As soon as TF '07 was announced people started bitching, so I wouldn't put it past some people.

 

Cool. I'd say you're in the minority though. I know a lot of people who had their interest in Transformers rekindled by the first movie.

You're not entirely correct. RiD/Car Robots was imported as a filler show because Hasbro needed something to keep the brand going while they and Takara worked on Armada. Armada wasn't given the go-ahead because of RiD's success.
Now RiD and Armada both proved that "traditional" (ie largely vehicle based) Transformers were profitable again, and yes both RiD and Armada did a lot to get some older fans who remembered G1 fondly back into the franchise.
If you look at sales, however, Energon did worse then Armada, and Cybertron did worse then Energon. So while RiD and Armada did a lot to rejuvenate the fanbase it was on a downward slope pre-movie. Then the first movie hit, and things took off big time.

So both RiD/Armada and the movie brought in renewed interest, but the first movie's contribution on that front blows RiD/Armada's out of the water.

 

But I started collecting during Cybertron.... 

 

Yes I totally agree with you. Saying that someone is not a true fan of Transformers if they like the Bay movies is absurd. Like you said everyone can like whatever is of interest to them.

 

Cybertron had some great figures. I'd say overall it was improvement over Energon, both in terms of the show and toys. Nothing wrong with liking it at all.
Sadly, though, it wasn't as successful as Energon, which wasn't as successful as Armada and RiD.

 

If only...  

 

Exactly what metric would we use to measure such a claim?

Lets say tickets averaged $10 each for Dark of the Moon so for the US and Canada that means 35,239,054 tickets sold. The US population is 314,686,189 while the population of Canada is 34,482,779 for a combined population of 349,168,968. While I'm not a math expert clearly most people didn't bother to see the film in theaters.

 

How about we just focus on the people who saw the movies and not the people who didn't? After all, with the latter group, there are thousands of reasons that they didn't see it other than "thought the first two were crap".

 

Where did you get those numbers because that is just low... terrible actually. Lets look at some of the films that beat Dark of the Moon according to that logic;

Ticket sales;

Transfomers Dark of the Moon; 35,239,054
Spider-man 3; 48,914,288
Transformer Revenge of the Fallen; 53,614,916
Star wars - Revenge of the sith; 59,323,332
Star Wars - the phantom menace; 84,732,943

Source; http://www.the-numbers.com/market/

You are stating that 'Transformer Dark of the Moon' is a good film based on ticket sales... yet 'Transformers Dark of the moon' was beaten by Transformers Revenge of the fallen by 18,000,000 ticket sales and that film even the director called terrible.

 

Totally, 100% this.

I'll admit. When I first saw they were making a live-action movie, and saw who was directing it, the first words out of my mouth were "Jesus f*cking Christ, please be joking." But then I saw it, and after my body finished recovering from the multiple orgasms I'd had, I was satisfied. I can't say I was impressed with the second two, but I loved the way in which they carried out the designs and such for the '07 movie. In particular, I loved that Spielberg had a very large amount of input, so Bay didn't make it the giant clusterfuck that he wanted to (and later did to the second two).

You have to take into account too, that Spider-Man 3 and Revenge of the Fallen, while both terrible movies, were released on the heels of one amazing, and one pretty decent movie, respectively, so the expectations going in were a lot higher. Once so many people had seen RotF, and Bay admitted to it being awful, people were a lot more cautious about what they were seeing, but overall, DotM received better reviews. Ticket sales are a tricky thing.

 

The original statement was about most people liking or not liking the Micheal Bay take on Transformers. So to be silly I found a way to point out that most people don't actually care either way because most people don't go to the movie theater.

Of the people who do care enough to go to the movie theater we just honestly don't have any way to know how many people loved the movie, how many people liked the movie, how many people were rather indifferent, how many disliked the movie, and how many just hated it.

 

If there were a way to determine how many people went to see it multiple times, we might be able to put together something of a better picture, but unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to make subjective-based conclusions on objective, only loosely-correlative metrics. A survey could also help, but then you get into issues like sample set selection, bias filtering, question composition and which metrics to use, etc. etc. etc. It's one of the reasons consumer behavioral analysis is such a pain in the ass.

