raisedbymoogles (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raisedbymoogles) wrote2011-07-09 08:40 pm
raisedbymoogles) wrote2011-07-09 08:40 pm
Entry tags:
If I Were Given The Godlike Power of Transformer Movie Reboots For No Particular Reason.
(Posting this quickly before I can change my mind.)
Because I am a geek, and like all geeks, I have opinions. I also have an Internet, which is the easiest and most consequence-free way to dissemenate said opinions. Also, I'm debating whether or not to go see DotM all on my lonesome, or spend the next few months dodging spoilers like I'm in a Mario game until such time as I can stream, rent, or borrow the movie to watch at home. Alternately, I could give up on seeing the thing altogether and just let myself be spoiled, but - well, I spent money on RotF, and while nothing can really justify that decision, if DotM is at least appreciatively better, it might make me feel better about it. Like the money I spent on a bad movie went to make a better one.
So. Here's what I would have done if I had been in charge of the Transformers movie reboot.
Transformers 07:
Okay, the big one, that will solve most if not all of the movie's problems: Cut the human cast in half. Entirely. No, I don't mean bisecting them with chainsaws, although a couple of them might have benefited from that. I mean get rid of the entire Maggie-Glen sideplot, kill off all but two or three of the military guys in Qatar, if not delete the Qatar angle altogether, and get rid of either Sam or Mikaela. My vote? Get rid of Sam. As entertaining as I found him, Mikaela made a much more believable heroine in 07, which made her neutering in RotF all the sadder. (More on that later.)
Also, getting rid of either Sam or Mikaela means getting rid of the whole annoying "de riguer hero's personal piece of ass" bit of cultural sludge that seems to be in every goddamn action movie. Seriously, guys, I'm all for romance and sexual tension and all but please don't shoehorn it in where it doesn't belong. The romance in Thor? Made sense to me. She was his salvation; she was also what he sacrificed. It worked in the context of the story. The UST in Iron Man also made sense because it stayed Unresolved and didn't take over. It was a little spice in the larger stew of Tony's suffering and redemption. Sam and Mikaela? They felt like someone in Marketing went, "We need some tits here," and lo, there was Banes. ...Honestly, that's probably what happened.
But I know movie studios aren't all that big on taking risks, which is why I think making Mikaela be the star human is the best compromise. You've got your boobs, so there's your 18-34 Stupid Male demographic locked up. You're not overloaded with human characters. And if you absolutely must have a romantic subplot - bam, Mikaela and Optimus. She's a tough-minded mechanically-inclined chick from the barrio* who's tired of hiding behind a facade of Pretty, Mindless Popular Girl! He's the polite but rather bewildered-by-Earth leader of an ancient, dying alien race who needs her help to resurrect the hope of his people! Also he's thiiiiis tall and made of metal. HOW OH HOW WILL THEY MAKE IT WORK. The romance subplot practically writes itself.
(Technically, you could do that for Sam too, but if Hollywood won't let us have robot/human romance, GAY robot/human romance would surely cause a few aneurisms.)
Cutting the human cast also solves the problem of Not Enough Robots. I cannot stress this enough. For the first half of the movie we had Sam trying to make it with Mikaela while also dealing with a possessed car. That could be any movie. We also had the Blackout in Qatar angle, but again, that could be any military versus superior alien technology plot because Blackout does not get a voice. As far as I'm concerned, Transformers doesn't start until Bumblebee calls down the rest of the Autobots. That is a serious breach of contract. Writers? Don't open us up with the sideplot, for the love of God. Open with the robots. Have them all huddled out in space, telling old war stories and discussing their next move. That gives us an instant connection with them as characters rather than as fancy special effects. Hell, it doesn't even have to be the Autobots. Have Starscream chew the scenery for fifteen minutes about whether or not he should try to find Megatron or just grab the Allspark and make himself Cybertron's new god.
"But, but, budget concerns!" I hear you say. Well, there's two solutions to that. One solution I've already provided you: cut half the human cast. That's half the salary money that can then go into animation. The second solution: don't make the Transformers designs so goddamn complicated! If you didn't have to animate every tiny little flange on their faces, you might find it a little less costly to animate the big suckers! (But, uh, keep the mandibles, thanks. And the toes.)
