Sabrblade wrote:Kurona wrote:The movie was very obviously intentionally aimed at fans of G1
Seemed more to me like it was aimed at mainstream action popcorn movie audiences unfamiliar with Transformers than anyone else.
Kurona wrote:notice that before the movies, every other iteration of Transformers featured entirely different settings
"Present-day Earth" was the main setting from 2001 to 2005, with "out in space" as a secondary setting during that time, and both of which the movies all take place in as well.
Kurona wrote:The movie went full-out G1 with it's Autobot cast - hence Ratchet, Jazz, Ironhide, Bumblebee
With Jazz being the only one of those four who bore any physical resemblance to his G1 counterpart, and not even in his color scheme.
Not to mention how three of those four were barely even in the movie at all.
It was most certainly aimed at general action movie audiences, yes; but we're not tackling yet - we're tackling what the Transformers part was aimed at. Because if it was just a generic action movie, you could call it anything. You could make it anything. You could just make another Die Hard movie or Bay could just make another one of his terrible movies based on real life disasters. But why was it Transformers in particular? Who are they aiming at?
Well, considering the age rating, the events of the movie and the sexualization, I'm going to assume it's not Hasbro's usual target audience. That usual target audience being, of course, kids who do not need G1 references thrown at them to buy a product. All they need is something they find cool thrown at them to buy a product. I sure as heck didn't get Energon Ultra Magnus as a kid because I thought it was a great reference to G1 Ultra Magnus in name and colour scheme, I bought it because oh my god my Armada Optimus can have massive shoulder cannons.
And most G1 fans don't really care about those new Transformers franchises that happened since they were a kid, or don't even know they exist. Some did, obviously. We're on a website full of them, but that's a very small and niche amount of people. Transformers (2007) was made as a Transformers movie rather than a generic action movie to target and cash in on a large audience who as children 30 years ago were captivated by a world-wide phenomenon. I don't like to put arguments as objective fact, but there is no debating that. You can't possibly argue that it was targeted at any other facet of the Transformers fandom.
So, if it's aimed at those fans... it's pretty natural that a lot of them would come away thinking "you know I really wish that guy calling himself Megatron actually looked like the Megatron I saw as a kid".
Admittedly, my use of the term 'setting' was a bit too broad and inaccurate. When I said it I meant more the themes and subject of the show. Armada focused on collecting mini-cons, Cybertron focused on saving the entire galaxy from a black hole, etc. The point is that they all went for something a little different than being G1-based in story.
Yeah, Jazz is the only recognisable one of the bunch. I just said they were going for a G1 cast, not that they did it particularly well.
In any case, this discussion is likely best not to take place here as it's a completely different subject. Don't want a repeat of that whole Masterpiece Energon scenario...