Okay, so I’ve made no secret of my dislike for Transformers. The first time I saw it was for free and, while I enjoyed a lot of it, the things I hated were just so moronic and lacking in any sense of logic that I literally could not bring myself to pay money at the box office to see it again. So why am I even bothering to write about the sequel? Well, unfortunately, I’m more optimistic than I’d like to admit. I’ve loved Transformers since I was a kid, the animated film is - in my nostalgic eyes at least - an absolute classic and the film this year just had so much potential it pained me to watch it go to waste.
So, now that’s out of the way, what’s the news? Not much, to be honest… but it’s been confirmed that Transformers 2 is set for release in 2009, with Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg, Shia LaBeouf and original screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci back on board. Joining the writing team is the man behind Scream 3, The Brothers Grimm and the upcoming television mini-series The Talisman, Ehren Kruger.
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While I’m neither here nor there on most of this guy’s films (that I’ve seen), what interests me is that he’s currently set to write a film based on Brian Michael Bendis’ graphic novel Torso, to be directed by David Fincher and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. As a major Se7en and Fight Club fan, I just can’t help but have faith in Fincher and - in turn - this guy’s writing chops. Could it be that Transformers 2 might actually add some intelligent scripting to the random rubble and deafening noise?
I’d hate to get my hopes up, of course. After all, Transformers was a major hit in a world where critical panning means little against financial success. And, besides, people actually swear they liked it…
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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8 Comments
Any word on if eye candy..sorry “Megan Fox” will be returning?
Don’t know… Don’t care…
I wonder if Jazz will be returning.
;o)
“…to be directed by David Fincher and starring Jake Gyllenhaal”
Where did you find info about Gyllenhaal?
Hmmm… It appears the only place it’s mentioned is Wikipedia.
Whoops. My bad. ;o)
Kane,
I actually swear I liked it, and I saw the cartoons just like you. Transformers has a lot of potential and I feel it was a poor choice to kill off Jazz and Megatron in the first film. That leaves Starscream in command and we all know that he wasn’t exactly an effective leader. We’ll see what they do with the script. I’ll watch it just as eagerly as I watched the first film. When I went to see it the place was packed and several times throughout the film people actually cheered. They really got into the movie.
As for people like you who wish it were something else entirely, there’ll always be people a film never impresses. It’s your right to dislike the movie. It’s your right to find millions of things that you’d have done differently. When it’s all said and done, part two is being filmed because of the financial success of the first. That means that a majority of the people who saw the film, loved it. I saw it three times because I had to show different people. My MOM even liked the film and she doesn’t care for action movies!
I hope Part 2 impresses you more and leaves you with a lot less to be unhappy about. No word on Megan Fox being in Part 2?
I know it’s just my opinion… but, like ‘X3′ before it, I honestly believe the flaws of ‘Transformers’ go above and beyond simple differences in audience taste. There were major narrative contradictions and lazy script-writing was as in-your-face as the random chunks of metal we were meant to view as battling robots.
My problems with the film have absolutely nothing at all to do with my love of the original animated series. Nothing at all. In fact, I was happy when I heard Orci and Kurtzman were reassessing the original Transformers lore to make it more realistic. I welcomed the change in character appearance (generally speaking) and the shift away from the sillier parts of the cartoon. The thing is, they didn’t make it intelligent - they simply replaced one bunch of stupidity with a whole heap more. To me, that’s a missed opportunity that belittles the audience and aims for the lowest common denominator.
I cheered in the film, too. I enjoyed a lot of it, particularly in the first half. The thing is, I’d expected a kind of Spielberg-ian heart that just didn’t show itself… and the most disappointing thing was that the film could have been everything it was for those who liked it AND something better for those who didn’t. It needn’t be one or the other… but they threw lazy storytelling in that undermined the entire franchise.
