Does anyone find this as annoying as I do? I think Optimus Prime should have been the main character of Transformers, not the kid. I don’t feel like Optimus Prime was done justice. Why do these movies always need to pump our human egos as though we can’t suspend disbelief long enough to identify with a non-human? This is something that I’ve been thinking about since Alien vs Predator, a movie that would have been so much better without the humans.
I suppose one could make a few good arguments about how the director and/or scriptwriter(s) felt that a greater number of people would be pulled into the story because of familiar faces (i.e., human) and a romantic cliche (Shia What’sHisName and She-Plastic). That may very well be part of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was partly done due to the considerable costs and time it takes to bring that level of CGI into the film. I can’t recall which article I was reading recently, but it mentioned that the rendering of just a few seconds of one of the Transformers took a full day or more.
The movie, I thought, was a standard Bay film (whole lotta nuttin’), and I regret that he was given the reins of a live-action Transformers flick, but the CGI in this film was incredible. I can imagine that the talent hired to take on that task was very expensive, so numerous non-CGI scenes were necessary. And, of course, you need to have a reason for those scenes, so some backstory is needed.
It’d be interesting to see a Transformers movie with most of the storyline focused on the robots, but I’m not sure it’d either be economically feasible or completed in a reasonable amount of time. But, I could be wrong; it’s possible that the money made from this film might fuel a sequel with even more CGI scenes.
The copy of Daily Variety I bought in New York yesterday says Paramount has Shia Labouef on contract for a sequel, so I guess they’re looking into it.
I agree wrt the new Transformers film. Well, actually, I think that the Sam and Mikaela characters were likable and added to the film. But just about all of the other human characters could have had their roles significantly reduced or cut entirely, and the movie would have been better for it. Drop the Simmons character, the entire teenage-hackers subplot, and a few other superfluous scenes, and it could easily have been a tightly-paced, Transformer-focused 90-minute movie.
Not me. I thought it was done very well.
The “teenage-hackers” thing was REALLY stupid, it annoyed the crap out of me, I mean come on!!
I actually liked that they didn’t put too much focus on the Transformers themselves. My reasoning: while I loved the show as a kid, the premise is admittedly really dumb, even by Summer blockbuster standards. More Transformers would’ve involved more talk about Cybertron, the All Spark, alien robots with bizarrely human personalities, all in the dialog of an 80’s Saturday morning cartoon. Focusing on the humans let the movie show enough of that to bring back the nostalgia and give an outline of the plot, and then pull away before the audience has too much time to think about it.
Of course, the hacker sub-plot was pretty dumb as well, but I thought the other two human plots were at least not painful.
My favourite Jurassic Park is number 3, and the main reason for that choice is because it’s much more about dinosaurs chasing and eating people than the first two, which both tended to get bogged down in soppy humanity and relationship stuff. No, say I! More dinosaurs eating people!
I also think Alien vs Predator should’ve had no humans in it at all, and just been a huge battle between the two races of beasties. That way the audience could choose for themselves who they’d root for, and it’d just be a huge excuse for two hundred metric tons of cool.
I always hated seeing the humans in the Transformers cartoon because they were portrayed like a woman tied to a railroad track, more of a liability than an asset.
What we need is G.I. Joe teamed up with the Autobots vs. COBRA and the Decepticons.
Oh, it was horrible. And they way they looked and talked, they were just like a 45 year old man’s idea of “rebellious kids.” It was painful.
You do know about the crossover comics, yes?
Why doesn’t somebody shoot michael bay? Why is he still allowed to make movies? Why is he still allowed to destroy all of our childhood icons?
In answer to the OP, YES. Especially not annoying teens or kids. War of the Worlds was butchered for me because of the sullen teen and the screamy Dakota Fanning. And definitely not romance!
…Noooo… any good?
When talking on the phone to producers, he mumbles his name really quickly and people think they’re giving the script to Michael Mann.
Haven’t seen the movie, yet, but this is a pretty standard technique in storytelling. You give the audience a guide that they can identify with, particularly if the setting/other characters are very alien. That’s the theory, anyway. (Personally, I always hated the humans in the Transformers cartoons, too.)
Supposedly Michael Bay has enough pull with the military that he can get F-16s rolled out on the Tarmac much more easily than other directors.
The hacker plotline was fucking ridiculous.
I didn’t even mind the two main characters that much. I liked the Transformers all up in Sam’s shit about ebay.
I think the Transformers are human enough that they can be characters in their own right. They made Optimus Prime a bit too slapstick for me. When he wasn’t being slapstick he was pontificating canned speeches about duty responsibility and heroism. yawn
Even though Bumblebee barely resembled the original Bumblebee, he was probably my favorite transformer. He was definitely the most badass besides Prime.
The characterization of Megatron and Starscream was a bit stupid. The only interaction was Megatron chastizing Starscream for failing him again, when Starscream mounted a successful interstellar rescue. Megatron was essentially Godzilla kept in Cryostasis.
The autobots were just plain stupid, and that annoyed me.
They keep doing this with old iconic properties. Joel Shumacher thought he needed to make Batman more cartoony. George Lucas thought he needed to make Star Wars appeal to a younger generation. Now Michael Bay has done it to Transformers. They need to get a clue and realize that the younger generation is going to like Batman/Star Wars/Transformers no matter what. The people you need to try to please are the older fans.
toadspittle I think it’s totally unnecessary.