Written by Phillip
So. My first review...
I went with my dad to see Transformers 4 at the midnight showing on the 26th. I was super hyped about it because all the trailers and all the posters and all the everything were showing off huge amounts of DINOBOT! action. DINOBOTS! Oh man. And while the DINOBOTS! were cool, the rest of the movie wasn’t that great.
Anti-Spoiler Mode Review:
I liked it a little. There were a great many storytelling issues, like little tricks to make you think something was happening when it wasn’t (that wasn’t cool), a bunch of things left unexplained, and situations when they brought something in super abruptly when there was no point, buildup, or anything. I probably give the movie a 1 out of 5 star, the one star simply because the DINOBOTS! looked frickin’ amazing.
Full-Spoiler, Super-Detailed Mode Review:
WARNING: Do not read if you do not like spoilers and have not yet seen the movie.
This is where I start listing all the things wrong with the movie:
1. Optimus Repair
All right, this one isn’t very big, but it’s still weird. At the beginning of the movie one of the characters, Cade Yeager buys a beat-up, completely destroyed truck that he believes he can break down for parts for his inventions. It turns out to be Optimus Prime, who needs Cade’s help in repairing himself. Once he’s a bit better and after a big battle with some humans, Optimus takes Cade, his daughter, and her boyfriend to look for the autobots, who can completely repair him. Unfortunately, they had just killed off Ratchet, the repairman, so they just had Optimus scan a passing fancy truck and suddenly he was all better. Fixed and everything. Wut?
2. Dinobot trick
Early in the movie, they zip over to some place in the arctic or something and show a dig site that had just uncovered a huge fossil. It wasn’t a normal fossil though. It was a fossil from when some Transformers came 65 million years ago and turned every living thing into transformium (that’s what they call it in the movie. ugh.) Guess what dinosaur it was? A T-Rex. Guess who it looked frickin’ exactly like? Grimlock. Guess who didn’t turn into dinobots 65 million years ago when Transformers came and turned everything into living metal? Dinosaurs. No, they just had the Dinobots come out of nowhere from a ship Optimus stole way late in the movie, with no buildup or anything, under the name “Legendary Warriors.” What the heck is that? They’re not even called Dinobots. Nope.
3. Transformium
Still don’t like that name.
When they first talk about this stuff in the movie, they describe it as a “rare earth metal.” Right after that, they go on to say: “we’ve unlocked its genome.” What the heck? IT’S A ROCK. It may be a sentient, living rock, BUT IT’S A ROCK. It doesn’t have DNA.
The other thing about this stuff is the way it transforms. When the humans make their own Transformers out of this stuff, instead of transforming the usual, normal, realistic, plausible way, (this is even though they’re made out of the same stuff the same way) they fly apart into little cubes with wires in between and reform as something else. What’s up with that? Also, if they do that, couldn’t they technically take any form they want? They’re not confined to only two different forms they want! They have limitless possibility! That’s even shown right after the movie introduces transformium, where the owner-of-the-company-guy takes a refined chunk of it, turns it into a music thing, then turns it into a gun! So these new Transformers could be whatever the heck they want now that they’ve been given independence, but nope! They don’t use their massive, MASSIVE advantage when fighting the autobots. They just stay in a single form the whole dang time. Doesn’t make any sense.
4. Lockdown stuff
Who... who is this anyway...? Just some character from the Transformers: Animated series that they decided to put in...? I don’t know.
But then there are a bunch of things left unexplained about him. He was sent by the Creators to catch Optimus Prime. Not just him, but a bunch of other Transformers, including the Dinobots. What? Creators? What Creators? And why, WHY, did he keep all of his collection in his ship until he had completed it instead of taking them one by one back to these “Creators?” And why did he not only keep them all in his ship, but in a separate, DETACHABLE section of his ship? And how did he not notice or even bother checking when Optimus stole it? Just what?
Also, what was all that fancy armory stuff in his ship that seemed to have some sort of importance but didn’t really? Just before we went to the movie I saw some toys at Target depicting a “Silver Knight” Optimus Prime. That was cool. He had shining silver plating and was holding a giant frickin’ sword. He was awesome! And he wasn’t even in the movie.
5. Seed go boom location
So after the humans worked with Lockdown to capture Optimus, he gave the humans a thing called a “seed,” which was a missile that would explode and turn every living thing into *shudder* transformium. Still hate that name...
Anyway, the humans were planning to go to the biggest city and detonate the seed in the center. And kill everyone in the city.
That doesn’t even need to happen.
The seed turns EVERY living thing into transformium. So why not just detonate the seed in a really, really big forest? Or under the ocean? There are any number of places where you could detonate the seed and not kill your fellow humans. I mean, optimal would be nothing dies, but I guess it is business...
But why kill thousands of people just to make things? The world would probably arrest you for mass, mass, mass, mass murder. It would give your company a bad name. Like, a REALLY bad name. So bad that... well... nobody would buy any of your stuff, for a start.
So, yeah... that movie pretty much sucked. If you’re only a casual Transformers fan or not even one at all, it’ll be fine (except for some things that are just stupid even outside the Transformers universe), but if you’re even a little bit hardcore (like me, I used to watch the Gen 1 stuff all the time, not so much anymore), either don’t see it or see it to see how dumb it was.
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