As for your comment about a sequel “being filmed because of the financial success of the first” and “that means that a majority of the people who saw the film loved it,” are you serious? It doesn’t mean that at all. Unless you live in a world where everybody’s psychic and only pays the price of admission if they know they’ll love a film, I’d say there’s a major flaw in your logic there. From what I can tell, less than half the people who saw it ‘loved it’, a bunch of others liked it or thought it was okay and the rest hated it or thought it should have been far better.
As for the sequel… I’m not going to get my hopes up. Just trust me when I say I’m not one of those negative sorts who went in wanting to hate the film. I just appreciate story over sleight-of-hand special effects.
Kane,
I can respect your wanting the film to be better. Give us your top ten things you would have changed and make them specific. This way we can see what you’re talking about.
As for my financial comment it was based in reality I assure you. How many films have you heard of that started off their first weekend great then tanked immediately thereafter? I know of several right off the top of my head. The reason those films tanked is because people got the word out that they sucked. Transformers didn’t have that reaction. I’m simply stating that ticket sales would have plummeted had he film been atrocious. As for HD-DVD sales (when it’s released), I’m sure it’ll do well yet again, which is to say again that people might be duped into spending $8 or so on Transformers in a theater but paying $20, up to $50 for HD-DVD indicates a certain desire for the film rather than an impulse purchase.
Which brings me to he next Top Ten things you should write about. Give us the Top Ten things you’d like to see specifically addressed in Part 2. That ought to make for a fun post and I’m sure you’ll bring back a bunch of great memories from the Transformers cartoons.
Well, actually… I’m not really interested in seeing anything from the cartoons unless it can add something to a real-world, logical script.
I’d love to give you your top tens but, honestly, I’ve wasted so much energy on my problems with the film already… and, besides, I’ve never been one to do things because someone demands it from me. I’d rather write what I feel like writing.
Having said that… my central problem with ‘Transformers’ was that it was a film about artificially intelligent machines with a technological ability to physically transform but did they really use this idea to its true science fiction potential? Did they make it ‘real’ and ‘believable’ by factoring in decades-old sci-fi traditions from films like ‘The Matrix’, ‘A.I’, ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Terminator’? No. Instead, they found a convenient alternative - magic. Yep… MAGIC! That is, the Allspark Cube - a magical, mass-shifting box that can somehow add the necessary mechanical bits and bobs to a mobile phone, Xbox and Mountain Dew vending machine to allow them to become vicious walking robots, complete with weaponry.
Why bother caring about all the detail and physical components of Bumblebee in a world where they don’t matter anyway? They can just appear from nothing or shape-shift like a T-1000.
Add to this that it’s a franchise about ‘Robots In Disguise’, yet they’re barely hiding and the Government is fully aware of them in the first film. Where’s the wonder? Where’s the big secret only a handful of humans are privy to? Where was the ‘ET’-style heart - the friendship between alien and human; the extremes these beings must go to to avoid being found out?
If you ask me, the Government should have largely been left out, the allspark thrown in the trash and the action scenes should have been in the sweeping plains of the Southwest where, for starters, we could see who was doing what to who and how. The ’science’ should have made some sense, with the earliest robots created centuries earlier by organic beings long gone. They could even have taken a leaf out of ‘Terminator 3’s book and explained that the outer shell is a changeable liquid metal-type substance but the internal structure is a basic machine restricted by its physicality. Instead, they have Frenzy just growing back a body. Oh, how convenient. In a world this magical, who cares about machinery?
As far as sci-fi goes, there is no reason ‘Transformers’ couldn’t have created a rationale of some sort that makes as much sense as other classics of the genre. Instead, it’s lost between Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ and the holodecks and transporters of ‘Star Trek’… with the visual aesthetic of ‘Con Air’… and I just don’t buy it.
Oh and, by the way… I intend to buy the film on HD-DVD, so don’t be so sure the money equals people liking it. I’m a ‘Transformers’ fan: I’m interested in the extras and the bits that worked for me; I want to like the film itself but I just can’t. It’s just too damn stupid.
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