First one was fun. Second one was a lot of things flying at me to no abandon.

I didn't find much of a difference between the first and second movies either. If people were really attached to the coming of age aspects of the first movie, I guess that just went way over my head since I was too caught up being angry at the movies being about people rather then the autobots

TF1 is widely, widely loved. If Tf3 is just as "good" as TF1, it will do massive business.

I actually am not attached to it...I actually don't think about it as a defining factor at all..it's a starting point that goes nowhere. The first one was more controlled in terms of direction and story. The 2nd one was excess. What made TF1 alright, TF2 increased the bad humor and the story was worse...it was also trying to achieve something it couldn't. The humor in TF1 while still not in my realm of preference was bearable. TF2's humor was really bad. In other words...what TF1 got wrong...TF2 increased that aspect of wrong was there by a lot. I'll hold strong though that the Shanghai sequence was very well done. The rest of it not so much, not a big fan of the forest battle..again..excess. It was cool...but as overall product to critique it was flawed.

I wish I had. That would have dramatically increased the entertainment.

Again, I can only speak for myself. It wasn't that I was personally wrapped up in the "kid's first car" story, but Sam fit a familiar "chosen adventurer" archetype. He was recognizable, and we understood his motivations. This was a dork finally given the time of day by the class hottie after he gets his first car. Most of us saw that scene of Mikaela looking over Bumblebee's engine and thought, "Sam! You lucky, lucky bastard!" Then came Sector 7 and their E.T.-style capture of Bumblebee, which called to mind how we felt in 1982 when the big, bad government treated our friend with hostility. Obvious, Spielberg-ian manipulation, but I was invested in the story and characters so it worked.

Believe me, I share your frustration about the imbalance between humans and Transformers in the first two films. Time and again I've said that Bay should have been assigned G.I. Joe instead. An hour into Revenge of the Fallen, I found myself paraphrasing Ian Malcolm: "Now, you do, uh, eventually plan to have Transformers in your Transformers movie, right?" Sam is a fine protagonist, but his parents are way too much. NEST is fine, but I don't want to know or care about them as individuals. Sector 7 and Simmons? Should have stayed contained in the first film.

Ultimately, though, they didn't ask me and their box office take seems to suggest they didn't need my input.

I have to disagree with you. The reason the Forest Battle is always brought up as a positive is because Bay took it seriously. Although there was some silly banter ("weak", "puny", "waste of metal", and "junkyard crap"), the tone of the fight was dead serious and Bay used a skill that many thought he lacked: restraint. The fight was very straightforward. It had no machinegun edits. And you coulld follow exactly what was happening onscreeen.

There was still goofy humour in the Shanghai sequence with the Twins bickering, Sideswipe mugging for the camera to say "damn I'm good", Prime saying "pull over", and Ironhide exclaiming "punkass Decepticon!" There was a group of new characters being introduced, nameless Decepticons getting offed, and Prime tossing the necessary discretion that a special ops mission (complete with media blackout) requires by actually having the Autobot logo emblazoned on his three parachutes.

The thing is that the Shanghai sequence married it all together in portions that were bareable and actually enjoyable. Later the film tries to awkwardly pack the laughs and action separately and both to excess. This was a mistake they repeated from the first film. When the Autobots arrive to Earth, the movie grinds to a frustrating halt so we can have extended antics at Sam's paarents house. At first, it's an amusing the diversion (the Autobots hiding around the house and the "where you masturbating?" gags getting the most laughs from the audience) but it grows tiresome since the film seems to have switched gears to full on comedy when for the past hour and a half it was being set up as a big action flick.

That's one mistake the sequel corrected, however. TF:ROTF has dar better pacing than TF. Once the ball got rolling (the moment Megatron was reactivated), it never stops moviing forward. Unfortunately, the improvisational nature of the screenplay (it was being written as they were shooting, after all) was something they weren't able to mask. It also doesn't help that since so much is thrown at the audience, something as simple as "why was only Bumblebee with Prime when he went to rescue Sam?" takes several viewings to understand.

Forest battle rocks Easily my favorite scene out of both movies.

I wouldn't even try to be that articulate about it. I'd just say that, as a scene, that felt the most like what I wanted a Transformers movie to be like.

Disagree with your disagreement. The entire first hour is largely just extraneous. We move along, but we're not getting anywhere. The whole first act could be summarized: Sam is at college, trying to distance himself from the Autobots. The government is suspicious of the Autobots. The Decepticons are up to something. That's all the information we need, and we spend way too much time getting on with things.

And, as I've just noted in an earlier post, the climax was horribly paced. Crossing the desert took so long that by the time they get Prime into battle on the pyramid I just wanted it to be over. Starscream could have accidentally stepped on Sam and Mikaela, leaving them broken and paralyzed and my only reaction would have been, "Finally! Let's got the Autobots!"

The same thing happens in the first. It's an hour before Barricade confronts Sam. And it's 90 minutes until we see Optimus Prime. At that point, all hell should break loose. Except we get an episode of The Witwicky's (all that was missing was a laugh track) followed by more exposition because the writers chose to finally introduce Sector 7 so late in the film.

