Transformers: Age of Extinction

[Hazekiah]

As much as I laud and respect your endless hyper enthusiasm @Hazekiah , nothing you can say can convince me that Transformers isn't a garbled mess from the get go.

And as a general rule, it doesn't matter how much care, how much effort and craftsmanship you've deployed to create something, if you end up with a mess then a mess it is (I'm looking at you, Prometheus).

And it isn't a high brow approach either : I've enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy, I've even enjoyed Pacific Rim ffs... I'm more than ready to switch my brains off for the sheer pleasure of a good ride. But Transformers is just unwatchable and unenjoyable. It's a mess. The script's a mess, the action's a mess, the designs are messy, and the characters... Well, the decor has more personality and story arc than the actual beings on screen.

If the final product is failed, it really doesn't matter how precise and thorough the whole process has been. To me, Transformers is just as enjoyable as a screensaver of 3D fractals randomly exploding. Sure it's colorful, but so is bashing your head against a concrete wall...

Well, firstly, thanks for the kind words about my "endless hyper enthusiasm," lol...much appreciated!

However, with respect, I sincerely think that people just "switching off" their brains for these movies is part of the problem. If more people actually kept their brains "switched on" and paid attention, I think they'd generally appreciate the movies more and see that there's more than just colorful, random explosions going on, not to mention better understanding and making sense of the so-called "messy" script, action, and designs. Speaking of which...

The designs are highly-detailed, granted. But they're also all fairly distinct and easy to tell apart as long as a modicum of focus is applied by the viewer, in addition to the fact that it's something which has been continually improved upon by the films. Autobots are individualized primary colors and Decepticons are metallic, bulky, jagged, borderline inhuman behemoths. How hard is THAT to tell apart? Same goes for the action. It gets pretty chaotic and fast-paced, no argument there! I can't imagine anyone glancing away or thinking about something else would follow it too well. But if you simply open your eyes and give it your full attention it's really quite simple to follow. And let's not forget that the third and fourth films being 3D have kept the camera FAR more static as well as the editing FAR less frenetic. And I honestly have no problem whatsoever with the scripts, either. What's so "messy" there? Naturally, there's a good bit of humor tossed-in and sprinkled throughout, I guess you could consider that a pacing or tone issue sometimes...but I tend to think of that as the sugar which helps the medicine go down. You know, the goofy stuff that helps keep the themes and motifs from coming across too heavy-handed or forced and which helps keep the proceedings fun for anyone not looking to get bogged down by the heavier stuff.

Which I think I've gone to some considerable length establishing is QUITE present, btw.

But people WILL need their brains turned-on to see it.

As for the décor having more personality than the actual characters, the set design and wardrobe choices actually ARE intricately, expertly detailed and relevant to the story. Glad you've noticed! I've ALWAYS appreciated that and I've actually done a LOT of research and writing expanding on how well done it is. But that's maybe for another post someday! I was writing that thread extemporaneously and it really needs some polishing to be more presentable, sorry. For now, I think it's simply worth mentioning that the titular characters, the Transformers themselves, are actually massively expensive, CGI creations, so their limited screentime is kind of a given. That said each successive film in the series has consistently done better and better at allowing for more character building and screentime for the Transformers. The dynamic between Optimus and Sentinel in the third film and the arc granted Prime's character in the fourth are excellent examples of that improvement.

However, it's also worth mentioning the brilliance of, say, Sam's arc within and across the films along with, say, the themes and motifs interwoven between and expressed by the human cast as well as the Transformers in the fourth film. Which is to say, when the CGI characters are WAY too expensive to do much with onscreen, you highlight the fact that the HUMAN CHARACTERS go through changes and develop and are themselves "transformers," in a way, mirroring (at far less cost) the arcs of the CGI characters they serve as stand-ins for, generally. As Optimus himself said, "Like us, there is more to them than meets the eye."

But, again, the audience would need to keep its brains turned-on to see that.

