aoe, anyone like it

Discussion in 'Transformers Movie Discussion' started by Arrogant Arachnid, Feb 13, 2021.

  1. cybeast

    cybeast Freelancer Pun Maker

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    It's actually amazing on how some people can talk a lot without saying anything.

    :D 

    On topic, The Dinobot can literally be changed to anything and it won't affect the plot in any way, at all.
     
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  2. AStreetcarNamedWheeljack

    AStreetcarNamedWheeljack Well-Known Member

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    It was okay. I didn't really like it, but I didn't hate it either. I hated like 90% of the character designs, because they looked too human. But the dinobots were easily the best part of the movie.
     
  3. EmceeDel

    EmceeDel Well-Known Member

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    I only saw it once in full back in 2014, but I remember surprisingly having a good time. It's not as good as 2007, DOTM, or BB, but I think I would put it above ROTF and definitely over TLK. ROTF had more characters I cared about, but AOE just felt more adventurous to me.

    I think it's the film with the most blatant product placement tho. That Bud Light ad in the middle of the film is beautifully corny :D 
     
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  4. Runamuck86

    Runamuck86 Well-Known Member

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    I liked it until optimus became knight shaped and the awful new autobots turned up
     
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  5. TheDude810

    TheDude810 I have an unhealthy obsession with the RotF Game

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    I found the video regarding the version of AoE we never saw:
     
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  6. mr convoy

    mr convoy Well-Known Member

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    It was the highlight of the movieverse for me.
     
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  7. Spartan Prime

    Spartan Prime Eat 'em up, eat 'em up, eat 'em up.

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    It wasn't as bad as The Last Knight. But it was damned close.
     
  8. Reask

    Reask Predacon

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    Honestly when I first saw it I was exhausted, but I absolutely loved it, Romeo and Juliet law aside wtf was that. I was just having fun with it not caring too much about the overall plot or lack of one.

    Nowadays if I were to watch it again I'd think its a chore, but I do have a lot more positive to say about it than I do TF2, 3 and 5. For one thing, I think this is Peter Cullen's best take on Optimus he has a lot more emotional range as this wounded fighter who makes his bitterness to Humanity obvious. It's a fresh take and Peter really gives it his all. Frank Welker as Galvatron god that was gorgeous to listen to. Yeah fanboying.

    Apart from that I was happy to see from Animated of all things Lockdown, it ain't saying much but he was a more memorable villain than what we had before. I was having fun with all the Quintesson build up until Last Knight lost interest. I like Cade a whole lot better than Sam as the Human protagonist and I'm a sucker for Kelsey Grammer.

    And... Okay I guess that's it. Action was alright but nothing we hadn't seen 3 years prior. I suppose it had better pacing despite the long length it didn't feel as rushed as the next film. Yeah anything else positive I have to say is just compliments that I don't think it's as bad as the other sequels in my opinion. Overall I liked it, liked it, nowadays it would put me to sleep. :D 
     
  9. Spartan Prime

    Spartan Prime Eat 'em up, eat 'em up, eat 'em up.

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    This is probably from fear of losing his job, since I'm pretty sure he was referring to this as the take on Optimus that he was most vehemently and vocally open against.
     
  10. Reask

    Reask Predacon

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    I've seen that Peter hates this portrayal, yet what I find very odd is he said he wanted Michael Bay to come back and direct the 5th film when he initially wasn't going to. I think Bay has a lot of respect for Peter Cullen from what I've seen so that's something but how is it Peter hated the violent version but still wanted Michael Bay back? He sounded sincere about wanting him back for the fifth film from what I read.
     
  11. Nova Maximus

    Nova Maximus Well-Known Member

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    From what I think I can gather Peter really hates the depiction of Bay Prime, saying how he finds many of his lines in DOTM/AOE uncomfortable and not how Optimus should be, yet like's Michael Bay as both a person and as someone to work with, since it was Michael Bay was the one to went both against Lorenzo and the studio to get Peter on board in the first movie, with the only reason he didn't get Frank Welker was because he didn't think his G1 voice would fit (this was pre-Transformers Prime).

