Michael bay has "redesigned everything" for Transformers 4

[marillion]

Candlelight wrote:

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Maybe Prime will be a Kenworth K100 this time...

I'm hoping for a Volvo... Get some international trucking interest going..

[Hound of UIster]

DalekJim wrote:

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I hope he doesn't get rid of the frequent overt racism. That was my favourite part of the original trilogy.

Don't forget the rampant sexism.

[FPAlpha]

As long as he unclutters the Transformers designs so anyone can actually tell who's who in a major fight i'm all for it.

Bay is perfect for mindless entertainment but i still like to know what happens onscreen (TF3 was a step in the right direction).

[lennier1]

True, without the voices it was hard to identify which gray motion-blurred blob was which Decepticon.

[Candlelight]

Hound of UIster wrote:

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Don't forget the rampant sexism.

I know what you guys are saying, it just wouldn't be a Transformers movie without terms like 'masturbation' or 'you dumb bitch' or 'fucking awesome'.

[Admiral2]

All I care about is giant robots beating the holy heck out of each other. I'm not going to waste time judging any other content if Bay delivers on that, like he's already done three times. (some of you really need to remove the damn stick...)

[USS Mariner]

Admiral2 wrote:

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All I care about is giant robots beating the holy heck out of each other. I'm not going to waste time judging any other content if Bay delivers on that, like he's already done three times. (some of you really need to remove the damn stick...)

Reducing our expectations/mental capacity to that level, in terms of the running time, we get less Opti-smash per hour with each sequel, which is honestly 90% of what drives the hate.

If we had racist, homophobic robots for an entire film, I guarantee you that the hate would be far less.

[Trekker4747]

Admiral2 wrote:

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All I care about is giant robots beating the holy heck out of each other. I'm not going to waste time judging any other content if Bay delivers on that, like he's already done three times. (some of you really need to remove the damn stick...)

That's sort of the point, the previous movie focused more on Shia LeBouf and his "antics" more than it the the transformer characters. Hell, half of the last movie dealt with Shia looking for a job and coping with his too-hot-for-him girlfriend.

The Transformers were barely characters in their own movies.

[Admiral2]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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That's sort of the point, the previous movie focused more on Shia LeBouf and his "antics" more than it the the transformer characters. Hell, half of the last movie dealt with Shia looking for a job and coping with his too-hot-for-him girlfriend.

The Transformers were barely characters in their own movies.

But the flip-side of that problem is wall-to-wall robots gives a human audience nothing to relate to. The movie might as well be set on Cybertron back in the day.

The Transformers have interacted with human beings since G1. That's the premise. Sentient transforming robots bring their million-year-old civil war to Earth and the people on it. Yes, the star human of the last three movies was particularly annoying, but humans have to be part of the story. I thought the movies struck the right balance...mainly because my main focus was the robot battles.

[Candlelight]

Admiral2 wrote:

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The Transformers have interacted with human beings since G1.

Yes but in the series the robots were the stars and had the main storylines, especially in the third season. In the movies they take a backseat to Shia trying to get it on with Megan.

[Trekker4747]

Admiral2 wrote:

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But the flip-side of that problem is wall-to-wall robots gives a human audience nothing to relate to. The movie might as well be set on Cybertron back in the day.

The Transformers have interacted with human beings since G1. That's the premise. Sentient transforming robots bring their million-year-old civil war to Earth and the people on it. Yes, the star human of the last three movies was particularly annoying, but humans have to be part of the story. I thought the movies struck the right balance...mainly because my main focus was the robot battles.

Exactly. There's nothing wrong with having human characters but over the course of the movie Shia's needs/stories became bigger and bigger with the Transformers' story being almost an after-thought. Hell, aside from Bumblebee and maybe Optimus none of the Autobots or Decepticons are really given any character or personality -aside of the racial stereotype characters.

The Transformers should have had much, much larger roles in these movies than what they got and should have had more distinct and notworthy personalities other than "the black stereotype one(s)" and "the Joe Pesci one."

You needed some form of human characters, sure, but did we need to spend so much of the second movie seeing Sam's mom suffering from a combination of pot brownies and lobotomy? And the third movie on Sam trying to get a job?

[Admiral2]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Exactly. There's nothing wrong with having human characters but over the course of the movie Shia's needs/stories became bigger and bigger with the Transformers' story being almost an after-thought. Hell, aside from Bumblebee and maybe Optimus none of the Autobots or Decepticons are really given any character or personality -aside of the racial stereotype characters.

I saw them as being like the old Japanese monster movies i grew up on, which had about the same ratio of human to monster action. For most of the movie the humans go around being human, being lovers, being comic relief, and then the big things beat each other senseless three or four times. I find that normal.

As for the racial stereotypes...I just chalk it up as one of the many things I'm willing to put with if the rest of the movie is entertaining. Married...With Children was filled with stereotypes like that. I still laughed my ass off every episode.

The Transformers should have had much, much larger roles in these movies than what they got and should have had more distinct and notworthy personalities other than "the black stereotype one(s)" and "the Joe Pesci one."

But larger roles will almost guarantee fewer robots per film, which would be counterproductive in Hasbro's eyes, because Hasbro's goal is to sell more toys. Fewer robots, no matter how deep and engaging their personalities, means a smaller product line.

You needed some form of human characters, sure, but did we need to spend so much of the second movie seeing Sam's mom suffering from a combination of pot brownies and lobotomy? And the third movie on Sam trying to get a job?

Yes, if you take into consideration how the project was presented to Michael Bay in the first place. It was Steven Spielberg's idea, and Spielberg thinks the core of the Transformers story is "A boy and his car." If a Hollywood icon hires you to direct a movie and tells you the movie's about a boy and his car, you can't just reduce the role of the boy and his life to an afterthought in favor of the car and his compadres, no matter how big of a douche the boy evolves into.

Candlelight wrote:

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Yes but in the series the robots were the stars and had the main storylines, especially in the third season. In the movies they take a backseat to Shia trying to get it on with Megan.

The series was designed for kids to watch on TV for free with the ultimate goal of begging their parents to get the toys for them.

The movies have to appeal to adults with disposable income to spend on tickets and junk food as well as the freeloading kids that will drag them to the theaters, so you need human soldiers with guns, human hotties in tight clothing, human mom's for comic relief, and yes, sometimes you need an an annoying snot to scream "OPTIMUUUUUS!"

[Gaith]

^ Well said. The only reason Shia/Sam isn't returning for the next movie is that he's become too expensive and unwilling to return. The fact that the studio has retained Bay, when it could just as easily have pulled a GI Joe 2 and hired some relative unknown at a much cheaper rate, and scripted a family of human protagonists as the leads, tells one all one needs to know about this forthcoming movie: it's gonna be the same horrible, soulless product the two sequels were. Until given firm reasons to do so, assuming any other result is pure fantasy.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Admiral2 wrote:

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The movie might as well be set on Cybertron back in the day.

I'd pay good money to see that.

[Dantheman]

I heard toy sales was the reason they kept changing up Megatron's vehicle forms from movie to movie, like how he was a jet in the first, a tank in the second, and a Mad Max-like truck in the third, so kids would have a reason for their parents to buy it without being like, "You already have that one".

With Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Starscream, well, they did do things like G1 repaints, and there was the Cybertronian hieroglyph "tattoos" Starscream got in the second film, and I remember seeing things like black repaints of Bumblebee and calling it Night Ops Bumblebee or somesuch, but yeah, there's only so much the toymakers can do that the filmmakers can give them.