I do blame the writers. The first 50 or so minutes were so much fun but then the sh#t show of a plot starts that these writers created once Burton starts explaining things and the mission starts was just awful.

 

Hi Zackmak. It's a common misconception that the director is subject to the whims of hired talent. To suggest that the production is determined by the creative direction of writers is a role reversal. There is a top down hierarchy with tiers of management to ensure all production staff fully adhere to the director's vision. In effect, the director is the storyteller, though delegates the processes (under strict direction and sub-direction) to others, before either approving or requesting rework of the product. It is not a democracy.

The director is however answerable to the studio and producers, which contribute significant resources to the project and expect specific targets and returns. We're not often privy to these negotiations, but much discussion has been made on some of Lorenzo's more unusual requests. One condition we know is that the studios consistently require the production to lock in a release date well in advance.

It has been well documented how 'hands on' Micheal Bay is as a director, to be expected if his name is frequently included as a subtitle to the film itself. All sub-directors report directly to Mr Bay and each element must be approved by the director to be finalised, regardless of his day-to-day involvement. Bay has the choice to accept or reject the work throughout the production as well as the ability to fire and replace anyone deemed incompetent. All experts work under Bay, unless you want to consider execs as experts.

In regards to writing, most frequently the studio execs and director will often have a preconceived idea of a story line and issue a brief of all elements required. Allowing the writer to connect any disparate pieces and develop dialogue according with any characters issued within the brief. The script is then reworked until it is approved by the director, under consultation of the producers. For this movie, however, it appears that there was little idea of where to go next, in a franchise seemingly well-milked. Therefore a writer's table was employed to brainstorm potential story lines. All of the proposals were subject to approval by the director and producers, with no obligation to accept anything they're handed. Apparently a couple of proposed story lines showed promise and were merged into a single story as directed. It has been suggested that an exec producer had particular influence in this decision, though Bay would have had to sign off on this as well as any subsequent rewrites.

Writers are just like every other creative talent and must follow direction as well as having their work approved, otherwise they're out of a job. That being said, the director is free to interpret or disregard script elements as the production progresses. Whole scenes may be dropped due to expense and time limitations with no obligation to the integrity of the writer's output. We're all aware that, for the first few movies at least, Bay would disregard written dialogue in favour of having actors ad lib. The script could be absolutely fantastic, but if half the details are ignored/changed or end up on the 'cutting room floor', it could all be for nought.

Accountability stops with the director, regardless of the amount of studio interference (which can be absolutely toxic). Half the process of being a director is negotiating with the studio and the fucked up demands of financiers.
It is technically amazing that Bay can produce a summer blockbuster in the limited time he has with all the studio pressures. Unfortunately it shows in the finished product. A good storyteller can tell a bad story well. A bad story teller...

 

I think they were so focused on trying to connect the previous films' plots together that they forgot to at least explain details about the current plot.

 

Did they connect the movies together though? I haven't seen it yet but from what I understand the only thing they cleared up was that Wheelie didn't die.

 

We can definitely start blaming Lorenzo diBoniventura for all of this now. As he's been pretty much outed as the guy who keeps insisting on the human focus and how the TFs have been involved with all of human history; that means roughly 66% of the movie's problems can be indirectly traced to him.

 

Well it has many callbacks to the previous films. Then there's the whole "Why they keep coming to Earth."

 

Which, according to the uninitiated, answering that question didn't amount to anything more than "Well, ancient Cybertronian texts call Earth 'Unicron' for some reason".

 

Well at least for the humans anyway. Seems the knights and now Optimus are fully aware that the humans are living on a giant robot. Surprised that Optimus isn't bothered by this fact in the slightest.

 

In my opinion no. One of my biggest complaints is that, of all the sequels, this film makes the least sense in the context of the fictional universe. The story of the Knights was enjoyable by itself, but it makes zero sense given what Lockdown said about them (unless he was lying). Megatron was quite enjoyable when he was on screen, but things about him and his story aren't explained, and we learn more about the Creators' motivations in AOE (which aren't shown in TLK at all) than we do in this movie. AOE's threads made sense in the context of a post-DOTM universe. DOTM's made more sense than TLK's. Even ROTF's threads made a lot more sense as a post 2007 story. Yeah, I think the writers should have focused more on existing threads as well as indicating which characters still exist.

I still enjoyed TLK by the way. It had sequences I enjoyed (Medieval scenes, the junkyard, Optimus on Cybertron, the abandoned town, etc.). It had genuine and moving moments here and there. I liked the returning characters when they did appear, and I liked a couple of new ones. However, I don't think it works particularly well contextually given the existing movie universe, and the movie would have been better by cutting out 10+ new characters between the humans and robots in my opinion.

 

Overall I thought the general plot was interesting, but dialogue and pacing is really bad. But that could be the way the film is edited as well, and that could be on Bay just as much as the writers.

I don't think Bay is willing to change, because many problems people have with the previous movies is very present here.

 

Do you mean his line where he says he's collected all of the Knights? Because I'm assuming that he simply hunted down all of the surviving Knights and stored them in the Knights' Temenos. But then why didn't anyone free them once the Knights and Autobots teamed up in TLK? Did he kill them? If he did, then why did he keep the Dinobot Knights alive?

...wait. All those Knight statues in the Temenos... What if they're not statues? What if they're actually the bodies of Knights hunted down by Lockdown strung up for display?
That'd actually be kind of cool in a morbid sort of way. Perhaps he only displayed the ones he killed, and the rest actually were freed and joined the final battle offscreen?

