# Thoughts on upcoming Transformer Bay movie?



## vejichan (Jun 15, 2017)

Being a huge tf fan from G1 and just curious on tf fans here how they feel about all these TF bay movies. Sure they make millions. have a bunch of plot holes, focus too much on humans and have action scenes that you could barely make out what's going on.


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## KnightBrolaire (Jun 15, 2017)

it looks horrendously bad. seriously, the first trailer I saw must have been pitched like "let's follow some middle schoolers around in a war zone and give girl power messages in a really stupid action movie "


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## MFB (Jun 15, 2017)

The original Bay Transformers film was fun, and something different from what I remember around that time. I remember leaving the theater, driving my shitty Subaru home and thinking "You sure you aren't a Transformer?" Alas, it wasn't.

Then T2, and 3, and 4, have come out and they've all gotten consistently worse. I remember watching Age of Extinction and it was 3 hours that felt like a lifetime. More robots, more needless characters added, and impossible to follow fight choreography.


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## KnightBrolaire (Jun 15, 2017)

MFB said:


> The original Bay Transformers film was fun, and something different from what I remember around that time. I remember leaving the theater, driving my shitty Subaru home and thinking "You sure you aren't a Transformer?" Alas, it wasn't.
> 
> Then T2, and 3, and 4, have come out and they've all gotten consistently worse. I remember watching Age of Extinction and it was 3 hours that felt like a lifetime. More robots, more needless characters added, and impossible to follow fight choreography.


exactly. I quit watching after the 3rd one (which I couldn't even sit through). TMNT is going down the same route with the first being kind of fun/watchable and the latest one being absolute garbage. At least he hasn't ruined Usagi Yojimbo yet.


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## USMarine75 (Jun 15, 2017)

The ONLY Transformers movie. The rest of those Michael Bay movies are just turds in a cereal bowl.

You got the touch... you got the power!


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## Duosphere (Jun 16, 2017)

I just watch TF movies because of the effects. I love watching them fighting and destroying things. I expect nothing of the story or the characters that until today, only served to make me fast forward the movies for the parts that I like.


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## Bloody_Inferno (Jun 16, 2017)

I remember when the synopsis first came out and I laughed that they're incorporating the King Arthur mythos to the movie. 
Then I found out they're serious...


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## vejichan (Jun 16, 2017)

The sad thing is..as much as we complain these bay tf movies will make millions worldwide. As long as they are making money Bay can just repeat the same movie over and over.. why change anything? I'll go as far as say Any movie names tf and has robots and cars will make millions regardles of director or the actor


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## wankerness (Jun 16, 2017)

They're reaching the point where no one in the US wants to see them, at least. The last one did pretty miserably in comparison to the previous few. It's just now reached the point of critical mass where no matter how badly it flops here, China will pay a shitload of money, it will still see a huge profit, and we'll be stuck with more and more sequels, getting progressively more and more directed at foreign markets. 

See also: The Mummy 

Maybe someday they'll stop releasing them here at all so we won't have to see trailers - that is what I'm hoping for!


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## Rosal76 (Jun 17, 2017)

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I remember when the synopsis first came out and I laughed that they're incorporating the King Arthur mythos to the movie.
> Then I found out they're serious...



They already did that in the original G1 cartoon. In the episode, "A Decepticon Raider in King Arthur's Court (aired in 1985)", some of the Autobots and Deceptions travel back to medieval times and duke it out with each other. The storyline is different from the movie but both have the medieval thing in common.

Decepticon, Rumble, speaking to a Knight in the cartoon.







From what I have seen in all the Michael Bay movies and being a huge fan of the G1 cartoon, every movie reflected a storyline in the cartoon. Some big, some small. What Michael Bay is doing is not new because the basic storylines in his movies had already happened in the cartoon and/or the comics. It just cost him millions of dollars for his version. It not as ridiculous when's it a cartoon because it's not to be taken seriously but when it's a movie that cost millions, people tend to be more critical.

In the cartoon, there is a episode where a female human falls in love with a Autobot (Powerglide). Honest fun in a cartoon but can be straight up weird in a movie with real actors.


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## Rosal76 (Jun 17, 2017)

vejichan said:


> The sad thing is..as much as we complain these bay tf movies will make millions worldwide. As long as they are making money Bay can just repeat the same movie over and over.. why change anything? I'll go as far as say Any movie names tf and has robots and cars will make millions regardles of director or the actor


 
I enjoy the movies but if Michael Bay really wants to stir some attention, he should make the next Transformers movie with Unicron.


