It's hard not to think it given how irrational everyone gets over the movies, which is why it keeps coming up I guess.

 

Forgive me again, for misunderstanding you in that thread. I feel like you are actually making legitimately great points here and probably, expressing them in a clearer manner, this time around.

I remember going to see the Planet of the Apes movies and thinking "why can't Transformers be treated with such nuance, on the big screen?".

And it's of course, because Lorenzo, or Paramount, or Hasbro has convinced people that there isn't anything more than meets the eye to Transformers, whatsoever, and there shouldn't be! Which is insane to me. It's so plainly, evidently, not true. In fact, none of us would be here, invested to the degree that we are, if that was the case.

As I said in the other thread, that's what I believe to be the true key to this franchise's success and longevity. Just as you describe, we came for the toys and the punchy punchy robots, and we found a vast mythological world, full of characters and sophisticated ideas and so many different themes and emotions expressed. We saw more than meets the eye! And that's what we were hoping that the movies would share with the wider world.

And yet, saddest of all, some fans, don't share this point of view. Despite being invested for years, to every little detail of every corner of this franchise to a degree that few other franchises could hope to engage people, they will fight you and die on the hill of what they've been convinced to believe.

 

No one thinks what I bolded in your post. Like, at all and this is where the contentiousness comes from because people have this "all or nothing" approach to the movies. If it's not 100% exactly what I want then I'm going to rain on everyone else's parade until I do.

As a point of comparison and hopefully relatable, I will always pine for a deep dive sci-fi but action-y TF anime that really gets into the lore and runs with it. I have not received that. At all. But I don't jump into Prime, Cyberverse, etc threads and unrelentingly bitch in them. In fact, each time a TF cartoon is released and people start in on them I try to give a counter on how it could be good while being wary on how it might not be.

With that in mind, that's my approach to the movies. Take what good I can and hope for better (preferably sooner than later).

Why does it have to be someone was "convinced" to believe something like TF fans have no free will? Because they don't hop on board the hate train?

 

That's the opposite of my personal experience. In every thread you will find quite a few people (usually, mostly the same) that will tell you to touch grass because Transformers is just a silly toy franchise and you're unreasonable to expect anything better than the current thing. And they will try to convince you that it's no worse than it has always been. There is some interesting psychology at play, for sure.

I don't go about trying to rile up people with different opinions on purpose, either, but people take it personally when other people are not happy with the current product and critize it. There's this truly false and toxic idea, that a fan's duty and definition is to be a supporter of the brand, no matter what. I wish more people were more critical of Hasbro's output. Other fan communities would not stand for 1/10 of the abuse that the IP of Transformers has been subjected to.

There is no hate train. We're not 6 years old. Nobody just "hates" things.

In as few words as I can put it, what I mean is that if a series of movie adaptations approaches the source material with pejorative eye, and someone gets introduced to the fandom through them, especially in formative years of their lives, it will take a lot to shake that impression of the franchise as a whole and the source material and in extention, those who are invested in it, as less than respectable.

And that's the main consequense that these poor quality adaptations have brought to the fandom community, in general. Why would people support more of this?

 

so when do you think we will get some more toy reveals?

 

So much this. You'll get people who will die on the hill of "it shouldn't be left to just be rehashes of the original G1 stuff" when arguing against those they call G1ers...until the movies are shit and suddenly the argument simultaneously shifts to "it's just like the G1 stuff!" to try and excuse why the quality of movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make are at best no better than the writing quality of a cheaply produced Saturday morning toy commercial where the scripts took a week at most to produce (according to the people who wrote the scripts) back in the 1980s.

The original cartoon really only survives in pop culture because it was such an iconic 80s franchise - the actual quality really isn't that good, multiple episodes can't even be shown anymore because of the rampant racism towards the Middle East (enough to make Casey Kasem leave the show), and it only all works within the context of it being a cartoon for children. They literally couldn't even get Megatron's origin straight since he's in some weird existential loop where he turns the Constructions evil before they bring him into existence. This is why most modern versions of G1 Megatron outright ignore that crap and go right for the Corrupted/Fallen Spartacus leading the Robot Russian Revolution angle.

