Also, TF1 was fun. AoE was fucking depressing.

 

Fun for about 10 minutes when Transformers were actually on screen and doing stuff. The annoying hackers and their subplot ground the pace to a halt. Also, the parents.

 

A very possible truth.

There were critics were were slamming AOE soimply because it existed, and some hadn't even seen the movie when the reviews hit before it's official release. (when prescreening reviews were dropping) Honestly, I didn't detest AOE, I liked bits of it, but even I'm just kinda done with TF movies now. i want something fresh.

 

Yes... you just can't ignore the fact that AOE had the burden of following ROTF and DOTM, and that absolutely influenced some critics in their reviews.

I guarantee if AOE had been the first film in the franchise, the reviews would have been as good as TF1 - if not better.

 

If AoE had been the second film with some major adjustments it would have been a far better sequel while still operating on the same plot points as ROTF, really but with far less flaws and glaring plot weakness.

 

Why do people automatically assume that a less characters means less character screen time? Rotf by far had the least amount of robot screen time, and even then most of it went to the twins.

 

Honestly, I think most of these films in established franchises get praised or panned for simply existing (with some exceptions), and AOE falls into the panned-for-existing category. It was obvious a lot of critics either hadn't watched it or weren't paying attention or simply hated it because it was another Transformers film. I'm admittedly actually excited to see where they go after AOE, but I can understand people wanting something different even if I liked it a lot.

I agree with this as well.

 

I'd have to agree with this. TF1 is every bit as appalling as the others, it got a pass because it was something new at the time. It's probably more accessible to the average moviegoer for that reason. It doesn't make any more sense, and it isn't any less annoying than the other three.

The extent to which one TF film is any better or worse than the next tends to get exaggerated. They're all much of a muchness.

 

It had 50% more robot screentime that TF1.

 

To be perfectly honest, they didn't *need* to watch it since the film's plot has so little substance. If they didn't like ROTF, they weren't going to like AoE any better.

I disagree, if only because TF1's plot is the least convoluted of them all and the lack of robot screentime works to its advantage because they're robots who are supposed to be hiding in plain sight from the humans for much of the film - they're an undefined alien presence and since the story is largely the human PoV on multiple fronts, the feeling of not knowing who or what the enemy is or where they'll strike next is served well by what the movie has.

Where things go south is when the series gets bogged down in trying to expand its own mythology as somehow being connected to Earth, because somehow even before AoE introduced the Transformium bullshit on Earth that's dead dinosaurs or whatever, the series makes itself contradict a ton of major plot points (DOTM establishes the Decepticons have been on Earth since the late 70's, have mingled with influential humans and got the last Apollo missions canned specifically to conceal their plan of taking the Space Bridge pillars from the Ark on the moon...except if they were that deeply embedded in the government's most valued programs by that point, how did they not know Sector 7 existed, let alone effortlessly be able to infiltrate Hoover Dam and figure out the AllSpark AND Megatron have been in there for decades? If the Germans managed to sneak spies into Los Alamos Nuclear programs, certainly an advanced species of inteligent mechanical lifeforms with insect sized spies could just walk right into Hoover Dam around the same time)

 

Maybe because TF1 was new for its time, not as stupid as the sequels, and actually told a pretty decent story? Admit it, guys, the sequels just repeated the same shit as the first one, only not as good. It's not that critics only care about the humans, or that they have some hidden agenda against Bay or Kruger - it's that they're genuinely bad movies.

 

Because it was a better film.

 

In my opinion, it was just as stupid as the sequels... in some ways, more so. And of the 4 movies, it has the weakest story. Again, just my opinion.

 

I still think you need to watch a film and judge it on its own merits. There are plenty of films I don't like that have gotten or are getting sequels, but I would or will only form an opinion of the sequels after I actually watch them. If you like or don't like a sequel after you see it, then that's fine. And once again I agree with Ephland.

 

Sorry, let me re-iterate. Rotf was 90% cgi crapfest with 10% actual dialogue from the characters' mouths. The 07 movie wasn't great in this regard either, but it worked at maintaining definitive personalities for the five Autobots. And this is for a movie that was from the human perspective.

Who the hell is Sideswipe? God if I know, but I can sure as hell tell you about the one guy who threatened the chihuahua with his cannons at the very least.

But that's not what makes the movie better, the fact that it has the most coherent plot and fewest errors is what makes it the "best". That doesn't necessarily make it a great movie, but it makes it an easier flick to digest than much of the nonsense in the latter three.

 

Even though ROTF and DOTM technically aren't part of the original topic, I'd like for you to expound on that a little more. Because it's kinda confusing as written.

 

Reviewer fatigue. Nothing more.