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

[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.

[iceypyro]

Striking out the gimmick remark... You mean it the way you meant it, which is different from how I construe the word, that's just my inability to construe how you meant it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.