The Energon Pub

I'm in total agreement with most of you over this faceplate issue - it's part of both Prime's image and character, and even though it obviously can't be changed now, how dare this Nelson p***k tell me what I can or can't complain about? Over the last twenty years or so I've invested a hell of a lot of money in this hobby that I love, just to be told I can't have an opinion on it? So Nelson, how about you crawl back up Bay's rear end where you came from and let the real Transformer's fans talk about the things they care about. Sorry if I've offended any of you guys with my ramblings...

If we look at this from a strictly logical standpoint, mouths allow for a much wider array of emotional display. The eyes are the other part; however with this movie design I doesn't look like the eyes will be able to widen or narrow much at all so if they wanted true emotional displays from the TF's they'd HAVE to have mouths. And who has more sentiment and compassion than Prime? And the reason he looks f'ed up in teh pic is because he IS f'ed up. This is obviously after the final battle or at least near the end of it. His head is tore up big time and he's laying on the ground...look at the huge battle scar above his right eye...

Come on guys, Optimus will have a battle mask at some point in the movie! I think that given Op's major role, that we NEED to see full expressive faces i.e full face, without battle mask.

I think with the Battle Mask up all the time, it may not deliver the effect required in all cases...

Prime having a mouth doesn't bother me in the least. I guess I got used to him having it because of all the cybertron episodes. I look at this way over all movie is more important than if prime has mouth or he doesn't because one transformer doesn't make or break a movie. But you also have to understand that this is a still shot someone from pr department sent out to the papers. Who knows if during the film how his face will look.

OMG Prime has a mouth!!! They are not making the movie to my exact specifications!! I'm going to turn emo and cut myself and wear girl's jeans... Why? Why? Why does Prime have a mouth? Why can't everything be the way I want it!? Life has no meaning any more. Why? WHy? WH...uh?

6 VWs for under $17,000?

This movie is going to be great. It is different just like every incarnation of Transformers. Kudos to Bay and Speilberg for giving us their vision and actually entrtaining us with something new not spoonfeeding us the same old thing.

I say get over it and enjoy the movie.

I have respect for directors who do what they want and don't sweat over what the fans say.

Damn you Michael Bay! You **** suck for giving Prime a mouth!

Flashbang wrote:I have respect for directors who do what they want and don't sweat over what the fans say.

Exactly. Talk about crying like a bunch of school girls. Waahhh the faceplate isn't on in all the scenes. Waahhh he has flames. Like who cares, it's a TINY DETAIL.

I can't believe reading these comments like 'the film will suck cos the face plate isn't on in all the scenes', what a load of baloney, go ask Sam Raimi how he feels about leaving his main characters in masks like the Green Goblin v Spidey fight in Spiderman 1 - he'll tell you it was a dumb move cos the scenes become flat cos you are just staring a darn inanimate plastic object. Prime has to EMOTE, he needs a flippin mouth to do that, it's not a cartoon, it's a $150 million dollar major motion picture so is it so damn hard for these people to understand that he has to be more expressive?

Here is a crazy idea, why not talk about the actual important things in the film like the story or the plot, or the characters (not their looks) instead of crapping on for what must be a year now about stuff that is completely irrelevant. It's like someone yapping on about what type of shades NEO wears in the Matrix, it's completely and utterly trivial!!!

No wonder Bay must get the impression a lot of fans are off the reservation.

I've already decided not to see this movie, so this is yet another reason for me not to regret it. I haven't liked the creative choices Bay & Co. have made all along and this is just another bad idea. The horrible look of the Transformers are the thing that bothers me the most and the script didn't impress me. I'll pass.

It's weird, though, how there's all this hype for the movie and people are getting excited about it (Even my girlfriend wants to see it!) but I'm just shrugging my shoulders and waiting for the next Transformers incarnation.

Whatever!

Seibertron wrote:This really pisses me off. It's Optimus-f'in-Prime for crying out loud. Can we at least have ONE thing in this movie not be changed for the sake of changing? I can't believe how passive so many people are being about this decision. And don't bring up the whole Optimus Primal thing. I would have been fine if they did the Beast Wars or Cybertron approach with movie Prime. This just looks ridiculous. How anyone at ILM or Dreamworks or even at Hasbro thought this looked even remotely good or "cool" seriously needs to get their eyes checked.

Please keep the entire design staff as far away as possible from G.I.Joe and any future Super Hero movies. Next thing you know we'll have a yellow Spider-Man with a visor and pinchers on his face as well as the Blue Lantern, a red Batman, a green Superman and a pink Wolverine. After seeing Spider-Man tonight and seeing how faithful they are to his costume, it helped me realize how disappointed I am to this day in the robot designs in this movie. I don't care what the reasons are for it, these design changes were poor decisions from the get-go and are completely unnecessary regardless of what mumbo-jumbo they want to make up to spin these changes to the public.

