I look at the fact he managed to make a movie about giant robots, full of explosions and shit, and it was boring as fuck.
For the same reason I did with Matrix, and all the other movies I mentioned. I’d already invested the time in the movies, I may as well finish. When I read a book, if it gets kinda boring, I don’t just put the book down and forget it existed. I finish it, and make a judgement based on how I felt about it. SAME AS WITH TRANSFORMERS.
No, it’s nothing like that actually. That’s a terrible analogy.
Oh so your opinion in this case is correct, given your “reasons” for not liking those movies, but people doing the same with Transformers deserve your wrath???
That’s my point though, Cameron does more than just direct a movie. Also, the studio’s had him dumb down Avatar, the original movie Project 880 had a much better story. At least he didn’t give robots testicles.
I am a HUGE fan of B movies, especially campy horror. So yeah, I think I have some experience there.
Never said he was, I just stated his style doesn’t work for me. I even made a list for you, in the hopes of calming the raging beast within you. This isn’t a black/white issue. There is no “Either you love Bay or you want to stab him in the balls with an icepick”
He ain’t the only director I dislike. And Final Fantasy VII was fucking badass. It was sadly one of the last badass FF games too
I chosemy wording carefully, I’m NOT talking plot. I’m talking making us care about the characters and the stress their in. Thats what makes things exciting. It wasn’t there, and ultimatly the exciting aspect is lacking.
Its not the worst movie of all time, nor am “I” calling it that. I saw it willingly expecting something akin to RoTF - and I’m fine with my purchase except the 3D, I think it was a big waste so far as 3D goes…whic hwas the only ‘surprise’…I was expecting better 3D work, but nonetheless. I’m not trying ot shit on the plot, because frankly it wsa better than the plot form the source material…energon cubes…yay haha. I’m shitting on what was done WITH the plot. It was underwhelming plain and simple. It could have been much ebtter with hte alotted resources. And like I said previously - I don’t blame Bay, because he’s not the only one with input, and not hte only one with power - its a callaborative effort. I think for his part he actually did a good job. Not great…but good/passable.
But I’d be lying if I said I’m happy with how things were handled with regards to anything outside of Optimus Prime and Bumble Bee. The good guy team. the Bad Guys. Megatron. The humans. I’m not saying humans shouldn’t be there, nor am I saying they need less time - but the way they were worked intto this one, well wasn’t good. The first TF movie IMO did the BEST job of human interaction and ‘point’ They did a good job of setting the backdrop for Sam & Bumble Bee, and it was an action movie with a story in it along with hte plot of…wll Megatron getting the ‘cube’. The second one, I wanted more of the same, and they delivered on some fronts, but some of the items were overbearing and drug the movie down. This movie was a ‘correction’ of RoTF and did a great job of fixing those issues…bringing it IMO on par with the first TF movie.
But that doesn’t make it great.
And ‘not great’ doesn’t mean Uwe Boll, and ‘not great’ doesn’t mean ‘Alone In the Dark’, a 38% does not mean ‘House of the Dead’ or ‘Crocasaurus verse Megashark’. It was an iaght action movie with a huge budget.
So the main complaint about the first movie was there wasn’t enough robots or time spent on the robots. So in the second and third one you guys get that in spades, but that isn’t good enough? WTF?
People bitched that sound wave didn’t get any love, yet they stayed true to his character in 2 and 3. But no, not good enough. He didn’t turn into a tape player. Ridiculous.
I’m a shockwave fan. I’m not disapointed that his role wasn’t relegated to sitting on Cybertron and being the toll operator for the space bridge.
These movies are not perfect by a long shot, but 1 and 3 are enjoyable and I think that 90% of the criticism leveled at them is because people, in their minds, have condensed all the cool things that happened in 3 different transformers tv shows and expect them to be condensed into a two and a half hour movie with no people in it. Sorry, but that’s ludicrous.
Wil, you’re not a stupid person, so I know you realize that a movie with all robots and no humans isn’t going to happen and was never going to happen. I know everybody who’s on this site wanted that, but nobody is going to foot the bill for a movie like that. Even a movie with a fraction of the human interaction that these movies have had would not get made simply because it would be all green screen and post production and I doubt any director would want to spend 10 minutes on set and a year and a half in a post production room besides George Lucas.
