I agree with you, humans make the Transformers work for those reasons...but it'd be great if we got well written or likeable ones for the most part.
Not that he would direct it, but 'Avengers' was on TV tonight and I - once again - marvelled (pun intended) at the way Whedon manages to handle an ensemble cast and give every character a piece of the pie. It's his great strength as a writer. And of course the incredibly snappy dialogue. Transformers could really do with this kind of loving attention. It's also phenomenally well edited. The cutting between the characters during the helicarrier attack and the final New York assault is nothing short of masterful and perfectly rachets (HA!) up the tension.
It's actually funny that you mention that, because I'm in the admittedly small minority that wasn't really a fan of the movie. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that bad, but I didn't really like it either. And it wasn't the heroes but rather the movie they were in that I didn't like. Some of the heroes were great, and others were okay. Having said that, even though I wasn't a fan I'll see Avengers 2 with an open mind. And since you mention it I could see Joss co-writing a script with someone else, especially since he seems to be becoming more of a script consultant type guy rather than the one writing scripts by himself. I just don't see him being the lone script writer for the live action franchise.
*shrugs* Just taste I guess. I can't stand the Transformers films. I think they are ugly, overshot, poorly written, lowest-common-denominator, barrel-scraping trash. But they've made a bazillion dollars, so...
To me the IDW moiveverse comics are where it's at. Best depictions of Cybertron and the TF's in general. I respect the movies, but I love the movie comics more. No Bay taint, and Cybertron is fully realized. I wish we got more movieverse products in the form of animated shorts and what not.
I think they are heading there now, as a lot of the base models and some design concepts now will reside within the hard drives of ILM. Not to mention transformation sequences that possibly could be mapped onto different characters. So yes while they continue to build a library of characters that can be tweaked or changed all the time they eventually will reach the point where all the film requires to be made is the rendering, mocapping process. And i think i know what OP means....that once the film is entirely based on cybertron then there is a possibility that it will lose some of its appeal because unless they bring in titans and or massive size differences between robots then they may as well be human sized as there probably would be no frame of reference ( i.e a human) to compare their size against....and also as a result of this all the sets they would require to build dont need to be anything bigger than what it tales for a human to operate within while doing some mocap work, there would be no need for huge sets and massive body parts to be created as everything about cybertron could be scaled down to earth size and no one would notice in the final product and also save a fortune in costs.
Yes mostly but not the movies. I mean there are sex jokes in them and transformers fights are brutal even though they are robots.
I wouldn't quite say Pg 13 means aimed at kids true kids aren't stupid and can watch and handle darker and mature things but calling Age of Extinction a kids film is just not accurate. Ratchet's horrible death would not be in a kids movie. Nor would his head being melted down for raw material. Never mind the brutal and barbaric fights between the robots kids enjoy them no doubt but their not kids movies.
I'd say Transformers: The Movie from '86 proves otherwise. Definitely a kids movie and it definitely had several brutal deaths and even rough language. Making the live action films PG-13 and nothing higher is a compromise so the films can be reasonably mature...yet still for kids.
I think you're the one that's missing the point, sadly. Even human sized or miniature sets would be extremely expensive to create compared to CGI animation, and even that would be highly expensive if it was expected to look top of the line. It is irrelevant what size Transformers are compared to humans. Isn't one of the spinoff movies supposed to cover cybertron? I mean, it'll be animated/cgi, almost certainly, but isn't that basically what people have been asking for for a long time?
THIS. The Bay movies are aimed at mainstream Teens and Young adults not at Core Fans because they want to make Money.
The relationship these movies have with the two very different audiences they court is nothing short of bipolar: the films have all the trappings for the young adult to adult crowd to varying degrees and yet the biggest chunks of the merch are aimed at people who paradoxically not supposed to be watching it. It's fuckin' weird.
Except it's not really that weird in the case of THIS particular franchise, though. As I mentioned in another thread recently, Transformers really set itself apart right off the bat in the G1 cartoon and comics by being the kid stuff with BALLS. Just in the first twenty issues or so, the comics had Megatron blow off Prime's entire arm at point-blank range, Shockwave wiping out ALL the Autobots and graphically hanging their dismembered torsos upside down from the ceiling of the Ark to drip oil across a double-page spread, a decapitated head of Prime held captive, Josie Beller being crippled in a Decepticon strike, Scrounge having his arm ripped-off and then being melted in a Smelting Pool from the waist down before sacrificing himself, etc. Oh, and let's not forget Prime basically committing suicide over a video game, lol. And the cartoon! Rumble covered in birdshit, Octane enjoying a mechaporn centerfold, Prime connecting his torso-tentacle into Elita-1's torso hole to activate her "special power," etc. Not to mention all the graphic Autobot deaths in the movie and Spike himself even saying, "Oh, shit! What are we gonna do now?" Hell, you could even consider the movie's soundtrack along those same lines. At the same time as the PMRC was pushing for censorship and warning labels and parents groups across the country were burning rock albums in protest left-and-right, this kids show cartoon had the balls to commission a rock band soundtrack complete with a video on MTV. Annnnnd yet all this was in service to a toyline very clearly aimed at kids, lol. The PG-13 sensibilities of the Michael Bay films are PERFECTLY in keeping with all that. And ALL THE MORE AWESOME for it! \m/
