Don't Go See Transformers.

[mr_jaeger]

As a personal favor to me, I would kindly make a request of everybody from my livejournal or myspace friends groups who posted or emailed to tell me that the Transformers movie is awesome. Please form a line to the left to claim a special, personalized once-in-a-lifetime offer, courtesy of your old pal, that Electric Bastard, Jaeger S. Meistersen

Comments

[starburstlvr]

The cartoon also had 2 years plus to work on "character development".

In no way, shape, or form was the cartoon "more grown-up". Maybe you remember it as being deeper than it was, but it honestly wasn't. I still love the cartoon though.

The film was a reversal from the robot dominated cartoon and the more human dominated intro-movie installment. Once again, you bring up a screenwriting/storytelling concern which had little, if anything, to do with Michael Bay. Fuss at the writers and the production company. Bay filmed what they gave him and made it look cool.

I was referring more to my conversations with Josh when it comes to Pirates 2. Although, your feelings on it provide an interesting point brought up earlier by another commenter. It's a matter of taste. I wouldn't pay to see Pirates 2 and if a man ever suggest we watch it after which I'd have the most amazing sex of my life with him - I'd make sure he never contacted me again. I could rant on about it but I won't.

If they don't give me more Autobots in the second movie - THEN I'll be pissed.

[protoclown]

Hey, I'm not trying to unfairly compare YEARS of character development on the cartoon to a two hour movie. That would hardly be reasonable. But IN said two hour movie, they wasted most of their time dicking around and as a result most of the characters WE WERE THERE TO SEE got two or three lines at most, hardly enough to give them any kind of personality, and it's not like they even had THAT large of an ensemble cast to juggle. Just look at how the first two X-Men movies dealt with their large groups of characters...sure, some got more development than others, but at least you got to know SEVERAL characters fairly well over the course of each movie. Those are VERY good examples of how to deal with a large cast in a two hour movie. The writers of his movie may as well have just had Optimus Prime and Megatron in it, for all the focus and attention they gave the others.

And I'm not just dishing out my hate on Michael Bay (though he does suck). I'll blame everyone from the writers to the key grip down to the studio janitor in whatever way they contributed to that movie's sucking. I'm not attributing full responsibility to Michael Bay by any stretch, but I'm certain the lion's share of influence on why the movie went in the directions it did fell on his shoulders.

[starburstlvr]

X-Men comic and movie = social commentary

Transformers = capitalistic driven toy line

[protoclown]

WHAT?? So now it's ALLOWED to suck simply because it's just a capitalistic toy line? I do believe Marvel's main goal with the X-Men is to SELL comics above and beyond all other concerns, so that argument doesn't work.

I'm arguing that the new movie failed to deliver character personalities that were present in each and every episode of the cartoon (let alone two years of material) and saying that it could have done better, using the X-Men as an example. This has absolutely nothing to do with it being a toyline or anything else. I'm telling you how it completely failed to deliver on even my most basic expectations.

[starburstlvr]

Ask anyone who wrote or worked on X-Men and they'll tell you something completely than those who worked on Transformers. True everyone wants to make money but the people who worked on X-Men, for the most part, were really trying to make a point.

And I would tell you that you expect too much, but I think it's really a matter of taste.

[protoclown]

I don't think I went in expecting too much. I knew the flimsy plot would only serve to barely justify the fighting and explosions. I knew things would be different. I knew characters would be altered. It's too bad that most of them were altered by REMOVING any semblance of character FROM them, because I was so bored by all of the Transformers except for Prime that I didn't give a flying shit sandwich about any of them. They were UGLY on the outside, and BORING on the inside.

And it's definitely a matter of taste. But the movie left me with a BAD taste, unfortunately. :\

[starburstlvr]

Awww.

[iceypyro]

Well you, sir, lack in the skills of observation considering you were bored by all but Prime.

Exhibit A - Bumblebee

Exhibit B - Megatron

Just because you can't feel for the transformers and probably lack a soul considering you could give 2-shits if a being died, doesn't mean you should get mad at the character development.