I didn't mind the desert trek at all. Yes, Sam was going on foot through the desert and Devastator was grossly misused (he should have fought against the Autobots and military with Prime showing up at the last minute to kick his ass) but they balanced that out with actual fighting. And, too be honest, the final action setpiece of the second film replicated the first. The big threat in both films was barely fought by Prime and later dispatched in the quickest way possible. At least Prime got the final kill in the second movie.

Agree with your disagreement! I was more forgiving of the first film because it was the "origin story." I did become impatient waiting for actual Transformers, but I at least felt like the first hour was building to something. Also, I love your phrase, "an episode of The Witwicky's."

This is why the forest battle is in such high regard for many of us: It's Optimus Prime beating the hell out of several Decepticons in full-on battle mode. The bad puns are played more to antagonize Optimus than to amuse us the audience; the goal is to taunt rather than amuse. It's a very mean-spirited scene, and that's why it plays so strongly. The other action scenes in either film tend to meander too much, are inconsistent in tone and I just kind of zone out and wait for it to be over for someone to tell me who just got killed.

Finally saw some publicity photos of the forthcoming toys on Entertainment Earth's website a day ago. Looking forward to Optimus Prime with his trailer.

Seems like the only TF3 related news lately is good news

Micheal Bay's website says the film is ~134 minutes, making it the shortest of all 3 of his TF film.

Perhaps in addition to a darker tone, and wider and steadier action sequences Bay has also delivered a much better paced and overall leaner picture without the excess that plagued the last 2 films?

My guess is that after the arduous task of filming that lengthy screenplay and still assembling it right up to its release, Bay insisted on something more streamlined to make sure the computer gurus had time to actually finish everything this time.

The opening sequence and forest battle are why I own the BR of ROTF. Most of the movie is crap, but they did get those bits right. Everything else just seemed awkward and out of place. Prime dies and they ease the tension by having two racist robots banter and flame-fart from Jetfire doing every old-man stereotype possible. Then we get an excessive battle with a bunch of nameless Decepticons and Autobots and a joke about Devastator having "balls." Such good stuff....

On the up side, the movie did have Optimus kicking all sorts of Decepto-ass, including Megatron's, which was sorely lacking in the first.

I always found it funny that people decried Mudflap and Skids as black stereotypes when the looked and acted like they were meant as homages to Mater and Stanley from Cars. Hell, one of them even had a gold tooth just like Stanley.

But, yeah, ROTF was an unfocused mess. I also have it on BD and get some enjoyment out of it but has a very bad improv feel to it. Which from what's been revealed, pretty much sums up how it was written.

White people were more upset about Mudflap and Skids than most minorities. I guess minorities know not to expect much from Whites when it comes to positive portrayals of minorities so we either laugh or shake our heads, but either way we just move on.

That must be it. Because when I saw it in theatres the audience was having a great time with them. And most people I'd spoken to that'd seen the film weren't even aware they were supposed to be black until all the whining online started. Heck, most of them (myself included) thought they were supposed to be rednecks.

I just didn't think Mudflap or Skids were funny or interesting. Here we were, in the second movie in which I felt cheated out of screen time for the actual Transformers and these were the two that we saw and heard? If they wanted to separate Bumblebee from the core group of Autobots, I wish they'd have put Arcee and her sisters with him instead of those two morons.

That argument I can agree with. But my gripe was that they robbed Ratchet and Ironhide of screentime. So unless Arcee, Chromia, and Elita One proved exceptionally awesome, it would still have been a latteral move.

On the subject of the new robots, I actually wonder why Sideswipe didn't get more screentime given they bothered to give him a whole standout moment during the Shanghai sequence.

Well, my remark was predicated on the idea that they still wanted to separate Bumblebee from the core group of Autobots. Given that Optimus Prime was separated from the living at the time, that basically means separating Bumblebee from Ironhide and Ratchet.

As for Arcee, I've just always had a fondness for the character. I loved her in the '86 animated movie, and I dig her in the current Transformers: Prime series. I always thought it was funny that so many fans thought it was absurd to introduce a feminine character, arguing that robots have no actual gender. If that's the case, then why are all the others clearly masculine? Looking back, I have to give them credit because Arcee is probably why I very easily understood the distinction between sex and gender.

I'm so confused...

I think what's confusing is that RocShemp and I are having what's known as a "conversation" rather than the kind of all-or-nothing, you vs. me kind of shouting match that has come to be so common. We agree on some points, disagree on others. Not much more to it than that.

TRANSFORMERS 3 is the only upcoming 3-D movie I'm looking forward to. If they can't do giant robots right in 3-D, I'm giving up on the format altogether.

Yeah, they would have been the lesser of two evils. I think the Twins would have been better received if their interchanges were lessened. So having Bumblebee off with Arcee and her sisters (with the Twins as tagalongs) might've worked better.

Yeah, I never understood the issue with excluding Arcee from the first movie (she was intended to be the bike Lennox uses when he fights Blackout). The reasoning was they didn't want to explain why there are female Autobots. It wasn't much of an issue when Elita One, Chromia, Firestar and Moonracer were introduced in the animated series. Heck, I remember there were complaints that they were absent from the '86 movie.

I actually liked the flirtation between Arcee and Hot Rod. It was amusing without feeling forced. It's a shame Bay barely used her in ROTF.

It's a shame Orci & Kurtzman barely wrote her into ROTF.

did they ever publish the script for TF or TF2? I wouldn't mind looking at what the TF2 script looked like by the end...