More Of The Same What Meets The Eye

J Montana scored Rybot and I passes last night to the preview showing of Transforming Robots, The Sequel: The Bad Guys Are Coming Back And They're Looking For Revenge.

I'd rather go to the dentist than see Not-The-GoBots Part Deux, especially because my hygienist rules, but given that it was free and showing in IMAX. Total cost to me was $1, for parking, so as little as I had interest it was still a good way to kill a few brain cells hours. Plus we grabbed a bite after to harp on it. I absolutely plan to make good on my threat to live blog the film like I did on the first (gimme a week or so), but that won't keep me from sounding off on the flick.

More Robots That Turn Into Machines was, predictably, bad. It suffered from all the same issues that made the first pass - convoluted story, shitty dialogue, confusing whiplash-fast action, useless characters, and terrible acting. To counter that, every frame is hyper-detailed and boundary pushing technologically. Only Michael Bay can make this kind of movie, and while it may not be something you want to watch, it's a dumb, summer movie that is watchable if for nothing more than to see the scope and spectacle.

The director himself shared these facts about the movie in hopes to impress you:

Robots

• 14 robots last time, 46 robots this time (many of which you won't be able to tell apart)
• If you had all the gold ever mined in the history of man, you could build a little more than half of Devastator (apparently, Bay has deduced some kind of gold to robot ratio and applied that formula to the screen)
• Optimus Prime will be life size on IMAX screens in many forest fight shots (if a robot is life-sized in a forest in IMAX and nobody cares, what sound is that?)
• Devastator’s hand is traveling 390 miles per hour when he punches the pyramid (though its hard to tell because the whole scene in is slow motion)
• The pyramid destruction simulation was 8 times bigger than the old rigid simulation all-time record holder at ILM (but it is 8 times better)
• All robot parts laid out end to end would stretch from one side of California to the other, about 180 miles (which is less than all the breast implants in LA, if they were similarly laid out)
• Devastator’s parts stacked tip to tip would be as tall as 58 Empire State Buildings (that sounds kinda gay, stacking parts and tips)
• If all the texture maps on the show were printed on 1 square yard sheets, they would cover 13 football fields (and if the Detroit Lions used them instead of their turf would still go 0-16)

Disk space

• TF1 took 20 Terabytes of disk space. Trans2 took 145 Terabytes. Seven times bigger! (and I just got a 1TB drive at Frys for $89...hope they got as good a deal)
• 145 terabytes would fill 35,000 DVDs. Stacked one on top of the other without storage cases, they would be 145 feet tall (that's not impressive, that's just math)

Rendering times

• If you rendered the entire movie on a modern home PC, you would have had to start the renders 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were being made) to finish for this year’s premiere (although if you had a time machine to do it, I'm sure you've be able to get a better computer)
• A single IMAX shot in the movie (df250) would have taken almost 3 years to render on a top of the line home PC running nonstop (which means all the downloads I did on dial up back in the day are equal to one IMAX shot)
• IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame (maybe you better not let some programs run in the background)

Imax

• Optimus Prime will be life size on IMAX screens in many forest fight shots (yeah, you told us already)
• IMAX frames take about 6 times longer than anamorphic to render (but one the same slow computer?)
• IMAX frame render times: As high as 72 hours per frame (hello, repetition!)

ILM screen time

• ILM Screen Time is about 51 minutes (I have no idea what that means)

Devastator

• Devastator is as tall as a 10 story building (and just as interesting)
• Devastator has more than 10 times the number of individual parts found in an average car (yet still no cup holder)
• Laid out end to end, Devastator’s parts would be almost 14 miles long (size queen)

Devastator totals

• Number of geom pieces: 52632 (so you say)
• The total number of polygons: 11,716,127 (for all the nerds)
• The total length of all pieces: 73090 feet (as if you measured)
• The total length of all pieces: 13.84 miles (we know)

They don't include it, but the film basically breaks down to 5% Megan Fox shots, 12% all the rest of the characters, 50% robots / vehicles, 19% explosions, 8% annoying characters, 32% robots and explosions, 6% useless repetition of things from earlier parts in the movie (in case you missed something when you went to the bathroom or had a visual-induced seizure), and 1% Linkin Park. What, that's 133%? Goddamn right it is - it's a Michael Bay movie!

BTW, the midnight showing alone made $15 million, which is roughly 1/3 the explosions budget or how much Bay spends on staying freshly stocked with Playmate whores and mountains, literally mountains of coke during the shoot.