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## Bloody_Inferno (Jun 18, 2017)

^ Dammit I should've remembered that Rumble Knight episode. Consider my face red. 

However I do remember that Powerglide episode all too well. So well that it annoyed me so much when the writer recycled that plot verbatim for a TMNT episode. 


Going back to Michael Bay's Transformers films, I've been thinking about how easy it is to jump on the hate bandwagon for a while now. It's an impulsive knee jerk reaction when his bad output outweighs his good (maybe 2 good movies), and I'm the first to put my hand up and admit to doing just that myself. But looking at the broader scope of things, the hate towards Bay himself gets harder to justify. Or I maybe just tired of getting arced up over a guy who makes 'fast food' movies. 

The problem with adapting a Transformers film to live action is that, from the average viewer's point of view, there needs to be a relatable character. How do you relate to a Jesus Christ allegory that's also an alien robot that turns into a large truck? It's hard to write any of the actual transformers themselves into relatable figures, when the source material existed as shameless toy commercials. Spike was our point of relation in the original up to the point where he becomes a suit wearing transformer himself (the fantasy zenith), and I can understand why Shia LeBouf/Marky Mark and walking Barbie Doll dujour get more screen time than the title characters themselves, much to the movie's own detriment. Having said all that, everything I said above does not justify sloppy writing where every single human character is irritable at best. 

I suppose I'm trying to justify my copy of the first Bay Transformers DVD with the Optimus Prime transforming case, or that I enjoyed Age Of Extinction much more than the first 3 movies combined. 

And I just said that, I enjoyed Age Of Extinction. It's still Michael Bay fast food, but I liked it, terrible flaws and all. Also, I enjoyed Pain And Gain far more than I'm willing to admit, but I digress. Pleasing the Chinese/Asian market aside, AOE actually had far more plot than the first 3. It's still overlong and over bloated, but I found it more interesting. The Autobot designs look more vibrant this time around, Lockdown also looks pretty decent, and it's nice seeing John Goodman and Ken Watanabe doing some not so serious fun. There's less of the glorification of American military than usual for Bay too. And yeah, the Dinobots were fun. It's a fun dumb movie so to speak. 

I'll probably will end up seeing The Last Knight at some point. Sure, it's going to be another Bay Transformers movie, sure I don't like Hot Rod's design, but I'm curious at seeing Sir Anthony Hopkins, more Dinobots and John Turturro playing not Jesus Quinterra once again. And the premise itself is on par with Age Of Extinction as already having more plot than the first 3. 

Obviously I've got my expectations to nether low levels of course.


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## Rosal76 (Jun 18, 2017)

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ^ Dammit I should've remembered that Rumble Knight episode. Consider my face red.


 
No worries. The episodes are old and would be impossible for one to remember them all. I only remember them because I thought they were weird.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> The problem with adapting a Transformers film to live action is that, from the average viewer's point of view, there needs to be a relatable character.



That's why I liked the G1 cartoon a little more. I enjoy the movies but the cartoon is the format on how I like for them to act. What I really liked, and I know I'm getting too deep into this, is that in the later seasons, some of the Decepticon combiner factions (primarily the Constructicons, Insecticons and Stunticons) started to do their own thing without being with the other Decepticons. In the first few seasons, both the Autobots and Decepticons were always together. Always talking about how to protect and/or take over the Earth. There was one episode where Megatron says, "where are the Stunticons???" And someone says, "they're probably out wrecking civilian cars". What I liked about that is that it showed that the Stunticons had some form on individualism, freedom if you will. Like they didn't always have to be at home base listening to Megatron's Earth domination plans all the time. Same thing with the Constructicons and Insecticons. The Constructs were sometimes building projects of their own and the Insecticons were always eating for some weird reason. For me, this gave those factions/individuals a little bit more identity/personality. Now, the Transformers that I really love, are the ones that have humor and the Decepticons that are sarcastic to one another. The humorous ones I can relate to.


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## vejichan (Jun 19, 2017)

back in the 80's, it would a dream to watch a live action TF movie. I give Bay all the credit he deserves for bringing TF back to us. Just wish that he would stay true to the G1 TF and lose the stupid unnecessary human jokes and focus more on the robots. Even though sitting thru 80% of each of these TF movies is torture.. that 20% of action pack action with the robots make it worth the price of admission.


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## Bloody_Inferno (Jun 23, 2017)

So I somehow decided I wanted to kill a few brain cells and saw the movie. 

Short story: It's the same flavour of terrible as the first 4 Transformers movies. I will say I liked it as much as I liked Age Of Extinction (maybe a bit more, possibly because it's 15-20 minutes shorter), but for me to choose which of these are good is like choosing between which shade of turd to be jammed down my gullet; baby yellow or nutty brown. 

