Which film is the odd one out, to you? You said 5 out of 6.

 

People liked big action movies, and then they realised they liked well-written, good, big action movies. (basically they grew up). You had Bonaventura and Co, and then you had something like the MCU, which was an eye opener for many.

 

I mean, no, because Godzilla vs Kong is dogshit as a story and people still liked that. What is more likely is that the Transformers movies simple got worse with every single one and thus lost the audience, but by no means do we have this "audience that GREW UP to like only actions movies that also check the boxes of excellent writing", as you can see from the continuous string of badly written films that are still succesful in this day and age.

There is such a thing as making a dumb spectacle movie badly, The Last Knight is a great example of that. Too long. Confusing plot. Nonsensical action that fails to deliver on spectacle outside of very boring concepts that the previous movies did better. Is King Kong climbing out of a hole from the center of the Earth up to the surface stupid? It is, but it is easy to follow too, which is not something you can say about anything in The Last Knight, and an audience can swallow bad writing if they can atleast understand what is going on, but they can't do it when a movie drops on their lap "merlin also unicron also wwii robots also there is someone called Quintessa we never explain properly" and so on.

What I'm trying to say is that people can enjoy junk food, but they can't enjoy rotten and foul old stale junk food.

 

The Last Knight, of course   (although, there are still some things I enjoy about it in isolation, most of Act 1 is actually relatively interesting, with slice of life Autobot stuff we rarely get in the movies)

I agree. I still fully enjoy nearly all of the live action Transformers movies, but they absolutely have been outclassed by most of what the MCU puts out. The first three TF movies all came out before Avengers 1. Avengers 1 basically took DOTM and did it better, with better characters and a more compelling (while still relatively straightforward) narrative. And it's only continued to grow in popularity and success since as it continues to put in the work and put out solid content.

Transformers absolutely needs to reassess how it approaches live action in the wake of the MCU. Bumblebee was partially a result of that reassessment, although it remains to be seen if larger scale TF movies can meet this standard as well.

 

Ah of course. Fair enough, despite not liking it overall there's still some things on a superficial level that I think are neat about it. I think the horned guys would make good Unicron cultists / worshippers, and it's kind of hard or me to not like big mech Knights even if they don't get to do too much in the movie.

 

Yeah, I think The Last Knight more than the other movies suffers from "too many scripts" / ideas shoved into one movie. A lot of ideas are actually interesting on their own / if executed better, but don't really work well together and certainly not as a sequel to AOE.

The Autobots in the scrapyard with Cade as their caretaker and engineer, the Cybertronian Knights helping the Brits and giving Merlin his "magic", this weird post-apocalyptic vibe that comes and goes throughout the movie could all work on their own but not really together.

And then you have a handful of poor or overused ideas, like Unicron being Earth (although Stonehenge being his maw was neat), Optimus turning evil for 5 minutes, and the forced setting up of a cinematic universe with the scenes at Burton's estate, and these all dominate the movie. Plus, there's a general lack of energy and sluggishness to the pacing which isn't really present in any of the other movies.

And finally, as someone who is by no means a stickler when it comes to name usage, Hot Rod is probably the single most egregious name use in the Bay movies. I think the character is fun, but he's not Hot Rod, and Hot Rod really isn't a name to be used lightly.

 

I think that was a mistake. I don't think Hasbro valued what Marvel created for them, I think they saw it as entirely disposable.

And that's what we've had. A disposable franchise. Crumple it up, toss it in the bin. Bunch of random characters no one cares about. Throw shit at a wall see what sticks.

It's as if they thought the value was just in the trademarks.

 

I mean, the franchise literally exists to sell toys, so they are going to always work towards that goal. In the 90s, they moved on from G1 the same way they are moving on from the Bay movies now.

Putting aside the cynical "to sell toys" outlook,, I still don't think your assessment is fair. The Transformers franchise did just fine in the years in between G1 and the 07 movie. We constantly had new iterations that were introducing new gimmicks, concepts, characters, storylines. Essentially all of them were based on the story concept G1 / Marvel established, and essentially all of them featured Optimus and Megatron.

All of these iterations contributed new things to the brand, and many people's favorite characters or favorite versions of characters come from one of them. I think it's a mistake after all that time and all these versions to now go back to the very first and make it the end-all be-all, when they didn't do that (nor did they need to) for close to 15-20 years after the fact.

 

So much of that period is an almost total write off. I don't like to step on people's cherished nostalgia, but how people watched Unicron Trilogy is beyond me. I won't say anything bad about Beast Wars or I'll get tarred and feathered. The amount of new chances we give this franchise over the years.

I think so much of it, including the Bay movies hurt the brand. I think it's been badly mishandled and I only wish I could fully convey to you how great it might have been. I have never said 'ruined forever', but the raw potential of the franchise always seems to greatly outweigh the end results.

 

We just happen to like em, nothing controversial about it.

 

I truly find it unfortunate that you feel that way. You really feel that basically every iteration of this franchise that came after G1 is a "total write off"? That the franchise could only have been "great" by sticking closely to G1?

If anything, many of the very best things about Transformers came from these other iterations.

 

I'm glad you like them. Having G1 in live action form WOULD be new and exciting and I hope you'd support that, too.

 

I would very much like to understand why it would be "new and exciting", considering that basically every piece of media TF has put out since TF:RID ended (except Rescue Bots) has been very slavish to G1 and the G1 aesthetic. It's everywhere.

Beyond that, was Bumblebee not what you are looking for? You keep saying "6 movies" so it looks like you're putting BB alongside the Bay movies? Optimus Prime in ROTB is by all accounts a very G1-looking Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen. Or does the presence of Beasts not allow ROTB to be considered "G1"?

