StarScream complains too much when he gets shot in the eye. The giant in 300 didn't complain at all, he just pulls the spear out of his eye.

Decepticons used aircraft in city at end of DOTM.

Sentinel Prime has been on the moon for how long? His robot mode is perfect for a modern Earth fire truck.

 

Dinobots only came in at the end.

Lockdown is as tall as Optimus? How? He's a sleek Lambo.

(I'm listing these more as problems that need changing)

 

Bumblebee as the lead character.

 

I would have cancelled ROTF altogether and just added its budget to DOTM's

At least DOTM had a chance of being half decent! (yes I know DOTMs budget came from ROtFs returns! it's just a dumb joke, man!)

 

That actor allusion line wasn't that bad then again I'm a sucker for shit like that.

 

Haha, well put...for humor's sake, at least.

But I heartily disagree about your criticism of Nimoy's recycling of that particular line.

Excerpted from my Arise, SPOCKTIMUS PRIME!!! thread:



Yet there is clearly ONE such reference which is hands down the most subtly blatant and polarizing of them ALL...

The Needs of the Many - Transformers DOTM - YouTube

Spock Logic The Needs of the Many - YouTube​

A classic Star Trek line blatantly echoed in a Transformers movie.

You either LOVE IT or you HATE IT.

Now, ONE frequent complaint about this scene is rooted in a general misunderstanding of Sentinel's application of the phrase. "How can he say that when we seven BILLION Earthlings EASILY outnumber a couple hundred Cybertronians?"

This issue is however nimbly side-stepped by simply pointing out that we the audience have no real data on the sum total of surviving Cybertronians and must simply assume there are more of them than there are of us.

But I feel that one key word in his statement tells a different story:

"How doomed you are, AUTOBOTS; you simply fail to realize
that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."​

He's not talking about humans there. He'd already expressed his utter disdain and complete lack of respect for us QUITE clearly by that point.

No, he's talking about the Autobots.

He's addressing them from the point-of-view of a defector to the Decepticons, and just like his evil collaborators he views us as nothing more than insects and a means to an end. We don't factor into his decision making process at all, beyond whatever diabolical use he has for us as his slave laborers. Again, he's talking about the Autobots there, who barely number in the double-digits, mind you, versus the hundreds of Decepticons he's aligned himself with against Earth and its protectors. As if to further underscore this point, he even says that line at precisely the same moment as a Decepticon carrier ship is cruising by right beside him, brimming with invading Decepticons and their attack ships.

Likewise, he's delivering to his former Autobot colleagues the ultimate justification for his plan to defect to their opponents right as he's finally activating HIS solution to their shared problem and just when he's mere moments away from attaining the crowning achievement and purpose of his entire defection in the first place.

In light of all that, his meaning should be completely obvious to anyone paying full attention to the movie or at least that scene. With all those points driving his message home and all in that same, single scene, no less, it's truly baffling how often people still manage to completely misunderstand his plainly straightforward and strongly reinforced meaning with that simple and direct statement. Yet they still do. Ugh.

But the OTHER big problem people seem to have with that scene is of a different sort. "It just feels out of place and is an insult to what the line meant in Star Trek II!"

Needless to say, I couldn't disagree more.

Sentinel is using the same cold logic Spock was demonstrating with his sacrifice -- the logic in both cases essentially being that the ends justify the means -- but in Sentinel's case he's not justifying logically his own sacrifice, but rather the sacrifice he demands of others. And from a viewpoint of pure objectivity his logic is sound. He's trying to save his entire planet and species, after all.

Which is exactly why Sentinel forgave Optimus earlier in the film when he confessed to Sentinel that he often felt doubt in his own leadership. Sentinel reassures him, "Never mourn the past, young warrior; because of you our race survives," because the ends are all he cares about and because Sentinel was attempting to indoctrinate him into his way of looking at "hard decisions," or to at least confuse him long enough to keep him out of his way. Sentinel's goals and intentions were completely noble, he just went that extra step too far and betrayed the very ideals and virtues which represent the best of his species. In contrast, Optimus maintained his high ideals and in turn essentially spelled doom for his planet and people, whereas Sentinel was able to forsake his ideals and would have restored his planet and people at the cost of all that was good in them.

This dynamic, echoed by Sentinel's quote from Spock, is representative of the core messages of the film regarding right and wrong and the hard decisions in life.

Optimus Prime's failure as a leader for being too virtuous is mirrored inversely by Sentinel Prime's failure as a leader for losing his virtue altogether. Optimus essentially sacrificed his planet and his people to end their war the only way he could find to do so, just as Sentinel sacrificed his virtue to save his planet and his people the only he could find to do so. In the end, thankfully, Optimus is able to learn this final lesson of "making the hard decisions" from Sentinel without completely forsaking his nobility and ideals and to instead form a synthesis of their two diametrically opposed approaches to "make the hard decisions" of killing both Sentinel and Megatron, no matter how much they begged or offered truces, and to thereby finally end the war once and for all. In the past, he might well have extended his hand in peace to both or allowed their retreat, but by the end of the film Optimus finally knows what must be done, which values he must forsake to win the war, and where he has to draw the line to preserve what good remains.

