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donnatroyprincessofthemyscira · 8 months

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justmenoworries · 11 months

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RotB spoilers

Wow. That sure was... a Transformers movie.

The Positives:

The human characters were amazing. I love Noah's relationship with his little brother, the Sonic and Tails thing made me squee both because I'm a Sonic nerd and because it was just so darn cute! Anthony Ramos does a great job of protraying both the comedic and the more serious sides of the character. I hope he gets big after this, I'd love to see him in more. Same for Dominique Fishback, who also did amazing as Elena. Elena is a gem of a character, I loved her genuine passion for history and how openminded and willing to help she is. Her relationship with the Autobots and the Maximals is so genuinely respectful on both sides and the way the movie makes it clear that the gang probably wouldn't get far without her knowledge - I'm just really happy that the first POC human companions in a Transformers movie were handled this well.

Mirage and Noah's odd friendship is wholesome and funny and one of the highpoints of the movie. Mirage in general is a pretty well-written comedic relief. He's quirky and does his own thing, but never to the point that it gets grating. I think a big part of his likability comes from Pete Davidson's performance, he gives this character such an inherent charisma and joy for life you can't help but warm up to him eventually. I found it pretty interesting that Noah and Mirage seem to be a sort of mirror to Bumblebee and Charlie, heck, their last scene together is literally Noah repairing Mirage to bring him back from a coma. Human-Transformer friendships are pretty hit or miss in these movies, but these two absolutely hit. Btw, we're definitely in for tons of ship-art after Mirage's "You were inside me!" - line and I, for one, cannot wait. Hot take, Noah and Mirage should have kissed.

The Transformers designs were awesome (for the most part, but we'll get to that)! They're very different from the old Bayverse designs, but not in a bad way at all. I think they're a perfect mix of the old traditional G1 but wth enough elements from more modern depictions that they can be seen as their own thing. I'm especially a fan of Arcee's new look, the visor that becomes her windshield in motorcycle-form is aneat touch.

It was cool to see less known Transformers get to be part of the maincast. Mirage is the obvious one, but we've also got Stratosphere, whom I honestly didn't think they'd ever bring back, but it was a nice surprise. I think it's an interesting decision to not have Bumblebee the one who bonds with a human, since in every mainline movie so far he was basically the bridge between humans and Autobots, as the only one with a permanent human companion. They even reference it. But I can get behind it, Bumblebee's kind of become infamous for hogging the limelight. Giving another Autobot a human friend allows someone else to shine for once.

The underlying commentary on instituional racism in both Elena's and Noah's stories was *chef's kiss*. The way Noah struggled to get a job, despite having all the qualities, but being dismissed at the first excuse hi would-be boss gets? Elena being obviously more qualified to be a curator than her boss, but being stuck as an intern who does all the actual work while the white woman gets all the credit for it? Real. Frustrating, but real.

Optimus being portrayed as more jaded and bitter and needing to relearn the meaning of Til All Are One was an intriguing direction to take the characcter in, I enjoyed it for the most part. Also ngl, I got a bit teary-eyed when Optimus pleaded with Noah not to destroy the Transwarp Key and that they could save both of their worlds without one needing to suffer. The paralells between Optimus and Noah were also neat. They're both soldiers who adopted a "Whatever it takes" mindset after countless instances of life just absolutely dumping on them and need to re-learn that sometimes, it's not just about you and your loved ones. You can't just dismiss the fate of others because they're not in your general orbit and working together so no one will have to sacrifice or be sacrificed will always be better than bulldozing through with a "Fuck you, got mine" attitude.

The movie gives the middle finger to the Ancient Aliens trope so fucking hard. Yes, the Maximals were on Earth for a long time and had contact with humans, nope, they're not responsible for stuff like the Nazca Lines or the pyramids, those were all still the humans. The Maximals only contributed their own artifacts to hide the Transwarp Key and even those are clearly distinct from humanity's ancient artifacts, absolutely no overlap. If anything, it's heavily implied the Maximals were imitating humanity when creating their artifacts and I think that's great.

