I actually didn't mind Bayformers that much. Until 3rd movie. I liked Mikaela Banes and she had two movies to establish her relationship with a protag. Then Megan had a fight with Bay and was removed from movies. Ok. That happens. But what actually made me turn my back on this was that her absence was explained with a dismissive one line that I believe was supposed to be Bay's way of saying "fuck you" on the screen. Who cares if it felt completly out of established character for her and gave no justice after two movies. Bay was butthurt and he needed everyone to know it.

Michael Bay is actually a talented director. Yes, he's excessive with explosions but there's a reason the Criterion Collection included The Rock, despite a streetcar exploding for no reason.

I would really like Bay to step down from Transformers he's done so many now and there really needs to be someone else heading up the franchise. Granted there are other reasons I don't like his transformer films but to avoid going off on a huge angry rant I'm not going to voice them here. So all I will say is though I do realize that his films make the studios money I don't think that's the justification enough that he should get to stay at the helm any more. Audiences deserve better than outdated stereotypes and tropes and ugly outdated humour which feels like its right out of a bad 90's movie.

Going to the cinema is an expensive in some countries and a good solid block buster film should be worth the money you pull out of your wallet his movies and my view his are just not worth the price I'd pay for a ticket. Please note I'm not against this man still doing other films I just think he should be removed from all mayor franchises including transformers and TMNT and put in to action movies that are B list as I think less budget would help him make better movies and force him consider that throwing CGI at everything will not win audiences over as well as make him work on fleshing out his characters better. This goes ten fold for his female ones who he treats very poorly, now don't get me wrong I like fan service and don't mind female characters having sexuality but he takes it one step to far in my view.

I'd like to see someone come in and, instead of basically adapting G1 directly to the screen but with more boobs, make a Transformers movie that reflects the mental image adults have of it from their childhood rather than the garbage it actually was.

For example I liked Armada version. It could be better, but Starscream was awesomely unique in this incarnation. And he could swing a sword like a boss.

There's another factor you aren't considering, and its' also the answer to the question raised in another thread, why the studios keep making and pushing movies that seem to make a pretty thin margin because of the production and promotion costs:

Merchandising. Toys, t-shirts, board games, video games, general brand awareness.

You're not going to see a creative risk in these movies for that reason.

It's funny to me because the vocal critics are all adult collectors and to make the media juggernauts change their tune we have to stop buying toys...

(I don't collect the movie themed toys, I think they all come out horrifically ugly and the robots look like bugs)

FreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:I believe that Michael Bay deserves something other than Transformers.

Agreed. I really want more smaller films from him like Pain & Gain.

Anyone see 13 Hours? Opinions?

Stillborn wrote:I liked Mikaela Banes and she had two movies to establish her relationship with a protag.

Inclined to agree. I feel she genuinely worked well in the 1st 2 films in a way she didn't in Jonah Hex & going by the clips I have seen TMNT which she came off as 50 times worse in IMO.

Anyone see 13 Hours? Opinions?

I didn't pay to see it. But I did watch it after finding out a friend bought the DVD.

It's a pretty good movie that's mostly respectful to the men who died at Benghazi. But it's more than a little 'conservative pandering'. If you've seen my opinions on media like Wolfenstein or Titanic, you know how I feel about fictionalizing or adding flourishes to real world tragedy. On top of that some of Bay's Flourishes (the explosions with streamers, several scenes of out of place comedy that come within inches of mocking the deaths of these men) really contrast with the serious tone he appeared to be going for. But you do connect with the characters and come to at least want them to live.

It was better than Pearl Harbor, if all else fails.

Chuckman wrote:I'd like to see someone come in and, instead of basically adapting G1 directly to the screen but with more boobs, make a Transformers movie that reflects the mental image adults have of it from their childhood rather than the garbage it actually was.

I've watched all of G1 extremely recently, we're talking like a month ago. I've since gone on to read some of the marvel comics as well as working through the Japanese series. I watched the first two films in the Bayformers universe and wanted to keep watching more to see The Last Knight but gosh it was so awful. It does not capture G1 AT ALL. Generation 1 before the 1986 movie is a very cute silly show about robots with the personalities of children. Executionus Prime doesn't ramble about war while he squeezes a robots throat so tight it pops up as oil spurts everywhere. There are story episodes such as the birth of Optimus Prime that shows his former body and how he was too trusting of the Decepticons as well. Post movie the show becomes more of a space adventure action show with a few stinkers towards the end. Finding out the Transformers were consumer products that became sentient is a pretty cool idea that could be used for a film as well but nowadays people prefer the marvel comics origin to the tv.

