You can't be serious.

Robots with thoughts and feelings who can transform into things is not ridiculous? Soundwave transforming from a giant robot to a portable stereo is not ridiculous? Megatron transforming into a much smaller gun is not ridiculous? Optimus Prime playing basketball isn't ridiculous? Carnage in C-Minor? B.O.T.? Starscream's Ghost? Rhinox farting? Carbombya? Shadow parasites? Reproduction by budding? The entire brand is full of ridiculous scenarios, concepts, stories, and characters. To claim otherwise is fantasy.

I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy a more serious take on Transformers or that fans shouldn't enjoy the ridiculousness of it all...I know I do...but so far, a super serious, super grounded Transformers iteration has not been produced. I don't even think that's something most of the fandom wants anyway.

I would say many of the things fans hated about the Bay movies were related to adapting the source material to a big screen, live action format for the first time.

The biggest problem with Devastator's balls wasn't their existence, which I think is hilarious by the way. It's the fact they weren't used enough. He should wielded them like Cybertronian maces for some Autobot-wrecking action! That's how Skids and Mudflap should have gone out!

You mean like Beast Wars had, too?

The entire brand is product placement.

This makes the films different from most other post-G1 fiction how exactly?

I will say that the Bay films are probably the farthest design-wise from G1...but they're the closest fiction to the original cartoon in terms of the core story.

And who is this person in the film industry who can magically give all of the fans their favorite robots the screen time that gives them this great focus?

I'd also say some of the Bay films balance the robots and humans better than given credit.

You mean like the vast, vast majority of plots and characters in the brand?

Plenty of people liked the Bay designs, too. I happen to like both many of the Bee and Bay designs.

 

STOP TRYING TO WHATABOUTISM AWAY BAYVERSE'S CRITIQUES!!!

I goddamn CHALLENGE you to find anyone that thought Rhinox's atomic fart was good writing.

 

Nowhere in my post did I say the G1 Cartoon is not ridiculous. I said that the concept, that is, “Transforming robots from another planet,” is not ridiculous. I fail to imagine what would make someone view that as a ridiculous concept, but if they did, that would be a purely subjective value and there would not be any point in arguing beyond just trying to understand why they felt that way.

A few of these next points are pointing out that other series have done some of these things too (I’m pretty someone has brought this up and called it “whataboutism,” but I don’t remember if it was on this thread or in the one about the Bayformers designs themselves that devolved into a multiple page long argument about Starscream looking like a chip), but the argument of, “what about when X did it!?” doesn’t really apply. Yes, Beast Wars/Energon/My Name Is Jeff Vine Compilation #4 —did— have fart jokes/name-slapped characters/a guy named Jeff in them. So? I wasn’t ok with it then either, so why would I be ok with it now?

(Except Jeff. Jeff=epic)

And the presence of funny haha poopoo peepee sex fart jokes is again difficult to argue when it comes to how funny they are, as that is subjective, but it can’t be too difficult to realize that lots of people tend to view humor like that as gross and uncomfortable, especially when taking their child to see it.

The brand being a product placement is true, but it should be a product placement for itself. The not-so-subtle beer, gaming console, and action website advertisements tend to stick out more than other movies’ product placements. Lots of movies have product placements; they’re just not super in your face.

 

Diaclone came from Japan too...

Their loss indeed. I love Kamen Rider and Sentai.

 

I want an entire prequel movie about Cybertron that look like this

not the planet of giant G1 toys of the Bumblebee movie.

 

The BW comment was to do with making it OK to reinvent the wheel if you will/not a comment on it's quality. I realize it was done out of desperation and they tied it to G1 and brought Furman in to help, but what it ultimately did was give an excuse to change whatever they felt like. The characters you thought you new are radically different. I know G1(Sunbow) gets thrown around as being bad, but that was a show specifically marketed to kids. The characters were archetypes. Ever see kids playing in a sandbox? I'm the king! No I'm the King! Starscream and Megatron. Say what you want about it but it worked. It connected with it's audience. Then BW came and was also for Kids. Kids were more sophisticated and the show reflected that. Now the Bay era. The lowest common denominator. Big robots running around beating each other with murderous intent, lots of explosions and gross humor.

