You can and their has been great Transformers stories like Beast Wars, Animated, Prime, hell even Armada and Cybertron had great stories.

All the problems lie with Bay's inability to want to make a critically aclaimed smart blockbuster, hey if the Dark Knight, Lord of the Rings and even Terminator 2 can do it....so can Transformers.

 

I just want to point out that Beast Wars did quote Shakespeare at times. Namely 1/2 of what Dinobot says.   (& it made sense)

& Rampage quoted Silence of the Lambs at least once. (& it was fitting)

& seriously, considering Beast Wars exists, I can't believe someone would say good plots can't come out of TransFormers.  

 

Which would invovle having real characters in believable conflits. It doesn't matter how "good" these stories are written - as long they don't treat their subject matter seriously, they will never rise above то anything more that а kid's show.

Yes ou could create a good story that uses real life human wars as a basis, but you won't find that in here. What I'm trying to say, is that you can't ever compare the TF Mythos to any real life war.

Uhm, no. Here is the thing - in real life you can never have defined good or evil. Beacuse you know, real life aint a saturday morning cartoon.

Even in World War Two of the where you can point to the Nazis as the clear cut bad guys, the situation is way more complex. There so many factors invovled in there -social, political and historic. There were real people fighting these wars and they had different motivation. They were part of different societies.

What are the Autobots' motivation. What are Decepticons'. Whay did the feel that they need to start a civil war? Is it because they are just evil? What is the Autobot's society? What do they ever do besides fight?

 

I can see where this discussion is going...

 

How? That was actually an interesting, new, and fairly original concept.

 

In G1 & subsequent continuities, the Great War started in part due to Autobot Rule using a Caste System (it's not really covered much in the G1 cartoon, but the Aligned Continuity goes into great detail) & the Decepticons not liking their place in it (worker class or Gladiators). Megatron rises as probably the most Powerful Cybertronian at the time & tries to change things... He eventually loses his way & starts fighting for the sake of power & fighting, becoming the Tyrant we know.

The War leaving Cybertron low on Energon, the Autobots leave to fine more power, but Megatron gives chase to keep the Autobots from becoming a serious threat.

There is a deep backstory, but kids don't care about that, so there are only hints in the shows.

Beast Wars kicked off when BW Megatron got a hold of an artifact & went back in time to change history. It takes a while before that gets explained, though.

In the Live Action Movies, the Allspark (essentially vector Sigma, responsible for bringing new TFs online) was ejected due to the war (probably also started over the Caste System), & both factions looking for it & Energon, since Cybertron essentially died w/o it. Here, Megatron actually is shown some what sympathetically, the way they went about the movies, though, sucked (at least in my opinion).

 

Sorry if I sound mean,but, what do you consider makes a great story ? I mean you can never make an alien robot movie show totally realistic without taking all the fun out of it so please , enlighten me.

 

No, in fact I haven't seen almost anything of the franchise. I've watched some of Beast Wars - probably the first season. I've also watched the '87 movie and the live action movies. I believe I have caught the gist of it. So yeah what I'm saying is mostly assumptions. And I could be wrong. But so far I've never seen or heard anything that says otherwise.

I will be very happy to hear about what I'm missing. How is animated or G1 or any other incarnation of the animations and comics different from I'm describing?
I would love to know, really!

 

Some of it is in the subtext & backstory. The G1 comics, which I haven't read, also cover a lot that is only hinted at in the G1 cartoon. See my post above.

You can't judge TransFormers from minimal contact w/ it. Even Toy Bios play a part in expanding the story.

Go to a Library, borrow TransFormers: Exodus, read it, then get back to us. It covers the Precartoon stuff, though in an alternate universe from everything else.

 

They have a good story.

 

Or maybe it's because Michael Bay is obsessed with action and explosions. He doesn't care about anything else. If I were him, I would admit it.

 

With good writing, comes the potential for good storytelling.

And quite honestly, I can't tell if it's delusion or plain ignorance on the OP's part, but there are plenty of good examples where the Transformers mythos has been crafted into brilliant storylines: Beast Wars, Animated, Prime, Marvel G1, Dreamwave, IDW, etc.

 

LSOTW.

Your argument is invalid.

 

Transformers films is capable of good story telling.

 

Marvel G1 can and did.

I grew up in the '80's, I saw N. Ireland, USA and the USSR, the middle east at the same time I was seeing the comics reflecting the same issues that news reporters were discussing on TV, just with robots in place of people.

For example, one origin story alone began with rising tensions between nations over dwindling natural resources.
These tensions were aggravated by terrorists attacking nations, spreading fear and confusion.
things eventually destabalised so badly that the nations went to war, eventually using their "ulitmate deterrents" against one another.

This was at a time when many nations were still at each other's throats, when oil consumption was still on the agenda, and when we were still shown instructional videos on how to survive a nuclear attack because nuclear war was considered likely because tensions were that high.
It was a very accurate reflection of war at that time.

And again, much like real life, the Decepticons were an organisation created by a man amidst all that, a man with a vision who exploited all of the events and recruited people from all nations, not unlike Osama Bin Laden.

Later on, Cybertron was portrayed more like an occupied country with the Decepticons more like an oppressive regime, the Autobots as rebels and many neutral Transformers that supported neither side, much like, well, a real country occupied by an oppressive regime.

Later still we saw the Hawk and Dove battle that was so commonly mentioned during the early years of the war on terror, with many Autobots questioning Optimus Prime's "weak" dove stance and believing that a more hardline leadership was needed to get the job done.

We saw that Decepticons weren't evil by definition, that not all Autobots were good, that both sides questioned their actions and if morals had a place in war, and a desire on both sides for peace and a lot more.

It wasn't always like that, there was plenty of Saturday morning cartoon stuff too, but the realism, the reflection of social and political issues and more realistic depiction of war were there more than once.

 

While I will disagree to a point with what you say because I feel BW was a well written show, I'll hold off on commenting about the other shows because I don't really care for them. I will say this though, generally if you have a poorly written movie/show, it's more than likely because they have people who are not really fans and/or versed in the material. Hollywood is more about putting the "hot-writer-of-the-moment" on a project than people that REALLY know the material/characters/universe.
But that's just my opinion.

 

I agree execution is so important when it comes to telling a story. It's why some people can tell a story and have people hanging on every word while other people just can't seem to tell a good story.