Transformers (UA Edit)
by Uncanny AntmanSam Witwicky gets his first car and also gets mixed up in an intergalactic robot civil war. You know, a typical teenagers life.
member ratings: 
(14 votes, average: 9.14 out of 10, rated)
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original film name: Transformers
new film name : Transformers (UA Edit)
film studio name : Pararmount/Dreamworks
edit crew name : Uncanny Antman
Date Original Film Was Released : July 3rd, 2007
Date Edit Was Released : November, 2009
Original Runtime: 144m
New Runtime: 96m
Amount of time Cut/Added: 48 minutes. (Which surprises me. I didn’t realise it was that much.)
Intention for this fanedit: It’s the old game of ‘Minimize Bay-ness’ for this one. I don’t want the film to be any less fun, just less stupid. (And at the risk of sounding like a typical Transformers fanboy, to lose some of the uselesss human stuff. Do I really care if Mikaela has never noticed Sam before? Does Lennox’s wife and kid mean anything to me in the slightest? No and no.)
Fanedit details : NTSC, Anamorphic, 5.1 (upconvert). Several extra features; Some net finds, and two of my own clips as easter eggs.
Hardware and software information : Premiere, Photoshop.
Time needed for the edition: Four months, on and off.
Additional Comment: For what it’s worth, the unlisted subtitle for the film is ‘Episode 1: Project Iceman’.
Edit list:
- Classic transformation sound effect woven into several scenes, only when I felt it wasn’t too obtrusive.
- Starts with Sam at home, checking his eBay account, continues on with Ron and Sam going to Bobby Bolivia’s.
- New opening titles.
- Qatar. No intro for the team, and no wife and baby for Capt. Lennox. Rearranged sequence with Epps at the feet of Blackout.
- After the base attack, we go straight to the Pentagon. All the analyst material is streamlined and run together to keep the drama and pace up of the potential danger. We go from the briefing, (Without the ‘They’re so young’ discussion) to the analysts working, to Air Force One (Front end cut, readout with incorrect Witwicky name removed, shortened Frenzy/Agents fight, removed General taking forever to authorise cutting of the hard-line, Frenzy no longer flips the bird), then Maggie steals a copy of the download right after the Air Force One sequence. (Slightly trimmed ridiculous product placement hand move with data chip. A shocker even by Bay standards.)
- After Air Force One, we come back to Sam at home asleep. His car is stolen, and he gives chase. After he witnesses Bumblebee standing up, he is chased by dogs out of the yard. (No breakaway chains though.) Sam is not arrested.
- Then we go back to Qatar, where Scorponok attacks the team. Various little trims, and no phone-based comedy.
- It’s now the next morning, and Maggie leaves the Pentagon to go see Glenn.
- Back with Sam at home (No news of the Qatar incident on TV), Bumblebee shows up and Sam runs for it.
- Sam falls off his mother’s bike (without showing the stuntman’s face) and we then meet Mikaela, obviously a friend of Sam.
- Barricade does not scan Sam with his extendo-probe-thingie. A little re-ordering when Sam yanks Mikaela off her bike’tried to fix up terrible looping of Sam in one shot. Less chatter after Barricade is shown running towards them.
- Replaced rock music with score cue when Barricade is chasing Bumblebee.
- During chase, we cut back to Keller learning about Maggie stealing a copy, then we go back to Glenn and Maggie who have finally cracked the encryption.
- After the FBI bust in to Glenn’s home, we come back to Sam and Mikaela, where Bumblebee hides briefly from Barricade. No locked doors or engine trouble.
- Trimmed the shot of Frenzy hot on Sam’s heels with the odd looking running, and a brief moment of Mikaela contemplating the electric saw for too long.
- Replaced ‘Battle Without Honor or Humanity’ with score.
- Removed several beats from the Autobot’s arrival to Earth. Less of the shouting fat kid, and no ‘Tooth Fairy’ line.
- Removed Mikaela’s ‘They know your name.’ right after Optimus gets up in Sam’s face for the first time.
- Dropped Ratchet explaining Bumblebee’s voice. (Also gone is Bee getting it back at the end. There’s simply no mention of Bee speaking in this version.)
- Optimus no longer uses a hologram to start his ‘History of Cybertron’ story. It’s just kind of weird’the holo makes Sam and Mikaela act like the road is destroyed, but then the perspective shifts to being for the audience only, as the next time we see Sam and Mik, they are just looking at Optimus and listening. Also removed Sam saying, ‘My Grandfather.’ After Optimus mentions Captain Witwicky. Yeah, we get it’it’s only been mentioned about a thousand times already.
