Transformers (UA Edit)

November 19, 2009 @ 1:47 pm

I wasn’t sure which version of this film to go for, as there are several cuts out there – Reaves – which after reading some of the reviews doesn’t seem to go far enough, JasonNs and Uncanny Antmans. I noted UC had cut a good 40 mins out, so given I enjoy Bay humour as much as Emmerich humour :roll: , I opted for UC.

Only watched Transformers once and was never a Transformers fan. I did however get a friend to watch who was a TF fan and had watched the original a good few weeks back.

From the word go, it’s obvious we’re dealing with a much more serious film. 95% of comedy and silly little redundant subplots are all gone. My friend was picking up all over the place where dialogue was missing and/or scenes. The start of the film is much more enjoyable from this perspective. Some rather slick custom titles are used as well.

Audio and Visual are top notch, as well as the editing as well. No flaws whatsoever that we could detect. 10/10.

Now the film itself, with so much material removed comes across as rather cold and devoid of any sort of character development, which is of course is the price you pay for editing a Bay film to be more serious. Same thing happened to me with my Godzilla : Zilla edit. You’re left with a film almost devoid of any emotion and entirely action. Whilst left with a serious film, you’re also left with a film that’s not quite as much fun as the original. Now I use ‘fun’ a little loosely, as the whole point is to remove Bay’s fun and make it a bit more digestible. But has it gone too far? Horses for courses, some people will love this edit, others will miss the funnier elements – my friend certainly did.

Two things we noted seemed a little odd. The early chase with Bumblebee and Barricade seem twice to get into a position where they’re right in near proximity to each other, we cut to another scene, come back and now they’re miles apart again. So, was there some fighting cut out? When Barricade is interrogating Sam, what happened to Bumblebee? When they both screech into a Warehouse, the next time we see – Bumblebee is exiting and way ahead again…..?

My most hated scene in the film is the Autobots hiding around the parents house. We think you chopped this down and I justified the necessity of it – Mikhaela meets the parents?

Anyway, so I’m a little torn on this. I don’t like the original, but this version feels a little too bare bones for me. On the entertainment level, I’m giving this 7/10.

So averaging out – 10 Audio, 10 Video, 10 Editing and 7 for entertainment – you’ll find the average is still a healthy 9/10. :-)

at first i wasn’t really interested in this fanedit, but the overwhelming positive response has made me curious

back when TF1 came into cinemas i had a great time and it is still one of my favorite mindless blockbusters along with armageddon (baysplosions…) and i couldn’t imagine what could be changed about this movie. The thing with transformers is that it is a dumb rollercoaster ride – so any “making it more serious” cuts are more or less doomed in the first place. A faneditor editing transformers also can run the risk of cutting the hell out of the movie to “reduce the dumb humor” without realizing that there is an inherent sillyness about robots turning into cool stuff and nuking each other, which begs for some comic relief – now of course scenes like bumblebee peeing and stuff are dumb humor and deserve to get cut, but i was afraid that UA might have fallen into the faneditor trap of reducing all those elements – luckily he perfectly hit the balance
he got rid of the annoying stuff, but there is still a good share of bay-hero-moments (military guy riding the bike for no apparent reason under a decepticon) or enough of sam comedy + thankfully a lot of sam’s parents has been kept, which is one of the first things most faneditors cut to make TF1 more “serious”

there are some drastic cuts, like mikaela first appearing when sam is chased by barricade and the whole s7 stuff has been trimmed for good, but boy does it flow well – the only dumb scene i was hoping to have survived the edit was the indian phone guy with the credit card, but it’s not in this edit. Also UA knows how a story flows: often an editor will cut out a line that is just plain horrible and a lot of the times (especially in michael bay movies) this will result in either the loss of the barely existing so-called characters in a michael bay movie or there will be an awkward flow where even if the technical stuff fits, the viewer notices that there is a beat missing – but UA never falls for that

Special congrats for the final battle, the rearranging and removal of the “you’re a soldier now” worked tremendously well

10/10 – great job UA