Honestly I thought the movie, with as little as they did with the transformers, produced a lot of character development, I knew who each transformer was, and their personality. Given the writer did that in a matter of 2 scenes with lengthy transformer dialogue, that's right I said lengthy, kudos to that writer.

And, if you want to blame anyone, anyone at all, blame Dreamworks because they went up to the writer and said "Good sir, we only do ask that you make the story... a human story" So stop blaming Michael Bay, which you seem to think you aren't, when you just gave him a full lion's share that he influenced what happened in the movie when he in fact did not, in anyway when it came to the story telling.

If you're going to be a movie critic, critique it with some taste, some facts, and some research apart from the movie itself.

Saying "The character development" was shit... kinda lacking in any credibility there man.

[protoclown]

Wait a sec...you're telling me that in order to critique the movie, I have to judge it based on things other than the movie? Um, no. Did you even read what you just typed? The movie needs to be precisely judged on its own merit, and if not, what outside sources are you suggesting? I think comparing it to the cartoon and comic I read growing up is fair, which I've already done and found it lacking in character development (which was the "make or break it" deal for me). I also didn't like the movie if I ignore its connections to the cartoon. These are not iconic or remotely interesting characters that I can get behind.

I don't know why everyone keeps trying to tell me it's not Michael Bay's fault. I don't CARE whose fault it is--I just look at Michael Bay's track record and see that he largely makes shitty movies. Yes, the writers are to blame too, but it's not as if I'm going to say "Oh, you mean Michael Bay isn't responsible for the bad character development (which is obvious, by the way)? Well, I guess the movie wasn't so bad after all then!" The movie sucks regardless, and who's to blame is completely irrelevant to my opinion on that matter.

My boredom at these character has nothing to do with my observation skills, but I've already mentioned in my own journal (which I wouldn't expect you to have seen) that Megatron arguably had personality. I also pointed out that I feel Ironhide had something vaguely resembling personality but not quite. I don't feel like repeating myself in depth on that matter here, but it's all in my own journal if you care to refer to it.

Two scenes worth of "lengthy Transformers dialog" is hardly enough to flesh out a cast of characters that size, especially when Optimus Prime has 90% of that dialog. The writers (yes, there were two, and if you'd done some of this "research" you tell me I should have done, you'd have known that) should have made SOME vague effort to establish unique personalities for the characters if I'm going to care about them. They didn't even try. Ratchet had no personality beyond "Hi, I'm a doctor!", Jazz was a cliched stereotype, and Bumblebee was just a gimmick with legs (and he even lost those by the end of the movie).

No, I really didn't care when the government took E.T, er, Bumblebee away because he was a gimmicky character who was annoying. And seeing Jazz, who'd had all of two lines of dialog, ripped in half by Megatron in the middle of the chaos of battle didn't affect me either. Apparently the filmmakers didn't much care either, because he was unceremoniously ripped apart in a brief shot that if you'd blinked you would have missed. I didn't even know Jazz was fighting Megatron until I looked up, saw Megatron rip someone in two, and then the movie kept going with nobody reacting to this at all. The film did a VERY poor job of establishing that they were fighting in the first place, and then giving that death any kind of weight at all. Even at the end it was barely touched on, with Prime giving as much gravity to the moment as if he'd said "We lost a brave warrior today...so anyway, who wants pizza?"

And if you think the character development was so well fleshed out, maybe you can give me some insight into the following characters and their personalities: Blackout, Barricade, Devastator, Starscream, Scorponok, Bonecrusher, Ratchet. Because half of these guys never spoke at ALL, and the rest had no dialog that would give me any idea of their personality. Hell, the only reason anyone in the audience knows their NAMES is because of that "roll call" scene.

[iceypyro]

Well, if you actually did any research yourself, instead of trying to make me look like an idiot, by looking like an idiot yourself "correcting" me telling me there were 2 writers, considering there were 3 writers.