- Cut first half of Sam’s arrival home. He gets up to his room without them realizing he is back. They only find out later when they come to investigate the noise.
- Removed lame ‘Hands off my bush’ line from Judy.
- In the Sector 7 car, removed mention of Sam’s arrest and Mikaela’s ‘bad dad, bad girl’ back-story. Replaced phone recording of Sam with correct audio from earlier in the film.
- The logic of Sector 7 coming after Sam is a little hazy without the earlier arrest scene, but I think it still works okay. Sector 7 has clearly been tracking what is going on, they have the Air Force One hack that honed in on Captain Witwicky, plus Sam’s eBay listing for Capt. Witwicky’s glasses, and knowledge of what the NBEs are capable of. (ie: The car that Sam declared, ”is alive.’)
- Removed Simmons’ blathering to Optimus when they first meet. He just gets out a ‘Hi there.’ Before Optimus orders him out of the car.
- Removed more Mik back-story and some of the pointless back-and-forth between Sam, Mikaela, and Simmons.
- No Bumble-Pee, nor any shots of Simmons afterwards. Also removed Simmons from ‘Bumblebee captured’ scene.
- Removed agent’s line about his ”Ridiculous government salary…’
- No conversation on helicopter between Sam and Maggie.
- Removed Simmons talking to Sam outside Hoover Dam.
- Removed Agent explaining back-story of the cube, building Hoover Dam around it, et cetera. I don’t have a problem with the exposition per se, but for pacing and transition I decided it wasn’t necessary.
- Removed quick beat during Megatron exposition scene that contained a discontinuity with Keller’s position. (Also contained his pronunciation of ‘robot’, which I always find a bit comedic.)
- No Nokia-bot. Also later, no Mountain Dew, XBOX or ’steering wheel’ bots. In this edit, the All Spark is never shown fixing or creating robots. The way it is used to create life should (in my opinion) be more mysterious, and certainly more difficult than just bumping into someone while holding it.
- Frenzy does not grow his body back when he finds the All Spark. He just sees it, then communicates with Starscream to let him know where it is. (Altered subtitles for Starscream to aid with slight change.) Starscream then rushes (via a time-cut) straight to Hoover Dam, well ahead of the other Decepticons who are confined to land.
- Devastator renamed Brawl in subtitles.
- Removed Keller telling Simmons, ‘Losing’s not really an option for these guys.’ And Simmons subsequent line about the fate of the world.
- When Bumblebee is about to touch the All Spark, removed Epps saying, ‘Okay’He doin’ somethin’ He doin’ somethin”
- Removed Lennox name-checking ‘Mission City. Plus a little trim of Simmons and Keller talking about the radio room and the All Spark shrinking.
- Re-ordered the good guys leaving Hoover Dam, intercutting with Megatron’s unfreezing. Megatron no longer yells, ‘I am Megatron!’
- Pitched Starscream’s voice slightly higher.
- Simmons, Keller, Maggie, and Glenn all rush to the radio room, where Simmons declares, ‘We’re hot. We’re live!’. (ie: Able to signal the air force.) We do not come back to them again. No mention of microphones, Frenzy (what’s left of him) is not seen again.
- Removed visit to pawn shop to acquire radios.
- Completely re-ordered most of the city scenes. My hope is to give the sequence more of a sense of urgency and sustained action. Less moments of standing around, which destroy any sense of real danger.
- After Bee gets his legs blown off, he hands the All Spark to Sam straight away. Sam no longer stands around forever while everything happens around him’now, Brawl attacks and Sam immediately takes off with the Cube without being told to. Mikaela runs off to get the tow truck after Sam has run. No, ‘You’re a soldier now!’ crap, (They use a teenage boy because they can’t spare one soldier?) and less of the Autobots telling Sam to run when they could just take the Cube themselves. There is no longer a specific plan to run the Cube to a building or signal choppers, just to keep it away from the Decepticons.
- When Brawl attacks, Jazz is the first one to take him on, not Ironhide.
- Ironhide no longer does his show-off move where he fires into the ground so as to somersault over a screaming woman in slo-mo. I’ve joined the first part (driving, starts to transform) with the second time we see him (Diving sideways while firing at Brawl.)
- Optimus now arrives directly after Megatron kills Jazz. No more Megs standing around for a long time for no reason.
- Removed Sam cowering while Starscream fights with Ironhide and Ratchet. After Starscream lands, Sam gets back up and keeps running, and Megatron immediately lands and starts chasing him. Sam has no plan, he’s just running to get away.
