You see, what we didn’t like about AoE and TLK isn’t the quality, the cgi in those movies is amazing, but we didn’t like how they changed everything. They killed Ironhide, Ratchet, Sideswipe, all the main autobot characters. They made Optimus a killer, even if you could argue he was in the previous movies, he wasn’t going to kill a human. They made Bee an asshole towards the new bots, they killed Sam offscreen. I don’t know what’s worse, they killed the previous main character, or that they fucking did it offscreen. Megatron is left as background shit, just doing one to two things important before basically never showing up again. All the new bots are very similar to the previous main bots, but with having the same problem of being killers. Remember when hound killed a bug on lockdown’s ship for no reason? Dark of the moon was a perfect end to the trilogy, and then AoE slaughters it all. Don’t get me started on TLK being more focused on the humans than any of the other movies....

 

Subjectivity: the quality of being based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.

I'm not sorry, but that's the definition of subjectivity. Everyone in this thread who is expressing their opinions about the Transformers movies is being subjective, myself included. Like I said, you can objectively describe the Transformers movies in terms of characters, plot, setting, etc., but once you get in the realm of whether the movie and its story and characters are "good" or "bad," that is subjectivity.

1. Transformers is a brand based on change. They are called Transformers. You do realize that the ways the movies have changed over time is within the realm of how the original cartoon and comics changed over time, right?

2. With that established, why is it okay for the first three movies to make changes from the cartoon and comics...which I think there's nothing wrong with by the way...but then it's not okay for the fictional characters and universe to change within the Bay movies? If the Bay movies and any future movies are free to make changes from the source material from the very get go, then I think movie continuities should also be free to change as they go along.

3. Fictional universes and characters should change over time. I know most Transformers fans like things to be familiar to them, but that's not how life works. Life is very different now than it was over a year ago for most people. My life is very different now than it was a decade ago. People and pets and others come and go. You meet them; they grow, some die, and others just move on. The heroes and good guys don't always get the happy ending they deserve. One faction gets destroyed or defeated, and new enemies arise to take their place. Over time, mountains get pushed up and eroded away. Glaciers grow and retract. Volcanoes erupt to create new rocks, only to go dormant for a long time. Some animals and plants become rarer or even extinct altogether; others become more common. And not every Transformers movie needs to resemble real life, but I prefer Transformers when it's simultaneously out there AND also grounded in reality and the ways of the real world. It's why I have loved the brand and the Bay movies.

That was DotM. Which, technically speaking, killed by far the most named robots in the movies.

Were Ratchet and Sideswipe ever main characters? Sure, Ratchet was part of the original Autobot group, but he was mostly in the background in RotF and DotM. Frankly, I think that Ratchet's death was actually important in the movie and done really well on screen is something that is commendable.

Sideswipe was about as generic as you can get, like all versions of Sideswipe. I understand people may like him if they grew up with the first two sequels, and there's nothing wrong with that, but he was never a major character by any stretch.

Like it or not, Bay Optimus had an actual reason for wanting nothing to do with humanity and wanting to stop who was, I don't know, trying to kill his Autobots? And in the end, he doesn't even kill Attinger for that reason, but to protect Cade.

I mean, the whole point of the AoE Autobots is that 1) most of them didn't like or didn't trust humanity due to CW's and KSI's actions, and 2) far from being all alike, the AoE are actually all quite different from each other in their cores, and their fighting and bickering was due to their differences and not their commonalities. Bee and Drift got in a fight, because Drift had a strong distaste of Bee's lack of discipline and childish ways. Like it or not, you can't blame Bee for grappling with Drift over that!

No they didn't. It says nothing about Sam. There is nothing AoE or even TLK, which shows a picture of Sam, that indicates he was dead, as it's never indicated he's a Witwiccan. AoE merely focuses on an entirely new group of humans; it doesn't say anything about the fates of any of the old humans, because it's not about those old humans.

Does anyone remember how Megatron in DotM was received by the fandom? People hated how physically weak he was, and that he gets killed almost instantly after offering a truce to Optimus. I personally thought his decline was quite interesting.