John Rogers, was the main writer of the 3 who, in fact, was told by Dreamworks, like I said, to make the story a human story. The other 2, took his story and reformatted it into a screenplay. There was 1 person who wrote the story. And 2 who formatted it into a screenplay.

All that aside, obviously Jazz was a cliche, he ripped the way he speaks our language off the "world wide web." Maybe you missed that too, but that gave him immediate personality, whether it cliche or not.

You named mostly decepticons in giving me people to name personalities of, saying some of them never spoke. Well, tying it into the cartoon like you've been saying, if you notice, a lot of the decepticons don't speak in most of the episodes in the original cartoon, their personalities were always ambiguous and generally held under the category of "generic badguy #5 with a different weapon"

That's like watching Rambo or the 5th element and asking me to give out personalities for anyone except the Main villain and his first hand man. Which leads me to starscream, who has plenty of personality if you actually pay attention to the movie you'd notice he doesn't like taking orders from megatron, he fails at succeeding, and probably wants to kill megatron when everything's all said and done considering he shot a missile or so at him during the last fight scene.

And, lastly I didn't say don't critique it on the movie, I said include things other than the movie that you've researched, if you're going to place blame, which, rightly so, doesn't really matter, at least place it upon the right subject, if for some reason you feel the need to do so in the first place.

Oh, and again since you weren't paying attention. Jazz hopped onto devastator to change the direction of his barrel so he wouldn't hit an autobot, devastator in the middle of transforming threw Jazz into Megatron who proceeded to land on top of him then pulling him out. After Jazz shot a missile at megatron he made a quick quip which Megatron replied to and proceeded to rip him in half. That took a bit longer than a blink.

And yes, steven spielberg wanted that friendship between Sam and Bumblebee, he puts that sort of humanistic bond in ever movie he does, e.g. (E.T and the boy) Like you said. Yeah, nice reading other critics and using their ideas instead of your own. Hell Spielberg himself said their relationship was like the boy and E.T.

Do you even know what a gimmick is? You say it like it's a bad thing, gimmicks usually give a character and/or object more personality, more depth, and sometimes they're quite trivial and have nothing to do with the person and/or thing's true personality or function. Anything unique, is unique because of the unique gimmick said thing has.

You may continue you're shoddy excuse for an argument, but I see no reason for myself to continue debating with someone who tries and fails to "1-up" something someone else has said, or in proving a person wrong just continues to prove their own degree of knowledge or lack there of, and impedes their own credibility when unable to use simple words in their own context. Good day Sir.

[protoclown]

"I see no reason for myself to continue debating with someone who tries and fails to "1-up" something someone else has said, or in proving a person wrong just continues to prove their own degree of knowledge or lack there of"

Hi there! Welcome to "how debating works".

And actually if you look on the IMDB there are five writers listed, three of whom are given "story" credit and two of whom are credited with "screenplay". Since dialog is what we're talking about here, the screenplay writers are the only ones relevant to this discussion. But if you want to go with the "there are more than two writers" argument, well then, we're both wrong, aren't we?

As for gimmicks, I consider them a tool of lazy writers, which is precisely the kind of writing the Transformers script had in abundance.

If other critics were making the ET/Bumblebee comparison, that's no surprise to me, because it was as painfully, beat-you-over-the-head obvious as it was stupid and annoying. But thanks for assuming I totally stole that from other reviews, especially when I have yet to read a single review of the movie aside from Josh's here.

As for Jazz, I'm glad you caught that, because in the poorly edited, chaotic jumble of that final battle (which is a sorry trend in many movies today, sadly), I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. Regardless, the fact remains that nobody in the story seemed to give a crap's ass that he died, so why should I?

Again, I didn't realize that Starscream shot at Megatron because all the Decepticons in robot form were virtually indistinguishable from one another, but now that you pointed that out, no, that still doesn't add any particular depth to his character. And I think you shortchange the Decepticons from the cartoon. It's true that as the villains, they weren't as developed as the heroes, but I can think of many great characters aside from Starscream and Megatron who had personality: Soundwave, Rumble, Swindle, Shockwave, Astrotrain, Blitzwing, Shrapnel, etc.

