Fair enough.

But in my opinion, this film sounds a lot worse than what we got. And the Dinobots' role in the finished film was that of the cavalry, which is really the role lots of giant beings in big budget action films. And at that, they perform their role well.

 

I’ve watched the Key to Vector Sigma a few times. Sure he can give life to the Transformers but he is in essence an AI, controlled by a key. Someone has to operate him to start with and I would bet it was the Quintessons. Much like the Autobots and Decepticons themselves however, Vector Sigma grew beyond his original function.

I’m fact, it would probably have helped the movie continuity a bit of TF07 had used Vector Sigma instead of the Allspark because then in essence we’re looking at the Precursor Tech trope which is pretty well established in sci-fi.

Just a thought.

 

Good points. Even without a name change though, I suppose it could always be established that the Allspark likewise grew beyond its original function.

My preferred idea is that the Allspark/Vector Sigma was programmed by the Quints or whatever race made the Transformers, and the Quints programmed it with specs from thousands and thousands of species they encountered across the universe to program into their designs, hence why some Transformers are insectoid or inspired by arthropods, others humanoid, others cyclopean (Shockwave and RotF Ravage, for instance), others dinosaurian or dragonesque, or other things entirely, including mixtures of the above.

Then again, I also prefer the idea of Unicron himself being made and programmed by someone else rather than being a robotic space god, which is why I never had a problem with Primacron in "Call of the Primitives." I found it amusing, actually. So I'd prefer Unicron be the ultimate weapon of the Quints or Primacron gone rogue rather than be an evil deity, that way he can still be a planet-sized Transformer who represents chaos, but he's not some supernatural being.

 

New headcannon accepted! I'm jealous I didn't think of it!

 

What we got was good enough for me

 

As he points out when talking about Sqweeks, he had no input on TLK or knows.
Though he's half right. The "Spike & Bike" stuff was a bit of a self insert, so much so that's why a lot of this prelim one ended up scrapped. But Sqweeks and Izzie still are moderately self-inserts from the same inspirations. That's about as much as those are related.

Some things carried over anyway, but tbh, a lot of this version was an early proto-pitch that was more fan fiction and self-wankery than it was going to end up in the film. A lot of movie development content gets paid for to develop out to see how it feels, sometimes to goof around, and then ends up completely disregarded. Though some stuff from this might get re-used later in other works.

"Spike" for example was a codename for a self-insert character though to be blunt. Eventually that was completely disregarded for Cade instead, they were kinda moderately near designed side by side though. That's why they share some elements. Then with Cade and some other material also eventually made its way to RID for synergy reasons. While it was fun in many elements, it really was a bit too gratuitous on the self-inserts way too much. (Which tbh, is saying something if I'm outright calling that gratuitous considering. xD )

Somethings were kept though like the logo. But a lot did need to be changed because it felt like it strayed too far from what some characters are and that audiences tended to be fickle about some things and how the fandom would react to Lockdown needed to better line up to his essence.

Though Tyrese Gibson as Roadblock is a bit of an overexageration. It was considered for about less than a day and decided he wasn't quite the right build for it. That it needed to be someone that felt more like a literal "Roadblock" and had a larger more imposing presence and frame. So "almost" is a bit of an exaggeration and sensationalizing it.

This pitch was more a very rough first draft that was more about being therapeutic and venting than it was about ever actively actually going into the movie. That's why the design art style they used is different than the normal concept art too. Most concept art we see is very CG leaning, and this was more "High priced comic art" styled done instead, because the other artists were busy with the material that was going to the movie. Further "tells" that this pitch isn't what it actively seems and was separate from other areas. Though it was concepts to explore to see how it felt.

As I said, with the movies a lot of concepts are explored, but that doesn't mean something was actively intended for use in the movie. Only the tops of the food chain would actually know that, like the people that pay for whatever to be made and actually make the decisions.

This is more sensationalized to create a narrative, a fallback pitch at most if the others fell apart. But also is from the very first early pitch. Like not even a real first draft that was taken to explore to see how it compared to what actively became the movie.

It has elements though that also got expanded out into other media forays across the board as well. You see elements in all sorts of "seemingly unconnected" projects elsewhere.

Megatron's head is also an Animated reference to go with Lockdown when you think about it. Very much similar to Season 1 with Megatron as a head in Sumdac's lab. Lots of fun little easter eggs and nods like that in AOE.