Because AoE Galvatron is the opposite of that. First Trilogy Megatron is a Decepticon warlord who declines in power over time, until he realizes this and turns on Sentinel Prime, at which point all he wants is to be back in charge. Galvatron is Megatron coming from a place of weakness as a decapitated head and using it to his advantage to gain a new body and new troops, which he succeeds at, and at destroying humanity, which he doesn't succeed at. Frankly, I think the 1-2 punch of 1) Megatron declining to the point all he wants is Cybertron to live and 2) Galvatron coming from a place of weakness to become a master of his own destiny is a very fascinating take of the character. AoE Galvatron/TLK Megatron is also the opposite of Season 3 Galvatron (who I love insanely by the way), in that Sunbow Galvatron was a weakness to his own faction due to how unpredictable and insane he was, while Movieverse Galvatron/TLK Megs is perhaps the only one keeping the Decepticons alive as a faction at all! He's an interesting subversion of both Weaving's Megatron and Season 3 Galvatron, and that's really cool!

Truth be told, perhaps more than any of the other movies, Megatron/Galvatron actually is the driving/manipulating force behind much of the movie's events. Who gives humans the knowledge to make their own Transformers? Megatron! Who manipulates them into going after the Seed to make more Transformium and Transformers? Megatron! Why does Galvatron not look like the humans wanted it to look like? Megatron! Whose fight is the point at which Prime gets captured? The fight with Galvatron! Think about it. Not only does Megatron/Galvatron manipulate the humans and control KSI. He also gets Lockdown to help him get what he wants! Galvatron fighting Prime without harming him allowed Prime to be captured alive by Lockdown, which allowed the Seed deal to go down...exactly what Galvatron wanted (Although I will admit the alternative is equally intriguing: that Lockdown knew who Galvatron really was, and he either didn't care, or he allowed him to escape due to some more nefarious reason)! Who, perhaps more than any other character in the movie, fits the film's theme of "Attempts at absolute control fail absolutely?" Megatron/Galvatron!

That doesn't even consider the fact many fans wanted Welker as the voice of Megatron and Galvatron, and which film gives this to them? Age of Extinction. And he does a marvelous job as Galvatron and as Megatron in TLK, too.

I can perfectly understand wanting more Galvatron action. I would not have complained a bit...but I'm also content with what we got, because what we got was a lot of fun, and I honestly wouldn't expect Galvatron to attempt and fight four, gigantic Dinobots at once. Consequently, his retreat made sense, and we did get a very tense and even fight between Prime and Galvatron in the middle of the movie. I don't think that last part can be emphasized enough, as it 1) plays a huge, and I mean HUGE, role in the movie, and 2) it means Megs is back to being able to easily go toe-to-toe with Prime, and that they are even foes for each other. That's much more exciting to me than one or the other being considerably stronger.

Personally, I thought that was quite funny and entertaining!

Although Hound didn't kill the alien for no reason. The alien did spit on him. Many human beings will kill non-human animals for lesser reasons than that even!

I love Dark of the Moon, but Dark of the Moon was not loved by many critics or fans at the time. Neither were the other two early movies. The 2007 movie only got better reviews, because nobody had seen live action Transformers before.

And I'm not saying it's always the same fans, but there is certainly some overlap between the people who complained about the "evils" of RotF and DotM, and now some of these same fans turn around, say with a straight face that the first three movies are perfectly kosher, and now pretend as if AoE and TLK are what "ruined" the Bayformers movies, despite many of the changes made post-DotM being responses to issues people had with the first three movies!

Now let me say something. There's nothing wrong with having preferences for one movie over the others, or preferring one group of movies over another. It's great if other people have different preferences from me. What I don't get is the constantly changing goalposts, which I think is really used to justify whatever the popular bandwagon opinion is rather than set any universal standard. What I don't get is the constant harping about some of the movies being unacceptable for "reasons," while the same fans will turn around and give a free pass to equivalent things in their preferred movies, and then these same fans will shout down anyone who dares have different preferences or who may see things differently.

