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ShoWest Transformers Footage Seen!

by Alex Billington
March 14, 2007

The Transformer named Blackout in the movie.

At ShoWest here in Vegas I just returned from a screening of Disturbia (a great movie on its own that I'll talk about later). Before the screening began, the one and only Mr. Michael Bay took the stage to introduce and present roughly 15-20 minutes of clips (3 different scenes in total) from Transformers. The scenes have already been show at various places, including Toy Fair in February and via Ain't It Cool News - check either of those for the complete description, however my response is onwards.

Honestly, I wasn't impressed earlier at the Scorponok scene that they showed in the truck on the show floor - check out LatinoReview.com's coverage of that. My complaint there was the screen size was small and the quality was terrible, so it was hard to see to begin with, and the scene was too "cut" or choppy to really be good. The camera never seemed to focus just on Scorponok once - not sure whether they were being elusive or that's just how Bay wanted it to flow. It had some fairly good action, and great military command visuals, but as for the Transformer fighting, it wasn't anything to "behold."

However, the very first scene with Blackout (the helicopter) fighting at the base was awesome! He uses these shockwave-like massive guns to blow away a football-field length of whatever it shoots at, including entire buildings, tanks, airplanes that are all instantly demolished. This scene looked polished and incredible. It was some massive mayhem that Blackout brought upon this little airbase in Qatar. And if this is a prelude to any of the huge amount of battle scenes and eventual CGI we'll see, than now I am finally excited for Transformers this summer, whereas I wasn't before based on the Scorponok scene alone.

The last scene was a lengthy one with Shia LaBeouf and his Autobot friends (yes, Optimus Prime included) at his house. It had a lot of comedy between not only the Autobots but Shia himself and his parents (who he was hoping wouldn't see the Transformers). My only concern was that this was bordering on the edge of being too cheesy, too comedic. I think everyone is looking for a hardcore, badass action film with lots of good battle sequences, but as is often the case with Michael Bay movies, he adds too much "camp" to the story for whatever reasons. This scene seemed too much in that direction, too cheesy and too "commercial" even; but fortunately it was still very enjoyable and exciting. Not only was Optimus Prime's face fully seen, but you could hear him (and all of the Autobots) talk at least once.

Overall, I'm pretty damn excited for Transformers, and I'm sure all of the fans should be too. There's really nothing to fear, Michael Bay will pull it off.

Find more posts: Hype, Movie News, ShoWest

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