No. I'm sorry, between toilet humor like Devastator's testicles and focus on dogs fucking (WHY?), ugly robots with barely any personalities to speak of - except when they're based on ethnic stereotypes - and incredibly shitty performances by John cheeseball Turturro, Megan goddamned Fox, Shia fucking Laboeuf, continued focus on the US Military and the boring, milquetoast characters they stuff its ranks with that we're supposed to give a shit about as being the deciding factor in resolving each and every conflict, and Optimus Prime, pillar of nobility - ripping off someone's face - no, just no.

I know that the 1986 animated movie is an hour-and-a-half long toy commercial which follows a very standard hero's journey. I'm well aware of that. It was made for kids, to make their parents buy them toys (which, of course, are all of these things, in the long run). I know it's full of animation errors. But I can still turn that movie on and smile from start to finish. You've got performances by one seriously remarkable cast (and Judd Nelson). It doesn't feel cynical the way Bay's movies do; it's got more heart than the four of them combined (lolz). And I'm going to reiterate that Bay completely and totally fails at establishing most of the Cybertronians as characters - you can scoff, but the TF series as a whole is so much more than the original cartoon - we had thirty years of comics and multiple TV series in which to get to know various robots. Four movies in and I couldn't really tell you what any of the Bayformers are like, barring Optimus, Bumblebee and Megatron, though I do admittedly remember Hound standing out a little in the last one.

Starscream had what, five lines across three movies? That's not a character, that's an extra. Background fodder. Unforgivable when your given pilot episode of any TF show introduces a whole cast inside an hourand typically gives you a feel for each of them after a few episodes.

I'm not one of those rabid "humans in transformers are bad" rabid fanboy types, but these movies place TFs as characters in the background as an afterthought to the main cast. It should be the other way around.

So I don't just hold the G1 animated movie and cartoon above these films; I hold the Marvel US & UK, Dreamwave and IDW comic runs higher, not to mention the excellent Beast Wars series, TF Animated, and TF Prime. They're not just bad Transformers experiences to me, they're bad movies. ROTF had some of the shittiest pacing I've ever had the misfortune to witness.

You want some good Transformers? Go out - right now - and read James' Roberts More Than Meets The Eye comic series. Do it. It took everything I ever knew about the franchise and turned it on its head.

Decepticons starting out as idealists intending to topple a corrupt political system. Entire political movements outlined like the Functionists' caste system; what a TF turned into after being created dictated their function for the remainder of your existence, and it was something the population rebelled against. Well-developed characters. Notions of relationships amongst a mechanical race which dispels concepts of gender as mostly irrelevant. Providing reasons that characters like Shockwave have one eye and a gun for a hand - they were punished by the senate for acting out against them and forcibly reconfigured to mark them as criminals and seditionists.

And hell, if you want gritty, it's got you covered too. There's the Decepticon Justice Division: Five sadistic zealots whose entire reason for existing is to hunt down and terminate rogue Decepticons. One of them has a melting chamber in his chest, another has a grinder, one of them turns into an electric chair, etc. Only time reading anything TF has actually disturbed me.

[snip]

And I think that's the thing about the Bay movies that bothers me so very much - they miss the spirit of Transformers and take themselves too seriously, delving into self-parody as a result.

But...to each their own.

Do they? Do they REALLY miss the spirit of the franchise?

Because I remember Transformers as being the kids franchise that had balls. (More on that later, lol.) It had bad guys that turned into GUNS. Not just day-glo laser-pistols like Shockwave, but REALISTIC replicas of a Walther PP gun sold to kids. It killed off characters wholesale. Beloved characters! Brutally and graphically, no less! It had a rock & roll soundtrack when paranoid parents everywhere were burning rock records and boycotting MTV. It had an MTV video, ffs! It had some pretty "questionable" humor. Rumble covered in birdshit, Octane ogling mechaporn, Optimus "plugging into his" pink gf with a cable from his hip into her womb and moaning as they "interfaced," her "special power" radiating from her "special place," etc. all leap to mind.

