Two low-ranked Autobots who Devestator couldn't even kill. I mean, Mudflap freaking gets sucked into a vacuum tunnel filled with nothing but giant sawblades...and somehow he pops out just fine?

Its really kind of sad that the only time movie Devestator ever actually comes across as a threat...is in the Movie Ride. There, you fly into his gaping maw, but Evac throws up maximum shields before you do so your survival is explained when you basically burst out of his back.

In fact, the Decepticons literally are more of a threat presence in the movie ride because they are constantly center stage, if only because it's a big game of keep away where you/Evac have the thing they all want. No exposition dropping, no human sidekicks that take up most of the action, and everybody gets a bit of screentime to shine.

 

When an amusement park ride has a better story than all of the Bay movies.

 

True, Devastator didn't even manages to kill ONE low ranked Autobots, they basically combine, looks menacing complete with balls joke, then get shot and died under their own weight.

 

Yeah - different nations react to the same films differently.

A good example is Missing Link, from our very own Travis Knight's LAIKA. Missing Link did better in the UK than any non-American market - both times I went to see Missing Link, the theatre was packed. The reason why? It had a bunch of well-known British actors in supporting roles.

For example, Stephen Fry, who voices the villain in Missing Link, isn't a well-known name in America - however, in Britain, he's a big star; among many, many other things, he played multiple roles in Blackadder, which is basically a national institution over here, and hosted the very popular panel show QI for twelve years. Saying you've got Stephen Fry as your film's villain is a big deal in Britain because he's very well-known; most Americans would probably say "The guy who was on Bones for a bit?" or "That guy from the Hobbit?"

Re: different regions, Missing Link was a particularly big deal in Liverpool, where I live, because the film's writer/director Chris Butler is actually from that area. After I saw Missing Link, it turned out an aunt of mine actually went to school with him.

Conversely, the films Coco and The Book of Life didn't really do well over here; Coco even got a delayed release. The reason why was because of the film's associations with Mexican culture, something that we in the UK don't really have much ties to. We think their food is nice, but that's about it.

In America, where (I think) a third of the population is of Hispanic descent, conversely, those films did brilliantly.

 

They succeeded financially, obviously. They didn't succeed for me in a critical sense because they were terribly written and directed. I don't think movies about transforming robots who make each other explode while intermittently tossing in beautiful, scantily clad eye candy is trying too hard to attract itself to women.

 

Ironic because the themes are universal but whatevs.

 

The theme is universal, but not the culture, cmiiw.

It's like The theme of death is universal, but Bon Festival is not a well known culture for people outside Japan.

 

You misunderstand.
The themes of family in Coco are universal, or at least heavily present in other cultures. And if you wanna get more specific, the after-life themes within the culture in the film are also present in various other cultures around the world.

That's why the film was so successful.

 

@cybeast has gotten the central point right, whilst you have not - much of the financial success from Coco came from Spanish-speaking markets. especially Latin American ones. In most non-Spanish speaking markets, it made a respectable amount of money, but wasn't really a box-office smash. I used the UK as an example, because, well, I live there.

In the UK, we don't have a large Spanish-speaking population or any real connection to Latin American culture. The big draw for British audiences was the studio doing it - we didn't know who most of the actors were (aside from Benjamin Bratt), we just knew it was a Pixar movie.

The themes in Coco are universal, but the cultural context it is in, for most non-Spanish-speaking markets, is not. The Book of Life, which dealt with roughly similar themes, did not do well in the UK for that exact reason.

 

It's more of "specific after-life" rather than "generic after-life"

The "After-life" itself is generic and broad, but things like Bon Festival, or Dia de la Muertos is specific to each of the culture, which sometimes makes people hard to understand "Why is this happening?" "Why they do that?"

Like say, planting stick on cucumber and making it like a horse is strictly Bon Festival thing, and you won't find it in Dia de la Muertos, etc.

 

'Coco' More Popular in China Than United States: Here's Why
There's a lot of cultures around the world who share similar ideas. Y'all keep missing my point as well as pixar's. Y'all think I'm saying that Mexican culture=identical to other cultures. Other cultures have a strong focus on family and ancestral bonds that extends to the afterlife. Thats why it was succesful in places like China. Different culture but the idea is the same.
Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "universal", but they are themes common enough in other cultures for me to have thought of that word.

Edit: Ok, I re-read y'all's comments and you agreed with the themes being universal, which has been my point all along, but then y'all try to drag it out into another argument.

I don't have the energy for this people, lets just go back to the topic at hand.