Everything that's bad about the previous films are obviously present here: movie is way too long and could lose at least an hour, very little focus on the Transformers themselves in favour of the humans and the military, clumsy plot, subplots that go absolutely nowhere, laughably bad dialogue, racist/sexist jokes, more stereotypes you can poke a stick at, product placement galore (yes lots of pandering to the Chinese market), lots of slow motion and a dude getting hit in the face with a car's tyre... a typical Michael Bay film if you will. So I'm going to try to point the good bits...

Like, AOE, there's a lot of plot here. It's still clumsy as hell with a central mcguffin, but I prefer some kind of plot over the nothingness of the first 3. But on the flipside it's mostly a metric ton of exposition dumps, and a large part of the second act is Sir Anthony Hopkins explaining the ridiculous amount of mythology so absurd even for a Transformers live action movie. But on the flipside (again), it's actually pretty fun seeing Sir Anthony Hopkins deliver a bunch of absurd stupid crap so convincingly well. Ok now I'm confused...

Another interesting plot point:



Spoiler



There's a big reveal that's taken directly out of Transformers Prime. As a guy raised on G1, I was too old to appreciate any of the canon post Beast Wars (that one only gets a pass purely because the presence of Starscream's ghost). Being taken from TF Prime didn't really faze me all too much, so I actually think that putting it in The Last Knight is really cool. The film does promise or threat (you decide) that they'll be expanding this plot... in the next movie(s) or so. Yep, even that plot point doesn't do much here.



Eh, whatever it's another Transformers movie, still better than Revenge Of The Fallen. Anyone who liked the movie series, will at least see this as one of the better ones, but for everybody else, the 80s TF movie is still the one good TF movie. But don't feel bad for spending money on this, China will be blowing this up the box office anyway.


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## bostjan (Jun 23, 2017)

I think what has happened with TF and TMNT and GI Joe is merely a reflection of how vapid Hollywood has become. As a person who came of age in the 1990's and began to appreciate films in the late 90's and early 2000's, I learned to appreciate thought-provoking films like Memento, Fight Club, Dark City, etc. When I see a movie like Wonder Woman and think "well, it was better than I expected," but, on the other hand, note that it was overall just not that memorable, I have to kind of wonder what has happened to me. Have I grown to become desensitized to bad movies with lots of special effects?

The first Bay TF movie was pretty much that. Alright, but not that memorable. The only ground it broke, really, for me, was in the special effects department. The story, characters, etc., were good but not enough to stand out above the noise. The subsequent films were more about explosions and cool robot effects and tons of stuff flying around on the screen at the same time to make the viewer feel dizzy and progressively less about story and characters. For me, it's already exhausted its novelty, despite my affinity for 80's toys that change from cars into robots. Thankfully, it appears that plans last year to release a Voltron live action movie were not serious, nor were the plans from 2015 to release a Gobots live action movie.


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## A-Branger (Jun 24, 2017)

bostjan said:


> Thankfully, it appears that plans last year to release a Voltron live action movie were not serious,


 !!!! never heard of that one and like you say thankfully it didnt happen!!, dont you mess with my Voltron!! 

after the crapfest that TF became and TMNT, and with the recent turd that was Power Rangers and I wouldnt have much high hopes for a Voltron movie.

Having say that, go watch the new series take on Netfilx. Oh boi its sooooooo good. Couple of minor changes, but its done so well.



also I find funny that everyone always talk about Michael Bay absurd amount of explosions, sexist, sterotypes, flags, cheesiness, ect. But no-one mention the Main thing I find I hate most of him. His 2ft tall camera man!!! F#%^*!, is like he never heard of a tripod, every single shot has to be done with the camera at ground level shooting up. I can deal with explosions, but the constant tilt up shots I cant anymore


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## Bloody_Inferno (Jun 24, 2017)

A-Branger said:


> !!!! never heard of that one and like you say thankfully it didnt happen!!, dont you mess with my Voltron!!



That was the JJ Abrams 'mystery box' shtick blown out of proportion on the first Cloverfield movie. The phrase on a teaser saying "I saw it! It's alive! It's huge!" was misheard as "I saw it! It's a lion! It's huge!" and the Voltron speculation spread like wildfire. 



