Uncanny Antman’s edit is a massive improvement. The new opening is excellent, and the entire first act was a very enjoyable film. The film now has a central focus on the setting up of events (similar to disaster movies like Armageddon or Deep Impact), we follow the Decepticons as they begin to infiltrate Earth, the pentagon’s response and the Analysts who try and stop them. Cleverly, the soldiers and Sam Witwicky become smaller subplots who will become the main focus of the second half (once the pentagon and analysts’ roles have become redundant). Uncanny Antman has managed to take one of the aspects of the film I found particularly irritating (the blonde supermodel “analyst” subplot) and actually make it interesting.

Towards the second half, things become a bit shakier. To be fair, Uncanny Antman is limited by the material and he had already gone massively beyond any reasonable expectations. The analyst suplot leads to a dead end once she makes a copy for her friend. Some kind of conclusion would be nice, the interogation scene is now pointless as neither character plays a further role in the film.

Megan Fox’s character was attocious in the original, but her complete eradication leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Who is she, why has she followed Sam. It is clear they’re still getting to know each other and flirting, yet the film also suggests they’re pre-established friends. While I prefer no-Fox to too-much-Fox, it does sadly highlight the fact that we’re watching an edit.

Antman has done improved the film’s climax a hundred fold. The original is one of the dumbest endings I have ever seen, it mostly revolves around a teenager, who’s friends are 30 foot racing cars, running *on foot* to get to a helicopter which he will use to escape from evil *supersonic jetplanes*, and is concluded by the bad guy who wants the magic box being given the magic box, which then kills him (as established about an hour earlier in the film). I really don’t think a person could write the ending any more retarded.

While the “put the allspark in my chest” conclusion cannot be avoided, Antman’s re-ordering of the entire climax turns it into an exciting and(mostly) logical brawl.

This review cannot do justice to the wonders that Uncanny Antman has done. He has taken out 90% of the stupidity, chauvenism, cheese, and unfunny remedial humour, and made Transformers one of the best films it can be given the material.

I do think it could have done more though. In my opinion, the scene with the Transformers in the garden and with Sam’s parents is just terrible. The scene is perhaps made even worse because it follows what Antman has designed to be a tense and exciting set-up: the Earth is being infiltrated by an incredibly powerful and unknown enemy, however, our saviours have arrived (the scene of the Autobots arriving has been snipped into being particularly cool now)… and yet the first 15 minutes we spend in their company is played for (unfunny) laughs. Maybe Antman just likes the scene, but I think the film and pacing would improve considerably if the whole thing was taken out: Sam looks for/finds his glasses, Sector 7 turn up and arrest him, Autobots intersept the convoy.

I would give the original theatrical cut of Transformers a 3/10 (without exageration). It does have some impressive special effects, but these are so badly handled and the rest of the film is such a loud, offensive mess that I find it painful to even try and watch it.

Judging Uncanny Antman’s edit purely as a film in its own rights, I would give it a 6 or 7/10. On the whole, its an enjoyable experience, and parts of the film are easily 9/10 quality. I don’t know if there’s much more you can do with the film, but I do think a bit of extra cutting might help (which contrasts the opinions above which suggest too much has been cut. The thing with a shit sandwisanwich though, is less will always be more). I look forward to watching the other fanedits of the first Transformers and seeing what their take on the film was. But for now I thank Uncanny for actually making Transformers into a watchable experience and allowing me the pleasure of watching Robots beat the crap out of each other.

review by boon23

Prologue:
I have been wanting to watch this fanedit for a long time, but somehow never got to it. Finally I did. As for all edits by Uncanny Antman, my expectations were pretty high, because he almost always delivers outstanding quality.
The original movie was not bad IMO, but never really good. It was superficial, had way too much stupid humor and the plot seemed to be the thing the movie cared not much about. Of course it wanted to show Transformers to an audience that grew up with the Hasbro toys – and that it totally did. Unfortunately I am not part of this generation. I never had a Transformer and other than knowing they exist and are toys, I knew nothing before I watched the movie.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
The fanedit started with what I did not like. The song in the beginning was a variation of the one from the main menu, obviously from some classic Transformers thing that I don’t know. I take it, this is a cool thing for the fans, but for someone unfamiliar with it, it just does not fit at all. The title credits are also not great.
But this is about all the bad stuff I can say about an otherwise great fanedit. We get a condensed, action-packed version of Transformers, where most of the stupid humor and the distractions are gone.

The characters and their changes:
Sam: It seemed impossible, but the Antman made me like Shia LaBeouf in this movie. By losing such an incredible mas of bad scenes and concentrating on the important parts he seems like just the type of anti-hero to like. Awesome achievement. Improvement factor: 100%
Mikaela: The relationship between Sam and Mikaela loses a lot of depth by deleting the sidetracks. In fact, Mikaela loses almost everything she ever had. we never learn why she is skilled with tools and cars or what she thinks of Sam and why. The original, although deeply flawed, took a lot more care about the relationship and to make it believable. It also presented Mikaela as a much more important and real person. Mikaela is the loser of this fanedit. Decrement factor: 90%
Captain Lennox: losing his back story he is now a true war hero. It feels a bit odd that he is presented as important when we get to know nothing about him, but still he is a lot more convincing in his role now. Improvement factor: 50%
Defense Secretary John Keller: he was really annoying at times int he original from what I recall. Now he is most of all helpful. We see him running around a lot. Not a great performance, but he is much more bearable now. Improvement factor: 50%
Agent Simmons: the major pain in the movie. His stupidity was just annoying. The movie could not 100% save him from being stupid, but he was so much believable as a weird expert of a super secret organization. In fact, he is not really a pain anymore. Incredible achievement. Improvement factor: 100%
Bumblebee: he is more likable and less childish. Big Improvement, especially for not pissing on Simmons. Improvement factor: 50%
Optimus Prime: He seems smarter, wiser and more like a true a leader. Thanks for deleting the final speech (although it felt like something was missing. Improvement factor: 50%

Back to the edit:
The streamlined action plot works really well, with a few exceptions: the Witwicky back garden scene and the autobots hiding is still akward and I think this should have been even more trimmed. The decepticon still turns into the Nokia cell, but this part is never continued. Other than that I was highly entertained and enjoyed all the cool changes. The new score worked great, the more mysterious all-spark was a wonderful idea. Sector 7 was much more serious and believable. all the worst parts of Transformers were masterfully addressed and turned into a magnificent improvement over the original.

editing: 9 of 10 (great and very creative editing decisions, no hard cuts, good plot development, but unfortunately we lose too much of Mikaela.)
entertainment: 8 of 10 (it was a good watching experience. Still not great, but far improved – the original got a 6 of 10 from me on imdb )

Image and video quality:
Perfect.

Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
The fanedit has no custom title. I did not like the menu music and the title score. The main menu and the extras menu look great and have awesome transitions. There is no chapter menu. The fanedit had quite some extras, most are additional internet videos with the outstanding and funny “no” video. Some sort of making of would have been great. The starting and end credits were self made but do not inform about the editor. The fanedit comes with nice cover art.
Overall: a nice package!
Great!
8 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 9 of 10
While it still is a superficial action movie, this is a highly entertaining and very improved version of Transformers. A huge achievement and I can definitely recommend this fanedit to anyone being in the mood to watch Transformers. It totally replaces my original.

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

I’ll give this edit 9/10. Almost as good as it can get with this entertaining, though occasionally annoying, film. Haha.

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.

8/10

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.

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!

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.

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

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!.