The Negatives:

The story isn't really the movie's strong point. It's a standard Macguffin-hunt, ending with a world-ending threat. If you've seen even one movie with those plot-points before, you've seen this one. There's very little there in terms of fresh new takes or originality. The pacing's too fast to give much attention to the characters, who should have been the main focus, and the climax is a drag that takes about half an hour too long, has about three separate Darkest Hour moments and severely undermines two major characters (more on that later).

The secondary conflict about Noah wanting to destroy the Transwarp Key to protect Earth from Unicron and going behind both the Autobots' and the Maximals' backs is resolved way too quickly. I get why it is, going more in-depth with it would have taken time that the movie simply didn't have to spare, but I feel like that was a potentially enaging discussion that we've missed out on. It's one of the very few examples where a story portrays a gray conflict in a competent manner: You can't really blame Noah for not wanting Earth to be torn apart between all those factions of giant robots, one of whom has shown nothing but disdain for humanity and seems to care only about his own people. On the other end, you can understand why Optimus is so desperate and hyperfocused on using the key to return to Cybertron: There's still a war going on there, dozens of his friends are in the line of fire and he's been forced to sit the conflict out on Earth twiddling his thumbs, with no way to contact the other Autobots. Optimus' speech to Noah during Airazor's attack was good, I won't deny that, but I wish we could've seen other characters react to what Noah almost did. Would they be accepting like Optimus? Or would they feel angry and betrayed, especially Mirage? Speaking of Mirage, how would the fact that Noah almost took away his one hope of going back home affect their relationship? How would Noah defend himself? Or would he accept that what he did was understandable but not okay and try to apologize?

I'm sorry, the Mirage-armor was just silly. It looked silly too. Granted the movie did kind of foreshadow it with Noah's Mirage-glove, but a simple glove is leagues away from 'dismantling my entire body to give my bestie a mech-suit made out of me'. And no hate to the CGI artists, but they messed up big time on the armor. It's obvious Noah's face is photoshopped in there and the movements are just way too video game character-y.

I'm not sure how I feel about the G. I. Joe teaser. I've never watched the cartoon, but I am aware they've had a history of crossovers with Transformers. Still, this feels like another attempt at creating a cinematic universe a la Marvel and I'm really starting to get sick of those. Plus, are we supposed to just ignore that a government organization was spying on Noah the whole time, meddled with his family's medical business and is already looking to weaponize the Autobots for their own purposes through Noah's connection with them? I gotta say, that's a whole lotta yikes that we're just supposed to accept because the Joes are, allegedly, the Good Guys. And come to think of it, how come they only contacted Noah? How come Elena didn't get contacted as well? She was right there, they never would've been able to save the world without her contributions! But that transitions neatly into my next point.

This movie does it's female characters dirty. All of the main groups suffer from Smurfette Principle (each group has only one female character who is mostly relegated to sidekick or background role for the sake of the male characters). Like, the male-female ratio isn't balanced at all here. Two of the four main girls don't get to do anything but be there, more or less, one gets fridged and one gets shafted for the sake of her male companion. Airazor's death was an insult, I'm sorry, but it was. You're telling me that Scourge has the ability to corrupt and brainwash other Transformers and out of the dozens of characters he fights/comes close to over the course of the movie, the only one he uses that on is the sole female Maximal? Oh and just to add insult to injury: Bumblebee gets fatally stabbed in the first act, but gets magically revived during the climax through energon. Not Airazor though. She stays dead. I guess healing springs are boys only. Don't get me started on Elena. The movie spends so much time building her up as the Heart, the Brain to Noah's Brawn whose contributions are just as if not more important and then it screws her over in the climax by removing the one way for her to save the day so Noah and Optimus can do it instead. She literally gets dragged off the battlefield so the men can do the "real" fighting. Oh, and remember Airazor? The movie was teasing that Airazor could be to Elena what Mirage is to Noah, but not only does Airazor die, she attacks Elena beforehand and Elena is forced to witness Primal mercy-killing her. Fucking wow. Elena wasn't allowed to have anything in this movie. (Yes, it was nice to see her being credited with the discovery of the old underground city in Peru, but again: The fact that Noah was given major credit for helping save the world while she was more or less shoved into the background and ignored speaks volumes). You're probably wondering why I haven't said anything about Arcee and Nightbird yet. That's because there is nothing to say. They're barely characters in this movie. Arcee is flat as they come and Nightbird is just a villain who spouts eeevil one-liners. Thanks, I hate it.

