Cosmic rust takes a while to kill a Cybertronian. The Allspark did it in seconds. Megatrons cannon has nothing to do with this. This was all about artifacts that could easily kill a cybertronian.

Still doesn't change the fact that the Seed itself was not on the Earth. The moon still isn't the Earth either though.


I repeatedly said that the upgrade didn't do anything strength wise. And you've got nothing on Megatron surviving a shot to the head from his cannon?


As i said: Artifacts. You keep mentioning other stuff.


Lack of villain screentime is my biggest issue with the movies. But as i said, Lockdown stole the show in TF4.


Was it mutual if he had planned to slaughter them all along?
Because it was worth a shot. If they had let him go Megatron would have had a lunatic on his team.

 

But the movie really wasn't about Bumblebee, it was about Charlie. We saw Charlie's strained relationship with her mother and stepfather, how she missed her father, how she wanted a car, how she was a mechanic, how she wanted to fit in at school, how she didn't want to dive anymore... after Bumblebee lost his voice and his memory, he was basically Charlie's dog.

 

Bumblebee as a film was originally a straight bayverse prequel so you have to keep in mind they had to work with THAT when it was retooled into being more of a reboot. As far as we know, there was a lot LESS robot stuff before they redirected its focus, as all the Cybertron stuff was added after the six month production extension and Megatron was supposed to originally be shown frozen within Hoover Dam.

 

I have no issue with G1 being the thing that grounds the franchise, however I think that fixating on it will stop a lot of potential for growth. I think that to move forward it;s important to remember Transformers' roots, like how Optimus Prime is supposed to be like ultimately. But, you should use that to broaden the franchise. DotM recreated the G1 episode where they brought Cybertron to Earth, so you don't need to rely on the aesthetics or voices to carry the franchise. That's just fan service.

As an example, when Optimus is treated as this practically infallible character he can become one-note. but when you add obstacles you find a lot of depth. Armada and the movies did this the best. Armada had Optimus let Starscream escape with the one of most powerful weapons in the universe which created conflict within the dynamic between the Autobots and the humans, and in the movies they introduced the idea of what would happen if the soldier who lead an army for millions of years started losing his last remaining friends - and lost them not because of his opposition, but because of the people he swore to protect and even literally died for them, and was ultimately betrayed by. I find this much more compelling than black and white good versus evil.

The issue comes when a lot of this goes over peoples' heads; they only see a character who is not who they grew up with, and criticize it instead of asking why he's the way he is. When I explained that Optimus and Sam had a character arc people think I'm making it up when the evidence is there. So to remedy this, instead of writing a better movies they reboot it.

 

Read Transformers 84 for correct interpretation of an unfallible yet fallible Optimus; confident in what he must do yet regretful of how.

Even a soldier on his third sorte does not resort to the gratuitus violence that Movie Optimus does. If my Battle Brother was tearing faces off, I'd worry about him. Sure these sorts of people do exist. But Optimus would be the last to exhibit these traits.

 

Fingers crossed, this book is a sign of things to come.

 

Earth soldiers don't live as long as Optimus. As I mentioned, their war went on for millions of years.

Regardless, I did express that, they could have written a better sequel than reboot it. His arc had ended anyway. The problem with wanting Optimus to stay the he was in G1 forever is that it's not realistic, because as the years go on people change for better or worse. I liked that as it made Optimus a more "human" character. I'm not defending the writing, as there were obviously times when his dialogue didn't match the character. But I don't disagree with his degree of violence. This isn't G1 so why should be exactly how he was there? People constantly criticize the films for assigning names to characters who don't act like their G1 selves when not every piece of media is translating that.

This is just my opinion though, and I'm happy that G1 fans are getting their G1 movie. Personally, if Transformers is going to be stuck in the past then I'm done with it because we were constantly getting new versions of characters back in the day to coincide with TV shows, video games etc, but now Transformers is "how can we rework G1 this time?"

 

We have no idea if we're getting our movie. One can hope. I think they're going wait and see how the Netflix series is received.

 

This is essentially how I feel about the Bay movies (and BB to a lesser extent). The “Jurassic Park” point is absolutely dead on. I want the Transformers to be the drivers of the narrative and the heart of the movies.

