Transformers! (Merged)

[Alex]

And if I was entertained I'm sure I wouldn't have cared much. But at the first aerial shot I leaned over to Lani and said "I thought they were going to Mission City; why are they in LA").

I don't think geographic inconsistency is a really big deal (after all, I'm pretty sure that they were shown driving away from Hoover Dam on the road that eventually takes you to Yuma) but after explicitly saying they were going to a place that was not LA it seems weird that they didn't do anything to mask that it was LA. Digitally remove the Bank of America building; add some buildings. Don't film on Wilshire. The helicopter shots and scenes of Starscream flying through skyscrapers were pretty much the same establishing shots a movie set in LA would use to identify that it was set in LA.

The streets they were fighting in isn't even a part of LA I've ever been in and I recognized it.

Again, not a make or break issue. Just something that, since the movie wasn't working for me, did stand out like a sore thumb.

Conversely, to use Live Free or Die Hard as an example again, I wasn't overly bothered by Willis flying a helicoptor in an east coast blackout from West Virginia to Baltimore and successfully finding a single house without any navigational aids. But I was having fun so I rolled my eyes a bit and moved on.