 

So you want a Transformers movie that doesn't really look like Transformers, as in if you watched that video muted with no voice over or any context you'd basically have no idea that it had anything to do with TF. Literally the only thing that makes this sequence Transformers in any way is Peter Cullens voice-over, you don't see anyone on Cybertron change form, its just giant colorless robots and ships!  

For all an audience is concerned these could be giant mechs being piloted by little green men.

Bumblebee's opening sequence had several moments of characters actually, you know, transforming.

There's this movie series I think you'd enjoy, it's called "Transmorphers".

 

Michael Bay is done with Transformers as director but not as a producer.
Want a Decepticon Dead End who is a stunticon to be the main antagonist in Bumblebee 2?

 

My point was not about motion capture vs. traditional keyframe animation - my point was that @Galvatross was incorrect when he said the following statement, re: the wasted opportunity to give Sentinel Prime in DOTM deeper characterisation.

The audience response to Caesar, a mere six weeks later, rendered the argument that audiences do not respond to CGI characters as well as human ones invalid. Maybe that was true when the first Bay film was made, but it stopped being true in 2011 and it sure as hell isn't true now, what with audience responses to Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Iorek Byrnison (in the BBC/HBO His Dark Materials) and the kaiju in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Visual effects have evolved since then, as have audience tastes; the Bayverse didn't take that into account.

My personal view, @Magnum Dongus, is exactly the opposite to yours - I think we should be keeping Transformers in traditional keyframe animation and avoiding motion capture wherever possible.

Mo-cap works for the Planet of the Apes films principally because it is dealing with creatures that have very human-like expressions - nonhuman primates. And, of course, it's pretty difficult to translate human movements onto a transforming robot, because there's a lot of things Optimus Prime is doing that a human can't.

As for facial performance capture, we've seen what happens when we try it on things that do not necessarily have human-like facial structures; two adaptations of The Jungle Book were released two years apart. One used performance capture for its animals' expressions and one, aside from the talking, kept its animals mostly photorealistic in terms of facial expressions. Ask yourself, which set of characters did audiences respond to better? The art form has limits.

I would bet any money that the characters in the Cybertron sequence (an all-CGI sequence) will have more intricate designs when they appear on Earth in future movies - the reason why is very simple. The simple designs look weird in live-action environments - I don't really like the BB Optimus design because it looks too boxy to fit in a live-action environment. In the mid-credits scene, he severely stands out; I think that design is going to be overhauled or heavily altered in future movies. When they said, back in 2006, the G1 designs wouldn't work in live-action, that's true.

The one thing the Bayverse got right was not making its characters faces look too human. You do not want faces like the ones in I, Robot - which were so human they were unnerving, because it invokes the uncanny valley. You can't get attached to the characters if looking at them disturbs you. You want faces that are alien and intricate, but have an expressive range at the same time - they did that with Bayverse Bumblebee, who had a surprisingly good range of expressions despite not having a proper mouth.

And @Novaburnhilde, it is improbable for modern computers to actually catch fire under operations for which they are designed, such as rendering an extremely complex model. The ILM supervisor who claimed that was exaggerating for the sake of both publicity and to make a point of the sheer scale of the visual effects in these films.

A general principle in the movie industry is, with visual effects, you generally get what you pay for - the more expensive the effects, they better they look.

 

Diaclone's involvement with Transformers only extends to the initial toyline offerings. Transformers itself is purely an American creation formed from simply licencing two Japanese toylines - Diaclone and Microchange - and in fact Diaclone itself was attempted in the western market and failed.

No, that's bullshit - same way Bay lied about Prime needing flames because "red didn't film well" or whatever - except come DOTM and you know what color Sentinel and Dino are? RED.

I mean, back in 2008, the G1 designs translated could look fairly realistic even for the limited technology of the time as demonstrated by this animation tied to the 2008 Universe line (Classics 2.0 at the time)

There is nothing dictating that the G1 designs can't work as far as the robot designs go - I'm not saying that they should do absolutely straight G1, the style they were using for Bumblebee was perfectly fine, but it was just a lie Paramount pushed to justify making the robots look super-complex.