Also, completely unrelated to the humans: Jazz's death. Okay, I get it. You want this to not be a kid's movie where nobody dies (*coughTFTMcough*), you want it to be Gritty and Adult. But you fucked it up. Jazz got about two lines and then he dies like a punk. You didn't make the audience care. Hell, you didn't even make Optimus care. If I wanted to see a movie about emotionless robots, I'd go watch Terminator. His close friend just died, I would have liked to see him a LITTLE VERKLEMPT. You wasted an opportunity for some serious emotional impact (a sin they keep repeating, it seems). ...On second thought, don't kill Jazz. Just don't. Plenty of humans have died, we all peed a little when Megatron showed up, IT'S DARK AND GRITTY ENOUGH, OKAY? Leave Jazz alone. Kill some more extras instead, it'll have exactly the same effect.
To be fair, things I liked about the movie: Mikaela, rising above her Token Piece of Ass status. Simmons, who made a good bad guy. Secretary Keller, making a good foil for Simmons. Will. The robots. The robots. The motherfucking robots. Optimus Prime's digital behind. And Sam, when he wasn't thinking with his dick (which was pretty much just those times when he was piss-himself scared, but that's what character building is all about, I guess). Jazz being Optimus's devil's-advocate. Ratchet and Ironhide being So Totally Dating. The overall story wasn't bad, really. Government agents always make convenient bad guys, and I liked how Simmons became an ally in the end, and the friendship between Bee and Sam was actually sold pretty well. And again, Mikaela's bit in the Mission City battle was hero material. As you can probably tell from the horrible Wall of Text above, this movie kind of drives me crazy with all its mishandled potential. It's worth the occasional rewatch, but it could have been a really awesome movie and watching it fall flat on its face with the finish line in sight is not pleasant.
Revenge of the Fallen:
...I don't know why this movie exists.
Okay. I know why this movie exists. It exists so that a bunch of cynical rich people can get even richer. Damned if it didn't work. I remember thinking in the movie theater, "The creators of this movie think its audience is stupid. And I can't even feel insulted on my own behalf, because as a young female geek who has no interest in beer or ninety minutes of Imax-sized ass in my face, I was never supposed to be its audience. I wish more 18-34-year-old-males would feel insulted, though." But apparently they didn't. And continue not to be, just as they weren't before, world without end, amen.
But continuity-wise, I don't know why Revenge of the Fallen exists. Nothing really changes. We get a couple of new MacGuffins, Megatron comes back to life, and once again, Sam is only relatable when he's piss-himself scared. Also, oh, Mikaela, you poor thing. What has Hollywood done to you? Any cool points she may have earned crushing Alice with her car were negated by her blaming Sam for being sexually assaulted. (Granted, it was really a brain-hacking assault, but tomayto, tomahto.) The rest of the film she was playing the Token Piece of Ass completely straight.
It'd really be faster to list the things I liked about RotF, so here goes: number one, Jetfire. He was the first Transformer that to me felt like an actual character and not a special effect plus voice actor. Of course they killed him off and nobody seemed to care too much, but that seems to be a pattern. Number two, Simmons; number three, Megatron's relationship with the Fallen (although the Fallen himself was kind of meh). A lot of people seemed to be dismayed by that, but seriously? This is not G1 Megatron. Bayverse Megs having his own personal god was not contradictory to anything we learned about him in the first movie, and anyway? Nobody gives Darth Vader shit for kneeling to Emperor Palpatine, so go soak your heads.
Also, G1 Megs did bend the knee to someone. Big orange guy, voiced by Orson Welles, far more ridiculous and far more tie-the-virgin-to-the-train-tracks BAD than the Fallen. You may have heard of him.
Aside from that and some glimpses of Cybertronian history and culture thanks to Simmons and Wheelie? The whole movie was completely unnecessary. The only way this movie could be redeemed is if Optimus's death and resurrection (seriously, Mike, you couldn't even wait for the third movie to pull that?**), the bit about Cybertronians being on Earth for A Long Long Time, and Sam's contact with the Allspark, continue to have siginificant ramifications in DotM. Otherwise, I would have just junked the whole thing.
