Movies

A cameo of Doc Brown for like 45 seconds, and Jango at the end, And with Neil Patrick Harris basically being Barney in the west

For me, it felt like a much tighter film than 2 or 3, in terms of having a small cast of characters who are given a lot of time to shine. Personally, I preferred ROTF and DOTM to TF2007, but most people I speak to got a little lost by the sequels, and liked the human element of the first film more. This felt like a return to that sort of beating heart; Wahlberg's character had an easy to relate to motivation; looking after his daughter. The chemistry between them made them feel like a real family, even if Peltz did start the film with a few wooden lines she grew on me by the end.

The Transformers were well-served in this one, or at least the Autobots were. The deaths of the older characters were a little rushed, but it made room for a core team of five autobots who were all memorable and distinctive, even if they didn't exactly have the most fleshed-out characterisation. Using Optimus as the primary human interaction character was a nice change of pace, and he himself felt a lot more alive than in previous films. It felt very real when Drift and Crosshairs talked about his leadership, that they would die for him.

The plot was something pretty different and I actually really liked it. For the most part I didn't really recognise it from any of the comicbooks or anything, except maybe the Megatron's head business being lifted from Animated, but that's ideal. I like seeing all new stories rather than constant remakes and adaptations.

My only major complaint was that this was the film that basically gave up on the Transformers transforming; all the Earth-made ones simply morphed like the T-1000. I love all the transformations in these films so not seeing so many was a little disappointing.

Also, it did feel quite long. For me, it suffered from a similar problem to Godzilla in that it was a lot of build-up to a great final fight which I knew was coming, so it was hard to enjoy anything in the run-up. Like Godzilla, I expect I'll enjoy it more on repeat viewings.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and will definitely be re-watching it in the cinemas. I'll probably have more thoughts later, and be able to make a better judgement of where it fits in my personal Top 4.