A-Branger said:


> also I find funny that everyone always talk about Michael Bay absurd amount of explosions, sexist, sterotypes, flags, cheesiness, ect. But no-one mention the Main thing I find I hate most of him. His 2ft tall camera man!!! F#%^*!, is like he never heard of a tripod, every single shot has to be done with the camera at ground level shooting up. I can deal with explosions, but the constant tilt up shots I cant anymore



Good news, that's not as terrible on The Last Knight. It's like they realised they didn't have to force the hugeness of the Transformers by burying the camera into the ground whilst pointing up.


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## USMarine75 (Jun 24, 2017)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_the_last_knight_2017/


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## A-Branger (Jun 25, 2017)

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Good news, that's not as terrible on The Last Knight. It's like they realised they didn't have to force the hugeness of the Transformers by burying the camera into the ground whilst pointing up.



well at least with a Transformer it kinda works in is favour if you were trying to put a POV of a person, but the camera is even lower almost feet/knee hight. But he loves that style of shooting for people too all the time, mixed with a massive long (usually circular) dolly shot to go with, and tilting sideways the camera, Why??? I never get the apeal of tilting a camera for shot on a $$m dollar movie


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## wankerness (Jun 29, 2017)

I'm always tempted to watch these movies just so I can understand the fuss. I see a TON of bile directed at them, and I kind of wonder how they can be as bad as I hear. Also, I sorta want to run them through my sound system cause I bet they make some good clunks and crashes. 

I don't think it's going to happen unless I find a blu-ray box set in a clearance bin somewhere for like five bucks!


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## KnightBrolaire (Jun 29, 2017)

wankerness said:


> I'm always tempted to watch these movies just so I can understand the fuss. I see a TON of bile directed at them, and I kind of wonder how they can be as bad as I hear. Also, I sorta want to run them through my sound system cause I bet they make some good clunks and crashes.
> 
> I don't think it's going to happen unless I find a blu-ray box set in a clearance bin somewhere for like five bucks!


or you know... you could *cough* pirate them *cough*


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## Rosal76 (Jun 29, 2017)

wankerness said:


> I'm always tempted to watch these movies just so I can understand the fuss.



Everyone will have a opinion but mine is, the franchise for me can be easily categorized as, "too much can be a bad thing". After watching the second Transformers movie, I come to realize that Michael Bay isn't going to tone down his movies. And I don't mean that as a bad and/or good thing for other viewers. I like to compare the Transformers franchise to the Alien franchise. If you show a little, it's awesome, and then something like Aliens (1986) comes out and you see them everywhere, it can somewhat lose it's mystique.

If anything, I would at least try and watch the first Transformers (2007) and just decide if you'd want to continue watching the others from there.


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## KnightBrolaire (Jun 29, 2017)

I'd say stop watching after the second or third one. Those are tedious/painful to watch and everything thereafter is horrendously bad imo. Not even fun bad like Sharknado or Zombeavers, just bad. Same thing with the new TMNT movies, the first was tolerable and the second was godawful.


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## wankerness (Jun 29, 2017)

KnightBrolaire said:


> or you know... you could *cough* pirate them *cough*



Pirating isn't really an option with a decent sound system unless you want to download a 35 gigabyte file which probably has 0 seeds for older movies like these. People rip the DTS 5.1 tracks sometimes but never the lossless ones. As I get the impression the only appeal of these things is ridiculous sound/effects seeing them through major compression would defeat any purpose!



Rosal76 said:


> Everyone will have a opinion but mine is, the franchise for me can be easily categorized as, "too much can be a bad thing". After watching the second Transformers movie, I come to realize that Michael Bay isn't going to tone down his movies. And I don't mean that as a bad and/or good thing for other viewers. I like to compare the Transformers franchise to the Alien franchise. If you show a little, it's awesome, and then something like Aliens (1986) comes out and you see them everywhere, it can somewhat lose it's mystique.
> 
> If anything, I would at least try and watch the first Transformers (2007) and just decide if you'd want to continue watching the others from there.



Oh, I believe all the reviews. I remember back at release, my favorite reviewer absolutely went off on a bender on the second one, I think it was the most annoyed he'd ever been with any movie. I was amused that with the new one he was like "it's awful, but it's so much less awful than some of the others that I am almost in a good mood about it!"



KnightBrolaire said:


> I'd say stop watching after the second or third one. Those are tedious/painful to watch and everything thereafter is horrendously bad imo. Not even fun bad like Sharknado or Zombeavers, just bad. Same thing with the new TMNT movies, the first was tolerable and the second was godawful.



