I love when a film succeeds in appealing to the majority of all audiences, i.e. Hook but I see the validity of many points made here as to why Transformers isn’t that great.

I recognize the same root problem, too much time was spent developing it for the children. I can see its aim was at adults and kids but in the adult department it just doesn’t hit its mark.

And… why are we making up Transformers when Soundwave was denied a part in this film? Rhetorical, he is my favorite. At least they had Starscream!

Hopefully, ‘Revenge’ is The Dark Knight of the Transformers. Well… that is probably asking for too much… well it definitely is asking for too much…

anyways transformers was pretty good it would be great if it had more bots

I wonder if you were able to make that joke with a straight face dude. If you did, you deserve an oscar.

ROFLMAO

Vic

You’ll fit right in here, bud.

Vic

[...] over a week ago, we found out we would not be getting a full trailer for the sequel to Transformers until next May. And why should we when when the movie is marketed, [...]

“There is no possible way to develop 12 or so Transformer characters and human characters.”

Ah, now I see what you mean. That is indeed a difficult task.

Although they managed to do it just fine in the classic WWII film “The Dirty Dozen.”

Vic

But really my point is that there is only so much room for character development in a 120 to 150 minutes. There is not possible way to develop 12 or so Transformer characters and human characters. The main human characters were developed ok, like them or not. The primary beef is that the humans were the focus, which was intentional. It was written for a teenage audience (hence teenagers as the primary focus), and it was successful at it. It angers diehard fans apparently, but it is what it is.

Sure, 22 minute TV episodes can develop a one or two characters really well, but that is typically one open-and-shut story that focuses on that character. But, I disagree that there are many movies that were successful at developing more than four or five characters, particularly action movies because so much of the screen time is action scenes rather than dramatic or character focused scenes.

I’m in a minority regarding this movie I know and no one probably cares what points I’ve made, but I just think there were more positives than negatives. I’d also like to see a lot changed in a sequel that probably won’t happen, but ‘oh well’ – I’m not the one bank-rolling it.

Panda, don’t take this personally, but that’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.

There are literally HUNDREDS of movies (if not more) with amazing character development, many in much less than 2 hours. Hell, you can get decent character development on a 40+ year old half hour episode of The Twilight Zone!

Vic

Megan Fox was the positive thing in this whole expensive mess.
They’ve got plenty of characters in STAR TREK, not all of them have plenty of screentime but we do care about them, the robots could die, I didn’t give them any thought.

Plus Optimus’ 2cents speech at the end made me laugh so hard it sounded phoony.

The Comic and cartoon did a better job in their short media then the film.

That version of Transformers based on a different script was closer to what I’s expect of Transformers even if they’re just production paintings.
http://www.geocities.com/oblivionsgallery13/featuredartists.html

Obviously more than you. I expect to be able to care about the characters, about what happens to them. I expect enough development to make them more than one dimensional caricatures. I expect characters who stand out from the background instead of being indistinguishable from the background.

Any half-competent writer should be able to manage that. I’ve seen movies with shorter running times than Bayformers pull it off. I’ve seen half hour episodes of Transformers cartoons pull it off, while the live action movie doesn’t even come close.

“I can tell you that the pilot of the 80’s TV series and the first ten issues of the comis didn’t develop these characters any better.”

There’s a flaw in that comparison. Depending on how you look at things, the pilot of the original series had over 30 characters introduced in just over 60 minutes, or nearly 30 introduced in about 22 minutes.

The first 10 issues of the original comic had even more characters introduced in those issues. That series also had even more going on in those 10 issues than the movie did.

Looking at the numbers, including the time you alloted for each of those series versus the movie, the cartoon and comics had less time to develop more characters than the movie did, especially if you don’t count the Decepticons in the live-action movie.

Your comparison falls flat on its face as a result. The cartoon and comics actually did a better job in less time.

“TF wasn’t a perfect movie by any standards, but I enjoyed watching it a second time”

Good for you. I didn’t even enjoy watching it once.

TRANSFORMERS LITHOGRAPHS
http://www.geocities.com/oblivionsgallery13/featuredartists.html

As far as character development, what do you expect from a 2 hour movie? I can tell you that the pilot of the 80’s TV series and the first ten issues of the comis didn’t develop these characters any better. Frankly, the movie developed the Autobots as well and teh series ever did, which was jsut to get an idea of their personalities. The Decepticons, not so much, but I took it as they were mostly soldiers and weren’t meant to develop much. Starscream and Megatron, the groundwork was laid (albeit subtly) so it can be expanded in the future (my guess). And as far as caring about them, I didn’t really care about the characters at the end of IM either, but I don’t expect to because it’s a ‘comicbook’ movie.

TF wasn’t a perfect movie by any standards, but I enjoyed watching it a second time, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies out there, crude jokes and all.

Yeah, where this movie, and the people who made it, is concerned, I’m filled with hate.

“Scatman Cruthers did his voice in the old cartoon and he was “Hip-Hop” for the time, and thats what they did with him now.”

Perhaps, but the voice is one thing, the vocal mannerisms are another. This thing with Jazz is that he’s about doing things with style, and he love Earth culture. Not just Hip-Hop, but all of it. Rock & Roll, Jazz, and Classical music would also be included. He’d draw on all aspects of the culture, but he was written as only drawing on one in a very stereotypical way. That didn’t ring true to me.

Bumblebee was more like Wreck-Gar than Bumblebee. Aside from that, yeah, he seemed to be close to Sam, but this was not the kind of thing I saw between Bumblebee and Spike in the original series. This was more of a bodyguard than friends who shared a mutual curiosity about each other’s worlds. In any case, he struck me more as being a renamed Hot Shot than actually being Bumblebee.

On the choice of vehicle mode, though, I don’t care one way or the other about him being a sports car. It’s not like that was the first time.

As for Prime, I actually think they got the reaction to Jazz’s death right. It was his reaction to Bumblebee being captured that was a glaring mistake form my perspective.

Megatron and Starscream, though, that relationship did not even come close to matching what we saw in the original series. I was almost put in mind of the Armada version of the relationship.

On the flip side, I do think Prime would have been much more broken up about Jazz being ripped in half than “oh, Jazz”. I also think that the Megatron/Starscream relationship, although briefly touched on, was not developed enough.