But gee, sorry man, I guess I shouldn't try to defend my points and "one up" you by disagreeing. That would hardly be sporting of me. To be fair to you, I shouldn't have even responded at all!

[iceypyro]

Actually there are just 3 writers, wow, you ARE perceptive, 2 people are written twice, (not where I looked for my information, but yes I guess if you might just be glancing and not looking at the names at all you might feel as though those are 5 writers)

[iceypyro]

Respond all you want, the 1-up thing had to do with you for some odd reason picking apart the whole how many writers are there thing saying there were 2 when I'm not sure why the number of writers was even some sort of an important fact.

I merely stated that it was the writer's story, and not Michael Bays, YOU decided to make a quip at me saying I don't research saying there were 2 writers.

Telling me how debating works, well, sir, I call that debate bullshit since you decided to attack the person rather than the subject. Granted I did the same, my mistake as well. Bad form on both our parts.

[protoclown]

Well, my error on the writers then. I'm at work now so I can't double check the IMDB (it's blocked), but I would swear to you that around 2:00am last night, there were five different writers listed, at least seven of which had wacky foreign names. I blame insomnia and general tiredness on that little hallucination, but if I was wrong, I was wrong, and I'll cede that point.

The reason I brought up the writer quip is because you told me that my opinion was basically invalid because I hadn't done enough "research" to satisfy you, apparently, when in fact I had been following news of the movie for some time and had read several interviews with the two writers of the screenplay. Those interviews created expectations within me (however low) that were simply not met. Now perhaps it wasn't their fault, shit that's in the script gets cut by the director and editor all the time and either doesn't get filmed or ends up on the cutting room floor, but either way, I didn't like the final product.

I threw out that quip about how debating works because you seemed awfully offended that I was actually bothering to try to explain myself, especially after you more or less showed up and told me my opinion didn't count because I must "lack skills in observation" simply because I disagreed with you about the quality of the characters. You were basically telling me my opinion clearly had to be wrong, because for me to feel the way I did, I must have missed something. You made a LOT of assumptions, that I wasn't paying attention (rather, I couldn't follow what the hell was going on and who was who in the fights), or that I had stolen my opinions and observations from reviews I had read, which is frankly a little insulting.

If I'd seen the movie the same way you did, I'm sure we would agree, but I could only see it through my own eyes, and I hated it for my own reasons, which I have explained. We're discussing opinions here anyway, so it's not like either of us can be right or wrong.

[iceypyro]

I'm an insomniac myself, and yes, after a few days hallucinations can occur, so that's quite a possibility.

I may have assumed a bit, which granted, is a bad thing to do, but I didn't assume everything, you yourself said you weren't looking at the screen, then looked up and all of a sudden Jazz was split in two.

"because you seemed awfully offended that I was actually bothering to try to explain myself" You yourself assume as well, and whether it came off as that, I'm never one to down someone else for expressing your opinion. I was trying to state, that it was my opinion that you shouldn't blame Michael Bay for the story when you brought up that thought, and rather you should find out who wrote said story.

[protoclown]

I didn't mean to make it sound as if I was looking away from the screen during the Jazz bit. I meant that I was "looking up" in the sense of looking at the screen, not that I had been staring down at my dick or whatever until then. Poorly worded perhaps, but I didn't even know I'd said anything that would have suggested that until I went back and read it.

Ultimately though, with a movie, if any ONE person is responsible for the final product, it's the director. If Bay didn't like anything in the script he could have had parts rewritten, or hell, he could have asked for a whole new script and the studio probably would have jumped through hoops to make it happen. For all we know he may very well have CUT scenes involving dialog and character development out, or perhaps made rewrites on set during filming, to the annoyance of the writers. Happens all the time. The director has the most control of any one individual, so it's not exactly misplaced blame to hold him mostly responsible for how a movie turns out. Granted, there are times when the studio will alter a movie against the director's wishes (see Fincher's Alien 3), but until I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume that Bay was satisfied with the final product.