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I wound up in a strange spot Transformers wise - my first experience of it being the Movie which was utterly amazing. G1 and the other cartoons were never really on during my childhood, but whenever I've seen them you can distinctly see that the original animations were pre to young teen focused whilst the movie was much more teen focused.

Beastwars was on a lot more and its a little like Reboot- for its day the CGI was awesome; but its aged horribly (as a lot of CGU heavy things often do). Was good fun though!


Bay films just, they just don't really work for me. It doesn't help that not only are they human focused, but they are also basically teen romance films. The sad fact is there's such a vast budget and amount of work that has gone into them, but in the end the stories are paper thin, the characters are paper thin and the whole affair seems t obe more of a huge tech demo for what complexity the CGI and greenscreen teams can do coupled with a lot of explosions.
Now I like lots of explosions, I like a no brains action flick; but the Bay Transformers films don't have Arny running around in them as your central human character

Also the action is too much.

You can’t tell who just got smashed, or who is who because it’s just a massive blur of metal filmed from far too close. The Transformers simply move too organically, and you don’t get much of a sense of their mass.

The overall designs have the same issue. Compare to G1, where even if you’re not familiar with the names, the designs and colours used are more than enough to tell one from the other, especially in fights. When Prime punched a Decepticon, you heard it and felt it.

I think the key thing is that in the original series when Prime was in a fight and losing you were invested in him as a character so you really felt every hit and punch.

In the Bay films you really don't have much characterising happening of any of the transformers save Bumblebee. So when Prime gets into a fight you don't feel as invested in the battle and its conclusion. The films suffer from the fact that you have to bring your characterising and such from outside.
It would actually be interesting to consider the viewpoint of those who don't have a Transformers background, even in a casual sense, to get an idea what they feel about them. My feeling is that Prime in the films is only a hero because of his actions outside of the films in other media. The Prime in the Bay films isn't doing and showing us he's a great noble leader and such outside of him not wanting to randomly kill people and doing a big end of film fight scene.

It gets a little better as the films progress, but so many of the Transformers just feel faceless in the films. Which I can sort of get, you've limited time, but at the same time I feel like they could have done way more, esp as there isn't a huge TV series that leads up to the films (in the same style, story and such).




It's a little bit like a lot of super-hero films we get where the film relies heavily upon casual awareness and background understanding of the heroes to fill in a lot of gaps.

If you don’t have much run time, use fewer characters.

And less greeblies for my tastes. The CGI Transformers are well realised, I don’t think anyone can fairly deny that. But….it’s just too much widgets and gubbins. Like a flayed body, exposing the inner workings, which should’ve been covered up with something.


The ranged weapons are also super weird. They don’t do much damage, until the script needs them to. The G1 series got round that as they were largely non-lethal and hey, it’s a kid’s cartoon with a code of conduct enforced by Moral Minority. But given the Bay films are surprisingly graphic, relatively speaking? The guns of varying destruction stick out.

There are redeeming features to them. The arrival of the Autobots and them finding their disguises does work for me. And hey, Peter Cullen is still Peter Cullen. But Age of Extinction in particular, they just feel like a series of unrelated vignettes cobbled together.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

I was a G1 kid, and “too old” by the time Beastwars rolled around, so never had much of a care for it.

I was also a G1 kid, and in my 20s when Beastwars came out... And enjoyed the hell out of it.

Even so, I'm fine with this version being different, just as I was fine with the previous movies being a reinvention rather than a straight adaption of G1. Change is fine, I just want a movie to be fun. And, sadly, the live action movies movies haven't managed to be as fun as the animated movie was, aside from maybe Bumblebee. Fingers crossed this one turns out to be better than the teaser makes it look.

As for my own feelings on this, I haven't watched any of the live action Transformers since Age of Extinction so probably not gonna see this either, though all of the praise for Bumblebee has me wondering if I should at least give that a go.

Bumblebee was a good one, yes.

Pretty sure I’ve got Bumblebee on DVD, and I know I’ve seen it, I just…couldn’t tell you a damn thing about it.

If it’s in the stack, I’ll stick it up the spout this weekend.

Here's my pitch, Transformers the Life and Death of Optimus Prime.

A 4 million year saga that goes from Orion Pax's life as a clerk, to being drafted, to becoming a leader, and finally to dying on a backwater world to protect some pitiful organic creatures. (Use the fight from the original animated movie word for word)

Make the kids of the 2020s cry like the kids of the 1980s did.

Follow it up with the plot from the Marvel books about who will succeed Optimus.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Here's my pitch, Transformers the Life and Death of Optimus Prime.

A 4 million year saga that goes from Orion Pax's life as a clerk, to being drafted, to becoming a leader, and finally to dying on a backwater world to protect some pitiful organic creatures. (Use the fight from the original animated movie word for word)

Make the kids of the 2020s cry like the kids of the 1980s did.

Follow it up with the plot from the Marvel books about who will succeed Optimus.

No, no... just have it as a film about a giant robot clerk... Maybe working in a grocery store.... that unexpectedly can't raise its security shutters
As I understand it, he wasn't even supposed to be working today.

Autobots, transform and roll out, but only after filling in form df32.3.45 part 3, signed in triplicate and with the puce form left with the instructing station.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
I did actually really enjoy Age of Extinction, which learnt some valuable lessons from the first three movies. And then came the Last Knight, which was an incomprehensible mess.

Due to the recent Transformer trailer, a bunch of clips have started appearing in my YT feeds, and I watched some of the Last Knight ones. I've seen that movie - once - and even I can't figure out what the hell is going on. It somehow takes the impenetrable visual noise of the Bayformer films and makes it worse.

