I still really like the Transformers movies

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > I still really like the Transformers movies

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Sam murdering Dylan with a club is a really wicked way to make sure the players in the film don't get to interrogate him for all his juicy info on what the Decepticons plans were and whatnot. He says to Carly that he only needs another 40 years, which seems insanely selfish until the end. In a film this rich with religious imagery, 40 years of time for humanity takes on new meaning.

Jumping back a film(watched a few more of the clips on Terry's Vimeo), right before Optimus maims Megatron and removes the face of the Fallen we get that scene with Jetfire sacrificing his parts. There's a body horror element to it that's disconcerting, pushing the transformer aliens further away from the humanoid shapes they wear and into something closer to one of Lovecraft's shoggoths. These just happen to be made of metal instead of meat. However, it's the proximity to the climactic fight/execution scene that's got me thinking.

Jetfire grossly rips out the metal alien version of a heart to give to Optimus and says, "Take my parts and you will have a power that you've never known. Fulfill your destiny". I had forgotten that in addition to the face removal, he punches his fist through Fallen's chest grasping his still glowing heart.

"I rise, you fall"

Cut to Megatrong and Starscream looking on in abject horror. Starscream urges survival, but Megatron is still in shock.

"This is no Prime." No poo poo. A large chunk of his head may be gone, but Megatron might be the first character to comment on the wrongness of his enemy's name/title. They turn and leave the profanity before them. The audience has been spared another round of Optimus consuming a sentient being, this time an unwilling one. He sheds Jetfire's external parts in disgust once they're no longer needed, but seems to keep the hearts.

Bay does not gently caress around.

edit. They're a lot more like pod people than I remember too. Metal pod people.

Maarak fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Oct 1, 2013

# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 07:40

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:22

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Milky Moor posted:

Doesn't Sam hit the Decepticon liaison (his name escapes me) in the knee with a rock?

Sam's pursuit and brief fight sequence with Dylan mirrors Prime's rampage and the rest of the action sequence in some fun ways. He adopts the fluid movement style of an autobot, ducking and weaving through the urban hellscape with ease. Sam gets his opportunity to strike when Dylan's face is covered by some windblown paper, not unlike the parachute blinding shockwave.

I'll be shocked if the next film doesn't continue the trend of autobot style violence being perpetuated by humans against other humans.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2013 08:42

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Mr. Bay's commercials are interesting to watch in hindsight:
http://vimeo.com/3160074

http://vimeo.com/michaelbaydotcom/videos/page:11/sort:date/format:thumbnail

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 05:06

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

sassassin posted:

Do you not watch horror movies?

There's a wide gulf between simulated violence and minstrelsy, even if the intent is to skewer American pop culture.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 22:45

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Lord Krangdar posted:

What makes it "minstrelry", though? Considering the actual context of the films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXSTcFjOHLE

Is the blackface in Tropic Thunder not blackface because there's context?

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 23:09

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Lord Krangdar posted:

I haven't seen that film so I don't know the context. But in theory someone could make a film about blackface or depicting blackface without the resulting film advocating blackface.

Agreed, but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Bamboozled certainly doesn't advocate blackface, but it's grueling to watch the segments of the Mantan minstrel show within the film.

Arquinsiel posted:

To be fair, the international reaction to it was much less vehement than in the US. To us not-yanks this is how America portrays black people pretty much all the time.

This gets at why, at least for me, Skids and Mudflaps inclusion are a cause for worry.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 23:38

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Excluding popular readings of the film from discussion is myopic.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2013 06:18

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

MisterBibs posted:

No poo poo, when Mark said something along the lines of "Oh are you going to shoot my daughter this time?", Grammar just smiles.

I casually avoided the third one, how justified is the government's "gently caress all giant robots, forever" mentality? Chicago didn't look too bad in the scenes I saw before having to leave due to illness.

http://vimeo.com/55083797

# ¿ Jun 28, 2014 08:47

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

MisterBibs posted:

I'm beat on this one, but the fucker got what was coming to him.

Speaking of fuckers getting what they deserve, my theater applauded hard when Grammer's character got shot by Optimus, as did I. It's rare for me to completely understand and sympathize with a character's mentality, but completely want them to die as soon as possible.

Great job! Now Dr. Fraiser Crane will never be able to testify or document the warcrimes he committed and the whole thing can be blamed on him.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2014 06:04

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Found this comment on an i09 review of the film:

quote:

As a 29 year old guy who grew up on the Transformers I can't even watch these putrid films on TNT or FX when my wife is gone and all of the blinds are drawn. As soon as I watch more than a few moments of these movies my mind fills up with self-doubt about whether or not I am actually a grown rear end man instead of a 13 year old teenage boy in the body of an adult.

Well done Mr. Bay, well done.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 01:28

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

MisterBibs posted:

Optimus being right/good/hero and Megatron being wrong/evil/villain isn't propaganda. It's basic fact of the property, so much so that even someone who has seen zero episodes of the property goes into the movie knowing it. I asked before, I think: is there a character whose innate goodness/heroicness so ingrained in our society? Everyone knows who Optimus Prime is, that he's the Good Guy.

And as all three films have shown, choosing against Optimus Prime is villainous and in Transformers, there's a character who is noble and heroic enough to stand against and defeat villainous characters.