And the movies miss the spirit of G1 by delving into the realm of "ethnic stereotypes," you say? Perhaps you're forgetting that Iron Hide was almost LITERALLY a redneck. And Jazz spoke jive and was voiced by Scatman Crothers because JAZZ MUSIC = BLACK, lol. The list goes on and on. Hell, even the utter stupidity of the Dinobots was based on the thinking at the time that the "walnut-sized" brains of dinosaurs meant they must have been retarded. And OMG "Carbomya," ffs.

But somehow The Twins aren't in the spirit of all that? Or Drift, the samurai-bot voiced by Ken Watanabe? Or John Goodman basically reprising his gung ho military man role from The Big Lebowski as a grizzled soldier who turns into a military vehicle?

And overly-simplistic sketches of characters though they may be, the movieverse Autobots and (admittedly most of) the Decepticons all have clearly-defined characters, which they manage to achieve despite limited, expensive CGI screentime across only a handful of two-and-a-half-hour movies, rather than HUNDREDS of issues and episodes and 30+ years of opportunity. That's not even a fair comparison, yet the movies still come out on top there...or at the very least maintain the spirit of the overstuffed first two or three years of the show and comic, wherein basically every single character was a Johnny One-Note with almost ZERO personality beyond whatever their ONE identifiable trait or purpose was quickly established as being.

And ONOES THE MILITARY!!1! Earth Defense Force and countless G.I. Joe crossovers, anyone? C'mon, now. It's not even an issue, we ALL know the military would IMMEDIATELY get involved in the case of a hostile, alien invasion. And Bay's great relationship with the military not only helped sell the global scale of the movies at ZERO cost for the production value, but they were generally portrayed realistically AND with a sizable emphasis on the faults in their command and implementation. Was it kinda gung ho? Sure, but still within the spirit of the franchise, for the sake of a worthy trade-off, and not without leveling some criticism towards the institution as a whole. I'd say that's a solid WIN/WIN/WIN.

Optimus Prime ripping someone's face off? He's a goddamned field general in a war spanning THOUSANDS of years. Sorry, brutal violence is just part of the job. But, hey, don't take MY word for it! Sure, G1 Optimus is a "pillar of nobility." But he ALSO went on a MEGATRON MUST BE STOPPED, NO MATTER THE COST kill-crazy rampage, running down and blasting away the Decepticon ranks across the battlefield and outright MOCKING Megatron's helpless pleas for mercy as he leveled his ion rifle right at his face to EXECUTE him then and there. Oh, and what was the VERY FIRST THING Orion Pax did after being reformatted into Optimus Prime?

Ohhh, that's right...

Which isn't to say I find those actions inappropriate or ignoble, mind you! I'm just saying that we should NOT for ONE moment pretend that G1 Optimus himself WOULDN'T rip-off the face of The Fallen if he'd had half-a-chance to do so. He even kicked Megatron right in the dick, ffslol. G1 Optimus did what he had to do, just like live action Optimus does.

Anyway, I'm sure you see my point by now.

And I don't even know why we're talking about the comics, I never said anything bad about them. I'm a huge fan! The Marvel Comics "Transformers" series was actually the first comic book I ever subscribed to ("G.I. Joe" and "G.I. Joe: Special Missions" being the only others), because they were THAT good and THAT important to me. Sure, there were plenty of duds there and they certainly had their problems, but when they were good they were GREAT. I've followed a bit of the Dreamwave stuff since then (mostly decided it wasn't that great I didn't really care much about it), and I LOVE most of what IDW's done with their line of Transformers comics. I haven't had a chance to check out much of "TF: MtMtE" or "TF:RiD" yet, but I've seen enough to know they're great and to look forward to killing a few days at Barnes & Noble reading whatever I can until I have the chance to buy them for myself.