Yeah, I'm sure you're right, and I've had TONS of warning, it's just I've had SO much and I've read a lot of detailed plot element overviews about how stupid they are (ex, the fourth one evidently having one character deliver a straightforward defense of statutory rape?!?!). I was completely disinterested for a long time back when the masses still seemed to like them, but over time as the series has gotten more and more hated and people have looked back on the earlier ones with such hatred, I have started to think "anything THIS bad must be worth watching!!." It's kind of like how I just went through the entire Saw franchise cause I found the whole series for 5 bucks. Or how I have Manos the Hands of Fate on blu-ray.  I'm like a bug to the bug zapper. They sound so bright and shiny....

I'll make sure to get them used and on clearance so I donate absolutely no money to the franchise!! The thing that makes me the most warmongering is China's taste in movies and how they're making us produce crappier and crappier movies just cause their people are so easily amused by our total garbage. STOP BEING SO DUMB, CHINESE MOVIEGOERS!!


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## Rosal76 (Jun 30, 2017)

wankerness said:


> I'm like a bug to the bug zapper. They sound so bright and shiny....



That's how I am with the Phantasm movies. Box office wise, none of them did very well. Cult classic? Absolutely. Block buster hit? Probably not. I mean, after the second one, the other 3 went straight to video/DVD. I didn't care, though. I would still watch Phantasm 5 if they told me Justin Bieber was in it.

Edit: I just found out that part 5 was in theaters. Probably select few.


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## wankerness (Jun 30, 2017)

Rosal76 said:


> That's how I am with the Phantasm movies. Box office wise, none of them did very well. Cult classic? Absolutely. Block buster hit? Probably not. I mean, after the second one, the other 3 went straight to video/DVD. I didn't care, though. I would still watch Phantasm 5 if they told me Justin Bieber was in it.
> 
> Edit: I just found out that part 5 was in theaters. Probably select few.



The Phantasm movies are appealing for weird content, though, not just an eye/ear assault! The first two are pretty cool. The first especially was WILDLY creative and unlike anything else. I haven't seen it in several years, but I still clearly remember some images from it.

I saw the third when I was a kid and I remember thinking it was so bad that I will never watch it again, let alone the allegedly inferior follow-ups


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## wankerness (Jul 10, 2017)

So...I watched the first 4 transformers movies, in blu-ray quality so I got the full annoying sound experience. I didn't hate them, probably cause of such severely lowered expectations. 3 and 4 actually had some entertaining sections. I especially liked the big building-slide setpiece in 3. I think if I was in a theater with the sound at deafening levels I would have had the s*** annoyed out of me by stuff like the huge evil ship's electro-magnet sound in 4, but with the sound just "loud" it was fine. They're obviously dumb as heck, and there's no way I'd pay to see them, but I'm glad to have experienced their dumbness.

The sexual politics are as terrible as everyone says, though. It's insane how leery they are. It's even funnier in part 4, where the character is 17 but her DAD says things like LOOKIN HOT and YOUR SHORTS ARE TOO SHORT and then the camera shows us just in case we didn't get it. Ah well.

I was most amused by the true insanity of part 3. I hope they had to pay Buzz Aldrin millions of dollars to get him to run his name through the muck like that. The fake JFK was jaw-dropping, too.


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## Rosal76 (Jul 12, 2017)

wankerness said:


> The sexual politics are as terrible as everyone says, though.



Like how they had scenes of Megan Fox bending over in both movies. Don't get me wrong. I think Megan is gorgeous but they were force feeding it.


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## wankerness (Jul 12, 2017)

Rosal76 said:


> Like how they had scenes of Megan Fox bending over in both movies. Don't get me wrong. I think Megan is gorgeous but they were force feeding it.



The hilarious introduction of her in 2 where she's painting a motorcycle in a position that NO ONE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND has ever used just to show off her curves and butt to the camera is referenced in practically every discussion I've ever seen of that movie. But, I found the first bunch of 3 to be even more ridiculous. It's a good thing that I saw Mad Max Fury Road before that one, or I might have had it tainted by the presence of Rosie. She's SO bad, but it's not like she had a chance! Best part is when her sleazoid boss is going on about how cars have the curves of the perfect woman and the camera goes in really tight on her legs and pans up to her tits and back down again. Ridiculous! Exploitation movies from the 70s were less sleazy. Haha.


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## A-Branger (Jul 13, 2017)

so I tried to watch the new one. On the site I stream movies they had a link for it. Usually when its that new/quick its like a copy from some country in asia because comes with asian subtitles. Maybe the guy who operates a projector on a cinema ripoffs a copy. Eitherway it happen to be a camera on the cinema kinda thing, which was pretty dang decent, but meh. I dont know if it was because the quality of it (even that it was passable), but I lasted 5 minutes before a big NOPE and started watching something else instead.


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