I admit it. I want to see DotM. I want to like DotM. I can't help but get excited when I see Optimus Prime.*** So I'm probably going to be inclined to give it a lot of slack, at least at first, because I want it to be good. But I want it to be a genuinely good movie on its own merits, not just 'good for a Transformers movie.' I don't expect it to be Citizen Kane, but neither do I want to be tossed some G1 references and some fanfic fodder and patted on the head while everyone else in the theater gets spoon-fed tits and cars. And my 'knows better' brain is telling me that that's all I can really hope for, and that I'm probably going to go see it anyway. And that makes me kind of depressed.
*Can Mikaela pass for Hispanic? I have no idea. For some reason I keep getting the idea that she's at least supposed to be half-Hispanic, but maybe to actual Hispanics she just reads as 'Caucasian with a tan.' Any actual Latinos/as wanna weigh in?
**If you wanted Op out of the way for a while, here's a novel idea. Have him be kidnapped by Megatron. Now you've got your Holy Grail for Sam to chase after instead of having to introduce another macguffin into the mythos, AND you get some serious emotional leverage by having him suffer unspeakable tortures from the Fallen (and you could work a little Fallen-backstory infodump in there), culminating in a battle in an epic mindscape wherein Optimus learns his true destiny as the last son of the Prime lineage and the protector of two races. We've seen Op get dead-Zacked before, dude. It's not impressive anymore.
***Not like that, you pervs. ...Okay, a little like that.
Because I am a geek, and like all geeks, I have opinions. I also have an Internet, which is the easiest and most consequence-free way to dissemenate said opinions. Also, I'm debating whether or not to go see DotM all on my lonesome, or spend the next few months dodging spoilers like I'm in a Mario game until such time as I can stream, rent, or borrow the movie to watch at home. Alternately, I could give up on seeing the thing altogether and just let myself be spoiled, but - well, I spent money on RotF, and while nothing can really justify that decision, if DotM is at least appreciatively better, it might make me feel better about it. Like the money I spent on a bad movie went to make a better one.
So. Here's what I would have done if I had been in charge of the Transformers movie reboot.
Transformers 07:
Okay, the big one, that will solve most if not all of the movie's problems: Cut the human cast in half. Entirely. No, I don't mean bisecting them with chainsaws, although a couple of them might have benefited from that. I mean get rid of the entire Maggie-Glen sideplot, kill off all but two or three of the military guys in Qatar, if not delete the Qatar angle altogether, and get rid of either Sam or Mikaela. My vote? Get rid of Sam. As entertaining as I found him, Mikaela made a much more believable heroine in 07, which made her neutering in RotF all the sadder. (More on that later.)
Also, getting rid of either Sam or Mikaela means getting rid of the whole annoying "de riguer hero's personal piece of ass" bit of cultural sludge that seems to be in every goddamn action movie. Seriously, guys, I'm all for romance and sexual tension and all but please don't shoehorn it in where it doesn't belong. The romance in Thor? Made sense to me. She was his salvation; she was also what he sacrificed. It worked in the context of the story. The UST in Iron Man also made sense because it stayed Unresolved and didn't take over. It was a little spice in the larger stew of Tony's suffering and redemption. Sam and Mikaela? They felt like someone in Marketing went, "We need some tits here," and lo, there was Banes. ...Honestly, that's probably what happened.
But I know movie studios aren't all that big on taking risks, which is why I think making Mikaela be the star human is the best compromise. You've got your boobs, so there's your 18-34 Stupid Male demographic locked up. You're not overloaded with human characters. And if you absolutely must have a romantic subplot - bam, Mikaela and Optimus. She's a tough-minded mechanically-inclined chick from the barrio* who's tired of hiding behind a facade of Pretty, Mindless Popular Girl! He's the polite but rather bewildered-by-Earth leader of an ancient, dying alien race who needs her help to resurrect the hope of his people! Also he's thiiiiis tall and made of metal. HOW OH HOW WILL THEY MAKE IT WORK. The romance subplot practically writes itself.
(Technically, you could do that for Sam too, but if Hollywood won't let us have robot/human romance, GAY robot/human romance would surely cause a few aneurisms.)