Forget about Megatron for a moment and just look at what Optimus Prime does, especially in contrast to what he says.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 01:36

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

To be fair to the genocidal monster, I think the rocket boots came with his slight update he received with the greatsword in the spaceknight's space-crusading ship.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 02:20

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Gammatron 64 posted:

Yeah, things like the Bud Light scene make me wonder if that really was self-aware self-parody. Because how can you film that with a straight face?

Check out some of the straight up commercials he directed. Bay is nothing if not consistent.

http://vimeo.com/3160244
http://vimeo.com/3159896
http://vimeo.com/4666352

Also, remember that scene of Optimus driving through the desert and his thugs emerging from the landscape to join his posse? http://vimeo.com/3159970 and its companion http://vimeo.com/3160074

edit. VVV "Our future is at stake" seems almost like a threat. Do you vote?

Maarak fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jun 30, 2014

# ¿ Jun 30, 2014 21:10

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Here's something notable: Lockdown's dogs aren't robots. You can see the flesh through the gaps in their armor - they are organic creatures. His subordinates are also clearly organic alien people in cloth suits, not robots.

Close, but the pack of hyena dog things weren't an either/or case but a full mix of mechanical metal based tech and organic tissue. The humanoid minions seemed fully mechanical, but I wasn't focusing on them very hard. That quick shot of the creator species hand was very similar in construction to Lockdown's pack. So from the creator species POV, there's no huge difference between building their tools out of metal or flesh, which should be enough to send a shiver down humanity's collective spine.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 11:19

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Maarak posted:

Also, remember that scene of Optimus driving through the desert and his thugs emerging from the landscape to join his posse? http://vimeo.com/3159970 and its companion http://vimeo.com/3160074

Someone put the scene on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_TAwH0-frk

It's very hard not to cringe at the giant metal aliens treating that natural beauty of the West like it's some kind of skateboard park.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 14:55

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Earth is a transforming planet already. Check the basic structure of the Sam trilogy: TF1 is the offputtingly fake/generic action movie about a boy getting a car (aka 'Car Mode'), while TF3 is the apocalyptic doomsday nightmare film (aka 'Robot Mode').

TF2 is, of course, the abstract and jumbled transformation between these two modes.

Very much like the cartoon, Michael Bay's transformers takes place in a world where the reaction to an alien invasion (which really started before humans existed, but they didn't know that initially) is muted and barely impactful in the day to day lives of Americans. Which is horrifying. The few people who seem to understand the gravity of what's been going on are those who have met the aliens and chosen to collude for one reason or another.

One has to wonder what the equivalent of the Truther or Benghazi movements would be. What do Art Bell show callers make of it?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 03:42

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Lockdown down seems to be one of the most powerful cybertronians that has appeared in the film series so far, and the scene when he murders Rachet indicates why: he removes Rachet's spark and absorbs it into his own body. We've seen this before with Optimus and Jetfire, but Optimus quickly sheds the wings and engines imparted from Jetfire after defeating The Fallen. Not to mention he pulls a Mola Ram on the Fallen and takes that spark too. So Optimus and Lockdown are both soul stealers, and now Galvatron has no soul. Nice.

Maarak fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jul 3, 2014

# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 04:06

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Indie Rocktopus posted:

- I'm aware of the recent nerd fetishization of but hear me out: I just read L. Sprague De Camp's biography of Lovecraft and I've been rereading some of his stories, and I can't help but feel the series quotes him in a couple of places. Specifically the Dreads in the third film, the incomprehensible Transformers language, Megatron who lies in the Laurentian Abyss dreaming (and covered in octopi), and most importantly Alice. The film seems to be engaging with the racism and gynophobia that permeate Lovecraft's work, as well as striving for his cosmic horror in the face of uncaring elder gods, though Bay achieves this not through atmosphere and inference but through his signature, exhausting assault on the senses.

Cybertronians are more or less metal shoggoths.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2014 19:42

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Dr. Fraiser Crane's deathsquads did repeat a line that NEST(or at least NEST-led troops) said during the Battle of Chicago in the third film, "Burning steel!" when they attack their alien targets.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2014 09:07

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Those creepy googly eyed bots from Lockdown's ship also show up in the second film when Megatron's body is recovered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RkzjpmKWjg

# ¿ Jul 8, 2014 02:26

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

quote:

Zhang told reporters that he and his wife spent over 200,000RMB buying various models. "If the economic conditions permit, one doesn't need to consider the cost of a hobby," Zhang said with a smile.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 18:46

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Optimus's systemic lies and deception from the previous 2.5 films undermines his credibility entirely.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2014 04:14

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Milky Moor posted:

It gets my goat that the aesthetics of the Transformers changes with every movie.

Yanking something I posted in another thread...

Alien shapeshifters that can't stick to one form seems quite appropriate for metal shoggoths.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 04:43

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

How is he not a Prime?

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 05:55

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

UmOk posted:

Did Megatron die again since TF1? I don't remember that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ddah7sZMP0&t=120s

# ¿ Apr 15, 2017 19:37

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

The stats on Shockwave are way way off, unless it's simply not counting his burrowing worm thing.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2017 17:46

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:22

Maarak: May 23, 2007; "Go for it!"

Y'all forgot the universal greeting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJYS76GBqZU

# ¿ Jun 20, 2020 21:00

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > I still really like the Transformers movies