Transformers: Age of Extinction

[Kojiro]

Why trolling? Isn't it far more likely that he just doesn't care?

Not caring would look entirely different. Many of the changes wrought by Bay serve zero narrative purpose and are only even noticeable by fans. If Bay didn't care- if he let Orci and Kurtzman have more say- we'd have ended up with movies much like the very good Transformers Prime which they also did.

[Sidewinder]

Has anyone read 4 Reasons 'Transformers 4' May Prevent a U.S.-Chinese War? It seems Michael Bay's apologists are grasping at straws in a desperate attempt to salvage his reputation- at Cracked, of all places!

Why trolling? Isn't it far more likely that he just doesn't care?

Not caring would look entirely different. Many of the changes wrought by Bay serve zero narrative purpose and are only even noticeable by fans. If Bay didn't care- if he let Orci and Kurtzman have more say- we'd have ended up with movies much like the very good Transformers Prime which they also did.

Bay had nothing to do with the 'Star Trek' reboots, and that didn't stop J. J. Abrams' movies from being total ass. As I said in Just... Why? (Orci To Direct Star Trek 3), while Orci and Kurtzman seem creative and full of ideas, someone SANE must filter these ideas to ensure the final product (the movies) do not get tangled up in confused and contradictory plot threads.

[Kojiro]

Bay had nothing to do with the 'Star Trek' reboots, and that didn't stop J. J. Abrams' movies from being total ass.

Which is utterly missing the point. We've seen how they handle the Transformers franchise without Bay. Sure they kept the Peterbuilt Prime but they ditched the flames and actually made him heroic and noble again. Ratchet went back to being an ambulance in red and white. Wheeljack was instantly recognisable and even Smokescreen ended up with the racing markings (in red and blue), including the double 38's on him (to the point the bot in the show mocked such an outlandish colour scheme for disguise). Cliffjumper even kept his horns, worked nicely into his vehicle mode and his spoiling for a fight attitude (to say nothing of his bright red colour scheme).

Now if you're not a fan none of that means a damn to you but the point is that when given control, Orci and Kurtzman actually seem to give a shit about the Transformers franchise and it's fans. Note that is distinct from being quality writers/produces. Don't get me wrong I don't love every change they've made but they're significantly more tolerable than Bay's.

G1, Bay and Prime.

As I said in Just... Why? (Orci To Direct Star Trek 3), while Orci and Kurtzman seem creative and full of ideas, someone SANE must filter these ideas to ensure the final product (the movies) do not get tangled up in confused and contradictory plot threads.

Again, I'm not trying to claim they're brilliantly talented or anything, merely that when they have control they treat the TF franchise with a respect that Bay must have actively overruled to get where he ended up.

[Crossroads Inc.]

UM Why the FUCK does "WheelJack" look like a Zombie Robot version of Doc Brown?

[Kojiro]

Probably for the same reason he picked up a Scottish accent? But that is just not the kind of change that occurs with 'just not caring'. It'd be like Admiral Thrawn not having blue skin in the next SW film (and a Scottish accent). Or in the case of Sideswipe it'd be like Episode 7 having twins and a redheaded female jedi, but the twins aren't Jaina and Jacen. They're two utterly unrelated characters who bear no resemblance to their EU selves, the red headed jedi is actually Jania, Jacen isn't mentioned at all yet inexplicably Mara Jade still makes an appearance as a brunette. That's exactly how badly he fucked up with Sideswipe, Mudflap and Skids and that's before you even consider the actual depiction. That's probably the worst case, but the series is loaded with little changes that seem to serve no purpose other than to buck canon and/or annoy fans.

Anyway, I've heard nothing good about TF4 but a significant amount of terrible that isn't inclining me to believe Bay has learned much.

[cosmicalstorm]

I went to see it with my 12 year old nephew in 3D with nice spots in the cinema and only ten others in the crowd due to the great weather that day. He was massively thrilled by the movie. It reminded me of how completely captured I used to be by movies when I was his age and his enthusiasm dragged me along. Once I stopped caring about the logical loopholes and the missiles magically never hitting anything and not having any explosive power it became a great ride. Like a good ride at a rollercoaster. Despite being 2hr 45min it did not feel that long. We both walked out in a state of cinematic shellshock.
I did not believe CGI for transformers could get much better but I see it has improved massively. The part with the Transformers riding dinobots into HK with swords and shitty skyscrapers blowing up everywhere being chased by an evil starship commanded by a thug leadlike robotoverlord was amazing.
This was a stupid but very entertaining action movie, many movies along these lines are stupid and not very entertaining but this was not the case here. Interesting to see how important China is becoming now.