There are parts of the third three that I really like, but the title of each of them should have been:

Humans
With Special Guest Appearance by Optimus Prime & The Autobots

Would've been more accurate.

The Cybertron flashbacks in Bumblebee - which was't bad, BTW - were some of the coolest things I've ever seen. They even got Cybertron right, FFS. I get that animation is expensive, but it's clear that the people making these have some inkling that that's what we want to see, but instead it's more humans humans humans!

Can we please get a good Transformers film before Peter Cullen retires. Or worse.

Exalt!

I agree with everything in this post. I'd absolutely love to see a Wreckers film done Cybertron flashback style with maybe a token human.

I can definitely agree that one of the movie franchise's biggest weaknesses is that there's too much of the humans in them, rather than just focusing on the robots. Of course, since the robots are fighting on EARTH, one must expect a certain amount of human involvement. I don't have any real history or nostalgia for the classic animated series (original, Beast Wars, any of it), and I never owned any of the toys, but I enjoyed the first movie a lot (and not just because of the aptly-named Megan Fox). The second and third ones were much less good, but the series sort of came back with Age of Extinction, partly because I liked Mark Wahlberg's character a lot better than Shia's. The Last Knight was terrible. Bumblebee was every bit as good as the first one, probably better. Here's hoping this new one will be more like Bumblebee and less like The Last Knight.

Human characters are like any character, if they're done right they work well.
IDW's Transformers comics had a fair few good human characters but then when you've got years to develop them it kind of makes it easier. When it's 2.5 hour movie the limits are much harder, especially when the focus is primarily space robots.

Super Bowl spot...

Do you think his name is Mirage?

So which one is that supposed to be? Also what’s with all the dead air at the end of the video?

 AduroT wrote:
So which one is that supposed to be? Also what’s with all the dead air at the end of the video?

In the fine tradition of transformers movies, that would be the plot.

Voss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
So which one is that supposed to be? Also what’s with all the dead air at the end of the video?

In the fine tradition of transformers movies, that would be the plot.

It's the space my hopes and dreams (for a movie about transforming robots) left behind after it turns out to be another movie about humans, and occasionally robots.

New trailer:

Well... I really wasn't expecting unicron. But i think this trailer reiterates the problem. We are moving away from the good character driven bumblebee format and back to the spectacle driven michael bay format.

So... Boo.

 Baragash wrote:

Voss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
So which one is that supposed to be? Also what’s with all the dead air at the end of the video?

In the fine tradition of transformers movies, that would be the plot.

It's the space my hopes and dreams (for a movie about transforming robots) left behind after it turns out to be another movie about humans, and occasionally robots.

We could get lucky. It could be about the robots...

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

Voss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
So which one is that supposed to be? Also what’s with all the dead air at the end of the video?

In the fine tradition of transformers movies, that would be the plot.

It's the space my hopes and dreams (for a movie about transforming robots) left behind after it turns out to be another movie about humans, and occasionally robots.

We could get lucky. It could be about the robots...

Well, the trailer seems to be about the 'good' robots fighting pointless minion robots that does nothing to stop the real threat approaching (also some guy's unfortunately boring life). And the fact that Orson Welles isn't involved means Unicron is likely to be a pretty hollow follow-up anyway.

The melodrama in these trailers is killing me

The_Real_Chris wrote:
We could get lucky. It could be about the robots...

That is how they keep scamming people into going to these dumpster fires: they prey on hope. It is like money scammers and desperation.

Even when they focus a bit on the robots the characterisation they use is so insanely shallow or the plot points are beyond stupid.

I still recall them making huge deal over robots hiding in our technology for generations and revealing that every single iconic machine humanity ever made was, in fact, a robot in disguise.
Which is just so insanely stupid on so many levels it boggles the mind that they could get there story wise.


Meanwhile most of the "Optimus is a great fantastic smart leader" is basically just what people say and stare at him in awe. When in reality in the series he doesn't really do anything to earn that title save for the big "end of film fight scene"

Voss wrote:
And the fact that Orson Welles isn't involved means Unicron is likely to be a pretty hollow follow-up anyway.

Orson Welles, famously dead after his last ever role voicing Unicron in *checks notes* 1985. Unicron has been in a bunch of Transformers stuff since the characters introduction and the lack of Orson Welles didn't hamper those incarnations. Hell, John Noble was the voice of Unicron during Transformers Prime.

Not sure how I feel about Unicron being in the film. It feels like a bit of a gimmick to hook people, a la "Somehow Palpatine has returned".

I'm assuming that it will involve the humans finding the Maguffin that stops him.

 Gert wrote:

Voss wrote:
And the fact that Orson Welles isn't involved means Unicron is likely to be a pretty hollow follow-up anyway.

Orson Welles, famously dead after his last ever role voicing Unicron in *checks notes* 1985. Unicron has been in a bunch of Transformers stuff since the characters introduction and the lack of Orson Welles didn't hamper those incarnations. Hell, John Noble was the voice of Unicron during Transformers Prime.

Exactly my point! Welles is famous, and a bunch of unremarkable things were 'not hampered' by his absence. Damning with faint praise there.

I am confused as to what point it is you are trying to make here.

 Chillreaper wrote:

I'm assuming that it will involve the humans finding the Maguffin that stops him.

Never! What writer worth his salt would use such a plot device! Everyone knows the way to destroy Unicron is either a) expend the matrix dooming your race inside him, or b) have scorpinok attack his feet.