 

Yeah, that's the line I was talking about. However, I do not think the Dinobots are the Knights Lockdown was talking about. It's never explicitly said. They were "legendary warriors" who Optimus asked to join him. Lockdown was specifically hunting the Knights for the Creators. When he gets Prime he seems eager to get back to his employers as soon as possible. I seriously doubt he had just captured the Dinobots on Earth; they were trophies he was keeping on his ship and not Knights he was collecting for the Creators.

I mean if Lockdown had collected all of the surviving Knights Steelbane should not have been flying over Earth before getting shot down, and the others should have been either prisoners or minions of Quintessa controlled by the Creator. Heck, having the Knights in the place of Infernocons as corrupted minions of Quintessa would have made a lot more sense based on what Lockdown said about the Knights and Creators, and you could have Megatron use the corrupted Knights, including Optimus, to his advantage or something along those lines. (I think Megatron is actually a Knight, or at the very least was meant at one point to be a Knight, and I have my reasoning that is based on the film and production details, but that's a discussion for another time).

At the very least, I would have liked to see or get an explanation as to why the Knights were not prisoners or corrupted minions of the Creators in the film if Lockdown had captured the others. Like was there a recent prison break on Cybertron or something? What the heck was Steelbane doing flying around when the other Knights were in the underwater ship, and were they down there for centuries?

I suppose the other possibilities are, like I said earlier, that Lockdown was not telling the truth whatsoever, or that the Knights he had captured are a different order of Knights entirely from the Knights of Iacon, but I seriously doubt either is the case based on both Lockdown as a character and how the Knights and Optimus interact in TLK.

Either way, I think the bold sentence above is what should have happened instead.

 

......Jesus-H-Christ this movie sounds like a fucking mess.

 

Again... I can't stand the designs.... Aesthetics is one thing but the actual designs that were given to these characters from day 1 just sucks. I posted a few days ago how I hated the xenomorphic look of the bots but if they were at least similar in design to their G1 counterparts with the weird aesthetic t would be forgivable, kinda like how Prime somewhat resembles his G1 form in ways but the rest of the bots... no..... Its been a real killing point for me on a lot of the films other areas.... if I at least had better characters to relate with, i.e. hot rod not looking ANYTHING like hot rod... a lot of the poor humor and extremely rushed feeling/poor editing and such could get an easier pass from me... The plots have always been kinda taken from G1 stories like DOTM which is my favorite still. The heavy human handed focus as well as constant back and forth scenes with something interesting then oh look more boring scenes with Sam or that guy pulling out the law so he can bang the guys daughter.... come on... its just crap....

I recently bought the itunes bundle as it was on sale even though i have them other places and tried rewatching them with cringy results not even being able to make it past the first 20 minutes.... 1 is too slow to start anything and takes way too long to get going.... 2 is just............ 3 while my favorite has too much back and forth with Sam trying to find a job and the constant glory shots of his GF that make me sick.... 4....... i hate how they TFs are painted in a negative light and i cant stand the prick trying to bang Cade's daughter.... its just so forced and bad...

I will eventually watch this and I've already read a detailed summary so I know whats coming.... I dont mind some of the story aspects but it seems to overfilled and i know how crappy they are at giving anyone any character depth or the story any real focus or meaning... Bay needs to leave... A lot of the controlling entities need to go also and make this series what it could be...

Look how well Marvel handles the Avengers movies and others.... still jammed with characters that have been fleshed out and decent stories while still having plenty of actions and explosions.... TF movies in comparison just seem to juvenile in development and decision making.... and they really arent for kids... I have my own and have heard from plenty of others... the crude humor and focus isnt meant for them so its time to stop saying its for them... There are other examples of movies that do the same TF tries to do with much better success and i'm sure whether we all want to admit it or not we know them.

I really hope Bay is done, and we can get some real change maybe even a soft reboot to something that resembles actual transforming robots we recognize with at least decent story and character focus, non human, less shitty forced humor like the series deserves.

 

I'm 50-50 on the designs. But the ones I REALLY hate are the bots that have human elements or features (eg. Hound with his beard, Jetfire with his cane and beard, Mohawk with a mohawk, etc).

But what the previous poster said, too....I can't stand the way they speak!!!! So many of them (Autobots included) speak like juvenile delinquents with words and mannerisms that mimmick too much stereotypical street/teen talk, for lack of a better expression. These are SOPHISTICATED alien robots, and we're made to believe that if they were to ever come to earth, they would resort to using words like 'Bitch' and saying things like 'Say hi to your wife for me" (implying he had relations with her). Really?!? I understand they need to speak English for the sake of the movie, but if I knew it would get this out of hand after the first film, I would have preferred Cybertronian talk all the way through the franchise (like what the Decepticons mostly did in the first movie ). Or, keep it sinister and simple for the Decepticons, and good-hearted and simple for the Autobots, and let their fighting and transforming elements be their stand-out features. It's more realistic. Save the forced humour for the humans.

 

if one thing about tlk that was evident was how garbage the writing was from the plot to the dialogue so no the writers share their part of the blame

bay is the director so the buck stops with him but the writing may as well have been done in crayon..they made me miss kruger which i thought was impossible

 

These movies are pure Bay regardless of who writes them. The core of these movies have all been the same regardless of who wrote them. Bay exerts a lot of influence over these films. Conversely, there seem to be no checks and balances in the development pipeline either. Hasbro and the producers green light all of these movies and give script approval as well as design approvals. Bay seems to be allowed free reign. There is a lot of blame to go around.

 

The writers right around bay and what he wants to direct. The fact that this movie had 4 writers speaks volumes about the course the franchise has taken over the past decade.

 

Yes, it's time.