I'm not talking about finally making whatever defines a state of the art, "good" movie. NO. I'm talking about a Transformers movie, where the main focus is on the transformers? Look at the trailers, the TV spots, etc. There's no way in hell this movie holds the same old same old from the last trilogy.

While it IS possible the film could be a disappointment (for anyone holding their breath in order to not be disappointed), it just feels like, off the advertisement ALONE, that THIS is the TF movie we've wanted ever since 2007. Here's what took away from the TFs in the last trilogy:

FAR too many main human characters.

throughout the last films we've had:
Sam
Mikayla/carly
leo
maggy
glenn
sam's parents
simmons
dutch
all of sector 7
lennox
epps
all of nest
the fucking military
2 typical government assholes(male & female)

It was too much humans, not enough TFs.

In AOE we have:
Cade
tessa
shane
joshua
TJ miller's character
li bingbing's character
grammar
ksi


The big thing about the AOE cast that I like is there's NO N.E.S.T, no military involvement it seems. They're not around to steal the TF spotlight! And also, MOST of the human characters here are at least relevant in some way, where the first 3 had too many irrelevant humans.

The main 3 humans alone have a better story arc than honestly most humans did in the last 3. More relatable, more touching. But aside from that, Bay stated that he realized the majority of this movie needed to be like the final hour of DOTM. It sure as hell seems that way at this point. And with the addition of the Dinobots, he's saying "screw realism, time to go cartoony"(nothing says cartoony like a fire breathing robotic t-rex with horns) and you know what, people LIKE that. If realism meant more military over transformers then I'm glad Bay turned around and said "fuck it, if this IS my last tf movie, im gonna do it RIGHT".

I know people must think im pushing my luck, but the hype is just in full effect. I'm more hyped for this than i was for DOTM, and thats saying something!  

 

I agree. No military means more tf action as robots need to take each other down instead of relying on GI Jo..I mean the Nest guys.

The family dynamics is also more touching and relatable as many can identify with the father daughter thing.

Bay and Kruger also dug deeper into the lore to give us Lockdown as well as a red bumblebee which is in the story a clone of the young autobot. To me that's straight Cliffjumper red bb repaint homage

 

Yeah, I get the same feeling. The humor so far from what we've seen looks like it has improved a lot. Mark whalberg replacing shia lebouf automatically makes it a better movie. The trailer money shots are so much more awesome this time also.

 

I agree with your assesment. A more TF centered story will make this one better.

It looks like it will have less 12 year old humor which was the biggest downfall of the previous movies.

 

The main focus is still on the human cast - It just seems that the story includes the Transformers more because the humans (Along with Lockdown) are after the Transformers so they'll be more action scenes.

The human cast does appear to be an improvement over the prior cast with the exception of Stanley Tucci and T. J. Miller's characters who seem annoying in some of the scenes that are shown in the trailer... the 'Oh My God' line is becoming worse than Shia's use of the word 'No'

Their is military involvement this time around - its just more on the side of KSI - the team opposing the Autobots.

It does seem from the trailers that Bay is doing the 'fuck it, lets do it right and show them all how silly they were for doubting me' strategy you mentioned - however the trailers are probably misleading us in the same way the trailer for ROTF or DOTM did.

I'm not getting my hopes up because I don't want to be let down - however I am adequately entertained by the things I've seen for the film - if this is indeed a much better film that the original trilogy then I will definitely support the film and I will probably end up doing a review on here after seeing it anyway covering my thoughts.

 

Having Tessa as someone's daughter instead of pure boob on legs (Rosie was better than mikela IMO) automatically means bay has to pull back the blatant "female body tracking shots" in 1-3.

Or at least I hope he does...

 

Probably not. We got the same feeling from the DOTM ads, and while that was better, it still wasn't anywhere near where it should be. I'm not going to hold my breath for that to change this time. And I don't think Bay is going to change his directing style for these movies either.

 

While the US military as in the whole military does not have a major presence in this one, there is still a government presence and there is a Chinese Military presence.