Which is succinctly echoed by the entire point of his monologue at the very end of the film. He understands that in the fog of war he will question himself and his decisions and that even his allies may turn against him -- he may even lose his home planet and possibly seal the fate of his entire species -- but THIS planet and THESE people he will NEVER forsake at ANY cost.

Which is in turn what Spock was saying with his final words, Spock and Optimus were simply noble enough to sacrifice themselves even for those who view them as alien and to count them among "the many" or even at all when weighing the positives versus the negatives of their actions, whereas Sentinel was decidedly not.

Spock and Optimus both demonstrate for us all that there are ideals worth dying for and sacrifices worth making for the greater good. The ends do justify the means sometimes. When Spock kills himself to save his crewmates and when Sentinel activates the control pillar to save his planet and when Optimus kills Sentinel and Megatron to end the war, they're ALL using the same justification for different purposes and are all essentially noble characters performing ignoble deeds for a noble end. One of them just simply went too far and tipped the balance over to outright unjust evil.

The choice to sacrifice oneself or kill others is a hard decision that should never be made lightly, but while it can easily be done for ill it can likewise be done for good. The key difference is the ideals and goals which justify the loss of virtue in the deed itself. Finding that balance between the correct path or a life-sucking abyss is the hard decision Optimus must make and around which practically the entire film revolves.

That concept is CENTRAL to the entire film -- indeed to the very character of Sentinel himself -- and the Spock-quote plays to that idea PERFECTLY.

The fact that the same actor had previously used the line in a noble fashion elsewhere rather than its more malicious context in THIS film dramatically underscores and intuitively demonstrates what Optimus said about Sentinel betraying himself in a way that no other dialogue could have managed.

Many fans seem to think using such a well-known quote while simultaneously turning its meaning on its head was nothing more than an ill-conceived mistake and a bastardization of the quote's source. But what they seem to be missing is that the filmmakers had a chance to use our shared cultural history with Star Trek audiences everywhere to their advantage in demonstrating the lessons of THIS movie, one of the biggest worldwide hits ever. To that end, replacing it with any other line or even omitting it entirely would be sheer folly.

Especially when they're using a Star Trek veteran's voice anyway.

Especially when that voice belongs to a character who's using technology suspiciously similar to Star Trek's transporter beams.

Especially when that voice belongs to a character who's absolutely defined by his betrayal of his own ideals.

Not only does the Spock-quote work, it works on levels which no other line could POSSIBLY have matched, DESPITE the inchoate complaints and misguided nerdrage of a vocal minority.

In short, whether they liked it or not, the ends justified the means.

Or, to borrow a phrase, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

 

 

So what needs do the Autobots have that are outweighed by the Decepticons needs?

 

I would change everything but the voice actors. Maybe use also the rest of the TFP voice cast, because they were awesome.

 

Actually, the better option would have been to not try and rush ROTF in the middle of the writer's strike. It's a film fully representing a low-effort sequel cash-in that never should have been made.

 

I think if I were to make one major alteration, I'd undo the killing of Starscream. Instead of jumping headlong into having Galvatron as the next upcoming big bad, seeing a cinematic approach to Starscream ineptly leading the 'Cons would have been interesting.

 

You continue to just blow my mind man.

 

This.^^^^

 

Oh yeah, that wouldn't have been a complete waste of a movie and 5-year wait at all.

 

Not enough explosions. 

 

I offer a challenge. Anti Cheese Edit of the sequels
Can... it... be... done?

anyways
Let's forget ROTF ever happened
with DOTM being TF1's only sequel or follow-up
Now I understand references to ROTF are subtly referenced throughout DOTM
let's tackle those
Sam was on a mission in egypt with the autobots and NEST to retrieve The Matrix from Soundwave before he could try and revive Megatron, however "They were already too late" because Soundwave had already tried but failed (or so everyone thought) Later Sam at home with mikela gets into an argument similar to what we later see between Him and Carly about how "He likes danger and He doesn't know who he is without it." and thus results in Mikela throwing Him, Brains and Wheelie out. About a day or so later He earns a medal from POTUS where He meets Carly.

and there ya go

It ties TF and DOTM together perfectly without ROTF ever needing to exist

and also in DOTM a not so abrupt ending, but rather one similar to the 1st films ending
where Prime gives yet another Memorable speech you can quote line for line years later without any sequel bait.

 

You're a funny guy, Hazekiah. Either that, or you're so batshit insane that you make Glenn Beck look like a sane and rational person.