Cutting the human cast also solves the problem of Not Enough Robots. I cannot stress this enough. For the first half of the movie we had Sam trying to make it with Mikaela while also dealing with a possessed car. That could be any movie. We also had the Blackout in Qatar angle, but again, that could be any military versus superior alien technology plot because Blackout does not get a voice. As far as I'm concerned, Transformers doesn't start until Bumblebee calls down the rest of the Autobots. That is a serious breach of contract. Writers? Don't open us up with the sideplot, for the love of God. Open with the robots. Have them all huddled out in space, telling old war stories and discussing their next move. That gives us an instant connection with them as characters rather than as fancy special effects. Hell, it doesn't even have to be the Autobots. Have Starscream chew the scenery for fifteen minutes about whether or not he should try to find Megatron or just grab the Allspark and make himself Cybertron's new god.
"But, but, budget concerns!" I hear you say. Well, there's two solutions to that. One solution I've already provided you: cut half the human cast. That's half the salary money that can then go into animation. The second solution: don't make the Transformers designs so goddamn complicated! If you didn't have to animate every tiny little flange on their faces, you might find it a little less costly to animate the big suckers! (But, uh, keep the mandibles, thanks. And the toes.)
Also, completely unrelated to the humans: Jazz's death. Okay, I get it. You want this to not be a kid's movie where nobody dies (*coughTFTMcough*), you want it to be Gritty and Adult. But you fucked it up. Jazz got about two lines and then he dies like a punk. You didn't make the audience care. Hell, you didn't even make Optimus care. If I wanted to see a movie about emotionless robots, I'd go watch Terminator. His close friend just died, I would have liked to see him a LITTLE VERKLEMPT. You wasted an opportunity for some serious emotional impact (a sin they keep repeating, it seems). ...On second thought, don't kill Jazz. Just don't. Plenty of humans have died, we all peed a little when Megatron showed up, IT'S DARK AND GRITTY ENOUGH, OKAY? Leave Jazz alone. Kill some more extras instead, it'll have exactly the same effect.
To be fair, things I liked about the movie: Mikaela, rising above her Token Piece of Ass status. Simmons, who made a good bad guy. Secretary Keller, making a good foil for Simmons. Will. The robots. The robots. The motherfucking robots. Optimus Prime's digital behind. And Sam, when he wasn't thinking with his dick (which was pretty much just those times when he was piss-himself scared, but that's what character building is all about, I guess). Jazz being Optimus's devil's-advocate. Ratchet and Ironhide being So Totally Dating. The overall story wasn't bad, really. Government agents always make convenient bad guys, and I liked how Simmons became an ally in the end, and the friendship between Bee and Sam was actually sold pretty well. And again, Mikaela's bit in the Mission City battle was hero material. As you can probably tell from the horrible Wall of Text above, this movie kind of drives me crazy with all its mishandled potential. It's worth the occasional rewatch, but it could have been a really awesome movie and watching it fall flat on its face with the finish line in sight is not pleasant.
Revenge of the Fallen:
...I don't know why this movie exists.
Okay. I know why this movie exists. It exists so that a bunch of cynical rich people can get even richer. Damned if it didn't work. I remember thinking in the movie theater, "The creators of this movie think its audience is stupid. And I can't even feel insulted on my own behalf, because as a young female geek who has no interest in beer or ninety minutes of Imax-sized ass in my face, I was never supposed to be its audience. I wish more 18-34-year-old-males would feel insulted, though." But apparently they didn't. And continue not to be, just as they weren't before, world without end, amen.
But continuity-wise, I don't know why Revenge of the Fallen exists. Nothing really changes. We get a couple of new MacGuffins, Megatron comes back to life, and once again, Sam is only relatable when he's piss-himself scared. Also, oh, Mikaela, you poor thing. What has Hollywood done to you? Any cool points she may have earned crushing Alice with her car were negated by her blaming Sam for being sexually assaulted. (Granted, it was really a brain-hacking assault, but tomayto, tomahto.) The rest of the film she was playing the Token Piece of Ass completely straight.