No arguments there, it's great stuff! The world-building, character-building, and story-arcs of the format aren't really comparable to that of the movie format, though. Same goes for the cartoons. It's comparing YEARS of daily/weekly/monthly stories to two-and-a-half-hours worth every few years, man. It's RIDICULOUS to compare the two, and that's not even addressing the fact that comic artists are obviously FAR cheaper than ILM, lol.

So let's compare the animated movie to the live action movies instead!

Which, I hasten to add, was my original point to you in the first place.

If you can look at that mess of a film uncritically while shitting all over the Bay films than, again, I say you are filtering your impression through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia goggles.

Both have animation and continuity errors, so fair's fair, w/e.

Both have some questionable acting choices and quality, so that's a draw again. And good on you for preemptively mentioning Judd Nelson, lol.

Both have characters who just seem to appear out of nowhere and characters who disappear offscreen, but then both feature revolving casts and time-jumps so w/e.

Not much "toilet humor" in the G1 movie, granted. But its companion TV show had plenty, Spike swears (and maybe Hot Rod, btw), and it was a different time for ratings and the franchise was basically just kid-fodder back then, with no real attention paid to teenage or adult markets, unlike the live action films.

Now let's talk pacing. Jeezus, that G1 movie stops cold for some lame-ass '80s rock song action sequence every 15 minutes, lol. And don't even get me started on "Dare to be Stoopid!" Ugh. And wtf was the point of the Quintessons or that whole trial sequence? It just pretty much comes out of nowhere with no purpose.

Same goes for logic and basic storytelling. WTF IS THE MATRIX? Why is it the only thing that can kill Unicron? WTF IS UNICRON? And Optimus can die because TOY SALEZ but Ultra Magnus is dead-but-fixable (albeit still useless) because PLOT ARMOR? Seriously, Optimus dies from a few gutshots but Magnus gets BLOWN TO PEICES and they basically GLUE HIM BACK TOGETHER without even THINKING to go get Optimus and do the same, lol. WTF IS THAT SHIT?!? If people want to talk about "messy scripts," than the G1 movie is the one that REALLY needs to be the focus of THAT discussion.

Sorry!

At least the live action movies explain the Matrix, who The Fallen is, why he has it out for the Autobots, and why he's scared of Primes. I mean, Optimus DID come back from the dead just to bitchslap his underlings, rip his face off, punch his spark out from behind, and crush it in front of his eyes, lolomg.

Let's be clear, I enjoy the G1 movie as much as anyone! Probably WAY more than most, if fact.

But it's basically a PoS with almost nothing going on under the hood.

Again, as I've detailed at length in many essays (and many more to come!), the live action movies are an altogether different beast in that respect and OMFG I love them for that.

Oh, and I'm sure you and @Jinsai will be pleased to know that I'm MORE than prepared to address the issue of Devastator's testicles and related "toilet humor" more thoroughly, but I'll save that for another post.

:)

[Shadaloo]

I would argue that the difference between the examples you're giving in regards to stereotypes between G1 vs the Bay films is how overt they're being about it, and how much it pemeates the atmosphere of the Bay films.

There's nothing wrong with characters having accents; it's what they do with them. G1 Ironhide's accent by itself doesn't imply anything negative about the character. He speaks in drawl, which is not specifically 'redneck'.

Now I'm not going to sit here and pretend like G1 wasn't insensitive at times - Carbombya speaks for itself, and yes, G1 Jazz spoke in jive. That's fair. But across four seasons of the old cartoon, the presence of moments like that was comparably brief in comparison to the films. Consider the tech support guy from the first movie, speaking with the thickest of indian accents, working the stereotypical Indian tech support job. Or Jerry "Deep" Wang.