Don't get me wrong ... I'm extremely excited about the movie. But I feel a strong sense of Deja Vu. Beast Machines comes to mind. Great story. Absolutely horrible designs.

Ryan I've seen you as a large supporter of the movie up until now and it surprises me you to take such a passionate stance against this now. Please realise this is not an attempt to be snarky, i'm just genuinely surpised.

Yeah you know when you take a major iconic character and nothing is more iconic than prime and make an alteration like this its going to look out of place. Even non Transformer fans know what Prime looks like. They see the design in all the promo material and what do you see? Prime with is "battle plate" on since that is the face of prime.

This will be the thing that will really impact the performance of the film as a whole. Too much artistic licence was taken and now it will suffer the same fate that all game/tv show movies that deviate too much from the baseline. Many will go but the following won't be there and the sequel (which we know there will be) will just look like grabing at more money than being as welcome as say the Spiderman franchise.

Many people will see the face and go, "Is that Optimus Prime? That looks silly." I'm really surpised their research department didn't realize what an impact changing a major iconic character would be. Shows that they really didn't care about being true to the franchise otherwise they would have come halfway on their visions and what is already set in the IP.

Optimus had a mouth under his battle mask in G1 too. Im guessing he opens up the faceplate to speak, otherwise you'd probably hear this

Optimus: mmphm mmmmhphm mmphm!

Sam: WHAT!?

Optimus: MMPHMM MMMPHMMMMM!

*Megatron steps on Sam*

And this is one of the many reason I will not pay to see this "film". I'll download it or get a bootleg copy. Bay and Co will not see a dime from me for this piece of crap disguised as a movie.

Im going to be the wierdo and go out on a limb here. Perhaps its just the picture, more than likely it is. However I can see some resemblance to Peter Cullen in the face.

Dont know if that was intentional, but might be something to think about although it remains unmentioned.

Well, the rest of his design only barely evokes the Optimus Prime image anyway - he could just as well be a mutilated Gundam - how much difference could the face plate have actually made at this point?

And at least the changing face plate is precedented - the only TF series since G1 that didn't have one is Armada, right? - Unlike Gorillascream and Scrapatron.

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Maldroth wrote:Ryan I've seen you as a large supporter of the movie up until now and it surprises me you to take such a passionate stance against this now. Please realise this is not an attempt to be snarky, i'm just genuinely surpised.

Umm... Remember when the Starscream design came out? Or the Megatron design? I don't understand why you're surprised.

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And is it absolutely necessary for those in favor of the design changes to ritually insult those who aren't?

I guess things really haven't changed in this forum afterall.

WHY THE MOUTH?????

:cries:

Bender Prime wrote:
Exactly. Talk about crying like a bunch of school girls. Waahhh the faceplate isn't on in all the scenes. Waahhh he has flames. Like who cares, it's a TINY DETAIL.

Flames and a mouth on Optimus Prime are "tiny" details? I can't believe someone is even saying this! The flames were bad enough (Prime is such a noble, calm, collected, heroic leader, let's put flames on him wooooo! now he's X-Treme!) and let's give him a mouth so that our dumb audience can see how he's feeling all the time, and have his emotions spelt out in big, bold letters.

"Oh look, Prime has a sad face, he must be sad... duhhh... that girl is pretty, Og like explosions!"

If you think those are "tiny" details, I hate to see what you would consider to be a "big deal".

Bender Prime wrote:I can't believe reading these comments like 'the film will suck cos the face plate isn't on in all the scenes', what a load of baloney, go ask Sam Raimi how he feels about leaving his main characters in masks like the Green Goblin v Spidey fight in Spiderman 1 - he'll tell you it was a dumb move cos the scenes become flat cos you are just staring a darn inanimate plastic object. Prime has to EMOTE, he needs a flippin mouth to do that, it's not a cartoon, it's a $150 million dollar major motion picture so is it so damn hard for these people to understand that he has to be more expressive?

Now this... I don't really now how to answer other than it's just plain wrong. I don't know how many times I need to say this, but you do not need a mouth to project emotions! Good film makers will allow the audience to draw emotions out of a character given the context. You don't need to have sentiments spelt out for you. If you really needed a mouth to project emotions, well, wouldn't every novel ever written have to come with puppets or something, if not - oh no - the reader wouldn't know how the characters were feeling!

Just look at Darth Vader here, his helmet is, as you say, "a darn inanimate plastic object", but I guarantee he emotes better than most on-screen characters with the full range of facial features.

Because, yeah, if Darth Vader needs one thing to emote, it's a mouth...







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Ravage XK wrote:I think Prime doesnt look half as heroic without his face plate. He actually looks a bit scary in that LA Times picture. I get the whole "these are aliens" thing but Prime was always able to emote perfectly well without a mouth thanks to skill of Mr Peter Cullen.