- No ‘I’ll drive, you shoot.’ The look between Bee and Mik beforehand is plenty. No ‘Shoot, shoot!’ either.
- Sam no longer has a flare when on the roof, no attempt at a chopper hand-off or chopper destruction. Megatron comes busting through the roof as soon as Sam runs out onto it.
- When Optimus is handed the remains of Jazz, I removed the ‘Awww’ from his dialogue. The sad, ‘Jazz.’ Is good, but the ‘Awww’ seems a little comical’corny somehow.
- Removed Lennox going home to his family, and Keller explaining what they’re doing with the Decepticons. We still see the dumping of Megatron (needed for continuity with Transformers 2) but no dialogue over it.
- No rock song finale. I actually don’t mind the song, but I wanted the ending to be more sombre, so I’ve stuck to score. Same goes for the end credits.
- No Optimus voiceover in either the opening or closing scenes. Yeah, everyone loves his closing speech, but it doesn’t tell us anything crucial we need to know. If I could have gotten it out clean, I might have kept it but I wanted the song out more than I wanted the speech in.
- Lots of other tiny little trims/reframing to fix some continuity problems and to slightly alter the pace or mood of several scenes. And a few altered/supplemented musical cues. Hopefully all ‘invisible’ edits that will only be noticed by those who really know the film well.
Awards:
winner of the true fanedit contest of the month November on Fanedit.org:
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Additional information links: IMDB
IMAGES:
Cover art by Uncanny Antman (download here):
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Ok, here is my review of this fanedit.
Now as a way of setting this up I must mention that I know UA, we played in the same sandbox when he fanedited an eps of MARVEL 24.
So Uncanny if you are ready for this read on…
TRANSFORMERS: UA EDIT
Just finished watching the AVI.
I watched the original film once and was not impressed. Also I was never a big TRANSFORMER TAS guy.
But when you get 4 TRANSFORMER fanedits in 1 month well I guess you have to find out whats going on.
I didn’t re-watched the original but did watch 3 versions: JasonN’s, UA’s and Kevinicus so I can compare them that way.
VIDEO
The usual UA high quality stuff.
AUDIO
Great audio.
STORY/ENTERTAINMENT
Not a lot to say here other than WOW!
The fanedit starts slow and then just builds. The only little bump I had was with the Mikaela intro.
Is it bad that I miss Mikaela? I did. We need some kinda beat before the vespa scene because if you never saw this film before you’d be like
“who the hell is that beautiful creature and why isn’t she in every scene of this film?”
Loved the ending sans V.O.
On a technical level Audio and Video are impeccable.
On the editing level, it is seamless.
On a story editing/entertainment level, I enjoyed the movie.
On my street-wise rating system I give this film a
GREEN LIGHT: Roll Out!.
Review by killbillme — November 9, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
I cant tell you how glad I am to see this edit. I liked Transformers but I didnt LOVE Transformers. I dont typically like Micheal Bay films but thats not what I am here to talk about. The edit is quite seamless and very easy to watch which is sometimes hard to do when you edit out almost 26 minutes of video. I had a really good feeling about the edit from the custom intro and song right from the very beginning.
The video looks great. The cuts are beautiful and really make for a smooth cut. 10/10
The audio isnt true 5.1 but is still clean and crisp. 9/10
The edit itself is great and made the movie far better and easier to watch. This is a movie about Transformers and not Shia LeBouf and his girlfriend running in slow motion. THANK YOU! 10/10
Overall 10/10
Review by bigfoot0330 — November 11, 2009 @ 6:42 am
The Edit is fantastic, I really like how you’ve arranged it, and changed the music in some scenes. But as a whole I think I’d still leave out more of certain dialogue and visuals (“What’s stressing, bitches?”, or whatever it is he says, Bumblebee dancing, Fat hacker Boy freaking out in the interview room, and Captain Obvious stuff like “It’s a robot”, “The ice is cracking!”, and “It’s going after the files!”.) What I also hate is annoying ignorant stuff like “Bring The Rain!” – no military professional would talk like that on a radio – and the fat hacker boy being able to see an embedded message within an audio file and be able to decode it in five seconds, complete with pretty visuals. Michael Bay lives in a dream world! (It’s not your fault it was written by a 12-year old). I’d just like to see an attempt to make it a bit more “grown up”.