You bring moments like that into a movie next to characters like Skids and Mudflap, and you can't tell me that their dialogue about 'not being able to read so good' doesn't play to the exact same type of stereotyping. Maybe it wouldn't if I learned a bit more about them as characters. Maybe if they featured in one damn scene which had them ferrying someone around while they talk about what they make of earth, or their life back home. Maybe if I got to know them. Leading me to:

The military: sure, yes, they'd get involved. Yes, they were portrayed well. But who cares about Lt. Commander Jerry McFuckface? Not me. Yes, it makes sense to have them around, but I don't give two shits about the family this one guy's got at home; why should I? For that matter, why should I give a shit about him? The focus and time spent on them could have, and should have, be better spent building characters like Starscream or Ratchet. Or Barricade, who disappeared for ages with no explanation. Or, yes, Skids and Mudflap. I can't stress how badly the lack of characterization for the robots hurts these films and undermines their entire point.

The presence of the military in this film should be limited to a background supporting role with maybe one liason side character. Nothing more, nothing less.

We should have a cast of Autobots and Decepticons who are characters. Instead we have Optimus, a mute Bumblebee, and three or four replaceable background robots versus Megatron (now Galvatron, the differences between which and how the change has affected him have yet to even be portrayed, nor do I expect them to be) and a small army of equally replaceabale robots, all of them background characters who are ultimately there to shoot stuff and get blown up before we have a chance to learn about them the way we have about Mr. Fuckface. A major problem with these movies is that the Bayformers crew barely saw the robots as characters, and gave them personality quirks instead of character traits. That's why Bumblebee can't talk - he doesn't need to express an opinion; he's something for the human cast to react to. Bay even said something along those lines around the time of the first movie; he didn't believe robots could work as relatable characters. It took four films before he even started to treat them that way.

Re: Optimus: Good lord man, It's not the fact that he executed someone, it's the way he did it. Couldn't he have just, what, chopped his head off with an axe, or shot him or something? You're missing the point of what I'm saying; yes, Optimus can and will kill people in a fight, but this is a guy who laments every life he has to take. It was an overtly brutal, nasty method of killing, a nasty image. He made him suffer. That's just not Optimus, it's too vicious. You'll note here that I'm not even bringing up the time he took off Bonecrusher's head or caved in Megs's skull or anything; again: yes, he's a soldier, and a good one, one who does his job, but never, ever someone who lingers on the kill, or makes his enemy suffer like that. It was a hateful kill, and your comparisons to the G1 movie scene don't hold up; Optimus and Megatron in that series had a history, and that moment was a long time coming. He wasn't savoring the moment or anything; he was calling out Megatron on his own bullshit before he finished him off. If you think, for a second, Optimus would ever make someone suffer, even his worst enemy, you're willfully blinding yourself to the piss-poor interpretation of the character in that scene, or you're willing to blindly accept any depiction of the character that's offered up to you. The one time it ever happened that I can remember, was in the IDW comics when Megatron, in captivity, pushed his buttons so badly that he gave him a near-fatal electric jolt in a moment of unthinking rage; which he instantly regretted and was a factor in his deciding to step down as Prime for a long time. Optimus doesn't do unnecessary brutality.

As a reminder, I grant that Age Of Extinction was a bit better about making them into characters. I enjoyed Lockdown. But they should have started off that way! To say that the Bayformer films had clearly-defined characters?

Define movie Starscream, Barricade, Frenzy or Bonecrusher to me, using no tie-in comics or toy specs. Please. Show me what characters the movie gave them.

And it is really telling that you're focusing on on the G1 show and comic to zero in on characters you don't believe have much of a personality either when, as you've pointed out, we've had thirty years of content since. Let's go back to 2007, with Transformers Animated: in the space of the three-episode pilot - three isolated episodes which require no outside knowledge of the franchise to understand at all - you get a feel for each one of the Cybertronian characters, Autobot and Decepticon alike. The same holds true for the first parts of Beast Wars and Prime. I'm not comparing the movies directly to thirty years of storytelling or being remotely unfair; I'm pointing out that there's a lot to choose from, and if I have to specify; these films fail as Transformers stories when held up against any given series pilot. Pick a series. Hell, even the original five-part More Than meets The Eye G1 pilot managed to sketch out more bare-bones characters than the Bay films bothered to. In every case, three to five episodes; your average movie length. That's all you need, with no knowledge of any other series. That's all it takes to introduce a cast of Transformers. And Bay & Co. never bothered to do it properly for four movies.