I’m not sure we will ever really get that, which is why I’m so excited for the Netflix show.

 

That's good news. Keep you in my prayers.

 

I just hope there is a future for the live-action movies.

I mean, do they? Transformers history in the movies seems to actually line up about 1:1 with Earth's. Their ancient Cybertronians line up with our ancient humans, and their creation- in the grand scheme of the galaxy -doesn't massively predate ours like it normally does in other continuities.

At most Optimus may be a few centuries old, but the problem is he doesn't really act like it. None of the Autobots do. They all have human-equivalent personalities and act more or less like us except more violent and deranged. Which is not normally a sign of age, and often a Decepticon trait. I mean, the movies don't treat the Autobot/Decepticon war as anything more than a simple good verses evil struggle, which is fine, yet most of our heroes are just as quick to violence and anger as the villains. There's no ideological debate or clash of motivations, the movies aren't anywhere near that intricate or thought-out. We're just supposed to accept these are the "good guys" when all they ever do is fight, kill and threaten us or threaten each other. Typically with age comes wisdom, even if it's not always the same kind of wisdom. For a war-weary, solemn dude like Prime who's all about ideals and heroism and freedom and such, he sure does lose his utter shit at a moment's notice.

Does that really sound right?

 

Don't bother. To the hardcore Bay fans that interpretation is infallible. They're no different than the die hards from any of the series' that post here.

 

On top of all that, the first film established that the whole Autobot/Decepticon war was over The AllSpark.

If that was the case, then what the actual fuck were they fighting over through human history? Why were they even on Earth during the middle ages? The films dearly wanted something more concrete than plot devices to anchor the transformers to Earth...which is missing kind of the entire point since most of the time the Transformers just show up to get what belongs to them and then leave (Mini-cons, Energon, Planet Keys, AllSpark, kill Optimus Prime in the past because the Ark is on Earth, etc.)

 

Why even ask the question? Everyone knows it’s because they made the whole thing up as they went along with zero regard for what had been done previously in the franchise or in their own movies. It goes beyond “creatively bankrupt” - there’s absolutely no creative or brand building integrity in any of those first five films. They’re an abyss.

 

Oh, I'm fully aware of this, but you still get some people who think that Paramount knew what the fuck they were doing at least up through AoE.

 

Well, I think they thought they knew what they were doing, which was not creating a cohesive, thought out narrative and continuity. The TF movies strike me as very intentional old school blockbuster filmmaking, which assumes the folllowing:

- Each movie is an entirely new story with a creative blank slate. Ties to prior movies should be loose, if any.

- Audiences don’t have the intellectual capacity or attention span to follow nuanced or complexes narratives.

- The movie star is everything and the most important thing to audiences is seeing a movie star do their thing (most true for 4 and 5).

- Action over story, of course.

 

It's not even that Optimus is deranged that really bothers me, it's that the movies don't do anything with it. They don't treat it like it's a disorder he's fighting to cure or control, and nobody in the films including Optimus ever even acknowledges it as a problem.

AOE Optimus was my favourite because it actually treated his behavior as a reaction to trauma... kind of. I mean, to the audience it was clear that Optimus was acting violent and spiteful because he was betrayed and hunted, but there wasn't really a foil to that anger. Arguably that foil was meant to be Cade, but outside of one kind of weak heart-to-spark, Cade doesn't really act as Optimus' conscience like he really should be, because Cade doesn't know Optimus, because they decided to be a "soft reboot" all of a sudden. Not helped that what should be a moment of dread and hesitation for the audience, where Prime angrily declares death upon the humans, is played up as heroic and exciting with Hound's boisterous "HELL YEAH!"

Ummm, no. That's not how the Autobots work. Even if they did decide they had to kill the person responsible for whatever reason, they shouldn't be happy about it. The whole movie, and every movie before and since, plays Optimus as though he is never wrong. It acts like every decision of his is profound and everlasting and he's the greatest sentinel of justice alive, even as he's mutilating helpless enemies who are already horribly disabled for no other reason than to feed his sick obsession.

 

i haven't posted here in a few few days but idk, i wanted to apologize because i feel i was getting way to heated on this topic

 

Appreciated!