    Plus there is the fact that Peter hasn't been treated well behind-the-scenes since TLK in both the movies and the shows, but I don't that has anything to be with Bay being there or not.
     
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  12. Shadow25

    Shadow25 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I know the scratch-track Prime voiceover that Peter was forced to sync to in Bumblebee was not something you ever heard of happening during the production of the five Bay films (at most, you had Mark Ryan on set reading drafted lines for the human actors to interact with). And for all of his potential qualms with the direction of the character, Peter still gave a terrific performance in AOE, and I really think it laid to rest any concerns that he could only do a stoic, emotionless Prime.

    And as for Bay, it definitely seems like actors enjoy working with him, he has a lot of repeat business in that department. I just think he was completely burnt out on these by the time of TLK, which is a shame because AOE really took things in a genuinely interesting and new direction, but perhaps some of that credit should go to the screenwriter Ehren Kruger.
     
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  13. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    He doesn't deserve any credit, not when he couldn't make a script that actually explained anything.

    I mean, what the hell were the Creators even doing that was the whole point of Lockdown being around in the first place? Oh, that's right, that answer doesn't exist. It never existed. If you have to rely on something else to explain your entire plot, that's not good writing, that's a plot hole.

    I would absolutely love for there to be an interview with Ehren where he actually goes on record and explains just what direction, if any, was really intended at the end of AoE, because we can say for certainty that TLK proved nobody knew what the hell was going on other than they were trying to reverse course from AoE's bullshit from a patchwork script trying to accomplish something else entirely.
     
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  14. Nova Maximus

    Nova Maximus Well-Known Member

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    I actually would have preferred if Ehren Kruger stayed on to write TLK.
    It still would have failed because it would have been another badly written Transformers movie and have been poorly written and stupid, but it would have been consistently poorly written and stupid with AOE without the seeming disconnect TLK had.

    Then again that disconnect with the seemingly last person who cared about where the story of the movies were going may have been the final nail in the coffin to finally get us the reboot.
     
  15. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    Honestly AoE was prolonging the inevitable, it wouldn't have been successful enough to warrant what would become TLK had it not been for the contracts with the government-owned Chinese film industry giving Paramount a bigger slice of the box office pie and the utterly bonkers advertisement campaign like the American Idol style talent competition for a part in the film (on which Lorenzo was evidently one of the judges!). After all, TLK had a smaller budget in comparison to AoE, made $600 million plus, and still was in the red by $100 million which nearly bankrupted Paramount. Imagine the damage AoE would have done if it had pulled similar numbers on its higher base budget.
     
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  16. Shadow25

    Shadow25 Well-Known Member

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    I mean, you answered your own question, he never got the chance to write the sequel that would have likely tackled the "creators". Plenty of movies set up things for sequels, and they don't always pan out in said sequel (or the sequel never happens). I'm sure the guy didn't know he wouldn't be writing the sequel at the time.
     
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  17. Galvatross

    Galvatross Dom Dom, Yes Yes Veteran

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    How do you know Kruger and company didn't have some story points and lore fleshed out for the sequel to follow? Just because TLK ignored or minimizes some things from AoE, it doesn't mean there wasn't a different plan from before the writers' room. I think the fact it's revealed in behind the scenes stuff that the Knightship came from a world other than Cybertron as well as the fact Paramount requested a photo be pulled showing melee weapons allegedly belonging to Megatron during filming suggest that plenty of stuff was planned at some point. Ironically, despite TLK ignoring much of AoE, Knight Megatron may actually have been one of those things planned that did make it into the finished film.

    Also, a cliffhanger that leaves some things unexplained is not a plot hole. Things going unexplained, or the answer being unexpected, are not plot holes. A plot hole means there is no logical explanation, or that it doesn't make sense based on the logic established by the narrative.

