And there's a difference between voicing an opinion about a sub-par product (which yes, we all have a right to) and acting like one's personal choices for character inclusion or storyline choice is the be-all and end-all of the movie/series or should have any bearing on what the director/creative heads of the movie/series wants.

It's not the "I didn't like the movies because they're poor quality"-comments that I'm addressing. It's the "I hate the movies because Bay is dumb and doesn't like [insert character here] and I like them why didn't he include [insert other character here] that's why the movies sucked!"-comments.

There are thousands and thousands of fans who all want different things in the "decades-old franchise summed up into 2 hours" movie. And, in the end, it's the director's choice. Not ours. Can we voice our opinions? Sure, of course. That's why there's forums such as this. But to act like what we (read: the individual, subjective, single fan among thousands) want is what the director "should've" put in the movie is naive.

 

Best post in a long time.

 

Yeah but think about it. We love transformers, even Bayformers. Therefore we will see the next movie and the ones after them even if they do suck. I remember thinking after ROTF, "Never again, never again..." but I saw DOTM anyways and I loved it. No matter how sucky the movies are, people will watch them because giant transforming robots are cool.

 

Well well.
Much better expressed the second time around.
That point doesn't really come across as well in the original post...if at all?

Though still, IMO, it's not so much "thousands and thousands of fans who all want different things in the "decades-old franchise summed up into 2 hours" movie." so much as Michael bay pretty much ditched/igonred everything from the "decades old franchise" and defecated all over it with his own personal version. It wasn't an homage so much as a rip off.

Go back to the examples you gave in the quoted post. None of them have the originals fanbase as up in arms as the general TF lovers community is. Also, the characters and themes are still the same, for the most part. not generously re imagined caricatures of them.

 

No i hate the dinobots

 

So stop paying him and the studio to make more of them.

If the movie stinks, just don't go.

 

Wow, what a stupid reason to kill characters.   Geez, maybe we can get a better director for the fifth one. (Doubt it though...)

 

maybe dinobots have 4 modes too - dinos/vechice/small humans robots/ parts of giant warrior [head and etc]

 

I would also like to point out, Optimus Rhyme, that your username is awesome.  

Hmm. Yes, looking back, I definitely could've elaborated upon my first post. Though I figured that this...

...might've been enough to allude to what I was getting at - the fact that fans aren't in charge of these movies and that our personal opinions =/= that of the director, which doesn't make them right or wrong.

And this is a discussion that has been had many, many times before, as I'm sure you know. Some people do think Bayformers is a shameless rip-off of our precious franchise with nothing more than a name in common with it. While other people think that Bayformers is an accurate summation of 25 years of robot doll commercials. There's no point in trying to argue this to either side. If they genuinely believe the former, or if they genuinely believe the latter, chances are neither side will be persuaded otherwise. The nature of a fanbase.  

Because, quite frankly, I feel that Transformers fans (yes, that includes myself) are downright crazy, petty and spoiled. I honestly don't know why Favreau can do what he wants with Jarvis and yet Bay gets lambasted for making his own version of Ironhide (a character who has been represented several different ways over the past 25+ years). I don't know why there aren't many Hulk fans protesting Abomination's design in TIH as there are Transformers fans who are protesting Bumblebee being a Camaro. I honestly don't know. My only guess is that our fandom is crazier than other fandoms.  

 

I agree just so many characters from all the cartoons and comic books over the years it's just not possible to put in every single character that every last fan likes.

I get the feeling people haven't seen Mortal Kombat 2 or they would know what happens when you cram in too many characters just to make sure every fan got to see all the characters in one movie. It just turns into a mess that even devoted fans have a hard time following much less the average person.

So far the GI Joe live action movies haven't had Shipwreck, but I don't feel like it's some person snub just because they haven't had a good way to work the character in yet.

 

Yes you can never have enough Dinobots!!!!!!!!

 

By definition "Maximum Dinobots" is the most Dinobots anyone can possibly have.

