The Energon Pub

Remember what it is we are dealing with here. This movie was conceived during/around the time of the writers strike. The story is rushed, the production is rushed and there are too many many elements compressed into too short a span that are supposed to be churned out in such a manner that it appeals to practically everyone. That last fact in and of itself is an impossible feat since we can't even put 5 TF fans in the same forum and get a solid, cohesive opinion. Which is stupid because we can achieve space travel, build weapons of mass destruction, replace human organs with synthetic versions but we can't create a machine capable of allowing a human to pull his head out of his own a**.

Even at 2 1/2 hours the movie was too short to cover everything that was necessary to explain. Hell, the Novel was done from the original screenplay and covered a lot of what was missed in the movie and I felt the book should have been longer. The whole writing and directorial team attempted to incorporate elements that the Trans Fans would recognize and ALSO try to do it in such a manner that the average joe could walk in off the street and be able to enjoy it and there just wasn't enough time to pull it off.
Personally, I think that trying to keep the fans happy is what ultimately shot this movie in the foot. WE are the reason that so many of the people out there are having issues with this film and I think it is about time that WE, as a Fan Community, sucked it up and took a good look at ourselves and how we are behaving and what it is we are asking for and realized that WE can't get what we want without COMPLETElY alienating the rest of the movie going audiences. If we alienate everyone, these movies will die at the box office and TF3 will be the last TF movie to ever see a big screen release. Until the Community realizes this, this franchise is screwed. All of us are going to get not what we want, but EXACTLY WHAT WE DESERVE!

At this point, just based on the selfish whining and pandering of the majority of the community, I'm scared sh**less of what we are going to get for TF3. I'm afraid that many of you are going to get exactly what you want and then NOBODY outside the fandom will have a clue what the hell is going on (way worse than this last time around) and TF3 is going to die right out of the gate.
What is it going to take to wake people up and make folks realize that the Univers and this Movie franchise doesn't revolve around them and that they are doing more harm than good? It's right there staring everyone in the face...

Then I'm mad at Paramount/DW for rushing Bay and the writers. We didn't need the film this year particularly, it was nice, but not absolutely necessary. I'd be very willing to wait another year for a better movie, rather than rush it & compromise everything. What this boils down to is greedy execs. They waited 3 yrs. between Batmans, 3 yrs. between Spiderman 2 and 3 --absolutely no reason to rush the s*(% outta this one.

T-Maximus

First off hello. I can understand your view and point of reasoning. But, at the same time I would reply, not as a fan of the franchise but as a general fan of movies and the genre, this movie was whored out. Not so sound crude, and I'm not saying I didn't like parts of it nor am I saying this film is the worst thing ever. I'm saying that me, as a guy who isn't biased with particular mythos finds alot of the points brought up not only here but other sources such as E-Magazine and Yahoo movie news and the LA Times and other places very valid. I don't think a majority of people hate this film just to hate it or they're venting older grudges from issues maybe held from the previous film....they sincerely know there are issues with this film in which blame shouldn't be placed on the writers strike or the producers or exec heads alone, but the Director as well. Especially the director being his job is to tell a story and if just as many people feel he didn't get the job done as there are people rushing to see this film.....he should be held accountable verses playing it off that all is well and having him run off to repeat the same mistakes.

The Writers strike did play parts into the choppyness of this film....this was addressed by the writers in the May/June issue of Screenwriters Mag in which they were interviewed for both Star Trek and Transformers, but to me it felt like and they address that the writers were rushing to complete the script just to meet deadlines. And ultimately, for a paycheck in the pressure of the strike and possibly not working again for a while. Along with that, Bay feels as if he completed this movie and greenlit the script soley in the same fashion. As if he was playing off the hype and success of the previous film to fill in the gaps left in terms of quality of this film so he could meet his deadline and earn his dollar. From an industry perspective, this is what it felt to me. This movie was made just to earn the money, but looking back if there is a TF3 (Which there has to be, the movie has generated too much money for a 3rd film not to have been greenlit) this film (Hopefully) will be viewed as the weakest of the triology. I mean this in terms of TF3 being up to par with the first film or better in terms of story, design, acting, everything needed to make your average good action film.