It'd really be faster to list the things I liked about RotF, so here goes: number one, Jetfire. He was the first Transformer that to me felt like an actual character and not a special effect plus voice actor. Of course they killed him off and nobody seemed to care too much, but that seems to be a pattern. Number two, Simmons; number three, Megatron's relationship with the Fallen (although the Fallen himself was kind of meh). A lot of people seemed to be dismayed by that, but seriously? This is not G1 Megatron. Bayverse Megs having his own personal god was not contradictory to anything we learned about him in the first movie, and anyway? Nobody gives Darth Vader shit for kneeling to Emperor Palpatine, so go soak your heads.
Also, G1 Megs did bend the knee to someone. Big orange guy, voiced by Orson Welles, far more ridiculous and far more tie-the-virgin-to-the-train-tracks BAD than the Fallen. You may have heard of him.
Aside from that and some glimpses of Cybertronian history and culture thanks to Simmons and Wheelie? The whole movie was completely unnecessary. The only way this movie could be redeemed is if Optimus's death and resurrection (seriously, Mike, you couldn't even wait for the third movie to pull that?**), the bit about Cybertronians being on Earth for A Long Long Time, and Sam's contact with the Allspark, continue to have siginificant ramifications in DotM. Otherwise, I would have just junked the whole thing.
I admit it. I want to see DotM. I want to like DotM. I can't help but get excited when I see Optimus Prime.*** So I'm probably going to be inclined to give it a lot of slack, at least at first, because I want it to be good. But I want it to be a genuinely good movie on its own merits, not just 'good for a Transformers movie.' I don't expect it to be Citizen Kane, but neither do I want to be tossed some G1 references and some fanfic fodder and patted on the head while everyone else in the theater gets spoon-fed tits and cars. And my 'knows better' brain is telling me that that's all I can really hope for, and that I'm probably going to go see it anyway. And that makes me kind of depressed.
*Can Mikaela pass for Hispanic? I have no idea. For some reason I keep getting the idea that she's at least supposed to be half-Hispanic, but maybe to actual Hispanics she just reads as 'Caucasian with a tan.' Any actual Latinos/as wanna weigh in?
**If you wanted Op out of the way for a while, here's a novel idea. Have him be kidnapped by Megatron. Now you've got your Holy Grail for Sam to chase after instead of having to introduce another macguffin into the mythos, AND you get some serious emotional leverage by having him suffer unspeakable tortures from the Fallen (and you could work a little Fallen-backstory infodump in there), culminating in a battle in an epic mindscape wherein Optimus learns his true destiny as the last son of the Prime lineage and the protector of two races. We've seen Op get dead-Zacked before, dude. It's not impressive anymore.
***Not like that, you pervs. ...Okay, a little like that.
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As for RotF...I am well and truly spoiled. I will have hot cocoa and cookies waiting when you get out of the theater.
*Not like that, you pervs. ...Okay, a little like that.
Well, of course a little like that, he's OPTIMUS MOTHERFUCKING PRIME fer crissakes. You'd have to be dead.
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I am well and truly spoiled. I will have hot cocoa and cookies waiting when you get out of the theater.
.....that bad, huh? Maybe I should just stick to ogling Optimus's ass.
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Come, join the TFP side of the Force. You'll be happier than giving Bay more money.
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Silverbolt will protect you?
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Query for after you've seen DOTM
Do you think they could have folded the second and third into a single movie? Since the only real things of importance you mentioned were plot points. :D Extending the third by half an hour or so, to introduce and provide time to build to conclusion, and just skip the (lack of) characterisation parts from ROTF in favour of just a few snips and most of the third movie's character-plotting, whatever it turns out to be?
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From the "bonus" materials in the BW DVD set: Hasbro insisted that every model exactly match the toy; if the toy had a part, then BY GOD the model would have it, too, whether it was needed or not.
This meant they blew the budget on the characters and had nothing left over for backgrounds. XD
Direct quote from one of the guys they were interviewing (for a value of "direct" = "subject to faulty human memory because I'm not putting the DVD in to check"): "We don't care about that (meaning the models exactly matching the toys) anymore."
WHY WHY WHY did no one tell Bay that? Maybe then we'd have gotten robots with distinctive looks instead of massive masses of Generic Ugly. (I mean, yes, the robots are FUCKING AMAZING to watch transform. Can I tell most of them apart? NO I CANNOT. I should not PREFER seeing my GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS in their alt modes, people!)
I haz a bitterness. :(
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