A quote from Don Glut (G1 writer)

Wow. I agree with one of the cartoon writers!

It seems more like he is jealous for not being involved in the project, but he is honest about the poor writing he did.

Even if he wasn't a G1 series cartoon writer, he more or less accurately reflected what's true about the LA movie. I find this is what happens when people set standards for what they watch. Of course it's entirely debatable whether or not some have unreasonably high standards or just that others have no standards at all.... and also what they base them on.

WOW he counts so much he didnt even give a damn on his own episodes he wrote why the hell would i care what he thought about the movie.

I would hardly call it "sour grapes". I seriously doubt he harbors any bitterness about not being tapped to write the movie.

I think he's just being honest... I'm sure most of the writers for G1 had a rather dim view of what they were writing. Nobody expected they were laying the foundation of a long-lived and much beloved pop property that would persist through another couple of generations. They were just hacking for a kid's cartoon in the early 80's about (in the immortal words of Orson Welles) "toys who do horrible things to other toys".

As a professional writer however, it might be argued that his assessment of the movie might actually be more valid than many of us here. I agree it's overly dismissive, both of the film and the property itself... but I think it's also a fair critique of the movie itself. Like it or not, it just wasn't a very good movie.

What's interesting is thinking about G1 being written by a bunch of guys who couldn't care less, strictly for the money... and yet it still turned out better than a lot of its competition at the time. Meanwhile, a show like Animated is written by a bunch of lifelong fans of the property. Aside from the rampant fan-wankery in Animated, is it that much better really?

And I'm saying this as a fan of Animated.

zmog

I feel a lot of you are feeling defensive for the movie based on this writer's comments.

No need for that, he can have his opinion. I tend to feel he is correct. I watched that movie 7 times in the theatre and I'll never make that mistake again. I can hardly watch it anymore! I'm almost embarassed to say I'm a transformers fan to people outside the know, because they might think I thought it was the best movie EVARRRRrarr!!! but my opinion has definitely been... toned down since it's release.

The original cartoon is an incredible mismatch of many different ideas. it's not surprising to hear that certain writers did it just for money, because they had plenty of other things to be writing at that point in time. You think they threw everything out the window to write something about a toyline? You have to realize they went at this from a blank slate. They CREATED the ideas that we still hold onto today from nothing. Dinobots? Ok let's make them dumb and talk weird. We accept that without a second glance now, but this guy had to come up with that. Sure sounds easy, but how many of you work in a creative field every day? Good ideas and good implementation of them is pretty much random.

The G1 writers probably were writing multiple stories at once and the only ones that still "live on" are the G1 Transformers episodes. Inhumanoids, Robotics, MASK, etc and all that didn't really get too far. All the same voice actors and sounds and animation houses did all these shows! And randomly, TF and Gi Joe were the winners.

So what does all this mean?

Basically, this guy's opinion is just as valid as anyone elses, maybe even more so. His opinions on the TF movie are just that, opinions. Albeit from a different perspective.

Wow I checked out the thread and that was a great read!!! See check out this quote:

"As I said, we were writing half-hour commercials for a line of toys. And we were told to "push product," especially certain individual toys that the company wanted to push in a particular episode. My story editors, at least during the first season, didn't have much of a clue as to what the show was even about; hence, we were give a lot of free rein in coming up with plots. We were, however, told that the basic theme of the show was energy -- the evil Decepticons out to steal it from the Earth, and the benevolent Autobots determined to stop them. Other than that (and being told what products to push and to jam as many characters into an episode as possible) we were pretty much on our own.

As I had seen a lot of Japanese giant robot shows and was also a fan of Toho's Godzilla, etc. movies, those were my frames of references in writing my episodes (although "Megatron's Master Plan" was based in part on the movie MEET JOHN DOE)."


Further backing up my theory that these guys created the heart and soul of our Transformers mythos. Of course some of it doesn't make any sense (unicron - primacron)

We have picked and chosen what is worth a damn to a good extent, and now we have TF Animated!

Why does every grumpy old critic over 28 used the word "video game" to describe everything they don't like?

That's because video games are now good enough to be compared to bad movies.

A decade ago, it was "MTV"... is a movie too fast? Too loud? Too obnoxious? It's "MTV-style"! Harumph, harumph!

zmog

I'm video game!

I'm at target and movie toys are lame