SO, the Technical – 10/10, and for the movie itself 6/10. But with improvement the movie as a whole could be an 8 or 9. The original I was WOWED with at the cinema but I must’ve been wearing rose-tinted glasses, and still found myself embarrassed at certain scenes (plus I was with my 8-yr old nephew at the time), so in hindsight having seen the movie after it came out on DVD I was terribly disappointed. I haven’t even bothered to see ROTF.
Still a recommended download, thank you for putting the time and effort into this.
Review by Darth_Scourge — November 14, 2009 @ 10:26 am
I can’t say any more than what’s been said here, but this edit was FANTASTIC.
Great editing, good music choices, and almost all of the cringeworthy or unnecessary scenes have been absolutely cleaned up.
This is now my archival edition.
Many thanks.
10/10
Review by EddieDean — November 18, 2009 @ 10:26 pm
amazing! i COMPLETELY forgot how much i HATED transformers in the theater. michael bay really DID film transformers, but who would guess with all that crap love story all over the place?
i LOVED how you split up the chopper attack, the rearrangement of scenes, the removal of megan fox’s character’s back story, the new (old!) sounds, dialogue editing, etc. etc. – all great.
i could offer a few slight cringe-moments of dislike, but in the grand scheme of things are really minute. thanks for giving us this, UA!
Review by joebshmoe — November 19, 2009 @ 3:36 am
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
, 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.
Review by white43 — November 19, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
I really enjoyed this edit but as white43 mentioned above, perhaps a little too much was cut, just so as to leave a little bit more character development and humour just to at least give us a chance to like Sam a little bit more.
Otherwise, everything else was fantasically, professionally done.
Especially the extrass… DON”T OVERLOOK THE EXTRAS! That’s some really great material, right there, and they earn an extra point from me.
8/10
Review by zeppelinrox — December 8, 2009 @ 2:07 am
Transformers wasn’t a great movie, but UA’s edits are usually top notch, so I decided to take a look at this one. And as usual seemless editing, great audio, 10/10 for both. So entertainment wise, well it will never be a great movie but your cuts in my view made it more watchable, most of the stupidity is gone, And lets be honest this is a movie about living robots not a teenage love story so I was glad to see that
dumped. Overall 10 for video 10 for audio 8 for entertainment.
still gets a 10 from me great edit UA.
Review by searcher — December 13, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
This is my definitive version of the film – i won’t be watching my store-bought DVD again.
Review by flyboy707 — December 14, 2009 @ 9:26 pm
I downloaded the AVI, and was quite impressed with the editing, gives the movie a new flow that is superb.
On the downside, the TF intro music was cheesy and weak, the score is superior and should be kept as much as possible, the inclussion of the new version of “The Touch” was silly. Also, a bit TOO much scenes of the characters were edited, humor is not a bad thing and helps with characterization. Surprisingly, Mikaela’s introduction still worked somwhat well.
And the removal of Frenzy works, but I feel it wasn’t necesary (the other bots gone are fine). Also, I miss the “I AM MEGATRON” line. And some of the exposition I feel should’ve been left in.
The city battle is amazingly well edited, and the cut scenes with the military made the autobots stand out more. The rearrangement of the whole battle is wonderful and the idea of Sam’s just running and satying alive worked wonders for his character. Except for some small decitions (like the way you cut Jazz and Brawl fighting -the flow is jumpy), you made an excellent job on this whole part.
Towards the end, I think the voice-over of Keller recaping the state of things should’ve stayed, but the scene still works. Perhaps not showing Lennox going home was a mistake (I understand that people hate the military and hacker subplots, but the soldiers are around a lot so they can use character development – trim it a bit, not cut it all). And finally, while I’m glad the kiss is gone, and the silent end with the score on the background is beautiful, I think Optimus speech sould’ve stayed, even if it meant keeping Linkin Park (which to be honest I quite enjoy).
Overall, really good edit, with a couple of bad editing decitions towards the begining that are cheesy, some that hurt character development, but a really solid flow on the first and second acts, and a spectacularly strong third act.
Review by MrSeyker — December 21, 2009 @ 11:22 am
UA has done a nice job with this one. Solid editing and the audio and video were top notch. I like the way some scenes are restructured or moved to other places in the film. The extras were a nice touch, too. Having said all that, I think an even better edit could be made combining this with Reave’s edit, as there is still some stupidiocy in it that Reave cut out of his, and some stuff I liked that Reave cut out of his. Of course, this all falls into the realm of presonal preference.
I’ll give this edit 9/10. Almost as good as it can get with this entertaining, though occasionally annoying, film. Haha.
Review by Ripplin — December 26, 2009 @ 4:57 am
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
Review by Sunarep — January 8, 2010 @ 1:20 am