Jun 8 2009'Transformers 2' IMAX Cut Slightly Longer, Thus Impossible to Hate
Watch out, haters! You bes' keep yo hatin' to the audience of the Jerry Springer's Security Guy Show and out of IMAX theaters. Michael Bay has made the IMAX cut of Transformers 2 slightly longer, and some shots are on big film, so he's warning "haters" for some reason! From Bay's forum (via Coming Soon, thanks to Rick):
Hey everyone,In Japan today. After a month and half seven days a week most days going till midnight me and my crew have just about finished Transformers. I have never seen such a level of dedication from every crew member in a movie before.
Even today after the press in Japan and right before the premiere tonight, I have to sneak out to a digital house to approve the last few effect shots.
It has been a long hard road, but really fun one to travel. What you will notice that is strikingly different than Transformers 1, is the level of animation detail. The robot characters (42 in all), you really can feel empathy for them. What is also very different is the sheer scale of the movie. We have been very tight holding back much of the best imagery in commercials and trailers.
The way to see this movie is on IMAX. Never before has there been 4k rendered character animation shot on full IMAX 70 mm film. This is a first and the results are stunning. You will see Optimus Prime in a few shots where he is actually perfectly to scale on the IMAX 50 foot tall screens.
For IMAX, I created a slightly longer cut with more robot fighting. Four scenes were shot on IMAX cameras so the screen will fill the full IMAX screen for these scenes.
Haters beware.
Michael
Yeah, haters! Since the only criticism of Transformers 1 was lack of 1:1 scale shots of any of the robots, I don't see what anyone could say about lack of coherent action, absence of compelling characters, and overall feelings of pointlessness. Game, set, Bay.
Reader Comments
1. Pat - June 8, 2009 11:22 AM
Can it be .... ? F1RST?!
2. Photoshop Police - June 8, 2009 11:28 AM
Dammit! I'm not gonna go wall-eyed just to see a few extra minutes of unwatchable robot fighting.
Screw All Theatres!
I wlll wait for blu-ray!
3. pluto - June 8, 2009 11:32 AM
Now we get MORE shitty Bay action...? BIGGER?
who cares
4. Photoshop Police - June 8, 2009 11:50 AM
Let me clarify. When I say unwatchable,
I mean literally... you try to watch the robot fighting and...
you CAN'T FRIGGIN TELL WHAT'S GOING ON!
Too much jagged robot crap = crappy battle blur.
You jerks overcomplicated the robots and now you can't tell WTF is happening in the friggin fight scenes! And you expect that situation to get better when you blow it up on an IMAX?
F U, MICHAEL BAY!
5. austinjames - June 8, 2009 11:58 AM
yes we all know Bay sucks at living....but come on Transformers was a friggin fun movie. who cares about character development i just wanna see robots fighting. hop off the bandwagon sheeple. the movie will be fun, dont be a dick
6. Temporal - June 8, 2009 12:09 PM
I have to say I can't even imagine how someone is going to criticize Michael Bay for Transformers being a dumb movie. It's based on a cartoon that was basically a half-hour toy commercial aimed at impressionable children.
Sure it's dumb, but it's fun. I enjoyed it quite a bit because I don't have a stick up my ass. If you want "The English Patient" or "Slumdog Millionaire" you are obviously in the wrong theater.
Some of the editing and SFX criticisms are legit, but it doesn't really make it horrible.
7. billhaverchuck - June 8, 2009 12:49 PM
do you really think people went into transformers hoping for oscar bait?
i saw it at the drive-in with case of beer & a couple of friends when it came out because i thought "hey, this'll be a dumb, fun drive-in movie!" and it was... only it wasn't fun. it was over-long, full of lame comic relief & actually had very little of what i hoped to see when i bought the ticket - GIANT ROBOTS FIGHTING. when a two & a half hour long movie about giant robots fighting contains more scenes of shia lebouf mugging than of actual giant robots fighting, i call bullshit.
and yes, you are right that it was based on a cartoon that only existed to sell toys. but the source material being weak doesn't make a weak movie any more acceptable. by that logic, the "where's waldo" movie should get a free pass, too.
8. Bickleton Wigglesworth III - June 8, 2009 1:07 PM
5, 6, & 7, sorry kids but you're all wrong. The first transformers sucked plain and simple. It has nothing to do with oscars or hate bandwagons or even that it's based on a dumb toy idea. There are basic film-making techniques and more importantly story elements blatantly missing from this movie.
