This thread should be stickyed. Best comedic value in this forum for a long time!  

 

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.... oh wait you're serious.....

Booo you suck

 

I've been wanting to see Transformers Revenge of The Fallen "The Real Effing Deal" Fanedit for a while. From what I read, they did a good job of removing most of the cringe-worthy stuff.

The first and third movies are pretty good how they are. I could definitely trim some fat though.

 

Vote "no" after reading the first few sentences. You have to remember that not all the people who are seeing this movie are Transformer nuts. Friends of mine said they had a hard enough time telling the differences between different robots to begin with. Add more and you're just asking for trouble.

 

why the hell are the wreckers, especially impactor, on earth? and airazor? what is airazor doing as an autobot, man?

 

He had 4 min of screen time (including the corpse) in a 144 min movie, and you want to add more Autobots?

Was it his awesome intro twirl and sit that made you love him?

Same here. I had no idea Megatron had grabbed Jazz until he actually spoke. After Megatron ripped him in half, I still couldn't tell it was Jazz.

 

Merely commenting on the "screentime"-issue, having 4 minutes of screentime - even spread-out in a 2.5 hour movie - isn't actually that bad. Especially considering that Jazz is not a main character (we'd be lucky to call him "supporting" at best) and he doesn't show up in the first hour of the movie.

But yeah, I agree with you, throwing more Autobots in there (especially the ridiculous list of the OP's) won't help them get any more screentime.  

 

How many TFs were not main characters?  
(can we call Jazz a "special appearance" then?)

For a "Transformers" movie, 4/144 min for a Transformer is bad. Bobby Bolivia (RIP Mernie Mac) had a 3 min scene, Glenn had at least 6 min on screen, and even Sam's teacher had what? roughly 2 min on screen and yet had a lot of character. Did the telephone operator at the beginning of the film have more lines than Jazz? I'm also thinking Sam's friend Miles had more lines.

IMO, Jazz had 6 definable scenes. The intro (arriving on Earth/scanning), 2 cool ones (introduce himself to Sam + swing off "Devastator's" cannon a la 86 movie style), 1 lame scene (staying in car mode when Ratchet and Bumblebee lifted the Furby truck, and when BB had his legs caught, and didn't help nor say anything), the short battle with Megatron death scene, plus corpse scene ("We couldn't save him", "Awwww, Jazz").

I was hoping he'd do, say, and be shown more. He was Optimus' first officer. He was supposed to be more than a supporting character. Not more than BB though, as he was supposed to be the kid friendly character AND companion to the main character of the film, Sam.


(For someone who has the time and patience, please verify my estimates!!! Thank you.)


Anyways, back on topic, too many characters can hurt the movie. Obviously in the first film Sam and Mikaela needs to show growth as we're following them, but the TFs needed to be shown as well. Especially if you were trying to sell toys of them. I don't recall seeing many Sam, Mikaela, Epps, and Lennox figures being sold, and yet the 4 of them had how much time on screen and lines spoken? I'm sure some kids went out to buy a Jazz due to his cool moves on Devastator, but how many kids wanted to buy Ratchet? I'm not even going into Optimus and BB figures as they were the main TFs focused. Ironhide didn't say much but he did do a lot with what little on screen time he had.

Oh, as much as I wanted to see a Metroplex in the film, how would that have worked OP? Especially without a Trypticon to fight. He alone could have squashed the entire Con army. Unless you make him small as a house/mansion.

 

Optimus and Ironhide were the only two badass Autobots in the whole 07 movie.

 

I will have it written so that Peter Cullen will shout "PWNED!" for every single annoying, non-fighting human like Spam or his family the Wootwonkies spouting lines!

Realistically, I'd script it so well that the only humans involved are the ones that actually work or fight and not make the movie kayfabed. It's disgusting how kayfabed some punk knockoff of Spike thinks he should just stay stuck in his own little world and not accept life's hardships.

Also, I'd have the Autobots and Decepticons written with personality so intrinsic and well done, that audiences want more of the character development.

