I tried the search function, and I looked at the thread titles going all the way back to Sep. 20, 2012, but I didn't see anything that looked related to this. However, I don't believe that none of you have posted about this. I'm just looking for help finding that thread so I can read the reactions. Some of you are really bad at titling threads, by the way. A mentally ill person got his hands on the TF trilogy and started seeing more symbols in it than Shia Labuff in ROTF. He started a big thread about it on the something awful forums intending to analyze all three movies. He got most of the way through DOTM before getting locked up in a psyche ward indefinitely. Here's what he wrote. The guy is insane, but the alternate narrative he creates for the trilogy is really fun. It's also something I admire given that I've written my own wacko analysis before. I actually kind of appreciate the Transformers movies. - The Something Awful Forum
That is Dense. SUPER DENSE. But damn, what a great read it is. I've read through all of the main posts, but skipped over all the comments and replies that weren't directly labeled as "Part 1, Part 2, etc." Made it through most of Dark of the Moon's analysis. Looks like it's either still in progress or has been abandoned. Too bad too, as he was right at the very tail end of DotM. Oh yeah, I skipped over all but the last couple comments he made about DUEL. From what I read though, I think I may have to go back and read that part too. Very cool stuff. Is there really an Autobot symbol on Soundwave somewhere??? And OMG Megatron's crotchplate in DotM!! I never noticed! My brain. . . it feels the way my stomach would feel if I just ate 2 entire Thanksgiving dinners. Must . . . rest. Come back for more later. . . *collapses on couch*
Just finished and it needs to be completed. I disagree with a lot of what he said, but it's fun just following along with the thought process behind it.
I'm so glad you made a thread about this, otherwise I wouldn't have known about it, such a fun read! Had this been in video form it would have rivaled RedLetterMedia's Star Wars reviews for me. Was he seriously not well and had to be taken away and stuff? he seems like he'd be fun to hang with, just reading this, he's a legit Transformers fan too it seems.
I read it yesterday and i gotta say, while i disagree with some things she says, she makes some pretty valid points. At first i thought that it must all be pure coincidence, but after reading the ROTF and DOTM parts, it actually makes some sence. However, it turns out that the movies are the total opposite of what Transformers really are. So Bay still can't make Transformers movies. And i hate how Optimus and the bots are presented as the evil guys, while all the Decepticons have good and pure intentions.
I don't think she (?) was arguing that one side was better than the other. More like, both sides are varying shades of wrong. The Decepticons are trying to preserve their species and are the only side shown nurturing their young, but they still trample and kill everything in their path to do it. The Autobots have lost the war, but destroy every method of providing life in order to insure that the Decepticons die out too. Scorched Earth theory. If you can't win, make sure everyone loses. Terry says a few different times, that the Decepticons are evil, but at least they're honest about being evil. But there's also the caveat, that the Autobots weren't merely destroying living-giving tools in order to drive the Decepticons into gradual extinction. They were also doing it in order to save the indigenous species of Earth. If we accept that the Autobots really are losing badly and on the brink of total extinction, it makes sense then, that Optimus and co. would want to spare a species they view as innocent the same fate. They know their days are numbered, but maybe they can make a difference with the time they have left. So anyway, I just finished reading up to the last update (sad that it was never finished). Some very interesting observations all throughout. It'll definitely take some time to digest it all. The claims made require that we believe the writers/director all had this grand vision of what the movies meant and what was being said symbolically, and that's a hard sell for me. It's hard, when so much of the behind-the-scenes material shows the writers and Bay commenting about how they thought such-and-such idea would be "cool," or "funny," instead of "We had something to say with this movie." There's a movie I like called, "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra." There's a nice bonus feature on this movie, that shows a Q & A session with the writer/director/star of the movie talking with an audience. He was saying that a fan of the movie came up to him with this epic analysis of the movie about how all 3 couples in the movie represented the various stages of love and such. First date. Newlyweds. Couple that's been married for a while. And the writer/director/star guy said that while very interesting, he never intended such message to be in his movie. Just like how Jack Sholder, director of Nightmare on Elm Street 2, never intended such a huge gay subtext to be in his movie, and never saw it until people started picking up on it and telling him about it. Or how Yoshio Sakamoto, writer of Metroid: Other M, probably (I hope) never intended the story of that game to be so incredibly misogynistic and damning to Samus Aran's character. Sometimes these things really are the products of dumb luck or coincidence or hack writing resulting in unintended messages. An example of coincidence or dumb luck- The Constructicons. Terry makes a lot of great observations about the Constructicons, but I have to wonder how much of that was intended by the creators, and how much was "We have evil construction vehicles that combine, because that's what they had in the old cartoon, and Hasbro is telling us we have to use them." But I can't deny the use of glasses, glass, crystal balls, etc. that are all throughout DotM. And the color yellow. And a lot of other things. Terry's analysis is definitely some meaty food for thought.
