Saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes last night. Phenomenal. If only the TF movies were anywhere close. Sadly they are not. Granted, I don't expect a TF movie to have a heavier dramatic tone, but direction and a respect of the source material would be a great place to start.

Both franchises have common elements: a different race of beings, a major human element - good and bad, conflict within the beings themselves, indistinguishable numbers of bots/apes, and the struggle to defend/find their place on Earth. Apes deftly handles all elements in a tight two hour movie. TF is the opposite: bloated and non-sensical.

There are four main apes, and they are incredibly fleshed out. AOE has a lot more bots, but outside of Prime and Lockdown the others are throwaway cutouts. Galvatron and the Dinobots are completely wasted.

To me, it speaks volumes, that the head of the studio has to come out and defend AOE, and say critics don't get what Bay is doing. The TF movies have made a ton of money, but the movies are average at best.

Just my two cents. Peace.

 

That's not what the money says they are phenomenal to the studio, people are just ridiculous to think they want to change up what gets people in the seats.

 

Experimenting on apes or alien robots, I'll always take the latter.

 

Pretty much this.

I also thought Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was phenomenal but as far as a movie studio is concerned, the Transformers franchise is easy bank. Many people going to the movies don't care a lot about the story; they want action. People go to a Transformers movie to see Robots killing each other and now, giant mechanical dinosaurs. I'm sure that if you ask a fan of the Transformers movies and they will undoubtedly tell you that they vastly prefer AOE to anything those 'damn dirty apes' can offer.

At the end of the day, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes probably won't gross nearly as much money as AOE which is all that most studios care about.

 

Went to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opening weekend because the reviews said it had a solid story. I love action in a film but I really need a good story and interesting characters to make all the bits between the action work. It was nice that things didn't seem inevitable but mistakes were made on both sides to get to a war. Instead of just jumping into a war of one faction good one faction evil there are good and bad characters in each species but even with the bad guys you can understand their motivation.

Age of Extinction is going to be a rental to me because it sounded like I just wouldn't be into the characters and their story. With a movie as long as Age of Extinction I really need the good stuff to be more than the action.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Csif5l_6c

Cause this is relevant.

 

I will probably see the new Apes movie on DVD, but I wonder if it will pass TF4 highest grossing film in 2014. It's got a lot of hype.

 

I think the projected earnings for this weekend are $70 million (for Apes), so I don't think it'll top TF4.

I've seen both, and I honestly enjoyed TF4 more (and I say that with no bias because I love the Apes movies).

 

Lol, I thought this thread was related to the "Optimus vs Maximals" thread.
By the way, MasterZero's video totally worth coming here xD