so secret they can't actually exert half the authority they believe they can, and oh yes, Megan Fox, who registers something like one million Scoville Heat Units and made me forget what Eliza Dushku looks like.
As expected, the movie concentrates on the human characters -- Optimus and his homies get a fair amount of dialogue, but the script belongs to Shia LeBoeuf, Megan, and the rest. I was disappointed at the total short-changing of the Decepticons; they get hardly any lines or characterization. In the good old days, the banter between Frank Welker as the supremely confident Megatron and Chris Latta as his snarky, reflexively traitorous second-in-command Starscream could carry whole episodes; Hugo Weaving and Charlie Adler have maybe two brief exchanges. Prime and Megatron likewise theoretically share a complex backstory, having once been co-rulers of their world, but this too is pared down to a bare minimum of their standard exchanges (one shall stand, you know the drill) and a set of last words that hint at what could have been.
Given, however, that Shia, Megan, and Peter have all signed on for two sequels, I look at this movie as the equivalent of the first Fantastic Four: now that the characters have been established, future pics can devote more time to plot. I hope.
--Sam
"Are you Username Ladiesman217?!"