 

What if we had "Infinite Dinobots"?

 

Then that infinity would form an undefined maximum of dinobots. Det(Dinobots)>0 in all cases if the Dinobots are a real-valued function with a defined Domain.

 

Meh. I wouldn't mind if he used them, I wouldn't mind if he didn't.

 

I'm a fan of the Dinobots, but I prefer the Transformers taking on Earth vehicles, not dinosaurs in the live action movies.

 

Exactly. If we didn't get Sideswipe, then we might've gotten Bluestreak. But then people might've been complaining that we didn't get Sideswipe. If we didn't get Arcee, then we might've gotten Airrazor. But then people might've been complaining that we didn't get Arcee. If it wasn't the Constructicons, then we might've just had three heavy-hitter 'Cons. But then people would've complained that we didn't get combiners. Some party is always going to be disappointed in the character choice, that's unavoidable. Characters are included, some characters aren't. Some characters show up in a certain way, others don't make the cut. It's the nature of the beast.

It's difficult to try and balance large casts of characters. It can be done, don't get me wrong. Heck, it can be done well. X2: X-Men United, LOTR, Avengers all seemed to fair well. But in a Bayformers film, where you already have a good dozen prominent, scene-hoggin human characters with a dozen prominent robot characters and another dozen random background filler characters, some characters are going to fall to the wayside. Consider RotF. Who were the new characters* added? Sideswipe, Arcee (and Chromia, Elita-One), Skids, Mudflap, Jolt, Wheelie, Jetfire, Soundwave, The Fallen, Ravage (with Reedman), Scalpel and the various Constructicons. And as we saw, outside of Jetfire, Wheelie, Skids & Mudflap, the remaining characters had little involvement. Arcee and Jolt were virtually non-existant, while The Fallen, the Constructicons, Sideswipe, Soundwave, Ravage, Scalpel and Ravage had relatively minimal roles. And on top of that, add the previously existing characters to try and share the screen with too. DotM? Sentinel Prime, Que, Dino, Leadfoot, Roadbuster, Topspin, Brains, Shockwave, Laserbeak, Igor, the three Dreads. And again, you can see who got the lions-share of focus between those guys and who basically showed up to say 'hi' and then leave.

*Yeah, yeah, the argument about whether or not a minor robot like Jolt or Hatchet constitutes a "character".

The problem is that these films are just not written for the robots as characters (save for main ones like Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee, Sentinel, Jetfire, etc.). So that's a strike against the robots right off the bat. Now factor in the craptonne of robot characters that are added in addition to them. There's just way too many robots in the film (and I reiterate, in a film that's already not made to focus entirely on them) to try and balance them all. Bay just can't balance a large cast, but we get large casts anyway. It's almost like Bay & Co. feel obligated to cram in more robot characters because "the fans" seem to be clamoring for more, instead of focusing on the ones that are already there. Take Dino out of DotM and you lose virtually nothing. Take Jolt out of RotF (and rework the "combining scene"), forget about Arcee and you've lost nothing of value in the movie. But that does accomplish having a smaller cast, slightly more focus placed on the already-present characters, and fewer "fodder characters", who are nearly invisible in the movie anyway. Win-win-win. Taking Dino out of DotM would undoubtedly mean more Sideswipe. If Arcee and Jolt weren't in RotF at all could've meant more Ironhide and/or Ratchet. Throwing the Dinobots into a movie that would probably already have ten+ human roles, five-to-seven Autobots and a handful of Decepticons is just asking for them to show up for a five minute sequence, say three lines and then die.

 

Dinobots? Wow.. 

 

My only fear is it would start to look like Transformers:Jurassic Park

 

At first it sounded fun... now its over-mentioned. Stop bringing them up please, Bay has a hatred of Dinosaur robots in general - once Bay is gone and the Transformers films are rebooted, then maybe we'll get the Dinobots.

Honestly though, they killed off 'Wheelack/Q' so chances of the Dinobots is getting slimmer each time.