And yes, there is no doubt AoE did make some changes from the first three, but AoE and TLK are not completely different movies from the first three by any stretch either.

Personally speaking, I love the first three movies...but I also love Age of Extinction, and I even enjoy TLK as a live action "Madman's Paradise" of sorts. Many of the changes made and new things in AoE were things I loved. I loved Galvatron's origins and the switch to Galvatron. I loved Transformium as a concept as well as how the KSI Transformers transformed. I loved the movie not being a traditional Autobot-Decepticon war, but instead having a fictional universe where the conflict was a little different. I loved Lockdown as a very sophisticated and nuanced villain. I loved the Autobots as not being perfect and all liking each other. I loved the relationship between Cade and Optimus and even the one between Cade and Tessa. I loved the Psittacosaurus and other dinosaurs at the beginning of the film and the ships of the Creators looming over ancient Earth. I loved how brutal and impactful Rathcet's death was. I loved the Autobots and humans exploring Lockdown's ship; that was something really cool that had never been done in the Bay movies before, and it was a lot of fun. I loved that it wasn't just more random Decepticons arriving to Earth or the Autobots and N.E.S.T. fighting these random Decepticons. I loved the themes in the movie and how, more than any other recent blockbuster, AoE made me think. It was, at times, very, very moving.

AoE wasn't the movie I expected when the film was announced, but I probably enjoy it even more as a result, as sometimes it's better getting something you don't expect from people who really mean it than getting a list of preferences checked off. Maybe Dark of the Moon or Bumblebee or the 2007 movie were more your thing, and that's great! More power to you! But people who have different preferences also have valid reasons for thinking so.

 

Wow. This is a strong essay you got here, with some good points. I applaud you, and I agree with you in multiple areas, including welker doing a great performance as mega/galvatron, hound killing the bug because it spat on him, and Megatron causing a lot of things that happened in movies.

 

I'm glad we can agree on some things and see where we're coming from! With all of the bad things that happen in the real world, I hope this can be a refuge where we can all appreciate the different perspectives and explain why we love the Transformers things we do. Frankly, if we all agreed on everything, it would be pretty boring. I hope you enjoy your time here on TFW2005!

 

I do think that Dark of the Moon is, in many ways, the most coherent and all things considered, probably the most thoroughly well-written movie of the series (as if it's saying much...), but the ending of the movie (and therefore, the ending for the "trilogy") was terribly poor. Optimus killing Megatron and Sentinel was just badly executed (heh) and very hasty way to end the movie and cut as many loose ends as possible in a film that was already rather long. Bay has this habit of "suddenly losing interest" on the run, which results all of the movies having one or two specific moments when they just drop the plot/character development/whatever for x time. In DOTM, the ending was one of them. Relatively cool, even if a bit tiring and overblown (heh) battle sequence. And then...

I mean, I don't expect Transformers movies to pull off The Return of the King level tear-jerking endings and match the depth and meaning of end scenes like that, but to close a trilogy, you'd probably want a bit more than a couple of one-liners, U.S flag waving on the background and Optimus giving his emptiest closing speech of the saga. And yet, I do think that DOTM (and AOE) have the best things to actually like!! ratio of the series anyway...   But yeah, just to underline that while I enjoyed DOTM back in the day quite a lot, it sort of stumbles at the very last pages.

I agree with @Galvatross (very good write-up, btw!  ) about various aspects of the sequel(s) and I think that DOTM-AOE bridging is actually rather well executed, even if Bay (again) drops the ball, loses interest or whatever.

Overall, that's what confuses me the most in these films. Bay's inconsistency.

Michael Bay does know how to make things look cool. And every now and then, he acutally managed to craft a couple of... actually very well put-together scenes, like the hoax departure of the Autobots in DOTM (that arrangement of "Arrival to Earth" is awesome!) and farewell to Sam, few dialogue scenes here and there, several Lockdown scenes in AoE... for example, his meeting with Attinger and the line "...you have no idea" is very basic, but nonetheless very effective foreshadowing and world-building, along with just another brilliant way to make Lockdown interesting, otherworldy and threatening. Assuming that is all intentional, you'd draw a conclusion that while he's definitely not Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan or Stanley Kubrick, he at least has some understanding on these basic elements of movie storytelling, and some, even if limited, capability of adapting given concepts/stories/scripts to screen.