When people want the movies to be more G1, that argument extends only to the designs, which Bumblebee finally proved can work with adapting the classic appearances without having to become piecemeal jagged nonsense. In terms of writing, that is held to the same standard as any other movie because it's a movie and in that regard, Transformers films have largely fallen flat. We can get a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy where there's a tree man whose entire vocabulary is a single sentence of three words in exclusively one order and a talking raccoon that doesn't know what a raccoon is, and the ending has the good guys win because Starlord just starts spontaneously dancing as a distraction. How, then, do we have over half a dozen live action movies about Transformers and we know literally jack shit about their species and culture, when there is literally decades of material to pull from on that subject alone ranging from the Senate, the gladiatorial pits of Kaon, to even what they do in their free time when Cybertronians weren't at war because Six Lasers over Cybertron is a thing in two continuities, to say nothing of Maccadam's Old Oil Bar which is the only place both Autobots and Decepticons will recognize as a neutral zone in a war that encompasses entire galaxies. The most we've gotten is just a bunch of key terms like 'Spacebridge' and 'Energon' thrown into the mix as if that really covers the gaping hole that is the failure to contextualize the cybertronians as their own civilization at war.

 

Man, just when I'm about to hit that thumbs up button hard, you kind of take the discussion to an unexpected direction and open up a bunch of different cans of worms at the same time. I'd like to discuss all of this, most of which I disagree with, unfortunately, but the thread will be completely derailed and filled with walls of text.

Instead, as a partial answer, allow me to share this video.

And cheers to Commander Radix, if he's in TFW, checking out this thread. This guy gets it.

 

I think you’ll find not everyone agrees on the BB designs being successful depictions of G1 characters in live-action.

Also a lot of the extensive lore exploration that you want to see can only be done in mediums that support long-form storytelling (tv, games, comics).

As stated previously, a LOT to unpack here.

 

ehh I think the mcu does lore explanation and all that well. This is technically the 7th transformers movie and we don’t know much about the movie universe in regards to cybertronians and then it all kinda retcons each other so it’s even more confusing…

 

This isn't what happens.

What happens is some fans perpetually shit on a certain part of the property, act like it's an affront to the entire franchise, and when people tell them "chill out, it's just dumb robot shit, like most of the entire IP always has been," they act like they're merely voicing even-tempered displeasure in humble hopes that better things are on the horizon.

Rinse and repeat for literal years.

 

This is true. Nobody cares about what they do with the universe…they just want the characters to be recognizable

which is valid

people want Superman to look like Superman and Spider-Man to look like Spider-Man

so changing starscream from a red, white/gray, and blue humanoid jet to a gray dorito covered in weird writing will obviously be controversial

most transformers stories are vastly different but as long as the characters are recognizable nobody cares…

People just want a good story With Transformers that look like themselves

 

We're on the 7th movies here, and we barely know about Cybertron, or the war, or who is Megatron, or who is Quintessa...

Because the movie doesn't bother with that and just go changing Macguffin after Macguffin in every movie.

 

Anyone else think it would be cool if Primus somehow made an appearance in this trilogy?



Would be pretty amazing to have a battle between two planetformers be how this trilogy ends. Would also be a nice change of pace from “we kill Unicron with Matrix”.

 

At least this one got more robots to robots action and TF character developement, easily better than all bay TF sequels.

 

ya..should ignore all unnecessary drones and unknown bots..put all budget on recognized TF characters only please.

 

Why though?
I don’t see why drones or nameless troops are a bad thing.

 

I meant Transformers could transform themself into aircraft,why still need drive those drones? and those nameless troops always dies in a second.. it is better to have more screentimes on all recognized TF characters like Bumblebee movie did..but with maybe 8-15 characters. Im glad this movie has Startosphere to transport Autobots around the globe rather than using Aliens craft, meants the filmakers got improvement.

 

Because it's boring and there are zero stakes involved. We know these drones aren't going to able to kill any of the Bots. They simply exist for the Bots to mindlessly slaughter.

 

I kinda wish they would, at least once. Nobody would see that coming!

 

Is it boring to have enemy troops for our heroes to fight? Marvel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc. Every franchise has its enemy forces bolstered by nameless soldiers.