Reviews

Although it was a short story, that I've read a long time ago, I never forgot this one and I was very pleased to hear that 'The Mist' was being made into a movie. Most Stephen King book to movie translations can be rated between bad and really bad, but still I've always had sort of a weak for (most of) these films. There are a few exceptions of course, for example, The Shining, in my opinion still the best horror film ever made(the Kubrick version that is). The Mist isn't as good or as scary as Kubrick's masterpiece, and although it has the same director/co-writer, it also can't compare to The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile, it was still enjoyable and sure had it's creepy moments. I liked a lot of scenes like when a giant praying-mantis-like monster, appeared out of the mist, to grab a human with it's huge claws, and disappeared again. The spiders where cool too, just as the tentacles that came from beneath the door... There also where some things that annoyed me, like the overly present religious woman. If I recall correct, she was also in the book, but she didn't irritate me nearly as much then. I jumped out of my seat and yelled out 'Yes!!! Die you @#%$!' (in my living room, not in the theater), when she was killed. The actors didn't really make the bizarre events more believable for me, I actually had to laugh when a few of them argued about 'how to tell the rest of the people in the supermarket there are tentacles outside...', with dead serious faces. But maybe it would still sound stupid if it where Jack Nickelson and Michael Douglas having the same conversation, I don't know. I also didn't like some of the camera work very much, sometimes it looked like the camera was deliberately calibrated or focused, I think to add some effect, but it was only unpleasant. And then the ending... Stephen King's novel leaves you guessing, an open end; a group of people escape from the supermarket in a car and as they are driving, they find out that they never had a chance, as a tower-high monster walks past them, it had a feeling of despair. The novel ends there, but I guess the writers thought this wouldn't be a very satisfying ending for the movie, and they where probably right. Although I've warned you about the spoilers, I won't tell you how it ends. I'll just tell you that I personally thought: 'Why? Was this really necessary?'. This kind of irony just doesn't happen to anyone. If only he had waited for 5 more minutes, take some time to make the right decision man, why the hurry? But I guess the ending is what people will talk about after seeing the movie. Me, I couldn't believe it and would rather have seen an open ending than this...

A while before it came out here, I didn't think I was going to like this movie. I had already seen pictures of the Bumblebee model, and was very disappointed by the design they chose. I suppose this style is more like in the modern Transformers animated series, but very different from how I remember the Transformers from the G1 series.

But then, when I saw the trailer in cinema for the first time(the one with the helicopter), I actually got goosebumps and when the film came out, the reactions were all so positive that I couldn't wait to see it. So I did, and damn, the movie turned out to be exactly what I had expected in the beginning;

The robot's design was far too complicated and overdone, the CGI was so obvious, I never got the idea that I was looking at real giant living machines walking around. At many times it was almost impossible to follow the action and I'm sure that when the designers would have sticked more to the original - more simple - Transformers design, the fighting scenes would have been much better and easier to follow. Besides, with a few exceptions, the robots all looked alike to me; when fighting each other hand-to-hand, it was very hard to see which one was the Decepticon and which one was the Autobot. Or maybe I just need glasses.

I understand it is also a children's movie, but I so hoped for a more dark feeling(like the first Batman movie, with Michael Keaton, that worked, didn't it?) maybe even a little gore. For example: why would a giant evil robot try to scare a tiny human into giving it what it wants, instead of just pulling out an arm or a leg?? I was hoping for some Starship Troopers like violence, you can call me a sick person, but I think that a battle between a Decepticon and a group of humans, would be over in a matter of seconds, leaving the Decepticon fully intact and the humans... well... dead. Then they would need the Autobots to protect them...

Another thing; why the hell did they waste the name 'Devastator' on a meaningless Decepticon that dies within 10 minutes(if I recall correct), while every fan knows that in the TV-series, Devastator is the first 'combiner' that consists of the 6 Constructicons, and one of the coolest Transformers ever. At least this Devastator did look like a Constructicon, but wasn't very impressive without the other 5...

There's one thing that the CGI Transformers can do, that the animated Transformers couldn't(or never did on screen), for as far as I know, and that is to 'scan', for example a car, and then transform into that car. When watching the series, one of the things I found weird, even as a kid, was the fact that an alien robot, that has crash landed on earth 4 million years ago, can look like a modern F15 jet... So the scanning thing would explain that, but for some reason, I don't know why, it kinda took the fun away for me. Another strange fact from the series was that Megatron could transform into a handgun that was small enough for Soundwave or Starscream to hold with one hand. That wouldn't be a good idea for the movie, but at least let him transform into a Cannon then, like Galvatron, but not an aircraft...

Aside from the things mentioned above; the script really sucked, as well as many other things, so don't think I only didn't like it because of the confusing special fx and the fact that they didn't stay true to the original series.

The movie also has some good points; like Shia LaBeouf, and a few good scenes, like the opening scene with the helicopter, and it was still enjoyable to watch in a way, but it could have been so much more than this... I've seen it some time ago, but I still can't understand how people can be so positive about this movie, like it was the greatest movie of 2007... That, and the fact that I'm bored right now, is why I wrote this. I hope the sequel will have some improvements, but the biggest failure of this film, for me, was the Transformers design, and I don't expect that to be much different in the sequel. CGI keeps getting better and more realistic, and although they are not yet able to create a realistic lion, or shark, or dinosaur, and far from making a realistic looking human, you would think that making a believable computer animated robot/machine would be hard to f*ck up, but they did it! And for that, I give this movie 4 *'s.