But then, to contradict that, over 60% of the runtime of these movies he seems to forget several basics of the cinematic storytelling. It's probably most prominent in ROTF, DOTM and especially AOE, which has some of the best character moments and story arcs for a transformer character, but somehow all of these movies don't care, for reason or another, to follow the tracks placed before them. Which sort of indicates that Bay doesn't care. He uses the relatively well-crafted story elements as a lead-up to the big, explosive action sequences. That's just unfortunate. Sure, these movies are eyecandy and sort of a product of their time when this kind of movie productions didn't dare to believe in source material quite enough, until the biggest MCU films proved that there's actually lots of money to milk when you do that right.

Obvious enough, Bay and co. didn't believe that Transformers stories are enough to carry a movie. These movies don't exist to adapt and execute the given story, their stories (with all the good and bad stuff) exist, for the most part, to give structure and context to the planned visual spectacle. As there's many franchise-loving people involved, there's always some soul, cool references and whatnot in them. But as long as the chief creative force - which in this case was Michael Bay - does not belive and pursue that, it's obvious that these movies appear as rather disrespectful to the source material and audiences in general. That's not to say you, or I for that matter, can't enjoy them, but it's more or less clear that they compromise a lot of things one might expect from... any movie, really. Entertaining, yes, but not very good cinema, so to speak.

--

...how am I donna make this on-topic. Uhm. Ah, here I go!

--

So that's why I'm not terribly eager to embrace any direct sequel to The Last Knight. Like all the previous films, it gave us a lot of great stuff. I'm honestly happy that these films weren't just a G1 live-action adaption, as I think that Transformers needs to evolve and embrace new designs, new approaches to the familiar stuff and whatnot. It's just how you do it. Armada Starscream is totally different character from his G1 version, and one of it's best incarnations. Bayformers Optimus Prime, with all of the horribly written stuff aside, has inspired me to think of a refined version of the same core concept: old, traumatized military leader who carries a heavy burden, questions his actions and is put on a tight spot when it comes to moral choices when dealing with other sentient beings (in this case, humans) vs his own.

But.

Over the course of one film (2007), they already made many creative choices with the characters, lore and whatnot that excluded many potential plot threads and story concepts from being pursued. With ROTF, even more so, and how they dealed with Primes & the Matrix of Leadership closed some pivotal franchise-defining concepts from their reach - or made them more difficult to bring along. DOTM, as mentioned, is relatively coherent and for a Bayformers film, surprisingly solid with it's inner mythos and book of rules, even if it's already doing some light retconning. And while the story link between DOTM and AOE is thematically brilliant, they paint themselves into a corner even more tightly by killing some characters (or "characters") in between, planting a different kind of origin story and foreshadowing a whole new major threat and players ("The Creators"); granted, AoE does (as I've probably stated too many times here already, haha!) this relatively well - on Bayformers standards anyway, when it cares to do so anyway, as the movie drops it's best qualities towards the end in favour of overblown and tiring action sequences... But anyway, it's there.

The concept was, if I've understood correctly, that AoE was supposed to provide a new setting for another trilogy, or whatever. Well, it did try, but the sequel - and at this point, it's hardly surprising - does not really pick it up at the slightest. Or maybe it does, at the absolute slightest, but that's about it.

And remember, there were talks of a writer's room toying with brilliant concepts and bringing the whole saga together. And yes, of course that meant that The Last Knight was supposed to be retconning all five movies to somewhat satistying, coherent piece of Transformers fiction. To make sense, to some extent. What resulted, however, was another rewrite of various previously presented ideas, another bunch of ancient Transformers on Earth and the attempt to forge some continuity to the already messed up story- and timeline was... ah yes.

It's all about the STAFF and WITWICCANS. As if we didn't have enough one-use MacGuffins already. Blah.