We did not need a return of the Realistic Old Man robot designs. Stratosphere and Wheeljack look so deeply out of place next to the others. Why couldn't Wheeljack keep his design from Bumblebee (the movie) and just have it tweaked a bit to fit in on Earth? Seriously, were the "realistic" faces anyone's favorite part of the old Bayverse series? Optimus, Arcee's, Mirage's and Bumblebee's designs were already perfect. Just human enough to be readable, just otherworldly enough to be alien, why did we have to do Jackie and Strats like that???

I'm gonna say it: It was way too early to bring in Unicron as the Big Bad. In Transformers canon, Unicron is basically Thanos. You can allude to him, hint at him as a Greater Evil that's to come, but you do not bring in fucking Unicron as your Starter Villain! Imagine if in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1, Thanos just showed up at the midpoint, teamed up with Ronan and got beaten by the Guardians. That's this movie with Unicron and Scourge. You already had perfectly serviceable villains with Scourge's team, you didn't need to waste the planet-level threat like that! Unicron should have been this constant looming presence in the background, someone we regularly see Scourge interact with and him managing to cross over should be a Worst Case Scenario, not the actual climax. He should not have appeared in person! Because now that the bubble's burst, the tension is gone. We don't need to be afraid of Unicron anymore, because the heroes already beat him once and he has no way to return. And where do you go to escalate from a literally planet-sized Transformer god who eats other planets as fuel??? Where do you escalate from there?? What or who could be more of a threat than a god??? There's a reason Unicron was the Big Bad for a whole separate movie in G1. Now that you had him, every other threat will inevitably look like a step down in comparison. The Decepticons will look like a step down in comparison! Good job Jody Harold, I didn't think anyone could shoot themselves in the foot that badly, but you've proved me wrong quite expertly. Bravo!/s

The Autobots and Maximals feel so underdeveloped. It's been an unfortunate trend in live-action Transformers that the actual Transformers are more window-dressing than anything else ever since Transformers (2007) and sadly, that's very much the case in this movie. Apart from Optimus and, if we're being extremely generous, Mirage, none of the Autobots get anything resembling a character arc or good character moments. Same for the Maximals. The Terrorcons are just generic villains who are neither hammy nor cool enough to leave a lasting impression. There are hints of potential, with the implication that the Terrorcons are remnants of worlds destroyed by Unicron that Unicron brainwashed into his service, but we never really elaborate on that. They're really just goons for the heroes to get whooped by in the first act, so they can be triumphantly defeated in the third act. They had something going with the Optimus/Scourge rivalry and the potential Scourge/Primal rivalry, but none of it is executed in a way that feels narratively satisfying. Optimus gets his ass beat once and Bumblebee gets stabbed trying to help him and from then on Optimus kinda wants revenge until he doesn't. Primal's brother Apelinq dies to Scourge while holding the line so the Maximals can escape their planet, but that's literally only mentioned once and then Primal just forgets he was supposed to hold a grudge, I guess. Watching the movie, it's pretty obvious the Transformers were an afterthought, which really shouldn't be the case in a movie series that has their name in the title.