I mean, these are transforming alien robots - the only thing that dictates how they look is whatever aesthetic they decide to go with. And there needs to be a balance struck between detail and streamlining.

Improbable? Dude, you have no idea what you are talking about. If it was improbable for computers to suffer heat damage, then why do they have fans? Why do you think high-end consumer graphics cards have entire cooling assemblies attached to the cards? The level of rendering employed for the TF films was enough to push the computers of ILM past the breaking point, generating enough heat that internal components melted down like a chocolate bar left in your pocket for too long.
Revenge of the Fallen Special Effects burn out ILM Mainframes - Transformers News - TFW2005

 

Computer suffering heat damage is a known problem with bitcoin mining, cmiiw? Since they use the power a lot, like really lot.

 

I think we're in agreement here - the hybrid aesthetic is the best way to go going forward. The Bayverse designs got too weird in the end and the G1 designs are a little too clunky for live-action - the hybrid aesthetic gives us the best of both worlds. And, to be honest, people are getting kinda sick of the rampant G1-true updating.

And the CGI models in the video don't look that good; although, given that it's an advert made on an advert's budget, I suppose that's to be expected. Although, I do agree that if Paramount's justification for making the robots look super-complex had been purely aesthetic, they could have bloody well said that and saved themselves a lot of criticism.

I think re: this subject, we agree on more than we disagree.

As @SPLIT LIP pointed out somewhere, in 2007, Bay was actually correct - red was a difficult colour to film at the time because IMAX and HD camera technology was still in its infancy, and the problem was more about matching it with CGI. By the time of DOTM, the technology had evolved to the point where they could get round those restrictions; ergo, Dino and Sentinel. It's like watching The Golden Compass and complaining Iorek doesn't look photoreal; they managed it in the BBC/HBO series, did they not? Filmmaking technology is an evolving thing; what was in DOTM has absolutely no bearing on the first film's production and to claim otherwise is simply absurd.

I messed up there; thank you for correcting me, @Autobot Burnout. I had thought that was just a hyperbolic claim by the visual effects supervisor in the DVD bonus features - still a credit to the film's visual effects to learn it was actually true!

Also, computers can overheat, but I don't think they can spontaneously burst into flames.

 

Fair enough.

I think at the end of the day this just illustrates how far technology got in only 4 years...about a decade ago, so a lot of the existing excuses like "CGI robots are expensive" aren't nearly as applicable anymore as they were.

You're welcome.

But no, computers can spontaneously burst into flames if they get hot enough. Anything can spontaneously burst into flames if superheated enough - including humans as proven with some rather graphic incidents involving the Electric Chair. I recommend the Last Podcast on the Left's episode on the Electric Chair if you want to know more (obligatory "adults only" warning because I am not joking about the 'graphic' part). Normally, you simply wouldn't see this happen as a result of pure processing power overexertion because normal computers would simply shut themselves off if their internal thermometers exceed a set threshold limit. But the ILM computers are obviously not normal computers.

 

Just to clarify here, Bay's statement was during the production of Transformers 1, which along with ROTF was shot on film. DOTM, with the 3D, was mostly shot on digital. So the red argument didn't apply anymore.

 

Fair enough.

 

You don’t need characters transforming all the time for it to be Transformers. Obviously it’s required, but I don’t know if it would have done much in that particular scene other than just to do it. You’re being overly critical of this scene, it works just fine as is and for plenty of people was a standout scene that was a little too short.

And still, the need to try to be insulting even in the smallest way. Does that help you sleep at night or something? I just don’t get it

 

This discussion has taken many tangents re: the relative merits (or lack of) of the Bayverse, whether Transformers movies "should" carry sophisticated themes, the faithfulness of the designs, and whether or not Bayverse fans count as real fans. However, there's a central point that seems to be missing; not why do so many people want a sixth outing from the Bayverse, it's why did we not get a sixth outing from the Bayverse?

