Just so you know, Starscream5150, I'm not joining the "Let's Get Him!" Bandwagon. Just addressing some points, but without anger or malice.
Starscream5150 wrote:There was a good point brought up about the writers. I will concede that bay's movies are visually stunning and I wouldn't armchair quarterback and even pretend I could do anything close to that.
Honestly, I'm not sure just anyone can. Take George Lucas, for example... His vision was, has been and still can be, stunning. He built it from the ground up. He, with great amounts of help from Ralph McQuarrie, created something thought provoking, entertaining and visually powerful. Once he shafted the SAG, things kinda went downhill.
Sure, there's no doubt that The Empire Strikes Back is one of the greatest films of ALL time. It's one of those rare films that even though it's universe is culturally significant, it's the one piece of it all that transcends every bit of the whole Star Wars saga. It makes other Hollywood (and even Bollywood) movies stop, take notice and they want to emulate it. TESB is probably in a class all it's own. Irvin Kirshner took over the directing duties from a now SAG punished Lucas and helped the whole universe step out into the forefront and have it still be relevant to this very day. (Truly, only a handful of films can say that.)
Then...somewhere in the madness, Lucas decided to throw in violent teddy bears and immolation. Even the director, Richard Marquand, wasn't given much to work with. It's most certainly not the worst film ever, not even by a long shot, heck it's not even the worst of the saga, but it's not exactly the fan favorite. (Oh, and TPM takes the cake as the worst of them all. Even AOTC had some visual splendor to it, no matter how fake looking it was.)
The problem? George Lucas. ANH is a classic, it's the one that started it all and subsequently changed the world. Lucas both wrote it and directed it. He wrote TESB and someone else in the directors chair took it to a new level I'm not even sure Lucas was expecting. He wrote ROTJ, and look how that turned out in so-so capable hands. And then we come to the prequel trilogy...he wrote AND directed all of those by himself. They have a substantial difference in quality. They go way below the original trilogy, hands down.
You might be asking "Why did you bring all of that up?" well... The scripts for the TF movies have all been less than lackluster in a lot of ways. Even though I enjoy them, each one more than the last, I can still admit that they have big weaknesses. The only strength they all share is Bay's visual and directorial style.
George Lucas went back and edited ALL six films of his saga to keep them more in line with his..."vision", which changes at a moment's notice, on a whim. We have to give Bay more credit than that, even he hasn't gone back and said "Let's add all of this to here, here and here." Once he's done, it's in the can, that's it. Love it or hate it. Lucas? He just kept adding new material that people find unnecessary.
Bay does what his website says: Shoot For The Edit. He shoots the film so the editors have something to work with, and have to edit minimally. Lucas went back and chopped the films up and moved pieces around to accommodate his new vision, even if they didn't really fit or make sense. While Lucas flushed his work all down the toilet, Bay saved even the worst scripts from becoming toilet paper, but the one common failure they both share? Their writing department. At least Bay can't truly be blamed for that, whereas Lucas can.
It's things like this that allow for Bay to continue to have a career in Hollywood, no matter what people might think of him. Bay takes someone else's work and brings it to life, while people like Lucas take their work and murder it in the town square for all to see.
Starscream5150 wrote:But he does have a say in the casting and the blatently obvious "zoom in on her ass" shots which while I'm not complaining from a testosterone standpoint, but theatrically when it's to the point that the audience chuckles or groans at the seen, it kinda pulls you from the story.
This part, I'll give you. It's not necessary, but what can we do? Also, considering it was aimed at teens and older, it's no wonder he threw in some eye candy. Not necessary, but understandable. The people behind the scenes knew what his visual style was like when he was picked for the film. Chicks, cars and guns. Oh yeah, the booms. It's worked in the past for Bay, it worked here. Can't exactly fight a money making formula. (Even if at least some of us want to.)
Starscream5150 wrote:I think he would also have the artistic license on the design and characters of the bots which were odd. Like the brothers who were borderline black-face or in AOE the samurai with a viceroy-esque racist Asian accent, even though he was a Bugatti.
He more or less had final say in the final robot designs, but other people came up with the concept of what they were going to look like. Hasbro had input, too. That being said, if people can put the blame on Bay for the robot designs in ROTF, it's because no one was there to watch and Hasbro certainly didn't stop him. The Writers Strike pretty much took ROTF and flushed it down the drain. It worked like this: Paramount wanted Bay to come in and start filming like...yesterday, while all the writers are sitting on their cans, today. So, Bay had to fill in gaps they wouldn't because they wanted more money to put pen to paper. (The strike is another topic for another thread.) So, the writers come back and help finish what they started and we ended up with ROTF. Hasbro okayed Skids and Mudflap, so much so that they produced toys of them. That's not Bay's doing, that's a whole bunch of people okaying things that make the rest of us go "WTF?"
As for Drift, the AOE Samurai? There was nothing racist about his voice. Drift is a Samurai, a Japanese construct. His voice actor, Ken Watanabe, is Japanese. If he had found it racist, I surely doubt he would've gotten on the microphone and recorded anything. As for Skids and Mudflap? Mudflap was voiced by a Black comedian. I'd imagine he too wouldn't have recorded a single line of dialogue if he thought Bay and company were actually trying to offend people. I think it was never actually racist, or at the very least there was never the intention, it just so happened to finish in a way that surprised people.
Starscream5150 wrote:All that said, again I concede that yes, the writers need to be canned. I really gave up on the movies when I watched Megatron kneel in front of a prime on life support. This is the guy who mouthed off to Unicron, are you kidding? He would have pulled the plug on that **** long ago.
Not all of the writers were problematic. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are the sole problem with this Transformers universe. Their first time? They picked the guy who helped bring Halle Berry's Catwoman to life, to help write the first film. Bay had some say on the robot design, but not much input on the script. I honestly believe it was John Rogers (the Catwoman guy) who helped keep it in step with Transformers as we know it, because it's become clear that O&K don't always have the utmost respect for the properties they're working with. ROTF, Ehren Kruger helped them and it had a G1 inspired feel to it, that took it places the film universe hadn't been before. Kruger single handedly wrote both DOTM, which was a solid film and AOE, the best of the series. He gave the fans what they wanted: A G1 infusion. Was it exactly how we wanted it? No. But at least it had some G1 in it. O&K get the ball rolling on all of the properties they work on, but then take a back seat and let others run the show and it usually turns out alright. The films and shows they work on directly? Ugh.
The Zorro sequel? Overlong, boring and bland. They wrote it.
Prime? They started it, other writers picked up the ball and ran with it, and it's turned out to be one of the better shows in TF lore.
Hawaii-50? Same as Prime. (Though, this one has some problems.)
Star Trek reboot? Some REALLY great ideas, some terrible ones. Over reliance on gimmicks.
Point is, all of the writers are to blame, to some degree, but O&K are definitely the ones responsible for ALL of this. Bay probably doesn't need another ass shot, or explosion number 1,336, that's true, but past a certain point, his job is to make the words on paper come to life, and he does exactly that. You put crap words on that paper, then crap life is what you get. Bay's not a writer, he never has been, he's always been a director that believes in style over substance, and he's never wavered from that position. So, that tells me that Hasbro, Paramount and the producers (including Steven Spielberg!) were more than fine with what was on the script and on the screen, and Bay did his job as they asked him to.
I don't think Ridley Scott could do much better with what Bay was given. I really don't.
NOTE: Realize that I am not a perfect Christian, nor do I profess to be. I apologize if anyone's ever offended by me, I'm not perfect. Don't hold my posts and opinions against other Christians.
Did I just read a shred of sanity...from 
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