    I'm not going to deny there are some major questions as to why TLK seems to run counter to AoE, but I don't think that's AoE's fault. On the contrary, I think AoE actually gave plenty of things for a sequel to do. The problem isn't that the fourth movie was an irredeemable piece of crap; the problem was that, due to Shrekcessive, knee-jerk, hyperbolic negativity, the production didn't see the many great things they already had. The production and writers' room looked at the treasure and saw junk, ignoring both the threads and theme of AoE, and the fifth movie was less enjoyable as a sequel as a result.
     
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  18. Nova Maximus

    Nova Maximus Well-Known Member

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    Here's a plot hole from AOE's final battle.

    Optimus can now magically fly for the sake of setting up the sequel.
    [​IMG]

    What's to stop him from grabbing the seed, the thing that's letting Lockdown track there exact position, and chucked it into space? They could have dealt with their biggest concern like that, and could have easily dealt with Galvatron and then Lockdown. It makes nearly half or more of the final battle pointless.

    And another thing that's dumb was that the Dinobots and the rest of the Autobots were left to guard the bridge at the end.
    Only, there aren't any enemies left, since they're all going to Prime instead of the seed. Which is, you know, their programmed target. Since at no point does Galvatron tell the drones to go for Prime over the seed.
    And then there's how and why Bumblebee went from fighting Lockdown to magically being with Prime and the rest at the end.
     
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  19. Shadow25

    Shadow25 Well-Known Member

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    While I think the implication is that he got the jet thrusters from his Knight upgrade (when he pulls the sword), I agree that it is way too big of a power up to be left to implication. It should have been used when he fought Grimlock as an introduction to it, at least.
     
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  20. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    Except with AoE, everything points back to the Creators, except the Creators basically don't exist as a tangible group beyond simply existing. They're just a thing created to be a universal reason for a bunch of otherwise relatively unrelated plot points being glued together.

    AoE fails to deliver on both points. Why do the Creators need to make stupidonium? Never explained. Why did they send Lockdown to capture Prime? Never explained.

    Setting up a sequel is one thing, but AoE pretty much just invents a bunch of shit, hogties it all together as relying on the actual motivations of this third party to answer why any of this is even happening...and then nothing. The movie can not function standalone because it doesn't have a foundation for the actual plot. As badly written as ROTF is, at the very least The Fallen actually has a simple motivation: kill all humans because he hates organic life.

    There is nothing about The Creators. Even Lockdown's throwaway line about 'clearing the chessboard' which itself is rather nonsensical given who is actually saying the line (why would he or the Creators even know what Chess is given it was invented literally millions of years after the Creators fucked off from Earth? He shoulda just said clear the playing field, same point but more genericly worded as to not be associated with more Earth-isms since he himself doesn't give a toss about Earth itself, he's just the hired help), simply isn't clear because it could have a variety of meaning - are they trying to reset the Cybertronian race? All of sentient life in the universe? Reset the universe itself? Even Lockdown, who ultimately is just a mouthpiece for the actual villains, can't explain the motivations behind what he's doing.

    And 'characters being mouthpieces for the real pupetmasters' doesn't mean you have to keep the bad guy shrouded in mystery. In Alita: Battle Angel, the main bad guy doesn't even technically say a word - everything is through people he remotely uses like ventriloquist dummies. But we do see him, we are told who he is and what his motivations are, and why we need to give a shit about them even though all he does on-screen through the entire film is literally stand at a balcony, push a button, and take his glasses off at the end of the film (while still at that balcony).

    In order to actually perceive something as an entity, we can't simply say 'oh, X exists and they're bad and are responsible for stuff' and leave it at that. We need a reason to give a shit beyond simply blaming everything on this undefined entity so it doesn't look like a massive cop-out for not having an actual reason for anything in the first place.

    That's why I want the writer himself to explain what the hell was his intention for where the story was going. Because we clearly didn't go there at all.
     
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