As an artist as well however, I would be able to overlook a majority of the plot holes (Not all, a majority of them) if a movie made soley of eyecandy looked great 100 or even 90% of the time. But it didn't, the two ugliest designs from my perspective (the Binks-Bot Twins) recieved the majority of the screen time while other bots more deserving of the movie light were left in the shadows such as Sideways and the Constructicons and Soundwave and Jolt. Verses other spiny designs such as Ravage or last minute designs such as Wheelie or designs that just looked like things were just thrown together such as Devestator hogged the spotlight and lowered my movie experience. Even previous film designs and characters would have been fine, more Ironhide, more Ratchet, Barricade! And for the love of God when you have Transformers in a film have them TRANSFORM!!!!!

My overall biggest disappointment, other then Devastator and Soundwave....was the Fallen. You have this great character who is suppose to be in flames and such and you have him lying like a incapacitated hospice patient as your introduction.....Megs had a waaaayyyyy better intro in the first film. I was eager to see the fallen all in flames via Balrog and Transforming. Heatwaves spewing from his mouth and such and instead I got him picking on cavemen and laying down on his robo-recliner and then waving a magic wand like some wizard. No Transformation, no fire, just some steam and some lava drool and a King Tut Headpiece. I actually thought one of the primes altered designs would have made for a better villan design as well. Oh Fallen, how I wish I could quit thee.

In closing I'll say this, the movie was fun, but thats it. There are major issues with it, those saying other wise I cant for the life of me see why. And I'm no where near as excited to see this film again as I was the first film, or even Terminator or Star Trek of Phelam 123. When the third film is greenlit, I would say the rantings and criticisms of the die hard fans here cannot do anymore harm then whats been done. It can only help at this point, and thats only if (Hopefully) someone is listening.
Laters,
Josh

good points. If there are 3, then this will be the weakest of the 3 i think too. WB slid back the 6th Harry potter movie from coming out last year, why couldn't Paramount/DW postpone this film more?? It is sure to make $. A franchise like TF deserves more time and care -than this BS put out anything for a moneygrab s&%t. Pisses me off.

This is interesting. If accurate this is as close as we'll get to knowing the general consensus about the film from the gerneral public, which is the only consensus which truly matters.

I thought Trek 09 was overrated, and at the end of the day little better or worse than ROTF. All of Kruger and Orci's scripts share similar flaws; IMO I doubt they'll ever write a truly great movie.

Steamed_Ham wrote:This is interesting. If accurate this is as close as we'll get to knowing the general consensus about the film from the gerneral public, which is the only consensus which truly matters.

I thought Trek 09 was overrated, and at the end of the day little better or worse than ROTF. All of Kruger and Orci's scripts share similar flaws; IMO I doubt they'll ever write a truly great movie.

It's funny you mention this being I think both scripts for both films were written around the same time....with Trek being more detailed driven being one of the writers was quoted as being a die hard Trek fan, while Transformers for what I read of the interview got the leftovers or side notes of the developing Trek script.

Again though, alot, but not all of the blame can be soley put on the writers for the majority of this films flaws. However after reading the possibility of the writers not returning for the 3rd film, I can speculate the quality should be better. Key word here is "Should".

good riddens if they don't use them for the 3rd. Where the hell did these guys come from anyway? Why'd they entrust those 2 dbs with such beloved franchises anyway. QUALITY writers Mr. Studio chief, QUALITY writers Brad Grey. Even if you have to pay them a little more. Makes a world of difference.