I think the most accurate and objective that we can get is something along the lines of "there were many people who were interested in the Bay films, and statistically non-negligible numbers of people inside this set who enjoyed the films, as well as statistically non-negligible numbers who had issues with it. Naturally, these figures become skewed when observed in relation to a community of fans of the franchise". Either side painting itself as the majority may very well be a fallacy.

 

Exactly.

Even if we did a poll here we don't actually represent a good base of the people who watched the movie because everyone who visits the site doesn't stop into the movie section.

The friends and family thing doesn't help either because I've got friends and family who have loved the film series while others do nothing but trash the film series.

Ha ha, and that's just with the people who speak English. Given how films are world wide events now it's impossible to know how the world feels about the films other than the films manage to sell loads of tickets.

 

In short, it's not just Michael Bay's fault for raping childhoods, but also the fault of the people who went and saw the movies, thereby unofficially giving Bay permission to continue with the supposed childhood-raping.

Does that mean we can lock this thread and shut up about Michael Bay now?

 

Well, no...

It's also the fault of the Hasbro executive, producers, and movie studio staff responsible for determining the overall direction the movies were to go in, as well as the weight the films would be given in terms of of resources allotted.

It's also the fault of the marketing people for how the films were promoted and presented before and afterwards.

It's also the fault of the cast and crew in the work that they did, although as director Bay probably had the final say.


These things aren't simple, and oversimplifying them only makes it easier to have the sorts of circular arguments we're all sick of.

 

I still can't say I understand the whole "childhood-raping" aspect of this argument. You could've done much worse. How do you think the people feel who were fans of The Green Hornet, Starsky and Hutch, et cetera feel? You think you got it bad?

 

This raped no childhood. It brought make childhood memories. Practically, like RiD, they pretty much brought Transformers back to life, without Bay, there would've been no Animated, Prime, WFC/FOC, etc. That's my conclusion. I don't know, I didn't read all of this page.

 

Actually that was already in the works during the filming of the first movie atleast since 2005 since Hasbro knew Cybertron will inevitably end. The movie changed the character roster like Bumblebee and Ratchet but otherwise we would have still had Animated.

 

For good or for ill some directors just naturally spark a fan reaction. Just look at the eruption when it was announced that Micheal Bay would be a producer on a live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. As long as Micheal Bay is connected to the live action films we just have to deal with people loving the guy or hating the guy.

Ha ha, although it's a bit hard to ignore a director when it's Micheal Bay presents a Micheal Bay production, directed by Micheal Bay, in Bay-Vision. The guy just doesn't seem very shy about announcing to everyone he can find that he's connected to a movie.

 

-slams head against table-
You missed the point. If you looked at the link i provided i also showed other movies. Hundreds of films have gotten higher than Transformers; Dark of the moon in terms of ticket sales, in fact the link i sent gave you 10 straight off the bat and their were another 25 i was planning to show you if needed - however i thought you would realize it based on stats.

May i also point out that 'low ticket sales' and 'high gross earnings' essentially mean (when put together) that the cinema is ripping you off. Nothing more. It is simply basic business knowledge.

Also, if less people go to see the film of course the people going to see the film will be expecting what the film has and be doing better reviews. People would expect ROTF level cinema and yet they get something 'slightly' better and call it an amazing film because it isn't as terrible as the other two.

Reviews mean absolutely nothing. Ticket sales mean absolutely nothing. Gross earnings mean absolutely ****ing nothing. When will people realize this? Its basic economics.

Ticket prices in 2009 (say they were about $7.5)
Ticket prices in 2011 (say they went up to $15)

In the example above you could buy twice the amount of tickets in 2009 and the movie would still only make the same amount as a film getting half the amount of tickets sold in 2011.

Cinema is a dying age due to this - also evident from the stupid ads you get in Cinema's now proclaiming that "piracy is destroying cinema's"

Rant over, but let me point this out. Its cute that you are protecting the 'DOTM' film as some kind of masterpiece however it was just not. Bay simply cut the budget on Transformers DOTM after ROTF failed in terms of fan popularity. He is also cutting the budget on TF4 from $195 million to $165 million - though I'll save that for a later point.

Simply put, you need to realize that Ticket sales verses 'how good the movie is' is not a good way to judge films.