What are the best Transformers fight scenes?

[Lord_Zed]

100%. The Optimus versus Megatron at the end of Dark Of The Moon is a complete joke. Michael Bay does not know how to create a fight scene since it's never a battle of wits or clever banter or physically thoughtful in any way. It's just shoot, slash, throw your opponent, rip out spine, repeat. Just watching those fights makes me feel as if my own brain cells are being diminished rather than the character actually suffering the cranial damage.

While I agree with you about this particular fight scene, I think it is somewhat symptomatic of an overall trend of lazy action movies. It seems to me that these days the final battle of every action movie, just comes down to filling the screen with as much CGI and explosions as possible, and the hero just shouting loudly and heroically and vanquishing his foe with sheer hero power, there is no clever battle of wits anymore the hero doesn't concoct some clever scheme to beat the bad guy they just win because they have too. The problem is I can't think of a an action film in recent times that breaks this mold, even good films like J.J Abrahms Star Trek end with a emotional fist fight and yet more explosions.

...utterly unrealistic. Not even an animal would just stay still while something else was attacking it... Ultra Magnus is meant to be an Autobot soldier and Cheetor had previously demonstrated enough ability to fight previously. It just seems that writers/animators get lazy, so rather than showing the opponents struggling/resisting, they just have them stand there while the attacker lays into them.

Funny thing, as much as I love the final confrontation between Optimus and Megatron in the original animated film (and it is my favourite TF fight scene), I do think the part where Prime throws Megatron is flawed for the above reason. One moment he's like "I'll rip out your optics" and struggling with Prime, the next minute Optimu's just causally pushes Meg's arm away, who proceeds to go all limp and just LETS Prime hurl him into the pavement. It just doesn't match the intensity of the rest of the fight and is the only real flaw in an awesomely constructed fight scene, but it bugs me every time I see it now!

[GoktimusPrime]

While I agree with you about this particular fight scene, I think it is somewhat symptomatic of an overall trend of lazy action movies. It seems to me that these days the final battle of every action movie, just comes down to filling the screen with as much CGI and explosions as possible, and the hero just shouting loudly and heroically and vanquishing his foe with sheer hero power, there is no clever battle of wits anymore the hero doesn't concoct some clever scheme to beat the bad guy they just win because they have too. The problem is I can't think of a an action film in recent times that breaks this mold, even good films like J.J Abrahms Star Trek end with a emotional fist fight and yet more explosions.

It can be difficult to have an emotional fight with guns and explosions, because guns and missiles etc. are such impersonal weapons. It's the reason why George Lucas decided to give Jedi & Sith the light sabre as a melee weapon. Both Jedi & Sith don't use blasters, except for Luke in Eps IV & V, but not in Ep VI which is when he considered himself to be a Jedi proper - even in Ep V when Han Solo shoots Vader, Vader absorbs the blasts with his hand and confiscates Han's blaster, but doesn't ever use the blaster - Darth Maul, Count Dooku & Palpatine all never use blasters - Obiwan used a blaster once in desperation to defeat Grievous, but immediately showed disdain with the comment of "So uncivilised!" Even Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet which replaced swords with guns; it still made the action at up-close melee range for the more emotionally heightened scenes -- like when Tybalt slays Mercutio, Tybalt uses a piece of glass like a knife.

The Transformers, who seem able to take several shots and continue fighting, have plenty of opportunities for melee fighting, and indeed a lot of the fighting in the TF films are melee, but Bay seldomly uses it to heighten emotions in the story... it does happen a few times though, like when Optimus suddenly gets impaled by Megatron in the forest fight in ROTF, or when Bumblebee suddenly turns the table on Soundwave and plugs him (after building tension for Bumblebee's impending doom). I thought those parts were well done -- but in most other scenes it's pretty much just gratituous fighting rock 'em sock 'em robots. It looks good and highly entertaining... but often just action for action's sake (rather than using the action as a story-telling vehicle). You look at the confrontations between Luke and Vader in Empire and Jedi -- both are highly emotional action scenes, but the action is driven by the story, whereas in Transformers the story tends to be driven by action.

Funny thing, as much as I love the final confrontation between Optimus and Megatron in the original animated film (and it is my favourite TF fight scene), I do think the part where Prime throws Megatron is flawed for the above reason. One moment he's like "I'll rip out your optics" and struggling with Prime, the next minute Optimu's just causally pushes Meg's arm away, who proceeds to go all limp and just LETS Prime hurl him into the pavement. It just doesn't match the intensity of the rest of the fight and is the only real flaw in an awesomely constructed fight scene, but it bugs me every time I see it now!

Yeah, I first saw TFTM in 1986, then saw like a hundred times more when I found it on VHS in 1988. So at that age it all looked good to me. My rose-tinted nostalgia glasses insulates me from such crapulence. But yeah, I saw The Headmasters as an adult, so I didn't have that nostalgic childhood bias to shield me.