A website claims to know what the opening scene in Transformers 3 will be. Quite a feat if true, since they’re still filming the movie and once they get it into the editing room everything could change.

But let’s play along anyway. Stop reading now if you don’t want to soak your gray matter in potential Transformers 3 spoilers. read this entry »

Michael Bay has taken his Transformers 3 production to the downtown streets of Chicago and, since he’s Michael Bay, he’s blowing a lot of stuff up. Filming in one of the most heavily populated places of America it was inevitable that someone would capture video and that’s just what we’ve got for you below.

Fans gathered in the streets to see what was happening and were rewarded by big fireballs and appearances by Patrick Dempsey and Optimus Prime himself, who dodge an attack and then drove by pulling his trailer. That’s right, Optimus Prime is finally using his trailer! Check out all the action in the videos embedded after the jump. read this entry »

It’s no secret that a lot of people were pretty disappointed by Transformers 2 and I’ve talked before on this site about my waning hope that Bay might actually have learned something and decided to focus more on story this time. But why work on the story when you can shoot in 3D?

Yeah Transformers 3 is hopping on board the 3D craze, I mean, of course. Anything to get out of writing a decent script for this movie. Even if people were burned by the last one, adding “3D” on to the end of any blockbuster’s title is, right now at least, a license to print money. If it’s in 3D, it doesn’t have to be good, people will see it. And boy oh boy, is Transformers 3 ever going to be in 3D.

Transformers 3 producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura talked to one of my roving reporters and revealed that they’re going whole-hog with 3D technology. We’re not just talking action scenes which might actually be fun in the format, but a lot of scenes which no one will care if they’re in 3D too. Here’s what Lorenzo had to say: read this entry »

After what an awful mess Transformers 2 was, as a fan I’ve been hoping that franchise director Michael Bay would take a step back, look at what went wrong, and then maybe get back to what worked so well in the mostly awesome first film. Those hopes are fading fast.

Though he’s been promising to do just that, these new set photos from Coming Soon seem to indicate just the opposite. See Transformers worked because it was, at its heart, the simple story of a geeky kid and his car. Transformers 2 didn’t work because it turned that geeky kid into some sort of frat boy douche and became the story of a bunch of metal shit pounding on a bunch of metal shit in some sort of inscrutable, high-gloss sheen.

So if you’re going to get back to that geek, average kid and his car center that made the whole thing worth watching in the first place, your new lead female probably should be playing some sort of girl next door, not a high-fashion, Donald Trump girlfriend reject. Yet that’s exactly what Megan Fox’s replacement, Rosie-Huntington Whiteley looks like in the CS images you’ll see below. Shia and Rosie look ready to hang out with Paris Hilton, not rock out to oldies stations with Bumblebee. Take a look after the jump. read this entry »

Normally no matter how bad a movie is, the people involved will never admit it And while most of the Transformers 2 cast might be willing to two the company line, Hugo Weaving isn’t. It’s the sort of thing you can get away with only when you’ve played an iconic character like Agent Smith. Hugo Weaving is never going to have trouble getting work.

So he’s free to be honest when it comes to Transformers, in which he plays the voice of Megatron. What does Hugo think of the movies? Not much. When asked about the status of the third film he responded, “Oh no,” he barks with a laugh. “They’re not making Transformers III, are they?” Megatron really doesn’t care. It sounds like this is just a paycheck he picks up so he can do better movies. In fact he’s so disconnected from the whole thing that he’s never even met the movie’s director Michael Bay. read this entry »

Accurate:

No surprise here, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was the number one movie at the box office this weekend and it made a ridiculous amount of money. $112 million just over the three day weekend. Add in the film’s totals from earlier in the week and it made more than $201 million in only three days.

It’s already the biggest movie of the year and the biggest opening ever to happen in June. It’s also the biggest ever movie in IMAX, having made $14.4 million in IMAX showings, more than any other IMAX film has ever opened with.

Cameron Diaz’s touchy feely cloning movie My Sister’s Keeper fared less well, and debuted at number 5. Here’s the full top ten:

Weekend Box Office June 26 – 28
1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – $112 million
2. The Proposal – $18 million
3. The Hangover – $17 million
4. UP – $13 million
5. My Sister’s Keeper – $12 million
6. Year One – $6 million
7. The Taking of Pelham 123 – $5 million
8. Star Trek – $4 million
9. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – $4 million
10. Away We Go – $2 million

It’s the biggest movie of the summer, which means that after a hot summer weekend like this one, almost all of you have seen it. The critics have trashed it, the pundits have questioned it, but what did you think of it?

[poll id="2"]

I still remember watching the first Transformers movie. It was in a packed theater, one of those screenings put on by radio stations. This usually results in an audience skewed towards the station’s demographic rather than one composed of movie fans but in this instance, a quick look up and down the aisle revealed an audience packed with Transformers geeks. Optimus Prime t-shirts were in heavy evidence along with the usual geek accoutrements present at any special nerd-friendly event. And when the movie played, there was an audible reaction. They laughed at all the obscure, inside jokes. They applauded in all the right moments. The first time Optimus Prime rolled on screen there was a gasp, a ripple of emotion which seemed close to collapsing into tears as thirty year old men relived that moment when as a kid, Optimus Prime died on screen and left them there all alone.

Shortly after that screening Transformers debuted to mainstream audiences and powered by incomprehensible special effects it became huge. The film transcended any and all possible boundaries of fandom to become something loved not just by fanboys, but by everyone who likes to buy a ticket for spectacle.

Enter Transformers 2, an inferior film by any measure yet one, inexplicably loved by audiences while utterly loathed by nearly every type of film critic. It’s on it’s way to becoming the second biggest film of all time and, those who reviewed and hated it are looking for scapegoats. How to explain this impossible success? How to explain the determination of audiences to like something which is, so obviously, a pile of dreck? Never before has the divide between audience and critic been bigger, and that’s left us all looking for answers. The one landed on most frequently by pundits is this one, espoused by Roger Ebert: “It has little to no appeal for non-fanboy or female audiences.” The implication here is that the film made $60 million dollars purely on the money eagerly handed over by nerds who, of course, will watch anything featuring robots without discrimination.

I beg to differ. read this entry »