My sentiments exactly - Mr. Cullen, with that John Wayne "the-voice-alone-could-kick-your-a**" inflection, made the character. Praise God Mr. Bay had the wherewithal to bring him in - that's going to make this movie work, if nothing else.

I'm just loving the fact that Prime needs a mouth to emote, but apparently, none of the Decepticons do.

Oh, that's right, giant robotic bug aliens don't emote, silly rabbit. Just their good guy enemies do.

And I don't lay the blame squarely at Bay's feet, either. Aaron Archer has been pushing for a 'mouthed' Prime for years. (See Energon, Cybertron, TF Movie, etc.) It wouldn't suprise me if Archer pushed for this the whole time.

Spidey shoots webbing out of his own hands instead of a contraption. Did that spoil the movie? NOOO!

Wolverine dons leather, instead of neon spandex. Did that spoil the movie? NOOO!

Ra's al Ghul is a mortal in Batman Begins, as opposed to the immortal character in comics and other continuities. Did that spoil the movie? NOOO!

He's still Prime. Lips or no lips... This is a pretty tiny issue!

rad902 wrote:Ra's al Ghul is a mortal in Batman Begins, as opposed to the immortal character in comics and other continuities.

What makes you think that?

Skowl wrote:I don't know how many times I need to say this, but you do not need a mouth to project emotions!

In a Michael Bay movie you do. He has never made a movie with deep characters.

Mouth, eyes, flipping the bird, or whatever. He needs to do whatever he can with Prime to project emotions because the story certainly won't.

PS...How come the bot that shouldn't have a mouth (Prime) does and the bots that should have a mouth (everyone else) don't?

I agree that it was a stupid thing to do. Hell, take Energon Prime for example. They had to go back & take the mouth off of later productions of the toy because nobody liked it(the fact that Takara didn't even give him a mouth kinda helped, too).

I never liked the idea of Prime with a mouth. He never even needed one untill Mainframe got ahold of Primal. Why does a robot need a mouth? Surely it's not for eating.

Oh, & whoever said that about Spidey & the Green Goblin fight....IMHO, the reason that looked bad is for the same reason it looks bad in the Power Rangers shows: They try to make up for lack of facial features by waving their arms around too much(read:emoting through excess movement), which just looks silly. With Prime being all CG, emotion could be pulled off without having to use access movement. Hell, they could easily have him communicate through his eyes. They did in G1. I mean, when he was on his deathbed, his eyes made him look defeated & in pain, & you could tell exactly what he was feeling, & that was a frikin cartoon movie in the 80's. Surely they could do the same thing if not better with all the CG tech they have nowadays.

Oh, & BTW....Disagreeing with the directions these guys are going in with character designs is not whining. Most people I've seen on these boards, as well as others, have argues the points in a reasonable, mature manner, but the few "OMG Bay ButT-r4p3D My Ch1lDH00d!!!" comments apparently was all they heard...or wanted to hear so they could call the fandom as a whole a bunch of whining babies....

Spiderman 3 is a very good example of how this TF movie could have been made with respect to the previous designs & still been well-accepted. Even what they did change was not so far-fetched in design that it slapped the source material in the face(mainly talking about the New Goblin).

I call BS.

Make bad decisions, change things for no reason, ignore the fans, make fun of them for being fans... Yeah, I really like where this is going. By changing things only to try to appeal to everyone they only will end up appealing no one, except for maybe the Lowest-Common-Denominator "omg teh r0botz is el huug3 lol i lyk wen teh 5iht bl0wZZ up" crowd who haven't even heard of Transformers.

If you want to make a movie about the Transformers, make one about THE TRANSFORMERS. If you want to make a movie about generic shape-shift alien mechanoids who simply look cool and want to blow **** up, do that. But you CANNOT make a movie about both of them! And simply attributing the classic characters' names and personalities to the new Terminator-like droids does NOT make them the Transformers. Modifying timeless, iconic characters just for the sake of 'cooler CGI' is a big mistake and a bitch move.

Perhaps one day a movie about the Transformers, the real Transformers, will reach theatres. But that day is not July 4.

Bender Prime wrote:Speak for yourself, I don't mind the on/off face plate, the benefits obviously outweigh the disadvantages given the scope and purpose of the film, something no one on here can comment on having not seen how these things actually look in motion.

And Bay is cool, there is no one I'd rather have directing my big robots movie, other than maybe Cameron.

I wanted Peter Jackson or Ridley Scott directing the Transformers movie. Those directors would schooled Michael Bay about directing a big budget film with a plot, script and acting... I was sadden that Paramount didn't hire Stan Winston since he's the best in the business in animatronics and robot designs.