Now @Music cited in another threat that decreases in domestic box office post ROTF were indicators that audiences were starting to get less interested. However, DOTM's domestic gross for DOTM was only $40 million less than ROTF' and in international markets, we see similar numbers. By comparison, the domestic gross of The Dark Knight Rises was almost $90 million less than its predecessor - and the Dark Knight Rises was coming off what is widely considered to be the best Batman film ever made. To argue that DOTM's reduced domestic box office was an indication that the Bayverse was starting to fall apart is patently absurd; if anything, it was closer to a best-case scenario than a worst.

It was AOE where things were starting to fall apart. As @Autobot Burnout has said repeatedly, AOE was only successful because it was marketed heavily in China - in America, the domestic box office was almost $100 million lower than DOTM, and, after two weeks, it was beaten by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In the UK, where I live, it lasted a week at the top spot, before Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and How To Train Your Dragon 2 stole its thunder; the latter of which had come out two weeks before it.

The reason for that? The gross, brainless humour and gross, brainless violence of the previous Bayverse instalments turned family audiences, including adult fans hoping to introduce their children to the franchise, off. For parents with young kids, why go and see a film where characters are brutally killed on screen and have to explain to your child why the Transformers film is spending five minutes discussing statutory rape laws in Texas, when you can go and see How To Train Your Dragon 2 instead? Your child will not be privy to uncomfortable discussions about inappropriate topics, the violence is handled with less gore and more gravitas and there's a more compelling story overall.

For parents with older kids, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a far more mature and compelling film with far more complex characters. It also tells a story with deep and mature themes and provides a lot of stuff for kids and parents to talk about.

And in August, both demographics can go and see Guardians of the Galaxy, which has enough action to appeal to older kids, whilst the tone is light-hearted enough to keep younger ones entertained.

You can see why AOE had to pander to the Chinese market to survive.

Absolutely.

Back in 2007, Transformers was a highwater mark in visual effects. It's no exaggeration to say that the 2007 film set a new standard for large-scale special effects - indeed, the MCU probably wouldn't have existed if it weren't for what Transformers proved could be done with large-scale visual effects. The idea of having the big CGI alien robots be characters, with personalities and voices, was another factor - this was a film where the CGI effects were characters, just as much as the people on screen. This hadn't really been done in film before - Transformers, for visual effects, was the mid-2000s' Jurassic Park.

A common defence of the reason why Dylan Gould and Harold Attinger got more focus in DOTM and AOE than their respective Transformer antagonists was that audiences don't respond as well to CGI characters as characters as they would with human ones. A mere six weeks later, the audience response to Caesar as a character rendered this argument invalid; in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar rapidly takes the role of protagonist from Will Rodman and is the main character for the next two films. For those three films, audience and critical approval ratings remained consistently high and all three were box office successes.

The idea that audiences will not respond to CGI characters as characters was true when the first Bay film was made; however, post-Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it sure as hell isn't true now, what with the favourable audience responses to Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Iorek Byrnison (in the BBC/HBO His Dark Materials), Blue in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the kaiju in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And, of course, our very own Bumblebee.

Also, @Galvatross, I forgot to respond to a statement you made earlier:

The reason for that was bugger all to do with audiences disliking the focus on CGI characters - the reason for that, many analysts believe, was franchise fatigue from the glut of terrible sequels and reboots (e.g. TLK, The Mummy, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, Baywatch and Pirates of the Carribean 5). In fact, the summer of 2017 was one of the worst summer seasons for overall ticket sales since records began - the fact that War For The Planet of the Apes made a respectable amount of money, with high critical and audience approval, in a summer like that is remarkable and it's a testament to the film's quality.

 

My mistake. Thanks for the clarification-understood.

Greetings, G1 Prowl.

Not sure if this was a response to my post. If so, thanks for the correction-I admit it's been a long while since I've looked at BW, and I will need to revisit it again to refresh my memory on some things. At the end of the day, I just want future good entries in the TF mythos.

 

No, it was aimed at someone else. I'm just making sure that we do not deify any of the 30 minute toy commercials.