But yeah, tbh, this pitch was entirely more "paid for fan-fiction with a self-insert". What we got did end up much better.
Can't believe I'm actually calling myself out on that. xD

 

I'm impressed the lengths and thought you put into discussing the movies when a lot of others just write it off as "big boom boom sex jokes xd". There's way more thought put into some aspects of the film's that people will give them credit for.

I mean, arguing with this person is like arguing with a brick wall but I give you mad props.

 

Thanks!

I don't have a problem if people like or dislike the movies or have valid criticisms.

It's just that when the Transformers have very similar origins in the movies and G1, but one "does not contradict itself," but the other "does contradict itself," when in actuality they're very similar to each other, regardless of whether one likes it or not, that I don't get it. I don't understand giving one a pass, and treating the equivalent things in the other as these awful things.

 

If you actually think AoE has depth in its writing, then boy do I have a book recommendation for you!


Just watch that episode of South Park, it pretty much explains how I see any argument that AoE actually has any meaning and isn't just drivel vomited onto film for three hours with stuff shoved in to please Chinese audiences.

 

Literally nobody is saying the writing in Age of Extinction is anywhere near the deepest fiction in existence. It isn't, but I'd also argue it's a much better Transformers entry than given credit, and it has more meaning behind the creative decisions with its story and characters than given credit. Just because it has some meaning does not mean I am saying it's the deepest thing in existence. I can freely admit no Transformers movie is as good as, say, Sergio Leonne's spaghetti Westerns or a Kurosawa film or the original Star Wars. That doesn't mean I can't extract any meaning from a Transformers film.

 

Given how much you write entire bloody essays on why a film is so good when it has something as pointless as that Romeo and Juliet card scene, which is not only unnecessary but hilariously incorrect based on real life Texas law (read: that scene shouldn't have happened because Tessa was the age of consent under actual Texas law and Cade basically couldn't do anything about it), it really does sometimes come off that you're putting more effort into trying to derive meaning from the film than the actual people that wrote the damn thing in the first place.

I mean, even you admitted that TLK just completely dropped virtually everything AoE was trying to set up, which has to say something for how little the writers cared about what they had written if they readily abandoned it - as does the part where Lorenzo essentially lied about the Dinobots getting a bigger part in TLK, because that worked out so well from what I hear.

 

Fuck this I’m out.

 

This is a strawman argument if I've ever seen one.

The writer situation is also ironic, since fans complained so much about Kruger, and the Writers' Room didn't include him. Did Kruger leaving result in a better written narrative? No.

 

The entire crux of the scene relies on Tessa being age 17...which would be seen as the legal age of consent (if not a year older than the minimum age) in most of the United States. The only states where that scene ever would have realistically gone down are California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Delaware. That's 11 states, or barely over 20%.

But no, they had to have it in Texas for some reason, and the argument for that scene by the people who made the film was that the age of majority in most places is the age of 18...even though it isn't for most of the North American continent. Or, really, the planet Earth in general. Who exactly were they trying to trick here? Themselves?

It's a scene that exists to do nothing but emphasize the fact Tessa is supposedly having underage relations (when she isn't according to Texas law) purely to build up Mary Sue Cade's character conflict with the boyfriend. But it's still unnecessary even for that because overprotective father should be something even Whalberg could do easily enough without having to go down that questionable route. What does any of this have to do with the actual film? Litterally nothing. Prime's off finding a new alt. mode which would have been far more interesting than highlighting a detail so insignificant that it could - and should - have been edited out entirely. Because among the many, many things AoE shows, its a lack of editing to streamline the plot.

This is the kind of writing you're saying is defensible as 'good'. Lazy, rushed, and completely irrelevant to what the actual plot is sometimes. Add on top of that a complete lack of explanation as to the rationale behind several things that were skipped entirely, betting on the next film to cover ground AoE should have (and we all know how TLK failed to do the basics there as well). This is why the Romeo and Juliet Card scene always gets brought up more than virtually any other scene in the film - because it's just so bad and has no place in a Transformers film.

 

It's a strawman, because nobody was even talking about that scene until you mentioned it, so here's a "strawman" of my own.

Better question: Why do so many fans have double standards between the different Transformers movies?

Why is "Sam's Happy Time" often given a pass, but Romeo and Juliet not?

