Several reviewers have noted that the Transformers are designed with monochrome palettes and baffling structural complexity. They're hard to parse when they're just standing around by themselves, much less when they're fighting one another.

This probably dissuades me more from seeing it than any other criticism layered at this movie -- if the action scenes don't even make visual sense, what's the point?

I love the way the robots talk.

I feel that the Transformers themselves are a very charismatic brand. I never watched them when I was young (I was too old) but I find Optimus Prime to be very intriguing. Like Batman, I think the brand is strong, charismatic. The first Batman movie was a complete piece of trash yet the power of the brand guaranteed big box office. Transformers is the same thing, I think. This movie is one of the worst reviewed of the summer and not all that good, particularly it's off putting politics. The brand is strong and charismatic the movie itself doesn't matter that much. (I'm just talking in terms of $$). Batman was the same thing and possibly Star Trek too though that is a different beast itself.

The studios probably don't really understand that so much with these two brands. My argument would be since the brands are so strong why don't we make a good movie.

" liked the first one until the robots started talking."

Actually, the idealist cheezy blabber is dead on for the old Transformer cartoons so is in keeping with the theme. No wonder Bay picked it up. :-)
Fortunately, just as when I was a kid I tend to let that roll outta my ears in favor of hokey cheesy one liners and cool friggin' robots who can change into regular machinery. Never gets old (even as I do;)

I liked it. But of course, I'm pretty tolerant to "popcorn" explosion movies. I don't expect Shakespeare.

It wasn't perfect - they could've slowed-down the fight scenes a few frames (the exception would be the super slo-mo scenes - that were in stark contrast to most of the frenetic action - but still kinda cool), and the military mobilization in Act III was really drawn out more than it should've been. Also there were a couple of loose ends that weren't addressed *SPOILER* (i.e. the two remaining shards of the Allspark that nobody even cared about in favor of that new device, the Matrix...and the little RC Decepticon that Megan captured just sort of disappeared).




I liked the twin robots. I don't agree with the hubbub about them being racist caricatures - no more than I did the same hubbub about the aliens in "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace" being the same.

Turturro (as usual) was great. His own character's story arc was sort of its own "revenge of the fallen" - or at the very least: " the redemption of the disgraced".

Also - unlike many critics, etc. - I laughed at a lot of the jokes.

Still not quite sure why the Twins spoke Ebonics, or pidgin, or whatever.