I'm sorry I'm rambling but I want to ask seriously in what way are the Bayformers films like the G1 cartoon? I know you said it's like he made a PG-13 version of the cartoon but in the cartoon they befriend humans, work with them and act like pretty silly kids. I'm not saying he RUINED THE INTEGRITY of a toy commercial but I feel like there's fun story elements and more importantly fun characters that are lost in the film. Plus his action scenes have been garbage in the first two films. You don't even see the Optimus Megatron fight in the first film. Also in the second you just see Jet Convoy basically murder Megatron in a 30 second sequence after literally 30 minutes of shia running in the desert.

G1 doesn't take itself seriously and has zero respect for its audience. The writers were there for a paycheck and clearly got bored and decided to see how far they can push things later on in the series to the point that they stuck to their guns on a racist camel fucking joke and made Casey Kasem quit the damn show. They didn't give a shit about consistency or continuity at all (Megatron is created by a group of robots he later creates, and that's just one serious error of internal logic...)

Yeah, it's a goofy kids show but it's lacking the depth and respect for the audience that came into syndicated cartoon shows later. G1 is nonsensical plots about blowing up the sun and seagulls pooping on time traveling Starscream.

Also, the second movie is almost a straight adaptation of the five-part G1 episode The Ultimate Doom with a character from some comic I haven't read added in. The third one is an adaptation of another multi-part episode about the space bridge. The first one is the only one that doesn't somehow derive from the cartoon in terms of plot, really.

You know what? This is the TF we deserve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1_6D9QS9Y

Optimus: we are going to shove a fist up Megatrons Ass!

Autobots: Ewwwwwwwwww.

Optimus: Not literally.

My favourite part is him saying that terrified "Vector Sigma" after hearing Wheelie was part of the team for some time XD

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The Transformers theme song as covered by Lion is the best rendition of the Transformers narrative we'll probably ever see at this point. It's better than the TV series, better than the Michael Bay movies, heck, it's even better than the movie it was featured in.

I don't mean that I simply like the song, or that I like the film's soundtrack as a whole. It's a good song and all, and kicks all sorts of ass, but the story it tells about the Transformers is far more epic, more exciting, more inspiring, more apocalyptic, and more purely heroic in nature than anything else that's associated with the series. The song stands alone as a strong and satisfying piece of Transformers story-telling in and of itself. The best thing we can hope for, film-wise, is a feature-length film adaptation of that one solitary song. Forget the TV shows, forget the comic books, and definitely forget the Micheal Bay movies. Just get John Woo to direct a film adaptation of that one Transformers song, jam as many toy characters as you can in there without it becoming overloaded, and we'll have the best mecha film in North American cinema.

Listen to this song in all of its epic, power-metal glory. Nobody could top a faithful film adaptation of that. Not even Michael Bay and all of his PG-13 legion of short-shorts, crop-tops, and lingerie models could stop a train like that.

You posted the wrong link. Maybe as a trolling attempt. But aside from that I agree with you. Lion is an absolute epicness that I listened for hours, few years ago.

Whoops. Not sure how that happened. Fixed.

Did anyone see Reddit Letter Media's mocking of the latest china cash in?

^ Yeah. RLM's videos on the new TRAN5FORMERS movie are the dankest memes on YouTube right now.

Transformers 5 had a 75% drop in attendance for it's second weekend in China. It's current global total stands at about $430 million. With only a handful of markets left to open in & the film dropping like a stone almost everywhere (lost 62% of it's US audience & is going to really disappear when Spider-Man: Homecoming opens next week & steals their audience) I'll be surprised if the film crosses $600 million worldwide.
Basically it looks like the world might be waking up because Transformers 5 might just barely make 50% of what Transformers 4 did.

I wonder if that Bumblebee spinoff is still on track to come out in less than a year or if maybe they've paused things to actually, you know, write a real script?

Tankred wrote:Did anyone see Reddit Letter Media's mocking of the latest china cash in?

For those of you who haven't been keeping up. Redlettermedia didn't actually review T5, they basically had a five-minute Preamble saying why they wouldn't review it followed by 11 minutes of black screen and Transformers movie sound effects.

They've been burned by it so many times that they aren't going to Get Fooled Again. They aren't going to give money to it, they aren't even going to mention it. They know the only thing they can do to beat the movie is ignore it and stop talking about it, don't give it free publicity.

Edit:

As for that bumblebee spin-off movie? It's definitely going to happen, IMDb says there are at least three more of these damn things including the Bumblebee spin-off in pre-production.

At this point, I say do a Days Of Future Past/Infinite crisis style soft reboot with time travel or a Cosmic Cube or something. Because they pretty much botched the execution of everything in the mythos. Just do a soft reboot and pretend the bad stuff never happened.