[Kojiro]

Ok, having now seen the film... spoilers and all that.








This was by far the best of the movies, but that's not to say it's good. Wahlberg is an infinite improvement over La Bouf. The entire sub plot with his daughter in unnecessary- she and he boyfriend could easily have been cut from the movie (including the terrible, awkward 'It's legal!' conversation). It's got plot holes all over it (Prime can't move a few meters to save Wahlbergs daughter from being captured but, untreated he's later just fine to take on Grimlock) and inconsistencies ('You weren't born, you were made!' which flies in the face of the previous 'hatchlings' seen and of course, he can't be a descendant of shit if he's just constructed). Then again I suppose Prime can just decide to shed his 'broken' shell and become shiny and new anytime he likes so whatever. Though if you're hiding it might help to not choose a near identical alt mode AND go so far as to self inflict the flames (the truck he scans is white) on yourself.

The new Autobots were better than previous but still nothing to get excited about. Hound was actually likable (though possibly due to Goodman's voice acting) and fuck me, he's even a green military vehicle. He's not a jeep or even a hummer but I'll take the incredibly small homage. The rest were unremarkable.

A few things:

Lockdown says that the ship he's on was made for the 'great knights' to explore the galaxy. These great knights it turns out are the Dinobots (though unexplained, Prime is also apparently one of these). Lockdown claims to have commandeered the ship, presumably taking it from at least one of said knights. He has all five Dinobots in cells though which are conveniently in separate ship attached to his. Just to drive home the stupidity he's also put the armoury in there, ensuring that should a prisoner escape they have the means to escape right there and a all the best weapons just to make hunting them back down all the more challenging. To top it all off the entire section is so poorly monitored that a bunch of 25ft tall robots can sneak their way onboard, power the ship up and actually detach and leave with it all without being noticed. Better yet the super bounty hunter doesn't even have a location device on his prize ship.

Speaking of the great knights, what that fuck? There is *nothing* knightly about these guys, save some their heads (and only their heads) look a bit like human knightly helmets. Heads are one of those things that really bug me about getting 'wrong'. The heads are *never* part of the alt mode and are internally stored and can look however the fuck they want. There's no reason they can't at least resemble the inspiration from which the characters come, the way Prime's did (it has evolved to be more messy and less Prime like). But whatever, screw previous movies, these guys are knights, so is Optimus... somehow... let's go chomp things. And I still detest watching Optimus 'yah! Faster!' Grimlock by using his sword as a riding crop.

As someone else said, it's also really odd to me to see transformers using human guns. They won't share their weapons technology with us- they'll steal our technology instead! Hound really drives this point home by carrying a a dozen or so different weapons of various calibers but they all do it. I don't think I saw an energy blast/laser at all. And please, please, please Bay, I know you like explosions but fuck off with the random, can't hit shit rockets. Get your collateral damage in other ways.

Transformium. Ugh. This felt more like they went 'Shit those transformations are difficult to work out and a bitch to render. Fuck it, just steal the replicator CGI from Stargate!' This stuff really is quite lame though I'll give the 'mind download' of Megatron points for how to create Galvatron. I will admit to liking that.

That's just my random thoughts for now. It's a bad film and it has an equally bad toy line. By far the *worst* generation of toys ever.

[Sidewinder]

That's just my random thoughts for now. It's a bad film and it has an equally bad toy line. By far the *worst* generation of toys ever.

I don't believe it's the worst generation of toys (that would be 1990's Action Masters), but it is very bad. Whoever thought to make the transformation sequences "metal origami" should be fined for every minute of anguish he/she inflicted on the toy designers forced to ask themselves, "Okay, how on Earth am I going to make this toy transform in a way that makes it resemble what we see onscreen?" It's very much putting the horse before the cart.

[Darth Tanner]

I don't believe it's the worst generation of toys (that would be 1990's Action Masters),

Hey I love them... admittedly they might as well not have been Transformers but they were damn cool. Except for the legs falling off.

Regards the name mismatch I think its just a safe bet than other than key characters (Optimus, Megatron) that they just worked from an existing list of names and matched them to whoever they dam well felt like...

[SilverDragonRed]

Why trolling? Isn't it far more likely that he just doesn't care?

Why should he care? Audiences told him that making movies with zero effort was the better way to go when Revenge of the Fallen made more money than the first film on a barely-bigger budget.

[Grumman]

Whoever thought to make the transformation sequences "metal origami"...