 

*Let it first be noted that I am in complete agreeance with the "It's a "Transformers" movie so the Transformers should be in it" and the "I wish there was more Jazz"-issues.  

Let me throw out some numbers pertaining to "screentime", just to give some context. You wanna' know how long the Tyrannosaurs - arguably the star non-human character - is in Jurassic Park for? Barely clocks in over 4 minutes of screentime in a 2 hour 7 minute movie; roughly the same as Ironhide in Transformers or Starscream in RotF. How about Hogun in Thor? All of 3.5 minutes in the entire movie; and he's of no more or less importance to the story than a character like Ironhide, Ratchet or Graham (RotF). Darth Vader in A New Hope? He is The big bad of the movie. The Grand Pooba villain. One of the most iconic characters in the entire franchise. And in a 2 hour 1 minute movie, his overall presence in the movie accounts for ... a whopping 8 minutes, equalling just under what Bumblebee gets in any one of the three movies.

And keep in mind that Jazz, despite being a Transformer in a Transformers movie, is not one of the main characters. Jazz in Transformers is about as important as Marti in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. After all, Marti's a pirate in a Pirates movie. Or Bayard the Bloodhound in Alice in Wonderland. He's an Underland resident in the 'Wonderland' movie. Or Jubilee in X2: X-Men United. She's a mutant in an X-Men movie. Whether we like it or not, the numerous Transformers share the screen with humans, of which there are plenty. There's about a dozen main/supporting prominent human roles. And there's about a dozen or so Transformers characters.

Sam
Mikaela
Lennox
Epps
Simmons
Keller
Maggie
Glenn
Banachek
Bobby Bolivia
Ron Witwicky
Judy Witwicky

Optimus Prime
Bumblebee
Jazz
Ironhide
Ratchet
Megatron
Starscream
Barricade
Frenzy
Bonecrusher
Brawl
Blackout
Scorponok

Tack onto that the more than a dozen minor human characters and dozens of cannon fodder/extremely minor Transformers characters in the other films and you've got over four dozen 'characters' all vying for time and focus. Some characters are inevitably going to lose. And unfortunately it seemed to be the title characters (the expensive, time-consuming, man-power-consuming CGI characters) that got the short end of the stick.  

There will always be distinctions between characters and the focus they receive. Main characters, supporting characters and minor characters. For every Jack Sparrow there has to be a Pintel. And for every Pintel there has to be a Marti. For every Aslan there has to be an Orieus. And for every Orieus there has to be a ‘Faun Soldier #1’. Likewise, for every Optimus Prime there has to be an Ironhide. And for every Ironhide there has to be a Dino. This will always happen, be it in an all computer-generated, all Transformer-cast movie set on Cybertron, or a movie where humans have to share the spotlight with the Transformers. Whether we like it or not, Bay’s Transformers films fall into that second category. Over a dozen robot characters - of varying importance to the story - have to share the screen with over a dozen human characters - again, all of varying degrees of importance placed on them. There’s main human characters and there’s main robot characters. There’s supporting robot characters and there’s supporting robot characters. And so on and so forth. It’s just unfortunate that when the human cast of these movies is brought into the fray, that the former ‘supporting’ robot characters are pushed down to minor roles. Ironhide would be classified as a ‘supporting role’ in RotF when compared solely to the robot cast. But when you factor in the plethora of human characters, suddenly Ironhide’s meager screentime makes him no more than a very minor role. When you have an excess of 30 characters (robot and human), someone’s gonna get the shaft. And who one thinks should have or shouldn’t have gotten the shaft is completely subjective. For every person who thinks Ironhide should’ve gotten the most focus, there’s someone out there who wants Ratchet to have the spotlight. And someone else wants Sideswipe to shine.

It all boils down to the filmmaker's and their choices regarding who they want the majority of the focus to fall on. And, as has been pointed out countless times over the past years, is on the human characters and only a select few robot characters.   In the grand scheme of things, they chose to have Jazz (and numerous other characters) be one of the lower rungs of the ladder, while characters like Optimus, Bumblebee, Sentinel, Megatron, etc. be among the top rungs.