Why do fans often give the other films passes for guys like Shockwave and Brawl and Devastator having no or almost no lines, but the Dinobots showing up in the third act of AoE and not talking is this awful crime? Not to mention they actually get more screen time than the other robots I mentioned, and unlike the others none of them die.

Why do fans give a pass to Shockwave never transforming in DotM or Soundwave or the Fallen never transforming in RotF, but not to Hound and Crosshairs in AoE?

Why do fans have no problem about the laughable ways the generic Seekers on Cybertron in Bumblebee die, or even the silly way (IMHO) Dropkick dies, but not when Decepticons die in ridiculous ways in the Bay films?

Why is Cliffjumper showing up to die early on in his first film Bee given a pass, but Ratchet dying in the fourth film this awful decision, when we know even LESS about Cliffjumper, who is also an original 1984 Autobot, than Ratchet? The average person who watched the movie would glean nothing more character-wise from Cliffjumper's death than Canopy's in TLK.

Granted, not everyone in the fandom thinks this way, but it seems a lot of fans do.

I'm not saying people can't have preferences. It's okay to like some movies more than others, or some robots more than others, or some designs more than others. That's fine. But it seems like this fandom will treat the many different iterations of Transformers, all of which have some flaws no doubt, differently from each other. Fans will then make excuses for one film or cartoon, only to treat equivalent things in another film or cartoon as these unacceptable offenses, when the difference in quality is almost always minimal.

I really don't understand it.

 

I think that point you're have to take that up with Michael Bay and his improv. I don't think Kruger can be blamed in this instance. That's what I used to think.


I mean Galvatross did create this thread which has 26 likes so far. So I guess, he did make some good points in front of some people without making them go, "Is this guy serious?"

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/age-of-extinction-is-the-best-film-of-the-series.1131714/http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/age-of-extinction-is-the-best-film-of-the-series.1131714/​

I have a lot respect for his points even if I don't agree with all of them. Even with his differences, talking with him still feels like a friendly chat. In contrast to you, I feel like I get passive-aggressiveness treatment all the time in the face of big, bolded capital words and exclamation marks.

 

It's all about the context.

Sam's Happy Time gets a pass because the whole point of that bit is how cringey and awkward it becomes when his mom starts talking about Sam 'going on a date with rosie palms'. The bit, from the parents point of view, is that Sam is trying to hide something he's embarassed about, so it's probably either drugs or wanking off. And if we're honest, Sam looks like a total lightweight so it ain't drugs. It's just a speech gag that gets dropped the moment Mikayla pops up and is no longer of importance for the rest of the film - it's parent humor.

Romeo and Juliet does not because it's at face value a very odd and concerning subject to bring up in the middle of a film just to fill time while Prime goes off to go scan another truck mode. But this time, it's unacceptable because this is an aspect that defines the character relationship between Cade and the boyfriend, something that is present through the entire film. And that scene takes it from a guy who is simply a stereotypical overprotective dad to being a guy who could in some circumstances legitimately be trying to protect his underage daughter from making the same stupid mistake he did...even though said boyfriend is a rally car driver with sponsors and probably could have contributed to her college fund for that reason because he has a stable job - something Mary Sue Cade does not have because he got a girl pregnant in high school. This is where the whole 'age of consent' thing kicks back in because as Tessa is of legal age, it's not so much Cade being an ass and the Romeo and Juliet card being unnecessary, as it is the fact Cade can't do shit about the situation as his daughter is legally an adult. And then that brings up the question as to why Tessa needs to be treated as barely underage at all since it would streamline some plot elements by simply acknowledging she's of age (or simply never bringing up that fact whatsoever) and reduce the dumb shit and get back to the robots people actually paid money to see.

Because Shockwave showed up at the beginning of DOTM, TF1 kept the Decepticons in reserve until near the end and it isn't like Blackout or Bonecrusher (or Scorponok) had any lines anyway. As for Devestator? He's not known for being talkative either.

The Dinobots were heavily promoted for AoE, except in the actual film they get downgraded to basically secondary extras, little better than horses, and goes against what people actually were HOPING for. Which was them being treated as a cohesive team of bezerkers more or less - even Animated got that right even if there, the dinobots were some of the weakest around because of their amusement park animatronic origins. Grimlock also is traditionally one of the stronger opposites of Prime within the Autobots, so for him to get downgraded to a stupid beast more or less that only shows up at the end? Why bother even naming him Grimlock at all then?