 

I think it's about a balance. Having some is fine, having Rotf levels of military, where I felt I was watching a war movie with robots in it instead of vice versa, is not.

Looking back to all three movies trailers, all of them advertised the military prescience in the trailers and tv spots. In Aoe, the only human prescience advertised is Cade family, Joshua and Attengier and LBB. In other words, no military

 

This. Alot of DOTM's adds actually featured more human scenes than anything else. between the military taking down decpeticons, the driller scene(featuring mainly humans), and sam and his new girlfriend. They barely showed enough robot footage to "wow" us like theyre doing here, mainly because they barely had enough footage to use in the movie.

 

It also worth pointing out that for dotm, the big ILM computing power went to the Driller, a cgi element that mainly interacted in scenes featuring humans (the building setpiece)

This time ILM's big assignment is the dinobot, an element that directly interacts with other robots. ILM is releasing a doc on the creation like they did with the Driller

 

I don't know but I'm at least hoping this movie will be better than the last 3.

 

Actually the style is different for this film. It reminds be of Bay's pre-TF films in regards to style and feel.

 

To be honest the recent TV spots are making it seem like more of the same.
I still have hope, though, because there seems to be a big character arc with Optimus losing faith in humans.

 

Nothing wrong with being hopeful.

That said, I'm glad I enjoyed the last three movies. I'll probably be fine with this one too.

 

I'm not getting my hopes up. Which is not to say that my gut feeling can't be wrong and we might actually get a well rounded action film that leaves most people satisfied, but the marketing on the Transformers films has always felt better than the actual films. Going by the trailers, TV spots, interviews, and all the marketing for the previous films the build up was great every time. Watching the actual films felt disappointing compared to all the potential shown in the marketing.

Bay just seems rather set in his ways as a director and I think Paramount is scared of real change because it might hurt the box office numbers outside of the US. So improvements over the previous films might be only slight leaving me with more disappointment when I compare Transformers 4 to the other action films I've seen so far this summer.

It's okay to hope just don't build up your hopes so high the film can't reach those lofty dreams of everything will be right this time.

 

The fact that they've got some big names in the voice cast leads me to believe that the bots will have more screentime this time around.

 

DOTM and AOE seem very similar in style and feel based off all the media presented
- Same words have been used to market both DOTM and AOE
- Both seem to be trying to portray themselves as 'dark, gritty' films
- Both have a groups of humans who are working against the Autobots
- Both have a subplot about one group hunting down another and killing them
- Both have a mysterious villain (Shockwave/Lockdown) who is being portrayed as the main villain
- Mysterious new object (The Key)
- Both have a military group obsessed with Transformers
- DOTM's dropped subplot is essentially the basis for AOE

Hence Ra88 points - he doesn't want to get his hopes up because he's been let down 3 times, which is a logical method of coping with something that disappoints him employed by a lot of the forum members it seems. If he keeps his expectation low he wont be too disappointed if the film suck, if the film is good then he'll probably enjoy it and recommend it.

While the style of film may be different the trailers portray it in much the same way as the prior films - albeit less mystery or suspense and more action.

Maybe its just the marketing though - as said, the marketing seems to be saying its the same style and feel as DOTM. Get RedGoblin to work on it next time :3

Hugo Weaving, Leonard Nemoy, Tony Todd and John DiMaggio find issues with this statement... :L

 

Well Megatron, Sentinel and The Fallen DID have big roles and a lot of dialogue.
They hardly got the likes of John Goodman and Ken Watanabe in to record 4 or 5 lines each like pretty much 90% of the other secondary Autobots in the movies.

 

True - my point was mostly that we've had famous actors in the past and they have been terribly underused and it hasn't changed how much screen time the Transformers have so I doubt AOE will be different In that category.

Also,

• Megatron appeared for 20 minutes each film and was effectively unmemorable in each
• Sentinel had tons of talks with Optimus about things... but it wasn't memorable or character building and none of it amounted to anything than chewing scenery or exposition. The scene with the Matrix passing for example...
• The Fallen had a max of 10-15 lines of dialogue and all of them were exposition.