Of course, like the previous four, The Last Knight also managed to present some actually great ideas and borrowing "Earth is Unicron" from Transformers Prime was fair enough, especially since the Unicron horns appearing from the Earth is visually very cool concept. But instead of using this one, final chance to reforge the messed up continuity and make use of already presented, often seriously underused stuff, they mess it up even more.

So. If there was a sixth movie, a conclusion to this... ehm, story, I wouldn't be too thrilled. Sure, it might be enjoyable and fun to watch, but at this point, a complete stand-alone film would be a much better choice, as the five films altogether have already sacrificed and ruled out several useful story elements. This is not to say one couldn't make something cool out of the remaining, let alone completely new, elements, but the payoff-value would be minimal, as the series-spanning story is all over the place, characters basically non-existent or not fleshed-out at all for the most part and whatever decent, good or even great stuff they have left is something I much rather see carried over to the completely new continuity than to see underused or wasted in one final attempt to close this mess appropriately.

Put it this way: the existing overall story and cast is so thin with no overarching story and character arcs at all that would really benefit from another sequel. Of course, it's a shame that such a great designs for Optimus (unpopular opinion) and Megatron saw no proper use in the end and there's a couple of other things with great potential as well, but that's the thing: we already have five movies full of underused and undeveloped concepts that are cool on their own right.

At this point, with (hopefully) completely different creative visions underway, I don't fancy seeing one-off movie desperately trying to give satisfying closure to a thing that is already all over the place, just for the sake of giving it a closure. Regardless how many cool individual elements one could fit in there, there's just not much to pursue, all things considered.

You could actually take the planned premise, cast and designs and forge a completely stand-alone TF story out of it. But it wouldn't need to be a "sequel" as - to be a bit straightforward - basically everything the previous movies would have to offer at this point could be done from the scratch within a time frame of ~10-15 minutes, or even less. That probably tells how broken and non-existent the overarching story of these movies is, not to even mention the character development - when there is any at all - which is likewise very thin or gets reset or just honestly ignored in between movies.

--

That all being said, I honestly hope that some of the designs and concepts from those movies live on in one for or another in future Transfromers instalments!   I just think that the overall thing is beyond repair and therefore would not gain any benefit from a sequel (TLK chrushed that last hope I got) and the sequel wouldn't really benefit from those five movies either, as the creative freedom vs burden of the previous films would lean so hilariously on the latter. Of course, it wouldn't be a first time when a sequel rewrites the in-universe rulebook. But that just underlines my point, I guess?

Which leads to another - apologies for repeating myself: why to have a sequel at all, when the continuity is more of a hindrance than a benefit & key to satistying conclusion.

Excatly.

Disclaimer: this might be a jarring one to read, as I'm not native with English and I have bit of a habit to express myself with a lot of unnecessary blathering.  

 

unrelated but I'm curious what your veteran status means, and how you got it?

 

He was on news staff. Veteran badges are given to ex-board staff.

 

yeah lets not

 

As much as i love this continuity, lets not do this.

 

It's time for the Bayverse...to end.

No seriously, it's over. It's been 5 years ffs.

 

What about design inspiration we can't just let it die like that besides bayformers are cool as fuck and honestly need more credit then hate... Just don't choose dickbot.

And as for tf rou... no

 

If by inspiration you mean something like pic related then sure.

 

Sure something like that

 

To be absolutely fair, it isn't like even Bayformers respected its own design aesthetic in the end with each subsequent sequel. The robots in TLK hardly look anything even remotely like the ones from the first film.

 

Trying to explain aoe,tlk designs are fucking confusing, those designs are continuity errors like those 2 movies

 

The only designs I liked from AoE and TLK were Grimlock and the old ww2 planes living in sir Edmund's estate. The rest of the characters were either too ugly or had eye-searing vibrant paint jobs.

 

Cause you know, for when you're literally the worlds most wanted, you really have to scan the most vibrant, sponsored cars or a Truck with bright red and blue flames that stick out like a sore thumb.

 

You do know that quote-only posts are against the rules, right?

 

He just placed his text in the quote by mistake. No need to be fussy about it.