I wasn't expecting much for the first Transformers movie, knowing the subject matter and Bay's work history and I was still let down. Even the fight scenes sucked in that, like Photoshop Police pointed out, the action was impossible to follow with all the blur tightly cropped camera work and questionable VFX. The movie could have been a lot of fun, it failed miserably.
Needless to say expectations for Revenge of the Fallen is exceedingly low.
9. billhaverchuck - June 8, 2009 1:40 PM
#8 - you... you actually thought i was defending "transformers"?
you need to quit the comment skimming, man. it's obvious you didn't read more than the first two sentences of my comment. i plainly say that i did not like the movie - even as a dumbass drinking movie.
10. Dave - June 8, 2009 3:45 PM
All you idiots are missing the point. The movie was never written to fulfill 'basic film-making techniques nor could it possibly make an actual story line develop' (just look at how watchmen took a true to comic book approach and failed miserably turning much of a profit) Nobody wants to sit at the box office for 3+ hours and be bored for nearly half that time. Everyone knows (well maybe not you 'tards), hrm, at least execs know Michael Bay's formula works. Heavy Action + big actors + hint of sci-fi and comedy (and throw in a comic book franchise to boot) and you're opening near $100 million.
Hell if nothing else it got you dipshits to see it more than once and complain about it. And I'm sure as shit you'll be in line waiting opening weekend this time around again. (even if it is to complain about another Michael Bay movie)
11. billhaverchuck - June 8, 2009 5:49 PM
"Nobody wants to sit at the box office for 3+ hours and be bored for nearly half that time."
they want to be bored for 5/6 of the time, then? cause that's just about the right fractional representation of the amount of boredom i experienced. the other 1/6 of "transformers" runtime i experienced confusion, annoyance, and extreme anticipation as i opened another beer hoping it'd make the movie less boring.
btw, "sitting at the box office" = FAIL.
12. Kingpear - June 8, 2009 7:41 PM
@6 - In response to your last sentence.... Yes.. Yes it does
I sure as hell didn't think I was watching Schindler's List, or a Beautiful Mind, but c'mon. The first one blew from start to finish.
The human characters are unbelievably over the top. Tuturro sucks more than Terrence Howard in Iron Man.
The fight scenes are awful with too much sh1t going on. Simplify the robots please!
The editing is just brutal, and the plot just never comes together.
Should I even mention the stumbling in the garden scene?
Awful... just awful
13. Rhialto - June 9, 2009 10:29 AM
Another post of this movie? Couldn't fit this in one post?
14. DreamFolder - June 9, 2009 12:52 PM
I was convinced after I commented on the earlier post (I questioned the sense of a giant robot using a flail) and got flamed. I'm convinced that there are trolls assigned by the production company to ensure that any negative comments get assaulted as ridiculous for expecting storyline or cartoon technology to MAKE SENSE. I bet you can spot them in this post too. I see a couple.
15. Joe - June 9, 2009 2:02 PM
@12, I agree on some, but actually liked Transformers 1, despite the humans.
I thought the robots were the best part. The humans are horrible (bad casting.) He cannot get the best actors - he gets the ones the studio will approve.
Shia sucks...what they need is a young John Cusack type
Megan - fuckable, but so are about a jillion others. Here acting is flat and/or forced
Josh Duhamel- He was okay, but too damn pretty for the role
Tuturro - Horrible (although I think Terrance Howard in "Iron Man" was worse)
Anthony Anderson - painful to watch
I think the only people I liked were Kevin Dunn (his dad) and John Voight (defense secretary).
The robots great, the humans, weak. Think of it in that context.
I am looking forward to Transformers 2, if only for more fighting robots.
I am leery about seeing something on IMAX unless it was shot for it (ala Dark Knight). I may peep this version on IMAX.
People hate Michael Bay, but he makes popcorn action flicks. It's not like he's making a romantic comedy or English period piece.
He has movie revenues of $2.6B (movie costs of $780M, total). That's an average of 235% payback. Not bad odds in Hollywood. He's only made one movie that didn't make twice as much at the box office as it cost.
Of course, his best directing was "Kerri Kendall Video Centerfold", but that's a different topic...no fast edits and cuts there, no sirrreeee!