I know people are disapointed that unicron didn’t show up. Well, can’t help you there. I know you’re disapointed that Megatron didn’t have enough screen time. I am too. I’d love to see him get remade into Galvatron. That didn’t happen. I didn’t let my expectations for every cool thing I ever saw in the original series bleed into these movies like everybody else and then get pissed off when my fanboy wet dreams didn’t come true.
edit and I just read your reply. The problem is, you’re saying not great. Most everybody else is saying “WORST THING EVAR” and that’s fucking bullshit. I’ll be more clear and say that I’m speaking more specifically to the people who went into this, excepting it to suck, went into the other two, expecting them to suck, and then get all pissed when the movie delivered more of the same. That shit makes no sense. I don’t care how shitty I might think a story is, if I think it sucks, I’m not gonna go pay 15 bucks just to finish the story, get pissed off about it, go on an internet forum and say that the director fucked my childhood in the ass like every one here has done since the first film.
I think the ‘worse thing evar’ concept is also tied to the natural reaction to raise your voice to get heard. It’s the internet, and its cool to bash stuff like this…so to speak. If you read what I first wrote when I poted I said I thought it was iaght and I enjoyed it…minus the 3D (which I still cna’t get over…I LIKE 3D movies and apparently this was shot in 3D, but it just didn’t translate well). I had NO expectations of no humans, the same way there will nver be an AvP w/o humans, its a ‘necessary evil’ (ironically), but in say AvP:Requiem, the humans were an important part t everything…in this movie when they say 'he’s just a messenger…I chuckled because…well thats EXACTLY what humans are in the series post TF1.
for instance
[details=Spoiler]
They made this whole ‘Deep Wang’ part to get Sam to know about the ‘plan’ and dig into it to tel lthe TF, but they already knew…it would have been better if Sam really did find out first and tel lthe Xormers and that kicked things off[/details]
All three movies were about the Decepticons having to get INSERT CRAZY SPACE WEAPON HERE and everybody else saving the day. I mean, nobody finds it weird that the control rod in DOTM was basically sitting out in plain sight, guarded by nobody, and easily fucking destroyed?
Actually, I liked the first one, even with its flaws. My gripes were in other areas.
Soundwave was fine in the second one, not so much in the third.
I’m disappointed that all he really did was ride a giant robotic worm and then get worked.
It’s essentially a trilogy, and I kinda grade it based on the overall product. And like I said, I had a few problems with the third one. Great actions scenes, I will admit that…but that’s not all it takes to make a good movie.
I was upset that unicron didn’t show up, but I kinda accepted it. My problem was when they did stupid shit like create their own Transformer who happened to be Megatron’s secret boss. Or turning Megatron into a fucking leper. I just feel they could have went in a better direction for those three movies. How, as a director, do you make a movie you just KNOW will do fantastic, and will have sequels, and not flesh them out as well??? Instead, they just kinda winged it.
I didn’t spend 15 bucks to go see Indy 4 and I haven’t watched the movie since it’s been out on bluray or dvd. Why? Because of George Lucas and Speilberg. They don’t do it like they used to, Lucas is a hack now and Speilberg is lazy. And guess what? They made a lazy hack movie. I’m not going to pay to be disapointed. And guess what? Everybody said it sucked. Look at that application of logic!
The second TF was full of flaws, and it’s obvious the script was a rough draft that wasn’t finished. There were even set reports where they were just shooting stuff because they really didn’t know how things were going to turn out. I know that when they were talking about the Fallen, it was specifically because of the fans. I think that Bay and the writers wanted to deepen the mythos and it got fucked up because of the strike. The writer’s strike fucked up a LOT of shit but I’ll give Bay credit for making a watchable movie out of a shit script. The flaws are pretty glaring when compared to the first two and he owned up to them too. You don’t see Spielberg or Lucas doing that. Bay seems to genuinely care about the movies he makes and his fans. He’s not up his own ass like Cameron, Lucas, or Spielberg either.
And I’m not mad about some of the Decepticons getting worked in the films because I think the approach that Bay took with the Transformers in regards to fighting was really fucking refreshing. With the exception of the 86 movie, no one has every treated these guys like soldiers and that’s what they are. They left Cybertron because of a full scale world war that wrecked their planet and both sides acted accordingly when finding the other. That’s why Prime was heat shanking people left and right.
