nitzanhavoc

I'm not going to get into the specifics. This film has suffered the wrath of the masses simply for not being more Avengers-y, including blunt, shameless and painfully unjustified favouritism shown to Zack Snyder's (inferior, imho) version.

Do not listen to them. Watch this. It's fun the first time as it is the 20th. Characters, acting and effects seriously make up for the admittedly wanting plot, and it's not like the competition at the time offered anything all that impressive. This film should have solidified this roster as the DC Universe's all-star team. Instead... you know what happened.

Is this a 10/10 film? No, perhaps not even remotely, but it's current rating is a grave injustice and this is all I could do about it. Trust me, after watching it you'll feel the same.

Enjoy!

Wow, where do I even start?? Let's just go by the numbers.

1. Stop casting The Rock in finesse clandestine roles!!! The dude is the size of two and a half average people, in what universe does he enter a place without every single person with less than savory intentions spotting him from a mile away?!

2. Yes, Gal Gadot is gorgeous and her accent just adds to her sex appeal, no arguments here! But being able to fool a professional and extra paranoid arms desler by promising him sex?! What are you, a twelve year old?!

3. And of course, the "plot twist". You see, I'm a huge fan of plot twists, it shows high level writing and usually upgrades films. But when the story is so bland, the pace is either frustratingly low or irrationally and unprofessionally high and the audience has honestly lost interest and doesn't care either way? There is zero need for a twist, especially such an unbelievable one. You know, when the cake you made turns out stale - adding chilly peppers isn't going to save it.

So, Reynolds is funny, Gadot is charismatic and exquisite, and The Rock is big and domineering. That is all. That is the entirety of this film, and I actually watched it in two sittings because I found lying in bed and aimlessly browsing YouTube more compelling than this film's mess of a plot. Will you hate it? Probably not. Can you find someting better to watch? 100% yes.

Let's start off by saying I'm a die hard old school Transformers fan, yet I managed not to be an edgelord back when Michael Bay created his first adaptation. I actually enjoyed everything, from the slightly unnecessarily edited SFX to the entirely unnecessarily ultered looks of the Transformers themselves. I even liked most of the stories and plots enough, because why not? This has been true for each and every one of the previous installments, Bumblebee included. And then came Rise of the Beasts.

The robots are as awesome as ever, you just won't notice, because the banal interactions between the human characters get most of the screen time. Particularly, the new robot characters (Maximals) are totally bada**, if only we'd actually see them fighting for more than two minutes. Don't get me wrong, the human charachters display some fine acting skills and character design and the characters themselves are likable, but this should have been balanced with a greater focus on the Autobots just like what had been done in the previous films.

Also, the antagonist (Scourge) is made to be invincible, almost like an excuse for the lack of fight scenes (sort of like a "why bother showing them fight, he almost killed everyone last time they had a 30 seconds battle), and the greatest threat Unicron, whule actually loyal to original canon (I'm so glad they dropped the whole "Earth is Unicron" bit from the Knights story, that one was an eyesore...), receives even less screen time than the others. Seriously, if you've never watched the original full length animated movie from the 80's you'll find Unicron completely underwhelming and it won't be your fault at all.

All in all, while watching it wasn't a pain, it certainly was disappointing and I'm kind of sorry I didn't use the time to watch something else. The disappointment is even greater since I had really managed to enjoy all the previous films and it wasn't even all that difficult. Now, when they start talking about the next one, I'll be far less optimistic.