Now, we're talking about the comics because I'm using them to prove just how far Transformers has come from the simplistic stereotypes you're justifying as present in the movies because the G1 cartoon exhibited such behavior at times. That's the crux of your defense: "The series did it thirty years ago, this is nothing new." But we're in entirely different entertainment climates these days; kids' shows have evolved. There's no room for this shit anymore. And I can be forgiving when it comes to a Reagan-era toy commercial, it was a more naive time. But a series of blockbuster hollywood films designed to appeal to the mass moviegoing audience in the present day? No. Even less room for this shit. Far less.

That's the funny thing here, actually. You've given me these examples to try and prove that the Bayformers films haven't done anything that the G1 series didn't do first; but it's not like that justifies their presence. The series is so much more than the old toy commerical you're using to compare these films to (but while we're at it, I'm also going to point out that half of Season 2 of the show was devoted to introducing and fleshing out new characters in almost every episode; half-hour spotlights for each character. Did they do it well? Arguable, but they at least TRIED. Also: the Dinobots were portrayed as articulated and intelligent in the Marvel comic, Grimlock especially towards the end of it).

And those ugly moments aren't what I'd call "in the spirit" of the various series. Far from. That, I'd hypothesize, is best encapsulated by the joy of seeing how the Transformers react to our world as much as we react to theirs.

Those goofy moments, like where Optimus plays basketball, Ratchet marvelling at campers preparing a weenie roast, or Jazz telling Buster that Madonna's Material Girl is amazing music he wishes they had back on Cybertron. Or Animated Prime's eyes widening when Sari whispers to him about where babies come from. Really lighthearted moments that make you smile, you know? Which are impossible when you don't treat the robots as characters.

Now as for the 1986 movie? Your exact quote was "I'd argue that any viewpoint which holds the '86 movie in higher regard than the live action films is SEVERELY distorted through the filter of nostalgia goggles".

Like I said, "I know that the 1986 animated movie is an hour-and-a-half long toy commercial". I know the Matrix is a giant plot device. I know Unicron has no explanation, that he just shows up. But I can say "this is a movie about the Transformers." It's a basic hero's journey - Hot Rod's. The Quintessons and the trial do have a purpose; they exist as a narrative device for Hot Rod to witness the brutality of the universe and prepare him for becoming Prime. It does nothing but follow basic storytelling tropes and it still tells a better damn Transformers story than all four Bay films do. It explored the Transformers' universe, showed us teeming worlds of robot fish, planets made of junk, and sets kids' imaginations alight. Do we forget that it was a movie, and that this is a franchise, aimed at children?

If TF 86 had a message, it was about finding hope in the darkest of times and living up to one's potential. It was, ultimately, an optimistic film despite all the horrible acts of war that occurred in it. I can watch it and smile, no matter how little sense it makes. I can at least enjoy the thing for all of its lunacy, and argue that a Weird Al-scored motorcycle chase scene - a moment of innocent fun meant to get the kids dancing - has way more damn justification to be in a Transformers film than a three-minute back-and-forth conversation with a cultural stereotype of a tech support guy from India.

Yes, I can watch TF 86 to this day and hold it in very high regard indeed. because it was a really, really fucking entertaining kid's show that had no aspirations to be anything but, which didn't even realize the potential it had at the time.

And can I point out, Haz, with all due respect, that you're trying to prove the inferiority of one single 29-year old kids' movie-slash-glorified-cartoon-commercial to a series of blockbuster films on a ridiculous budget staffed by supposedly, capable Hollywood screenwriters? How bad is that, that there is even a need to try?