Spark Light wrote:I was always pretty iffy on the movie, but one thing actually got me really excited over it - back when the Transformers game website was released, it had that epic picture of Prime and Megatron, and the most epic Lord of the Rings style music in the background.
I thought, Wow, maybe this movie will be something special after all, despite Bay directing.
But it really isn't, not like that.
The point is that there are so many terrible, logically unsound defenses for things in the movie, but the worst has to be "It's just an action flick".
Yet I'm harkening back to seeing that page and hearing that music, and feeling really up for it. Amazingly, Transformers did NOT look ridiculous being set to serious, deep, epic music.
This is where the movie went wrong - it COULD have been epic. Lots of tweaks along the way would have helped the feel of the movie towards this end - tidier, more varied designs(too much grey/black), drawing more from the comics, and other things like that, but ultimately, this needed to be a lot huger than it was, instead of being Epic, it was an Epic Fail on that front.
Think about it. Why is Transformers such a silly idea? Why can't it have anything more than a popcorn flick?
It's about two warring alien factions, destroying their world for power, and in their struggle arriving on our world with us torn in between, but trying to hide amongst us all the same.
I don't know about you, but that sounds epic. In fact, it sounds like it could be the start of the most epic story ever made. Have I drilled that in yet?
"Transformers isn't shakespear" - I don't know if you noticed, but even Shakespear was quite whimsical, so it shows people aren't thinking through that comparison at all. It doesn't matter. Transformers fans are the ones who seem to take of note of the fact that they're "Just Toys" - they claim the general public do, but they do it far more often than anyone else.
Why? Probably because we've had to deal with so much **** the last few years. People defending the changes in design, etc., fail to realise that only G1 was really universally liked and loved on *some* level, it was the only Transformers to truly pierce the mainstream, and is still recognisable today; people have already forgotten Armada.
People have had to put up with so much bad "change", watering down, they've never stopped to realise what Transformers COULD be, what changes would actually be best - most of us have become Toy collectors, and have little attatchment to the characters. I've never seen a fanbase so willing to defend a movie that bears a little too much resemblence to the Super Mario Brothers movie in terms of cheesy Hollywood "Getting things somewhat wrong" syndrome.
I feel that thinking Transformers could only be a popcorn flick is where Hollywood went wrong here. We've seen from the G1, G2 comics and Beast Wars that Transformers can be epic. You could make an epic movie out of Tetris if you wanted to - something that's already BEEN well developed getting something with such a weak plot is just sad.
I wanted Transformers to be something really special. Something to fill children and adults alike with wonder and love for these amazing characters and where they're coming from.
You all thought that changing the designs was necessary for making it "Not for Kids", but what I'm saying is what needed to be done, and you know it. It's not even that much to do with the designs, if you want a Mature Transformers movie, you have a mature plot and well developed characters. This movie fell below the G1 Cartoon in some of those respects, which isn't something to celebrate.
The Decepticons should not have been monsters, they should have gone the opposite direction - an opposing faction that aren't necessarily always wrong, but are still more or less "The Bad Guys". Moral ambiguity. Decepticons we can relate to. One thing they should have taken out of Armada(Starscream). The focus should not have been on stereotypical, relatively uninteresting humans.
I'm sorry for not conforming to the ridiculous notion that the characters and universe I love are nothing but a folly. I'm sorry for the fans that feel the same way I do and have managed to persevere being active through this for a lot longer than I have.
The reason you're wrong is because that's not how the rest of the world sees it. The general public never would have accepted Lord of the Allsparks.
And nor would I. I usually groan when "Lord of the Rings style music" comes on, unless I'm actually watching Lord of the Rings, which I limit myself to only at Christmas Break so it doesn't get stale.
I'd prefer a popcorn action flick with a weak plot to yet another 2x4 over the head of so-called "epic" style. There's no subtlety and there's no true depth, just a bunch of overblown RPG dialogue given merit by grandiloquent psuedo-shakespearean gusto. The books were way better aside from the battle scenes, which were quite boring for someone who was in the trenches of WWI. Maybe he couln't bring himself to relive the nightmare. Robert Jordan has the same problem.
So when it comes time for an action movie, I know it will never be deep, because the last deep action movie came out in 1991 about a delinquet kid on a dirt bike who would grow up to command an army against robot resistance. They actually made something like that not only deep, but tragic and awe-inspiring, and they did it without hitting me over the head with a baseball bat of "epic style".
Though one movie came close to deep. Quite close. About a millionare who comes home after 7 years in a Chines prison to find his home town overrun with crime, so he constructs all this elaborate imagery to scare the criminals out of town. That movie was pretty deep. Also quite subtle.
But otherwise, I expect an action movie to be as shallow as possible, because otherwise it will be lame, except in some rare cases.
Transformers could have been far better than that movie, true. I'm picturing in my mind right now a scene of say Sam in the Decepticon's base, hiding behind something huge while in the background Con voices play out in an argument in which their dialogue reveals all of their characterization and intent, and the fans think "yeah, that's my boy _______ right there!" It would have been cool, and they could have done it.
But it never would have happened. Hollywood doesn't care about us, because our tastes are more refined then the general public's in this case. What we would have liked would have been lame in their eyes.
We did not need Lord of the Allsparks, and I for one am glad we didn't get it, because Hollywood can't manufacture epic. Nobody can. Epic is something that happens on it's own.
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