Could you elaborate? Or link to a video that demonstrates what you're talking about?

[Kojiro]

Whoever thought to make the transformation sequences "metal origami"...

Could you elaborate? Or link to a video that demonstrates what you're talking about?

I'm not sure this is exactly what Sidewinder means but I'll give this a crack. Traditionally and at their core, due to the fact they're based on existing toys, transformers have usually looked like 'chunks' of vehicle cleverly (to varying degrees) rearranging themselves into a more or less humanoid shape. All these toys had to work within the engineering skills of the designers of the day but it was always 'chunks' and you could see it in a given toy.

In this movie they seem to gone a different route to previous incarnations. When a bot transforms it seems to split apart- solid plates 'fold' open and the revealed machinery- always an indistinct mess of metal parts moving at speed- folds out, the splits and folds off to reveal more underneath or within. It's so bad you can't actually follow which part of the robot is made from which part of the vehicle. There are exceptions, and occasionally bits of vehicle are kept (Bumblebee's doors being the big one, reminiscent of the Nissan Z models but not Bumblebee) but by and large it's just a big mess of moving parts. Look at the new model for Prime? Sure you know where the pipes are from but what makes up those smooths shoulder pauldrons? Where does that collar like bit come from? Where has all his glass gone- it's certainly not on his chest?

In short you have a vehicle model and a robot model and it's just folding and rearranging of small bits in a blur of motion. The alt mode seems to have very little relation to the robot mode. This didn't seem to be a problem with the first film, where Prime had some 10,108 parts. In this film it just seems like they have a 'metal origami' effect that eventually resolves itself into a robot. They even manage to sneak in a triple changer because... well when you're not concerned with the how of a transformation why not? To me it feels like a cheat, like they wanted to save time/money on CGI and rendering.

And that is not even counting the 'transformium' bots who seem to be nothing more than vehicle -> mess of white squares-> robot! It is incredibly lazy.

This has resulted in the terrible, terrible toy line of ultra messy robots hidden inside vehicle shells. It has also seen the return of non transforming transformers.

That's my take.

[Grumman]

Thanks for the explanation. I'd seen references to "One Step Changer" toys, so I thought it was an origami crane/fortune teller reference to the apparent emphasis on the dumbed down transformations for little kids over the puzzle boxes (which it seems have been shoved out of the official movie toy line into Generations).

[Kojiro]

The toys- especially the 'one step' ones are truly terrible for the most part. There's some that boast just '18 steps' though some of those steps are mirrors- 1. fold out left arm 2 fold out right arm... What there is though is an ungodly amount of kibble (kibble being the 'leftovers' of a transformation).

Look at that junk hanging off the back of his feet, down the side of his legs and most horrifically that backpack. Many of them are nothing more than robots compacted up into the shell of a vehicle. The transformation is nothing more than deploying or retracting said shell. There's a giant Grimlock toy whose transformation is nothing more than bending him at the waist- the hidden mechanics retract his arms (and by retract I mean fold onto his chest) and push up the dino head to cover robot. The leg assembly doesn't change, he has the reverse knee t-rex set up in both forms, complete with murderously large clawed feet. Lazy as fuck.

[Parallax]

First, let it be made clear that I grew up with the transformers franchise in the 1980s; the cartoon entertained me, the comics helped teach me to read, while the plethora of toys made me think in new yet logical ways to solve the puzzle of how to transform each one (I hated having to resort to the foldout instructions). During my childhood, the animated movie was by far the movie I rewatched the most, to the point I could quote it line for line.

Last night I watched the latest in the live action/CGI movies, transformers: age of extinction. To summarise, I ended the movie thinking that it was akin to having to eat a manure sandwich that included freshly baked bread - there were elements of the movie that were fine but the bad parts overwhelmingly ruined the whole experience.
The first positive was the complete omission of Mr nonononono, who was never a believable or sympathetic protagonist in the previous movies, and his attached family. That being said, his replacements were not a huge improvement in that they were less characters and more walking cliches ... And that's an issue that plagued the CGI cast members as well. Well-meaning-but-down-on-his-luck-dad is, of course, over protective of eye-candy-but-otherwise-pointless-daughter, who is secretly dating cliché-irish-guy. Let's not leave out slacker-surfer-dude, who at least had the good sense to get killed early on.