 

Show me where my live-action G1 movie is. I'll wait.

It's a step in the right direction.

It was a step in the right direction...but that direction is obviously not where Lorenzo wants it.

We've already gone through this. When the people at Paramount and Hasbro stop just "throwing bones" to the fan community of ALL its franchises and start taking the legacies seriously like Disney has with Marvel and, finally after some course correcting, Star Wars, I'll personally be in a much happier place and many in our fan community will be too.

Again, you have your movies that brought "new" things to the table. Go find a Blu Ray player and be happy while we gripe that many fans of the franchise since 1984 are still feeling underserved in the live-action movie department.

 

Bumblebee is your G1 movie. The designs are there. The voices are there. The characters are there. ROTB by all accounts will also be a G1 movie, featuring Beast Wars (although we can't say for sure until the movie is out, of course). Does it not qualify as a "G1 movie" unless literally every single minute aspect is the same as the G1 cartoon to a fault?

I would hardly call bringing Peter Cullen back to the role after 20 years when no one was forcing them to and it would have been very easy to just hire a celebrity a "bone throw". Not only that, the "fan community" is composed of way more than just G1 fans. These boards are filled with people who grew up with Beast Wars, the UT, the movies, G1 is just a part of it. I'm sure there were plenty of people who would have wanted to see Garry Chalk play Optimus Prime in the 07 movie (he was the only Prime I knew!).

I also don't think Star Wars is doing anything to "honor" any legacies, it managed to screw the pooch big time on the sequels, but with the Mandalorian and other shows, they're just putting out good content. And people are enjoying it. It has nothing to do with legacy. And taking aside the question of if the Transformers franchise even has a "legacy" on the scale of Marvel or Star Wars, putting out good content similarly will have nothing to do with the concept of "legacy".

I hate to say it, but the longtime Transformers fans since 1984 are not the core audience for these movies. The G1 fans (or any fans) who frequent boards like this and buy the Generations toylines are a small fraction of the audience that the filmmakers need for this movie to be seen by for it to be successful. They will make the movie that they think will be the most enjoyable and as such make the most money, the same way Hasbro will make toys that they think will make the most money.

You are certainly allowed to want the kind of movie you want, but none of us fans really deserve anything beyond a good quality piece of entertainment, which will at the end of the day have some amount (maybe a lot, maybe a little) G1 inspiration in it). I want a follow up to TLK to end the story, but that's not going to happen because it makes zero sense to do so from Hasbro / Paramount's standpoint.

TL;DR: Worry about the movie(s) being good first, and their G1 accuracy later. The WFC Netflix series proved that no amount of G1 will save you if the content is utter garbage.

 

Let’s not forget Lorenzo tried to sabotage the audition so that Peter wouldn’t be cast.

 

It's not about "sticking closely to G1". It's about building on the foundation of the franchise in a cohesive way. The past 40 years have been anything but cohesive.

It's like they dug up the foundations, built things without a plan, tore those down and built on the rubble.

I can cherry pick bits and pieces that are worthwhile. Even the worst of the Bay movies will have the odd thing I can appreciate. There are a great many talented people that work on these.

 

Lorenzo says a lot of stupid shit, a lot of it is concerning, but I ultimately don't see a lot of his influence shining through on these movies. He didn't get his way with the Peter Cullen casting, he didn't get his way on Bumblebee, the only time he seemed to have gotten his way was in trying to springboard the TF Cinematic Universe from TLK, which failed spectacularly.

So for as much as he runs his mouth, the movies have largely not suffered for it. Maybe it was because Bay was a big name enough director to have final cut on them all.

The foundation of the franchise is toys that transform from robots into vehicles and back. That's the foundation. Every iteration has built on this.

And beyond that, just about every iteration has kept the basic story as well, which is Prime v Megatron / Autobots v Decepticons on Cybertron and Earth.

 

LOL! A few minutes of Cybertronian fighting in G1 style doesn't make it a G1 movie anymore than having Clark Kent show up in the Tick cartoon makes it a Justice League cartoon. So yeah, I'm still waiting.

If you don't see that for what it is, I can't help you.

The "other" fans got their movies. The rest of us are still waiting.

You obviously didn't read my mention of course correcting because you're upset someone wants a good Transformers film that honors its legacy.

Bullshit. BULL. SHIT. The only reason anyone wants ANYTHING to do with Star Wars these days is because of what Favreau did with The Mandalorian - a television show that is spot on in moving the franchise forward while honoring its legacy to the point that freaking CGI Luke Skywalker showed up.

It absolutely has a legacy - one that Hasbro finally got on board with regarding its toy line. Now it just needs to do the same with its movies.

Yeah...and we're tired of waiting for our turn when everyone else is getting theirs. They have theirs now, several times over.

That's a red herring argument because what you're trying to say is that G1 can't entertain people. Bull shit. It's entertaining people then, now and will into the future. But for the life of us, we can't get a live action movie?

And that attitude will continue to allow things like Sonic The Hedgehog to happen. No, I'm done playing nice for the sake of "oh boy, at least I got a Transformers movie! I should be ever so grateful of Hasbro for giving me things I don't really want - because something is better than nothing!"

F-that.

 

Bumblebee movie is great, but it's a much smaller movie. It felt like the warm up to the more ambitious movie we may never get. We're left with those shots of Optimus going over the bridge, and for a moment it feels like the actual Transformer movie we wanted from day one. But then it's over.

There are people buying and enjoying those figures that didn't live a day in the 80s. Some weren't even born that millenium. If you like transformers, doesn't matter how old you are those are some of the best you can get. Kids don't look at Optimus Prime in the Bumblebee movie, or that opening Cybertronian segment and find it horribly dated and objectionable. It's a solid design, it's well-crafted entertainment.