I have to agree with all that has been said, and I enjoyed all three films (well, some parts of ROTF) myself. It's true that we would feel the need to care for the robots more if they were given full characterization, but the problem is that they're a pain for the animators and take time to finalize. In the end, the robots are simply given limited screen time to just fighting (or jokes).
I never felt that we learnt the relationship between the Autobots properly enough in the films. When one dies, filmmakers are too busy concentrating what Shia's up to next.
For example, in DOTM:
Ironhide's death. No real problem with his being killed (although I was horrified to see him rust to nothing), but the scene right after that is Sam's parents giving him romance advice. Ironhide is never commented on again. He was the heavyweight of the team and Optimus' best friend. Just some sort of acknowledgment would be nice.
Cripes, it was like Optimus taking Jetfire's spark without thanks all over again.
But in the end, all films were flawed but fun to me, and better treatment of the franchise than Rise Of Cobra was to JOE. (because frankly, when you look at ROC, Joe is not the first thing that comes to mind). By DOTM's release, I came to realize that I never had any true beef with the robot designs, and the voice acting was very satisfying.
Oh, and Steve Jablonsky's scores. Love 'em too. Sigh, wish more folks could realize that even bad films have great music.
There has been wasted potential in the Bay films, but nevertheless, they enhanced the franchise's image and popularity to the public, rather than entirely ruining it. And I should note that those of us who enjoyed the films also enjoy arthouse/Oscar bait/quality films as well (so screw you, Distressed Watcher).
So... I believe something was achieved. Here's to the inevitable Transformers 4, or, preferably, a reboot. Anyone know Neil Blonkamp's number?
I remember when I saw the first live Transformers movie in 2007, it was the most disappointed I'd ever been after seeing a movie. And you know to be honest, I really don't think that I had set my expectations that high. It's just that I guess my expectations for the live Transformers movies are different than what's been put out so far after two movies.
First off, I don't want to see the humans as the central characters, I want to see the Transformers themselves as the central characters in the movies. The humans can be used as secondary characters, but I want to see the Transformers as the primary characters. My second complaint is the Transformers designs. I just do not like the designs of the characters. I don't know what it is, but they just look awful. I wish that they looked closer to either the way that the characters looked in the original series, or make them look like they do in the Transformers: Prime cartoon.
My third complaint is the plot. I guess if I were creating live Transformers movies I would take a completely different approach. I don't want to see all this sneaking around nonsense. What I would've liked to have seen in the first movie is the Decepticons just having an all out attack on the planet Earth, with heavy duty destruction. The world would know that the planet was under attack by the Decepticons, but since they have disguises, no one would know whether a plane in the sky was a regular plane or a Decepticons.
Instead of this we've been treated to a couple of very boring movies featuring mostly humans accompanied by characters with very bad designs. It's ok though, I've got the original Transformers series/movie, the Beast Wars/Machines series, and now the Transformersrime series. Those series seem to have a better understanding of what the Transformers brand stands for.
I think that's one factor that makes it so annoying. Fight scenes I can mainly understand but using the other half of the time to make them there for comedy rather then characters....why? There is already a massive hurdle to get viewers out of this mindset and believing in CGI characters having complexity and depth. The fact that Bay feels the robot characters are best used for slapstick (and really immature slapstick at that...urinating on people?) just shows how he's missing the point on an incredible resource.
No, we have seen entire movies, entire worlds crafted with CGI. There is no excuse for the lack of characterization for the transformers. The reason for that comes down to Bay, who didn't really care at all for the transformers as characters and saw them only has props to stage big fights. He instead dedicated HUGE segments to the movies to poorly written human characters. He would rather spend 30 minutes on Sam's, irrelevant to the plot, love life, than spend time on the characterization on the transformers. To Bay, Sam was the only main character, the auto bots were nothing more than fancy special effects for him to play with.
Hand these films to a director who KNOWS where the focus should be and you would probably get a shorter movie that would have spent a whole lot more time with the autobots
Oh that simple, the designs are WAY too complex and detailed. To paraphrase yatzee, its like they started drawing but didn't know when to stop. whoever designed these things basically applied a sense of realism and sacrficed all sense of good character design. The characters look like huge masses of wires, gears and metal; its difficult to make out any kind of distinguishing features. It can be even hard to describe the build of the characters. The slight differences in color becomes your best method for telling one bot from another; which becomes a problem when you have something like two robots of the same color. They are impressive examples of CGI but they are incredibly ugly. This is unlike prime which adds in simplicity to the designs to make them disiguishable
This is an interesting topic that's spun out of the movies... I agree that the Transformers in the film are mainly there purely to be marvels of CGI and for fighting, though when they're not people still complain that they're stereotypes that ruin the movie for them.
One of the films biggest problem that I've noticed is trying to give enough time to everything. They give some focus towards the Autobots though not necesarilly giving any of them major characterization or screentime longer than Prime or Bumblebee or whoever is Bays favorite at the time. The only Decepticons who ever really get focus and characterization are Starscream and Megatron, the major mainstays. Even Transformers Prime has Decepticon infantry just there to be crushed by the Autobots every episode. Sure they have recurring Decepticons but that's because it's an ongoing animated series. You can introduce Airachnid and Breakdown and even give them their own episodes focusing on them because you don't have the strain of juggling the time in a large movie with many things going on. I'm not necesarilly condoning their treatment of the Transformers in the film, even I wish we had more time for the characters and to show us their emotions. But I try to look past that.
You could say I look past a lot of things. I enjoyed Revenge of the Fallen, I honestly did. But I can say without a doubt that it was a bad movie. I laughed, had fun with the action scenes, and kept thinking how much I enjoyed it as I walked home with my dad. Sure the movie had problems that made it a bad movie, but I still enjoyed myself. I look to Transformers for enjoyment, and if I get that, I'm happy. Transformers Prime isn't as... smart I guess? Or as well thought out as say G.I. Joe Renegades or Young Justice. But it's not supposed to be like those shows and shouldn't have to be, it's its own show and I enjoy it. Take Kamen Rider movies for instance, for the few you here on the forum who know about it, their not emmy award winning stuff or even always original. But their there for you to enjoy them, and I think it's okay to be like that.
On humans... well, humans have on a whole been as central to the franchise as the Transformers themselves. I think the reason they get more focus is to appeal to a much more broader audience than the cartoons. Casual viewers, which encompass much more of our population than I think fans do, will relate more to the humans on first viewing than the robots. Of course I think that after the first movie the Transformers should have gotten more focus, though even when we did we got Skids and Mudflap who people criticized and hated.
Though even with whatever complaints you may have about the movies or the trilogy as a whole, they've done good things for the franchise. The successes of these movies brought us Transformers Animated, War For Cybertron, and Transformers Prime. They've brought in new fans, made Hasbor a good amount of money, and to some a fun new universe for Transformers.
Man... I hope I expressed myself well enough in this post :sweat:. Just reading Hellcats blog inspired me to write down some of my feelings on the film franchise. Of course I'm sure people disagree with me, and they probably have valid reasons to. Still, I think all of us can be glad that the Transformers franchise is doing well for itself, for even if we dislike one entry into the franchise it's success can always bring about something much better.
rime series. Those series seem to have a better understanding of what the Transformers brand stands for.