Hi, Roger...thanks for reading this thread!

i'd rather Brad Grey & Spielberg read it than Ebert

vectorA3 wrote:i'd rather Brad Grey & Spielberg read it than Ebert

Ha ha ha.
So true.

Joshua Vallse ......brotha post as often as you can. Your user review was spot-on and you had me laughing at the critique of The Fallen character........I mean his "recliner" haha

I just couldn't take his character seriously at all. I blame a lot of it on how he's introduced. It starts off with a serious mistreatment of Megatron's revival. The Constructicons show up out of nowhere, diving off some benign ship. You can barely hear the doctor ordering to "kill the young-ling" and then in the snap of a finger they cut to a shot of Meg's lying on the floor fully rebuilt. Suddenly he's blasting off and he's on the Nemesis in about 5 seconds just in time to throw another cliched "Starscream you failed me" line. And then blam, there's the Pharoahe of Transformers sitting lazily in a chair and Meg's kissing his backside........finding out that only a Prime can defeat him...... because the writers said so..........

The whole thing was a cheap Vader-Emperor ripoff. I threw my hands up in the air and muttered "WTF" when suddenly he decides to get up off the chair in the 3rd act. Only to laugh even harder when he gives his televised speech, of which we're shown absolutely no reaction by the world. You would've thought pandemonium would've broken out.

If The Fallen's own brothers couldn't defeat him, then why could a far descendent of a Prime? Megatron gave Prime a beatdown in the 1st film and Prime clearly needed Jetfire's get-up to defeat The Fallen so one could logically concluded the Fallen would've faired just fine has he gotten off his lazy-chair much earlier.

Rock Sexton wrote:Joshua Vallse ......brotha post as often as you can. Your user review was spot-on and you had me laughing at the critique of The Fallen character........I mean his "recliner" haha

I just couldn't take his character seriously at all. I blame a lot of it on how he's introduced. It starts off with a serious mistreatment of Megatron's revival. The Constructicons show up out of nowhere, diving off some benign ship. You can barely hear the doctor ordering to "kill the young-ling" and then in the snap of a finger they cut to a shot of Meg's lying on the floor fully rebuilt. Suddenly he's blasting off and he's on the Nemesis in about 5 seconds just in time to throw another cliched "Starscream you failed me" line. And then blam, there's the Pharoahe of Transformers sitting lazily in a chair and Meg's kissing his backside........finding out that only a Prime can defeat him...... because the writers said so..........

The whole thing was a cheap Vader-Emperor ripoff. I threw my hands up in the air and muttered "WTF" when suddenly he decides to get up off the chair in the 3rd act. Only to laugh even harder when he gives his televised speech, of which we're shown absolutely no reaction by the world. You would've thought pandemonium would've broken out.

If The Fallen's own brothers couldn't defeat him, then why could a far descendent of a Prime? Megatron gave Prime a beatdown in the 1st film and Prime clearly needed Jetfire's get-up to defeat The Fallen so one could logically concluded the Fallen would've faired just fine has he gotten off his lazy-chair much earlier.

Nice to meet you!
I'm glad you got a good chuckle. That was honestly my realtime reaction when I saw him. There's a rule in stories when dealing with your hero and your villan, and its roughly your hero is only as good as your villan is evil. This movie would prove to be a good example of what happens when said rule is ignored and replaced with Huey and Dewy.
Josh

Fallen's own brothers couldn't defeat him b/c he had the matrix I think - they were only cunning enough to hide it from him before it was too late. As far as the descendent of a Prime being able to defeat him - I don't know. The rushing of the 2nd half of the movie -esp. not fully fleshed out writing - really left us in the dark on that part of the story. I need to see it again, but i want to say that Prime w/his temporary new parts was able to get the matrix away from the Fallen again & then kick his arse, but I'm not entirely sure. I think this is what the writers were intending, but it came out horribly b/c everything was rushed. They so should've waited another year. Think of how bad the Dark Knight would've been if it were rushed and released in 2007 instead of '08.