Hans wrote:Leonardo wrote:I wonder, then, if there's anything this film - or any contemporary TF film - could do that would recapture that feeling. A children's cartoon is obviously going to have a different feel, a different atmosphere and ambience, than a live-action movie made 20+ years later for a different audience. Could any TF film today ever truly recreate that feeling?
I don't think so. It had to do with the background paintings, the music, the off-world storylines... in a way, many episodes were fantasy, really. Sci-fi and fantasy blended together. I'll try to give you an idea of what I'm talking about: remember the episode "Cosmic Rust"? The beginning, when the Cons come across Antilla. It's an ancient, ancient city, dating back from before the dawn of time. The way it looked... the music (some sort of trumpet theme when the hologram speaks it's message of doom), the gloomy sky and rusted buildings. That just had ambience, athmosphere. You can't really recreate that in a live-action movie like this I think.
But that sort of thing is what I loved about the original series. How about golden age Cybertron in "War Dawn"? "Desertion of the Dinobots, part 2", "Sea Change", the inside of Cybertron in "Key to Vector Sigma" etc. etc. Those are some of my favourite episodes.... they just work in creating a great "feel"
In that case, if a contemporary film couldn't replicate that feeling (short of using the same backgrounds, music, etc., and being animated), is it fair to criticise this film for not accomplishing something that it never could achieve (and perhaps never set out to achieve) in the first place?
I wonder, also, how big a part nostalgia plays in it all. I'm not quite talking about the rose-tinted spectacles explanation, as we've all come to admit and accept the faults of previous fictions. But how much of the pleasure we derive from that original feeling is borne of a simple fond remembrance? How important is it that we warm to the feelings of a fiction that was presented during, for many of us, our formative years?
Personally, I prefer the comic storytellings over the cartoons, and I favour the modern IDW comics in particular. However, a two hour movie could never deliver the same level of intrigue and excitement (for me) as a comic series. This may partly be because I believe Transformers tells its best stories over a space of time, during a number of issues in which plots and characters can be developed. Naturally, one couldn't cram all that and terrific action sequences and an introduction to the franchise all into 120 minutes.
It's in this respect that I see the film* as being in tune with the spirit of Transformers cartoons. The cheesy dialogue, the simplistic plots, the physical action, the thumbnail sketches, etc. That's not to say I'll necessarily think this is a good film, as I don't think the cartoons are particularly good cartoons. Even
Beast Wars, which was well-written for what it was, had the time, the seasons, to develop. If BW had been just the pilot episode, I don't think it would have stood the test of time, at least not in my eyes. Yet I think this new film* is very in-keeping with the general feel of the cartoons and, in that sense, is very much Transformers.
*I must be more precise here, and stress that I'm obviously talking about what we have seen of the film to date, as I cannot in good conscience judge it until I've seen it.
massive blister too. 
too much. but yesterday was a little different than norm anyway. *yawn* soooooon bed sooon
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