 

How I'd change it. Give more screen time to the Autobots and Decepticons. That's it.

 

Okay. Guys. Really.

Yes, maybe the OP's ideas are less than adequate, but that doesn't mean we all need to rip at his throat endlessly. Not everyone came out of their mother with the storytelling talent of Spielberg or Whedon or Lasseter.

I would share my ideas for changing the movies, but I'd rather not stretch the page to the height of Metroplex.  

 

I didn't even have time to read through all of this, but I know I don't have to, because TylerMirage is pretty much always right.

 

  Thanks, bro. (Saved for future sigging). But really, it's not so much a matter of me trying to be "right", it's me trying to prove that this is an issue that is not exclusive to Bayformers.   Metroplex79 raises a completely valid point, I provide examples to help strengthen and/or shed light on (or correct, if necessary) his observation.

 

While i do agree with what you said, I have to point a small difference. Take jurassic park, for instance. The T-rex IS a very famous non-human part of the movie, but the movie isn't about it. It's about the humans, trying to survive in a park filled with dinos. Also starwars, it's not (arguably, I'll give you that) about Darth Vader. I get we can't have that whole lot of screentime for every character, but the movies, and the whole franshize, is about transformers, not about humans. I liked for most part how the first movie used the humans, though. I feel that they give the audience someone to relate to, and I think the transformers get exactly the right screentime to show them as fantastical beings, never before seen. I liked that. I didn't like it int the rest of them. It stoped being about TFs, instead being about humans...

 

Oh, I agree, Jurassic Park isn't solely about "the T.rex". But it's the same way that Transformers isn't solely about "Jazz". Or "Optimus". Or "Megatron". Or "Sam". See? That's the thing. There are multitudes of characters present in all of these franchises, with certain characters getting the spotlight over others. We're never going to escape that.

Much like how the Bayformers trilogy (and arguably Transformers in general) is about both the humans and the Transformers dealing with the effects of having their war brought to Earth.

Jurassic Park is "just dinosaurs" just like Transformers is just "robots fighting". These franchises are more than just that. It's multiple things. It's a balance of human characters, robots/dinosaurs, action, stories, events, emotions, etc.. We get dinosaurs in JP. We get humans in JP. We get them together, intermingling as well. Just like Bayformers*.

And I go back to the fact that, yes, Transformers is about TRANSFORMERS. But not entirely and exclusively. Humans have always been a major part of the franchise. With the exception of the Beast Era (and some of the Japanese Transformers Neo/Headmaster/whatever stuff), humans have always been key players, to varying degrees. G1, RID, Armada, Energon, Cybertron, TFA, TFP, RB and Bayformers. You name it. They all have Transformers characters (obviously) but they all have numerous main human characters as well. I want to see more than just Ironhide punching Starscream in the face. I want to see more than Megatron gloating over Optimus. Some of my favourite moments are things like Alexis and Starscream, the Sari arc in TFA, Fowler in TFP, the team-up aspect of RB with the humans. It's the balance of things; the humans, the robots, and then them together. And we get that in the trilogy. Some people (not you) act like the movies are 99:1 for human-to-robot focus. Which is an extreme exaggeration. I completely agree with you on the first movie and how it worked so well with the ratio, and as the movies go on, the "robot ratio" increases. DotM is easily split 40:60 in terms of human things-to-robot things, if not a greater ratio (in favour of the Transformers). *It's just that Bayformers seems to have a larger human-to-robot ratio than other Transformers media; which I believe can be attributed to the live-action film medium.

Now, how interesting said human characters are and their contributions to their respective mediums is a whole other story...  

 

Well, Tyler, I think there's something else going on here. In previous iterations of Transformers, everyone was a character in their own right, up to get an episode of their own or random character development at any time. Ironhide is a standby. Jazz is a standby. However, in the movies, they're reduced to a couple lines of dialogue and maybe an action scene. They're not just supplementary shmucks, they're names meant to mean something, meant to be characters.

 

This is entirely true, and something that I cannot debate or deny.