The action is extremely underwhelming. The fight choreography is kind of okay, but everything feels way too floaty and weightless. There's no 'oomph' behind any of the punches, kicks or any physical attacks. Same goes for the gunfights. The characters might as well be firing with pea-shooters for all the damage any projectile does in this movie. Airazor's fire-breath is the closest thing a weapon comes in this movie to being actually threatening, because she's allowed to do actual damage that isn't shrugged off. If there's anything to be said for the original Bayverse movies, it's that the fights were phenomenal. You could actually feel the characters were heavy, you could tell they were getting hurt. Nothing about this film's fight-scenes feels tense or engaging. Just a bunch of robots shooting blue pellets at one another and doing flips in-between. That's it. Bumblebee (2018) only had like three major fight-scenes and it still managed to outdo this one in terms of solid action. The big battle scene in the climax tries to feel grand and high-stakes, but it doesn't work because you don't care for most of these characters. Though I will admit, Primal kill-stealing from Optimus and Optimus being indignant about it was funny. Maybe I would have cared more if we'd had more interactions like that between the characters.

Conclusion:

This movie was mid in every way. Some characters stood out, most didn't. The story was nothing to write home about, the acting is solid for the most part but the action doesn't deliver and you constantly feel like there could have been more if the movie handled its time better.

4.5/10, Bumblebee (2018) did it better.

#rotb spoilers #transformers rise of the beasts #tf rotb

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torpedopickle · 11 months

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Review of Transformers Rise of the Beasts (no spoilers until the end):

This movie was super fun. It really managed to get me pumped by the end and it had a strong sense of momentum front to back, slowing down in the right places, but not to a halt. It could be considered a tad too fast paced for some, but i thought it was just right. It was a really great cinema experience, the music, visual effects, and direction was super strong all around. Steven Caple Jr. has never helmed a project this big, and I was pleasantly surprised by how confident the direction in this movie feels. Along with a simple but effective plot and strong performances all around, and a script which gives a lot of humanity to each character, it turned out to be a very fun movie. I rate it about a 7.6/10, it might get a little higher once I marinate on it more, but thats where it sits for now. I'll be going more in depth below on things I liked if you would like to continue reading.

I actually really like this movie's plot. I see a lot of critics claim it's "incoherent", but it's actually a very simple story, and it manages to find a lot of strength in this simplicity. People might be put off upon hearing that this is yet another "find the mcguffin" plot like past transformers movies. However this time it's actually executed very effectively. The mcguffin of this movie, the Transwarp Key isn't just a thing the bad guys want because then they can make bad things happen so the heroes want it just for the sake of stopping the bad thing. They nanage to weave some strong character work into this plot. Particularly with Noah and Optimus Prime.

Both of them have highly personal stakes motivating them to find the Key. Optimus wanting to use it to return to Cybertron to retake it after having to flee the war, feeling immense responsibility and guilt over stranding the Autobots on earth. He wants nothing more than to go home. While Noah wants to destroy the Key to make sure that the antagonists can't use it to destroy earth, as we're shown quite early on that he has a lot to protect at home, along with a strong sense of responsibility to take care of his struggling family. This conflict of interest over the mcguffin creates a solid dynamic between the two characters, putting them at odds, and confirming their biases against the other at first. Optimus not trusting humans, and Noah not trusting optimus to keep the key away from the Terrorcons after seeing him just barely survive an encounter with them. It's so simple but they managed to tie the personal motivations of two of our leads into the mcguffin of the movie, which has the continued effect of tying their motivations into the plot, thus driving the plot forward through their personal goals. It's very well done. On a sidenote about Prime and Noah, Peter Cullen and Anthony Ramos both give very fun performances, Cullen getting to add in some dry wit to prime really helps make him feel like the big brother character he should be, and Ramos sells the resourceful brooklyn street kid really well.

