Hi everyone - so before we begin - it's not a hate thread, not at all, not one bit. I am happy for the success of the movies - all of them.

This...is about something else and it's gonna be a long one, but it's worth it - it's about putting you in the shoes of a transformers fan who's been with the line since the begining. Not to validate any of his claims, but to make you understand him a little better and to think twice as to why he has the kind of ideas about the movies as he does. You may not agree with him, and you probably won't after reading the thread either...but hopefully you will understand why.

Right, so about a day and a half ago I made this thread: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/movies-television/434561-bayformers-type-superman-movie.html

About a hypothetical movie, changing all the characters in the first live action transformers movie to DC heroes/villains but keeping the same same script, making the necesary changes needed ofc but trying to copy sceene by sceene.

Of course this is a lousy idea and if I were religious I'd pray that they never made a movie like that.

But the reason I posted it was to give people (who would normally not listen to what I have to say) a chance to see the movie from a g1 fans perspective...mine   - because when you use names like Optimus Prime, Jazz and Ironhide I associate those characters to previous incarnations.

Don't get me wrong - I know that they are not the same characters (duh) - but the characters have allways had certain characteristics that define them like Optimus Prime cares deeply about his autobots, he doesn't kill, he puts the needs of his autobots over himself, etc, etc.

My point is that too me - these names and everything else that made transformers transformers to me so when I see all of that tossed out the window I either reacted like or understood the criticizms against the movie:

Basicly you can replace Superman with Optimus Prime in the followiing comments:

My personal take on the movies - couldn't have said it better myself

My first thought when I heard details about the movie

Right now I think we have the argument going in at least 2 threades about how Optimus Prime didn't use to kill. And this position is what a lot of transformers fans had before the movie.

I think this would be classified as hate if that was posted today by a g1 fan, but regardless it is the belief of a large portion of pre movie transformers fans

The appearence of the Movieverse transformers were a big topic of hate...whilst different, in all the previous incarnations of transformers hthe robots had the same general design, by that I mean they were alot more humanoid and had some kind of robotic "skin" I would have found an image of a man without any skin, but that would have made my point too obvious to get any reactions from people.

The second thing brought up about human involvment is also something that anoys alot of g1 fans.

I think this sentiment has been posted way too often and is classified as hate today...but fact is that a lot of g1 fans simply do not like the movies.

Plot issues, also something that has been talked about alot and how the focus should be on the main characters of the story.

again, problems with drastic change to the characters.

I think that is how far I got before people started catching on. I'm sure that if the post had carried on we would have seen even more arguments that were in line with what g1 fans said about the movie. It's not that I hate the movies, it's not...it's just that I have a history with the transformers going way back to when I was a kid and to me I think I viewed transformers and optimus prime pretty much like you view superman. It's was just too different to what we were used to that we reacted like some of you did when you read the first post.

I am so sorry that I deceived you all I will make it up to you somehow. I just needed your help to get people to understand g1 fans perspective a little better.

I hope this post has helped you gain a little perspective on the "hate" from tf fans and hopefully you can see where they are coming from even if you don't agree with them.

On that I leave you with this post which I think is brilliant, and I hope that none of you will react by saying "Grandus raped my childhood" for doing so:

PS: Not hate...at all

PPS: No, I'm not insane - I wasn't serious about the superman post

PPPS: I'd like to thank Ashton Kutcher for helping me name this thread

 

You didn't really force movie fans to look at the movies from a G1 fans perspective though, prior to the movies most of us were only G1'ers anyway, and we've already drawn our conclusions as to how and why we appreciate the movies.

The main reason I said that follwing the plot of TF1 wouldn't work for Superman is because a huge part of the Superman ethos is the fact that he was raised on Earth from a baby. That fact for me is unavoidable, is as much a part as Spiderman being bitten by a spider. It's what makes him who he is, and a reason why he yses his powers for relatively small things, rather than flying around the world and putting an end to all wars, dissolving all goverment, and sitting on a throne and ruling the world.

Transformers is and always has been about war. War on a scale that humans find hard to comprehend, and by accident or design humans have got caught up in the middle, hence their need for disguise. As noble and just and peaceloving as you want Optimus to be, at the root of it he is a soldier, who constantly fights against the odds. In the real world, that means he's occasionally going to have to do things that aren't particularly palatable.

 

I guess it's a post more so aimed at the newer fans who didn't know much about transformers or had very vague ideas about transformers.

And I don't know...as a kid I don't think I rationalized it like that - it didn't matter so much how superman got his ideals it was more so that he championed them, just like Optimus Prime did.

And I think that depends alot on when you came into the fandom and how old you were - where as you saw them as soldiers I allways used to see them more like superheroes with lasers fighting supervillains- good vs evil and all that. I guess it was just hard for me to swallow the whole "ohhh, we're at war" bit when the opposing army consists of 5 or 6 people who never dies  

 

Superman has to be magnanimous and hand Lex Luthor into the authorities every time, even though he'll obviously escape to reek havoc again and again.
The day he has enough and throws Lex Luthor into the sun is the day he stops being human. Because if he can do it to Lex Luthor, he'll do it to the next Super Villain, and if he can do it to the Super Villains, why not that mugger? That bank robber? North Korea? Then the government start producing those kryptonite war heads they've been talking about 'just in case...'

Even if his enemies were Kryptonians, he couldn't kill them, because that would show that he himself is vunerable, he'd have to exile them for his own sake.

Now when it comes to movie Transformers, Prime is the authority, and he and his troops are mortal. He can't afford to take prisoners because they are just too powerful, they don't have the facilties or the man power to contain them. He can't hand them over to the humans because he can't trust the humans, and he can't afford to accept a Decepticon who has 'realised the error of his ways' because if he was betrayed that Decepticon could wipe out every remaining Autobot in a heartbeat. Look how much damage Sentinel did, if he had been a bit sneakier and not in a rush and on the brink of having his plans ruined he could have taken them all out. He didn't kill Prime because he hoped to make him see 'sense' and come over to his twisted way of thinking. Prime can't afford to take that chance because he holds literally no cards.