Ah, but that is the plan of misdirection instead of the plan that nothing happened.

People would still be talking about what happened and people would still be upset because the government gave them a bit of truth with yes something did happen in Mission City while diverting attention away from the one bit they really want to keep secret.

So if I understand you correctly the government isn't saying nothing happened it's a weather balloon, the government set up a fake company to be the scapegoat and to distract people from digging for the real truth by giving them the equivalent of a fake treasure map. Like a good magic trick where the magician attracts attention to his right hand so you will not notice what his left hand is doing.

Sort of like people saying Area 51 is such public knowledge because they want people to be distracted there rather than looking for where the really secret stuff is going on.

 

Sounds good to me!

 

Why is it such a big deal? government cover ups happen all the time...its a movie, all u haters need to stop being so critical, its a TRANSFORMERS movie!

On another note I hope this corporation does not take up bot screen time like the hackers....

The movie needs to follow, Sam& Mikala...transformers...transformers...government/soldiers...transformers....sam/family/mikala.....transformers.....government/soldiers....transformers...transformers...transformers...transformers.....of course all roled up into one is fine.. as long as I see transformers for the majority of the film

 

Ha ha, because it's Bay. The guy can't say the sky is blue or even good morning without it causing some sort of fight.

 

The corporation is a minor element of the military/Autobots story. The screentime given to the hackers in the first one now belongs to the Decepticons...

 

Not in the least. First, I was stating that you made a piss-poor justification for Americans being gullible by using the Iraq War, which also reveals what the writers actually think about the intelligence of their audience. That is what set me off more than any cover-up issue.

Secondly, Its a pretty hard pill to swallow that the US would have anything THAT advanced (considering the most advanced publicly acknowledged military robotics are unmanned drones). And by the slim chance that it did, this simply going "hayhire" excuse, which resulted in the destruction of millions of dollars in property damage, that killed hundreds if not thousands of US citizens, and that involved military action in a major US city would absolutley 100% spark such outrage by both the press and the public it would surely lead to congessional investigations into that techonology. But Americans are THAT gullible and they'll just write off giant fucking robots that the US are building, happened to go crazy, and kill hundreds of citizens.

Since when did being critical of an idea automatically mean hating? Like your second statement, I too only worry that this will be a larger than necessary subplot meant to generate some traditional MB humor for the first of the film. But thank you for reminding why I typically avoid this forum.
Now if there are some are quick scenes in the movie that show this investigation, then fine. But this appears like a major and pointless subplot that will be running through the first half of the movie only to be forgotten in the second half, much like the "Hacker" subplot. Though like Ash said, I could buy if it were some private corporation. I was coming from a stand point that these were military robots that went haywire.

 

Piss poor? Not sure i'd go that far. Without trying to pick a fight, I was just noting the historical FACT the the intel was wrong, we were lied to, and we all went along (me included in the gullible camp).

As for it being difficult to imagine we could have tech as advanced as what was witnesses, you may be right, but is it somehow easier to believe that the tech actually represents sentient aliens?

 

I think its just a degree of the analogy that doesn't work for me. The situation of the Mission City incident and the "evidence" for the Iraq War are just too dissimiliar. In the case of the Iraq War, ALL we had to believe was what the government told us. There were no other sources to form an opinion. We had to take the word of our Government because there was no one elses' word to take. It isn't like we heard from the man on the street of Baghdad saying that information was false. With the Mission City incident however, you've got literally thousands of eye-witnesses to counter the word of the government. Many of whom, I'm sure heard the robots speak and saw them transform.

That is good point. Which would be easier to believe? Alien robots or man-made Robots beyond our current capabilities. Really, before this thread, I never even considered a government conspiracy angle. I just assumed that the cat was out of the bag, and like most of the Transformer media, the sequel would involve humans just coping with the Transformer presence.

A conspiracy is an interesting angle if handled right, but it can also just be an excuse for more "Sam's Happy time" and "Hide the Autobots" scenes. I really can't wait to see how it is handled though.

 

I still think Mission City human casualties & death count < 1000. Perhaps less than 500.

I think the biggest amount of casualties was caused by Megatron, when he ripped Prime through 1 or 2 floors of that office building.

And then there was the F22 debris from Starscream's aerial assault.

Other than those, the action was kept isolated & compact.

A super quick government cleanup, could have messed with collective memory.

 

Fair enough! Good discussion.

 

it's called "Suspension of disbelief."
It's what you do when you walk into a movie about giant alien robots.

 

Sorry, but I see that excuse lobbed about too often in discussions about fiction.

So...if say...next movie, the Fallen was defeated by a spandex-clad superhero human you could just say "Oh, suspension of disbelief. I mean, giant robots, superheroes, whatever. Same diff."?

Of course you wouldn't.

That's too often a way to try and excuse internally inconsistent writing. Good fiction must be internally consistent. Things that happen must make sense within the framework of the fictional world.

The first TF movie pretty much set up a world more-or-less like ours, then the alien giant robots come. An audience accepts the alien robots because, within the fictional context, it's been set up properly.

What the movie did not set up, is the idea that, at any point, the human population could literally blow off an event of the magnitude of the Mission City fight.

That is no consistent with the world we had been shown beforehand.

- Coeloptera

 

Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The whole point of these movies is supposed to be "what would happen if the Transformers arrived on our world?" not "what would happen if the Transformers arrived on a world where everyone was a drooling idiot?" (although there's a strong case for arguing those two worlds are actually the same). Yes, I expect to have to suspend my disbelief in alien lifeforms. I don't expect to have to suspend my knowledge of how people behave.

 

Arg, I remember all that talk about the Tsunami, I wanted to blow my Television away whenever I stepped into the living room and my parents were watching yet another news segment about it.

I can just imagine that person muttering "Oh well, I've got the Video my Hardrive" and comes home to find his Computer's HD has been Erased.

 

I'm sure there's a point to this discussion but I'll be darned if I know what it is. A section of the S7 conspiracy being uncovered is not a plot hole. It just means Captain Lennox didn't really think too hard about the consequenses of sending McGuffin to a densely populated city.

 

WoW Dude, you totally missed me and Bob's discussion on this. I think we covered all the bases with it.

 

Not only the deaths and injuries but from things like New Orleans we've seen that destruction in a major city causes economic problems that are hard to ignore as massive tax payer dollars have to be pumped into the rebuilding effort and that rebuilding and returning life back to normal is long slow road.

The repair and rebuilding of Mission City just doesn't seem like something that would just quickly disappear from the public's collective memory.

Plus if we are digging around for what people are going to talk about for how long, well heck it seems like everyone has heard of the great San Francisco earthquake and that happened back in 1906.

 

And wasn't there a big rock or something that struck the Earth 65 million years ago and killed some giant lizards? People are still talking about that, even without eyewitness YouTube footage of it.  

 

What I'm suggesting with suspension of disbelief is that you accept certain rules they have set up for their reality in order for the story to move forward.
Do I think the Mission City blow out was too big to cover up? Yes I do.
However, they established that the Govt has known about the robots (S7) and has means already in place to cover this up from the public.

I would think they could treat it like they did with the Hellboy movies. There are photos and witnesses of Hellboy and an agency there to discredit them.

Still, without having actually seen Revenge of the Fallen, it's hard know how Bay is really treating this aspect of the film.

 

^ Yeah, I think they can pull a BPRD-like cover up. They can mention how hard they had to delete the Youtube videos with the Transformers every single day