"cinamatic redundacy"-movie autobots

i know this may bring up some stupid arguments but i felt l,ike i had to say it.

i feel that DOTM needed more autobots. i am not so keen on the recent trend of the autobots being this week depleated small group thing. i mean in G1 they really had numbers on their side. I am now speaking from a neutral point of veiw. the magority of the audience of the movies arnt in depth fans like us who know back stories and thing sin between the movies, they know only what is shown on the screen. so for characters to be introduced, are not openly killed and disappear the next movie is what i call a "cinamatic redundacy". its like if the new batman movie coming out didnt have alfred or commissioner gordan.

so i feel that jolt and the twins should have at least been background characters in DOTM. since a general movie goer could assume that the arcees died due to their condition in battle and them not being shown again.
jolt and the twins had no such situations.

the reason i first started thinking about this was at the end of DOTM when the the autobots and soilders were chargeing sentinal and the piller and there are like 30 humans with just bumblebee and ratchet with them. sideswipe and mirage were kinda just "there". they both only had one spotlight moment each in the movie. the wreckers were alright, serving a few good moments that had impact on what was going on. a further reason for my beleif of autobot shortage is how all the autobots are shown at the end of the battle(the first image below) but then in one of the closing shots, half the bots are missing(second image below.

would it have been so hard to add them into the background and battle scenes. the movies, and transformers in general, have never had a problem with space fillers. they sure would have lookd cool running through that gauntlet scene with the other bots and soldiers.

so as a director, i think it was down right stupid for micheal bay to eliminte charcters in between movies simple because he didnt like them or such. it is over all i consistant ind illogical for someone as experienced in cinema to make this choice. as a service to the general audience of the films he should cover all the bases of his movies.

The thing with Jolt was that he was a living prop in ROTF, making him a background character would be a waste of CGI [especially since they have much bigger needs in DOTM, such as Driller and the invasion].

The Twins is a more troublesome case, Bay actually said he liked them, but an entire armada of people absolutely despised them, considering them the Jar Jar Binks of Transformers, Michael Bay, noticing the bomb he had in his hands, got rid of both due the extreme criticism. They were supposed to die in DOTM, but at this point, their deaths would cause more laughter and joy than sadness, so gave up on both.

I don't really think that "Cinematic Redundancy" is an appropriate term for this situation. "Cinematic redundancy" implies something that is extra, superfluous, not really needed, in excess, etc. in the film. "Not giving a darn about robots as characters" is more apt.

Don't get me wrong, if you're going to introduce characters, either explain why they're suddenly absent, or don't make them absent. The problem is that we need more screentime for the characters who do get to see, rather than throwing in more background characters just for the sake of the seven people who cared where Chromia and Elita-One went. The problem with keeping characters like Jolt, The Twins and the Arcees in DotM is that then you run into the problem of having even more minor characters who don't get time to shine, which would lead to more complaining. Why bother having Jolt or Arcee if they're just going to be in the background and not do much? RotF taught us that. If they did the same (or less) in DotM as you propose, then they might as well not even be in the movie at all. If he keeps those other characters, then people complain about the excess amount of robot characters who have nothing to do but walk around in the background. If he removes those characters, then people complain about the absence of minor characters who would offer little-to-no value to the movie. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. As for the Twins, well, that's a more sensitive situation, so I'll just leave them out of this for now.

I, for one, would've preferred that the 'Bots we did have (Sideswipe, Ratchet, Dino, Wreckers) got some more battle time, or even included in more action shots with the soldiers before thinking about the likes of Jolt and Arcee in DotM. Let's focus on what we have, rather than worry about what we don't.

And yes, in that sequence, it's just poor editing. That's why the Wreckers and Dino are suddenly absent. Nothing to do with Bay making a conscious decision about them; simply that the sequence was a jumbled mess and things got lost in the chaos (read: Bay editing). I'm with you, those closing shots could've been so much better if they had focused more/included the other robot characters like Dino and the Wreckers.

EDIT: Balder, ninja's with the best of 'em.

Originally Posted by The Fanbase Oh, look! It's that thing that I hate and am not looking forward to. I better comment about how I hate it and am not looking forward to it.

my point is what wrong with that, whats wrong with having them in the background and notgiving them spotlight, not everycharacters needs, every movie has characters that do something, are minor and dont really do much. who says there has to be a total number of autobots and we have to get to know them all. look at the frickin decepticons in the movie, do you want to know EVERY single one, no, sometimes you just need people for support, fillers, and to just stand there and look cool.

I'm not disagreeing with you on that. I'm not saying that every character has to have their own showcase sequence and life-changing arc. That's why there's the distinction between main roles, supporting roles, bit parts, cameos, minor roles, etc.. Not everyone can be the Jetfire, Wheelie, Sentinel or Megatron of the movieverse. Sometimes you have to have a Dino and Igor. For every Bumblebee there's a Long Haul. But lack of background-filler Autobots is not really a fault of the movie. It's a creative decision. You either have them or you don't. The story either calls for them or it doesn't. They chose not to and it save them $X that they felt wasn't needed on throwing Jolt and Arcee in those scenes. Spending time and money on characters that they felt weren't needed just for the sake of "let's have 23 more shots of Autobots out of focus in the background". They could've done that easily with the likes of Sideswipe and the Wreckers; no need to bring in other Autobots for that.

There's not really anything blatantly "wrong" with it. In my mind, cannon fodder characters meant to fill the backgrounds are best used for faceless troops and bad guys, akin to Stormtroopers and Vehicons; characters (that are barely "characters") that are easily replicated in terms of production and whose sole purpose is to fill the background and be blown away. Autobots could definitely use some of those, but for the purposes of these movies, they're not really needed. Especially in the movieverse. The idea of faceless, nameless drones for the Autobots that stand in the background and are blown away goes against the look and feel that these movies are going for in terms of "the good guise are awesome and the bad guys are evil monsters boo!". Of course, this is something that a potential reboot/remake in the future could explore. But it all goes back to the fact that no matter what decision would be made on the matter - if we had Jolt/Arcee/Twins in DotM or if we didn't - there would always be one side that was disappointed with the choice. They had to make a choice, X or Y, and they chose X. The 'Y' side was sad. If they chose Y, the 'X' side would be sad. The filmmakers made a creative decision and some people didn't like it. That's cinema summed up.

Originally Posted by The Fanbase Oh, look! It's that thing that I hate and am not looking forward to. I better comment about how I hate it and am not looking forward to it.

you are of course right as well but look at it this way, the decepticons have this huge army hiding on the moon. what about the autobots? i understand that they are very reduced in numbers compared to the cons but i think they need some background soldiers so to show that they are more of a dwindling army instead of a very small minority group of their race. you see what im saying.

just by being there, the extra characters do shine by fighting on and remind us that it is actually a WAR, much like the human soldiers.

Are both those shots facing different directions? Maybe the missing guys are behind Optimus in the second shot.

If anything, I felt like there may have been too many Autobots in the films, since they were treated like characters without given any real time for characterization and impact on the story. If they had been treated as background characters, it might have actually gone smoother.

They are indeed facing different directions. It would make sense for the other 'Bots to be behind Optimus in the second shot, but notice how they arrive. Bumblebee and the gang arrive on one side (with Sentinel closest to them) then suddenly they're on the other side (with Megatron closest to them). It's an editing error regardless. Either 'Bee and the gang magically switched sides of the bridge, or Megatron and Sentinel magically switched places.

Originally Posted by The Fanbase Oh, look! It's that thing that I hate and am not looking forward to. I better comment about how I hate it and am not looking forward to it.

either or, lol