Agreed. I tried to watch the blu ray with my kids the other night, they scattered in 20 minutes. Just terrible.

 

That's why I don't like the Razzies, i feel they blame the wrong people for it. Anthony Hopkins was one of the better aspects of The Last Knight.

 

Good luck, TF!  

And hey, you know what they say: "in show business, there's no such thing as bad press!"  

 

I'm assuming the point of your post was that fans of an entity are never satisfied. I pointed out that TF fans, for the most part, were satisfied with the first movie. True, I took the opportunity to shit on the sequels more than I needed to, but I think the fact that TF fan approval as well as general population approval for the first movie kinda countered your sentiment. Let me know if that wasn't the point you were trying to make.

 

I can damn sure say, after watching Revenge of the Fallen I yearned for the quality of the first one..

 

I always thought the first movie was more liked simply because it was the first one. Critics and most members of the general public had never seen live action Transformers before. The fandom had never seen live action transformations, Transformers battles, and a live action Arrival to Earth before. Furthermore, it played things incredibly safe and comfortable (it's the least daring of all five films story and character wise), but it wasn't more well liked because it was better than anything that followed it in the grand scheme of things. Besides the designs and live action aspect nothing about it was creative and adventurous in terms of its role in the brand. Not that it's a bad thing...I can enjoy something safe and comfortable every once in a while...but it's the daring stuff that pisses 90% of fans off that makes for much more interesting stuff. I think having the main villains be a treacherous Autobot leader or a neutral bounty hunter or Optimus losing faith in humanity is much more interesting than the hundredth time we've had Autobots coming to Earth and befriending a teenage who gets caught up in their war. Nothing against anyone who prefers the latter, but in my opinion the former is much more enjoyable and in many ways better.

Most everything people complained about the other movies is also in the first movie, and often in even greater quantities. Even the critics that gave it positive reviews said they liked it for the same reasons they later hated the sequels. I don't think it's of better quality than the others.

 

Hope it wins!! I can think of no title more deserving,
perhaps the worst movie I've ever had the "privilege" of sitting through.  

 

I hope Micheal Bay wins worst director, sorry but I honestly think that he simply doesn\'t care and only does these films just for the money. 

 

OK, for one, the first movie was discernably better in terms of story, consistency and dialogue (which despite what you think, are the things that piss off most of the fandom about the later movies, NOT that they were more daring). By virtue of being the first film it has a tremendous advantage in terms of consistency, there was nothing before it to contradict, but Krueger and Bay almost seem to have gone out of their way to disregard what was set up in previous movies…with each subsequent film. It’s not so much that the first movie was ‘better’ than those that followed it, it’s that it was less bad than those that followed it. Yes, Bay figured out how to better position the cameras for creatures this large than with the first movie, and yes, the SFX was better in the later films (the one consistently positive aspect in reviews of these films has been ILM’s contribution), but the scripts are so much worse. Bay basically instructed Krueger to tie one ILM effects scene to the next, and not to worry about whether anything made sense (Krueger basically confirmed this – he said something along the lines that it’s a movie about giant transforming aliens at war, so logic isn’t necessary). It’s the ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude to consistency that pisses off most fans and turns off most casual movie-goers…that and the horrific characterizations and dialogue. Not inaccurate to the source material characterizations, just that these are horrible characters with horrible dialogue doing and saying stuff that’s just insane. Turturro (bad in first movie, so much worse in sequels), Mom (quirky but OK in first movie, unwatchable in sequels), college roommate d-bag, moron-twins, leg-humper, Ken Jeong (this is what a guy looking for help does, attack a potential lifeline in a bathroom stall and speak in code?), John Malkovich (did this role get him blackballed from movies?), and the list goes on. Bay must love zany, nonsensical characters. Having one or two, OK, fine, but it’s almost as if he needs to have one or two quirky but sane protagonists living in a sea of lunatics. I’m guessing he used to watch Seinfeld in the 90’s and think ‘this show would be so much better if it were just Jerry and three Kramers’.


Wow, digressed there a bit, but yeah, you’re WAY off in your assumption that it’s the ‘daringness’ that fans have a problem with in the later movies. And frankly, what you see as daring really isn’t, and it’s certainly not creative. The Fallen was Hordak, Sentinel Prime was Dooku, Lockdown was Cad Bane, and the humans turning on former allies out of fear has been done to death, the soldiers assigned to hunt them long pre-existing military or black ops clichés. The battle sequences have gotten grander, but frankly, that’s more detrimental than anything (at least in terms of time – people wind up looking at their watches mid-way through the grand finale’s of TF films). But yeah, I guess Bay does gamble a lot more in the later films, it’s just that most of those gambles have lost.

 

"...and I base that on absolutely nothing."

Excuse me for a minute while I laugh my ass off.

The 2007 film does not have a better story than the sequels. It's one of the more bloated of the films; it has pointless human characters and scenes and nonsensical elements in spades. The hacker subplot? Totally not needed.

Megatron crashing into the Arctic despite the Allspark being in the Colorado River? Every other alien being in the films landed right where they wanted to, so that makes ZERO sense. Humans in the early twentieth century uncovering, transporting to the Hoover Dam from the Arctic, posing, and freezing Megatron? That also makes ZERO sense given we see what happens when the power gets cut off in a matter of moments, and that's in the 21st Cebtury.

The first film had Megatron etching the coordinates of the Allspark into a pair of glasses makes ZERO sense. Heck, just about anything related to the glasses makes zero sense. Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, and Age of Extinction, while they may have been longer overall, at the very least kind of needed to be more long.

The Last Knight did have too much going on no doubt, but the other films did not have weaker plots than the first film. If anything most of them had slightly better plots.

The first film was not more consistent, either. Characters show up and disappear all the same. Barricade is shown on the freeway before not even showing up for the final battle. No explanation as to what happens to the Allspark mutations. Not even a line. If anything this is one thing Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction do much better; we know the fates of characters that appear in those movies.

The dialogue is better? Is this a joke? "Criminals are hot!" "Sam's happy time." Showing the Autobots talking about Bumblebee "lubricating" on a human. Ratchet saying "tingly" when he gets shocked? That's not good dialogue; that's baby talk that five year olds get a kick out of, which is much, much, much dumber for adult and teenage viewers to like than swearing and threats of violence in movies about warring alien robots. I greatly prefer the latter.

And I find it hilarious that you bring up Sentinel Prime and Lockdown, because they have more to their characters than any of the 2007 Decepticons.

If people have a preference, even a strong preference, for the first movie over the others then that is fine, but the idea that the first film is on this great, insurmountable pedestal of quality next to the others is a nostalgic mass delusion. There isn't this great gulf in quality between the Transformers films that so many fans think there is.

I will say it doesn't have as many geographic inconsistencies as RotF, and its acts don't feel as disparate as The Last Knight, but beyond that it is NOT any better. If anything there are many things some or even most of the sequels do better. I enjoy it as the movie that introduced Transformers and transformations in a live action movie, but I never, ever thought it was "better" than its successors.

And speaking of Sentinel and Lockdown:

How in the world did you become a fan of Transformers to begin with? Since when have Transformers not resembled characters from other brands and franchises and common archetypes? Answer: NEVER!

And the reason "humans turning on former allies" has been done in fiction is because there are examples of it happening in the real world! People turn on reliable allies and despised demographic groups because of greed, fear. and the desire for greater control. It's a relatable story for many human beings, myself included, because that happened to people in my own family. Art, even over-the-top big budget action flicks based on kids' toys and cartoons and comics, often imitates life.

 

*laughs maniacally*