The Decepticons were more menacing in the Transformers films than they’ve ever been in any other incarnation of the Transformers. They had a fuck ton of cool moments too. In the cartoons they were woefully inept, except for a few cases. The movies aren’t like the cartoons where the decepticons were taking over power plants and letting people run away to safety. No, in the movies the Decepticons were interested in fucking up the earth. Hell, they leveled a fucking city, fucked up the pyramids, and wrecked like 15 highways, Chernobyl, some city in China, destroyed an airforce base, and they bitch slapped a mars rover. That’s a lot more than they EVER did in the cartoons.
Megatron wrecked shit in every movie except the third, and Starscream, the bitch that he is, had one of the coolest moments in the whole trilogy when he took out that air squadron in the first movie.
These movies were pretty good to the Decepticons. I think the Autobots, besides bumblebee and prime were the ones who got the short end of the stick.
I’m still baffled at how Bumblebee’s voice was fixed by the cube at the end of the first movie, then by the second it was broken again, and by the third it’s still broken, and he just beeps a lot
Could you imagine if we had a whole movie of robots like that? It would look terrible.
Did anybody else actually like Sam? I thought he actually had an interesting character arc in this film and the series as a whole. The stuff about where his life was taking him and not being satisfied with it. I think that Lebouf did a good job when it came to Sam. In the first he was a schlub who was trying to get his first car and not be a nerd. In the 2nd he was trying to move on from all the stuff he’s seen and be normal. In the third he’s struggling with the fact that despite all the good he’s done, it doesn’t seem to matter to anybody. He goes from that to a guy who is willing to walk into a burned out, bombed out city to try and get his girl back because he can’t simply leave her there. That’s a pretty large progression of character.
And Bay made Bumblebee a G. In the cartoons he was a bitch.
Lebouf brought I a lot to the movie, no matter what he always brings a strong performance. I wish Bay left out all the cheesy humour out for the transformer and just relied on Lebouf to bring the comedy.
I think the best question to the bay haters are if not bay, then who? I don’t think there is any other director who would have made this series as passable as he did.
although i wanted more from the series, i did enjoy them for the action popcorn flicks they were. So i got to agree with Ronin to an extent. And as far as the care bay has for his films, watch the 2nd disc on the rotf set. Was like 4-6 hours of the making of, and it was SO much better than the actual movie. Bay cares. And it kinda shows, even if you don’t agree with what he did, after watching all of the time and energy he puts into it, and the effort of the effects team, you sorta “get” where he is coming from.
Easily would have went with Spielberg on this one. The man is a HUGE fan, is already the executive producer of the series, is rumoured to be picking up when Michael Bay leaves. I wanted him to do it since day one.
I still maintain that this series is Transformers…it was pretty much destined to make money
Yes i thought Shia brought the strongest performance of the human characters and really enjoyed his arc in the third movie. The way he felt was very believable the whole way through.
I actually like (for the most part) the Bay styled transformers…I think there were places that could have been a little less organic - to make it easier to see the face so to speak as well as transforming, but all in all I liked his more alien looking approach to their design.
On the decepticon treatment - yeah they fucked up more stuff than i nthe cartoon, but I’ll be honest, hate me/disagree with me or not, Beast Wars > OG Transformers - and the interaction while silly at times, made them interesting. My biggest complaint about the first wasn’t the number of Trasnformers but hte interaction between them all was minimal, this improived GREATLY in the second but was shut down in the third. I’d rather see Megatron being a true LEADER of bad guys, pimping his guys around (like he did Starscream in 2) and being full of well more bad-assary. They pussified Megatron by the end of TF2, and while I could buy his loss, I was hoping for ‘more’ in the 3rd…not…well what happend the ONLY time he does anything.
Shia played the Spike roll well…no complaints on him. I think I would have liked Megan Fox a bit more than the new chick, but thats more me not liking the human angle and hoping she would have changed it a bit more. I think it would take a fourth movie with Shia working for ‘whomever’ for his character to be ‘complete’…it would make an interesting sequel as well seeing him bounce around getting freaked out at random decepticon shit happening.
Didn’t Shia say he’s signed for the 4th one? Please don’t bring Jason “only decent in certain types of action movies” Statham into this. His style of action movie acting doesn’t fit transformers at all.