The cliché humans find a wrecked optimus prime, who is in a vehicle form very similar to his original incarnation (I don't know if this was intended as a friendly nod to the past, or a middle finger). At this point, the movie destroyed much of it's suspension of disbelief in that optimus prime soon goes on a rant about killing humans. Yes, optimus who cherishes life so much that he once sacrificed himself instead of letting video game characters perish. And they have optimus say words of similar effect throughout the film. When you make it abundantly clear that you don't remotely get one of the core driving beliefs of an established character, you should not proceed with your story.

As a quick aside: This is also where man of steel fell short, in that it demonstrated little hesitance in having Superman kill zod despite his record of preserving life at all possible costs being a near unbreakable philosophy of the character. Optimus and superman are characters who are meant to represent something bigger and greater than what we already have, there to give us something to aim for and not act at a level that we already do.

Optimus' Autobot allies are, just like the humans, little more than clichés; hound has been transformed into a bearded (what?) Fat military loud mouth, the Australian accented one I can't even recall the name of (trenchcoat of metal.... What?), while drift repeats the sins of previous films and goes unashamedly for offensive racial nonsense instead of actually trying to find fleshed out personalities of any sort.

You have more personality in games such as high moon's war for Cybertron given to the characters, with less time and more pew-pew-pew being available. You had more personality demonstrated and built in an episode of the 1980s cartoon show, let alone later versions such as transformers: prime. You have far superior characterisation in IDWs comic book line. When all of these other aspects of media can achieve far more with far fewer resources (be it money and/or time) it indicates a great deal about the Hollywood movie.
The movie structure and general plot falls apart at a casual glance. At the start we are told (and shown) that the essence of a transformer is the spark within their chest - that glowing ball of energy, for all intents and purposes, is a transformer and their body is more or less just what each of them uses to get around. Yet, by means completely unexplained, Megatron is still alive despite being no more than half a head, his spark long since extinguished. The inclusion of the dinobots comes out of left field and is generally done very poorly, they are just there and do not even receive names let alone personalities.

Optimus pulls the ability to achieve escape velocity out of nowhere, despite needing jetfires remains to fly at all in just the previous film. Of course, this raises the question of why didn't he (and his fellow Autobots) simply go hide out on the Moon, instead of getting all shot up? Optimus also goes down the path of personal vengeance, while leaving huge messes back on earth - he has no idea how the humans will treat his fellow Autobots, or if the dinobots (as uneducated and savage as they were) are off to do their best Godzilla impersonations and level some cities. Not to mention he knows that mega/Galvatron is still loose on earth but doesn't seem to give a damn.

Speaking of Galvatron, since when would Megatron (one of the most fiercely independent and will fuelled characters in the franchise) choose to adopt a name given to him by humans? Back in the day, it took a complete rebuild and mental adjustments by a mad demi-god for Megatron to accept the a new moniker. Still, it was nice to hear the classic Megatron voice again.

And yet none of the above were the major fault of this film. No, the major problem with this action filled explosion-orama is that it was incredibly dull. I found myself looking about the room at various points, seeking stimulation even though the screen was awash with explosions and blondes in short shorts. Commando, the old Arnold action flick, is a terrible movie but even with (perhaps because of) horrible one liners and dodgy acting it is still entertaining in a it's-so-bad-it's-good manner. Age of extinction can not even achieve this meagre standard.

[Grumman]

I was able to take advantage of the IDW Transformers Humble Bundle since the last time I visited this thread, and I strongly recommend them over Bay's crap. Don't get Regeneration One or Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, but all the others I've seen have been good to great. More Than Meets The Eye #4-5 has been the highlight, I think.

Now I just have to find somewhere to buy Windblade.

[Parallax]

You are completely right, the IDW titles are Transformers gold and well recommended.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Normally I wouldn't post in a thread that had been inactive for a couple of months, but after watching the film I have to say I couldn't disagree more with the assertion that it's the best; it's the worst by far.

Dark of the Moon, for all its flaws was exciting and easily the best- from where the Autobots faked their destruction by Starscream to the Battle of Chicago. This is the one time the human soldiers actually have the weapons and tactics to fight the Decepticons without being dependent on Autobot support- in just about every occasion previous to this they've gotten completely curb-stomped.

Even the Executive Meddling done by Spielberg to get rid if Megan Fox and replace her with some blonde bimbo who can't act to save her life, wasn't as bad as what we saw in 4, from them shitting all over the end of DOTM to the useless sack of shit that was the guy's best friend (he couldn't bite the dust fast enough), to the bad characterisation of Optimus. Is it just me, or did Galvatron not actually do a whole lot over the course of the film?

The idea of "Creators", is actually a call back to RoTF, though I suspect that's more by luck than judgement:
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