Most overrated movie ever

Rating: 4/10 (26 June 2008)

A while before it came out here, I didn't think I was going to like this movie. I had already seen pictures of the Bumblebee model, and was very disappointed by the design they chose. I suppose this style is more like in the modern Transformers animated series, but very different from how I remember the Transformers from the G1 series.
But then, when I saw the trailer in cinema for the first time(the one with the helicopter), I actually got goosebumps and when the film came out, the reactions were all so positive that I couldn't wait to see it. So I did, and damn, the movie turned out to be exactly what I had expected in the beginning;
The robot's design was far too complicated and overdone, the CGI was so obvious, I never got the idea that I was looking at real giant living machines walking around. At many times it was almost impossible to follow the action and I'm sure that when the designers would have sticked more to the original - more simple - Transformers design, the fighting scenes would have been much better and easier to follow. Besides, with a few exceptions, the robots all looked alike to me; when fighting each other hand-to-hand, it was very hard to see which one was the Decepticon and which one was the Autobot. Or maybe I just need glasses.
I understand it is also a children's movie, but I so hoped for a more dark feeling(like the first Batman movie, with Michael Keaton, that worked, didn't it?) maybe even a little gore. For example: why would a giant evil robot try to scare a tiny human into giving it what it wants, instead of just pulling out an arm or a leg?? I was hoping for some Starship Troopers like violence, you can call me a sick person, but I think that a battle between a Decepticon and a group of humans, would be over in a matter of seconds, leaving the Decepticon fully intact and the humans... well... dead. Then they would need the Autobots to protect them...
Another thing; why the hell did they waste the name 'Devastator' on a meaningless Decepticon that dies within 10 minutes(if I recall correct), while every fan knows that in the TV-series, Devastator is the first 'combiner' that consists of the 6 Constructicons, and one of the coolest Transformers ever. At least this Devastator did look like a Constructicon, but wasn't very impressive without the other 5...
There's one thing that the CGI Transformers can do, that the animated Transformers couldn't(or never did on screen), for as far as I know, and that is to 'scan', for example a car, and then transform into that car. When watching the series, one of the things I found weird, even as a kid, was the fact that an alien robot, that has crash landed on earth 4 million years ago, can look like a modern F15 jet... So the scanning thing would explain that, but for some reason, I don't know why, it kinda took the fun away for me. Another strange fact from the series was that Megatron could transform into a handgun that was small enough for Soundwave or Starscream to hold with one hand. That wouldn't be a good idea for the movie, but at least let him transform into a Cannon then, like Galvatron, but not an aircraft...
Aside from the things mentioned above; the script really sucked, as well as many other things, so don't think I only didn't like it because of the confusing special fx and the fact that they didn't stay true to the original series.
The movie also has some good points; like Shia LaBeouf, and a few good scenes, like the opening scene with the helicopter, and it was still enjoyable to watch in a way, but it could have been so much more than this... I've seen it some time ago, but I still can't understand how people can be so positive about this movie, like it was the greatest movie of 2007... That, and the fact that I'm bored right now, is why I wrote this. I hope the sequel will have some improvements, but the biggest failure of this film, for me, was the Transformers design, and I don't expect that to be much different in the sequel. CGI keeps getting better and more realistic, and although they are not yet able to create a realistic lion, or shark, or dinosaur, and far from making a realistic looking human, you would think that making a believable computer animated robot/machine would be hard to f*ck up, but they did it! And for that, I give this movie 4 *'s.