Yeah, there's a LOT of ridiculous rambling. It's better to just jump to the numbered parts and skip the walls of text if you're still interested in reading. You're not. It's just another opinion of the movies, though much more long winded.
Ok. I pushed through the personal agendas and finished it. I don't even know where to begin with this. I will say that there were somethings that she pointed out that I hadn't noticed in the movies before, but they were things that were actually in the movies!!! 85% of what she went on about weren't in the movies at all, from a material viewpoint. All of those points were her imagination running wild. I guarantee most of her "connections" or "realizations" never even once went through the film-makers' minds. She making things up that aren't there. There's a lot more I have to say, but I feel it's obvious to most of us who don't buy into making things up for movies that creates a story that isn't even there.... wait, we have a name for this; it's called "fan-fiction." That's where this belongs. It's not an analysis at all. It's made up. Getting to the end and seeing the mental instability be confirmed, it all but solidified my stance that this is fan-fiction. I will admit it was a good read, as said fan-fiction. It definitely took up a few hours I had that I needed to kill to protect my sanity.
I just read enough to see some of the same regurgitated bullsh*t that we see over and over and over again.
That doesn't necessarily invalidate her claims. As I was saying in my earlier post, a lot of messages that make it into visual works like movies, comics, and video games are the result of hack writing, luck, or whatever. You have a creator that creates something without thinking about its implications. So you have hacks like Yoshio Sakamoto, who inadvertently created a work that portrayed Samus Aran in an unhealthy, misogynistic relationship, where she was required to be submissive at all times. Or you have the Twilight Saga, which is supposed to be this epic romance story, but comes off just as creepy as Other M. Edward looks at Bella the way Yoshio looks at Samus. This stuff typically happens when you have hacks just throwing shit together without thinking about what any of it means. Even Terry in her giant analysis found several scenes, that she couldn't make heads or tails of, so there you go. And I know, for example, that the whole kitchen scene in RotF was pretty much just Michael Bay going on a whim. On the commentary, I'm sure I heard one of the writers or editors going on how they would've cut that scene entirely as it didn't really add anything. Seriously, cut out that entire scene and the movie continues forward like nothing happened. I could totally buy that Bay and co. were just throwing a bunch of shit on-screen with little thought as to what it all meant. What Terry's analysis asks me to do is consider the notion that it wasn't all random. That a lot of it, in fact, was intentional and that people involved really were thinking about the implications. A person really could read all the inherent messages in the visual imagery of Megatron taking Lincoln's throne. Those messages really could all be there. But I don't think the writers or Bay thought much of it beyond, "Hey! This would be a great tip of the hat to that old G1 episode!" There's a difference between making things up whole-cloth and interpreting what you see on-screen in different ways. This was a semiatic analysis of the movie's visual elements. Terry interpreted them in a particular way that makes sense to her. It is not the only way to interpret these movies, I'm sure, but it is a way.