As for the other characters, Mirage is another standout. A lot of his lines were genuinely very charming even if some were misses, he definitively has some of the dorkiest lines. For better or worse. His relationship to Noah felt very genuine and they bounce off eachother well. Elena didn't have quite as strong of a motivation as Noah, but her inquisitiveness and infectious energy brought by the stellar Dominique fishback made up for the lacking drive of her character, although her character did do a good job of giving drive to the plot. Which would overall be one of my biggest praises for this movie, being that the human characters, which are usually sidelined and dragged along, actually have a ton of agency. Elena really determines where the movie goes, and Noah really holds a lot of the cards in the conflict as he wants to get rid of the Transwarp Key. As for the minor characters, the other autobots all got to shine, except for Wheeljack, he was mostly just there. And Stratosphere was just an uber. But thats all those characters needed to be so why complain.

On the maximal side, Primal and Airazor get some minimal, but still well done substance to them. Their philosophy of honoring the dead by preserving what lives, even at great personal cost came through really well.

On the villain side, it was servicable. The Terrorcons are very much antagonists in the most rudamentary form, being there to set the plot in motion and to provide motivation for our heroes. Peter Dinklage brought a nicely spiteful energy to Scourge, who albeit light on characterization outside of being a cruel, mocking bastard, has some decent context behind who he is, just enough for him to feel like he actually has a history behind him.

The visual effects in this movie were pretty top notch, it's got a couple shakier sequences, but overall it's a very solidly produced film, with Caple's directing really managing to pull through. The action flows really nicely in this film, doing a good job of making you understand where each character is at any given time, even during the big battles, keeping it from feeling incoherent despite the large amount of moving parts. I do think some of the action screentime could have been a little better utilized, particularly in showing the minor antagonists getting some more up close clashes with the heroes.

The score by Jongnic Bontemps sounded amazing in the theatre. Strong percussion with memorable and versatile reoccurring melodies, with some really sweet integrations of hip hop into orchestral tracks that manage to really emphasize and earn the intended emotions of each scene.

Overall it's a super solid movie. It doesn't really excel at that much, but it does very little to dock points, and manages to find strength in the simplicity of its components. This is a must watch if you can see it in theatres.

Spoiler thoughts from here on out!!!

I thought Airazor's death was handled very poignantly. It pressed the right emotional buttons, it felt intimate and merciful. I'm so glad he didn't like break her neck or something. The fact that you mostly just hear her spark fade instead of seeing it improved it a lot. It was a great mercy kill scene. Thematically, it was also quite strong. It underlines the maximals' determination to preserve life at the cost of their own if necessary. A tragedy which is compounded by how few maximals are left. As well as primal's fortitude to do what was necessary even tho it pains him. I overall liked primal in the few small scenes we got with him. Like how humble he is and how much he seems to admire humans. "We can't take credit for humankind's ingenuity" was a nice line.

Bee's "death" was handled very well too. Although i could do without the mi capitan line. Bee's condition also pushing prime's desire to take down scourge was a nice bit of story. Scourge being so slimy and spiteful, constantly mocking made him very hateable. I think Prime beat him too easily tho. Like he pretty much beat him one on one, despite failing at that earlier because of scourge's dark energy making him super powered or whatever. I thought the bit with prime and noah fighting together was really nice, putting forward the theme of finding common ground and facing hardship together. Although i really wanted primal to get a piece of the scourge cake too. He also had beef with him after all. And it would also help strengthen the unity team even further as well as even the odds with scourge's super powers, which would have been more natural than just prime fighting him better than he did earlier. Nightbird and battletrap also could have used some more love. Like battletrap was straight up one of the first casualties in the climax lol. He died SO fast. We never even get to see him really directly fight someone other than when he crashes into primal. Same with nightbird only getting to really fight bee in the air and then dying literally the instant she takes damage from him. Bee's return was really cool and a satisfying way to turn the tide, but damn he turned the tide a little too much lol. I would have liked to see some more one on one tightly choreographed matchups with the two goons like we got in bumblebee. Noah's exosuit was really cool, but mirage basically melting onto him was kinda silly lol. Bee's offroad alt mode was aquired in the climax which felt a bit dumb

#transformers #rise of the beasts #rotb #transformers rise of the beasts #optimus prime #mirage #bumblebee #optimus primal

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