Shockwave gets a pass because there is a fuckload of CGI transformations all over the place through the whole film and he rides around in his giant sandworm made of sawblades (plus his alt. mode kind of isn't that great). The Fallen gets a pass (barely) because he doesn't actually Transform - the point of the Seekers was that they were the first Transformers (remember Jetfire's little speech about his father being a wheel that turned into nothing?) as it tied into their role into seeking out planets near stars to erect the Sun Harvester.

Hound and Crosshairs don't get a pass because there's only five Autobots for most of the film and all that CGI got wasted on dumb shit like a vending machine and the useless gravity ship. Back in 2007, with a smaller budget and less screen time, you still got all five Autobots transforming on screen at least once.

The Autobots/Prime being unstoppable murder machines in the films is a commonly cited issue, since it trivializes the strength of the Decepticons.

Prime killing a bunch of generic seekers on Cybertron in Bumblebee gets a pass because A) rule of cool, and B) it doesn't really do him any good anyway. He's still seen surrounded by even more generics AND some big name threats like Soundwave at the end of that scene.

Not to mention Prime has trouble against Ravage and the best he can do is knock him away briefly. Bumblebee in ROTF rips out his goddamn spine.

Ratchet was around for three films and developed some kind of following for that reason, I didn't like the death personally but I've said my thoughts on why AoE was clearly trying to be lazy with the soft reboot by killing most of the Autobots off screen anyway.

Cliffjumper dying at least has meaning behind it since he was tortured for the information first, unlike him dying in Prime where he was plastered all over the promotional material only to die three minutes into the first episode just so Arcee could bitch about it for three seasons. However, Cliffjumper had the advantage of looking like a unique character, whereas Canopy was the definition of generic cannon fodder whose sole reason of existence was to die.

You really need to see the insides of other fandoms if you think this kind of behavior is unique unto the Transformers fandom. Every fandom has these kinds of differences in opinion. Trying to understand these differences is a fool's errand - that's trying to delve into the nature of human thought process itself. As humans, we are naturally contradictory in our opinions for an infinitely vast variety of reasons.

But part of living with that is just coming to terms and accepting that people will be contradictory or hypocritical, and trying to 'correct' them is just going to piss people off and generally be a waste of time. You're not going to instigate social opinion change no matter how many lengthy posts you make to white knight AoE, it's just not going to happen because of how strongly that film is disliked. Especially when they've made up their minds that the films are NOT G1 and yet you constantly go on about how the films somehow are super-related to G1. And that's your right to believe that, but the way you constantly post about it really does come off a tad self-righteous, as I do admit my posts may sometimes come across as well.

The way to resolve the tensions that exist is to simply enter a state of equality - I.E. there are people who hate Animated and those who like Animated, and this is a pretty steep divide. However, Animated ended a decade ago and so it is a known quantity. The movies...have not. They keep on coming and it makes the side that doesn't like them feel marginalized because despite what all the movie fans claim, most of the movie-haters do not want more G1, they just want something that is not movie - only problem is that Hasbro got so dependent on the movies that in the wake of TLK failing, they didn't have any backup plans, so G1 was literally all they had to work with for new stuff. I guarantee that if the movies came to a complete stop and Hasbro came out with a whole new series that was not movie or G1, things would calm the fuck down around here at long last.

 

 

I don't think either one is any more or less concerning to bring up in a Transformers film. They are both issues that could pop up with teenagers.

So why did the 2007 movie need to break from the robots to have the Sam's Happy Time scene? You see what I'm saying.

Yes...and then he proceeds to not show up until after the Autobots infiltrate a Decepticon-controlled Chicago. He doesn't show up in Africa, or in DC, nor is he seen while the Decepticons are actually massacring people.

Technically speaking, Grimlock first appears in the middle of Age of Extinction. He's hanging upside down in the Knights' Temenos. Prime looks at him, and Grimlock looks at him back.

Not to mention, Shockwave actually gets considerably less screen time than the Dinobots do.

Again, no difference from the AoE Dinobots in this regard, since they aren't freed from their prison until the final act. So why is it okay if Decepticons are kept in reserve but not Dinobots?

So why is it okay when Decepticons don't get dialogue, but not okay when Dinobots don't?

​

I'd agree with you there.

Yes, because all big budget action flicks try to, at least for part of their marketing, try to sell the big scale action. And who was involved in the action in Hong Kong? Exactly.

But the other films are no different. DotM's marketing heavily featured the Driller, which didn't feature any more than the Dinobots. Ditto to the Mission City Decepticon action scenes which heavily featured in the film's marketing. So it seems silly when fans treat some robots only appearing near the end as okay, but not in other instances, ESPECIALLY given the Dinobots actually get a lot more screen time than many Decepticons and Autobots alike from the other films.

The movies were called Transformers, not Dinobots, not Decepticons. Transformers. As long as it has Transformers present, it is Transformers. It doesn't matter if those Transformers or Autobots, Decepticons, Lockdown, Dinobots, or Allspark Mutations. Every single one of the movies had Transformers in them. We were never promised this Dinobot-centered film fans made up in their head. On the contrary, the marketing sold the story as being along the lines of the Autobots being hunted and the Transformers being made of a rare metal.

First off, what people were hoping for varies from fan-to-fan. Some fans wanted the film to have a lot of "Me Grimlock,"....but others hate Grimlock's caveman speech and didn't want that.

In addition, what SOME fans were hoping for was that they wouldn't die like Devastator. Fans were worried that they would be part of some immature humor, like Devastator. Fans were worried that they wouldn't transform into dinosaurs or maybe have no robot mode.

What happened? None of the Dinobots are killed, none of them are the subject of immature humor, and they all have proper dinosaur and robot modes. Even if they didn't speak, they had the personalities of dinosaurs, and Grimlock kept his fire-breathing abilities. The depiction of the Dinobots, even if you weren't crazy about them, could have been much, much worse. They were essentially following:

1. The cavalry.
2. Transformers with the alt modes and personalities of fanciful-looking dinosaurs.
3. Ancient Transformers who, like dinosaurs are to humans, were these mysterious, almost legendary beings to the Autobots.

Considering that, they play their role well enough.​

Except, if you actually watch the film, they actually act like a team of that nature somewhat. They loosely coordinate attacks in places, Strafe helps Slug when he is about to get pulled by the magnet, and they stay in each other's vicinity for the most part rather than separating. That sounds like a team of Dinobots to me.

I think you're mixing together the Primes and the Seekers there. The Fallen is not a Seeker. He's one of the first Primes. They're not the same thing.

Age of Extinction also had transformations: multiple transformations for Prime, Bumblebee, and Lockdown, a couple for Drift and all of the Dinobots, one for Ratchet, and not to mention the KSI Transformers.

And by vending machine, I'm pretty sure Dispensor was in the 2007 film. Maybe you're thinking about the Oreobot?

Wait, so it's "Rule of cool" if a more G1-designed Prime, but when Bayverse Prime or Hound or Grimlock does it, that's not "Rule of Cool?"  

And Bayverse Prime slays the Driller...only to get shot down by Shockwave and tangled in some cables. Bumblebee and Hound almost get overrun after killing some KSI Decepticons in crazy ways; without the Dinobots coming to the rescue, they likely would have been goners.

And Ratchet's death had MORE meaning in AoE than Cliffjumper's did in Bumblebee.

Zero chance of the fandom calming down, regardless of what the future holds.

The problem isn't that you dislike Age of Extinction, it's that you base your hatred of it on things that aren't true. It's that you give passes to equivalent things in other Transformers fiction, while crucifying Age of Extinction for doing the same things. It's that it can do no right, even when it comes to things that are similar or almost identical to things you like about the other Transformers films. That is not a reasonable standard to hate a Transformers film by any stretch. If you disliked all of the movies, or liked all of them, then I'd understand things a little more.

Now, it's okay if you just like it less, because maybe you missed the old human cast, or you missed some of the original Trilogy robots and their designs, or maybe you just don't like Dinobots. I could understand that. But many of these things you give a pass to in the other movies are not any worse in Age of Extinction, and some of the things are improved in some ways.

Electronic has had his own criticisms of AoE, but with someone like him I feel he tries to be more consistent, and that his criticisms are things more applicable to the series as a whole.

 

Now we need "The version of TLK we never got to see" thread.

 

The only thing I like about what he said.