Official Transformers Movie Thread [Spoilers!]

[Lightsaberboy]

Here's the tv spot on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=106R2zZ9Ea0

 

both tv spots can be found here at ign:

http://media.movies.ign.com/media/568/568421/vids_1.html

[rozo100]

Holy crap! there is a transformers movie? i bet they'll screw it up as they tend to do these days. i liked the original show on fox kids, sharkbyte was the best character by far.

[BongoBob]

No offense, but how the f*** did you not know there was a transformers movie

[DarkStarMojo]

Both TV spots are fantastic but I prefer "Hidden". I think it shows a little more impressive visual effects which are needed to really sell the idea to a general audience. As for the designs, I'm really glad Ironhide and Ratchet are different from one another rather than carbon-copy repaints with a slightly modified head. Sure it would be nice if they had more throwbacks to their original bodies but both designs are cool enough that it really doesn't bother me. And I see so much of Ironhide's tough, southern personality in his design that, IMO, it captures the character far better than his rather arbitrary G1 version ever did.

 

Yup. I'm psyched. Hell, if my DA page doesn't say that, I don't know what will: http://legend-of-blackout.deviantart.com/ Shameless plug for the win and roll on 7-4-07!

[Lightsaberboy]

I like "hidden" too, but "Destiny" had some cooler shots in it, like Starscream flying under the bridge then flipping over and transforming.

 

I also thought this was a nice cameo. old bumblebee meets new bumblebee

[Darth Groovy]

Those TV spots are great. Even if the movie blows nuggets of filthy awfulness, those TV spots will still be great.

[Lightsaberboy]

Bonecrusher and Optimus duke it out on the freeway!

 

Sam is interrogated by Barricade about the whereabouts of the AllSpark

 

Whoa Bonecrusher's gonna bodycheck that bus! They even added his reflection in the bus window! So amazing the level of detail ILM goes to.

[Darth Groovy]

Thanks for the images Lightsaberboy. I must have watched those trailers a dozen times now, just to pick up on something else. I'm very excited about it now. Those Transformers look great!

[Pho3nix]

Yeah, I think they look great too.

 

It's weird how many people are negative about this movie, I'm sure it will turn out good.

[Nalukai]

i am HIGHLY dissaponted in megatron and starscream..

 

megatron was a GUN wtf did a plane come from

?

 

and i see starscream in the trailer but he looks queer as a football bat in the drawing pics on that site.... i dunnno might be a good flick since spielberg is involved... but i dunno... looks like they are gonna revamp it too much to my tastes.

[Lightsaberboy]

Starscream looks fine. He design is very similar to his G1 design, but since they're not using mass shifting, they have to compensate his huge upper body with a smaller lower body. the cockpit still folds down to his chest and his upper body has a triangular shape much like in G1, and he has 2 wings that come out of his back much like his cartoon design. Besides, his little move he does when he flips over the bridge and transforms mid-air in the tv spot is awesome.

 

and megatron being a gun wouldn't work in the film. Not to mention they don't want to deal with the mass shifting, it's stupid for the allmighty Megatron to turn into a gun and require someone else to fire him. That's like Darth Vader needing someone to swing his lightsaber for him. Besides, from what I know he stays in Cybertronian form most if not all of the movie anyways.

[Spider AL]

Hmm. Simply put, Starscream is unrecognisable.

 

Look at Prime. You can recognise Prime. you look at that freeway screenshot, squint for a moment and state: "yep, that's old Opto. Yes it is."

 

Then you look at the Starscream images. He's brown, he's... chubby, for want of a better term, he has little short legs with reverse-jointed insect-feet and some sort of squished up bug-face. He looks nothing like Starscream.

 

If sources hadn't put the name of Starscream to that image, would we have said "Oh look, it's Starscream." Of course not.

 

Does this sort of obvious observation make those who point it out "negative nancies"? Likewise, of course it doesn't.

 

None of us have seen the movie, none of us can review it just yet. But the fact remains that changes HAVE been made to the characters. It's no use denying it. And there's no good reason for most of those changes, as far as I can tell. They kept Prime's "look" fairly intact. They could have done the same for all the characters.

 

This is Transformers. It's not any other alien-robot movie. It's a movie about a certain set of established characters. If you're going to keep one or two of those characters intact, why would you not keep them all intact? The answer is, there's no reason not to.

[Lightsaberboy]

Starscream is recognizable enough. As I said, he has a lot of similarities to his cartoon designs. however since they're not using the mass shifting that made all the transformations look weird in G1, the design has to look slightly different and they have to compensate his huge upper body with a smaller lower body, especially if they don't want him to basically dwarf all the other autobots, which he almost does since he's already about twice the size of Jazz and Bumblebee.

 

plus, when he transforms in the tv spot, he looks badass.

[Ratmjedi]

Regardless of how some of the characters aren't exactly going to look like there counterparts from the original series, I still think it's going to be a sweet movie. I just wonder how they end up on earth from Cybertron. Plus I think the new direction that they're going with in the design of the transformers is good. It is the year 2007 and the original designs were made in 1984, so they deserve a revamp.

 

[Lightsaberboy]

well from what i've gathered, Megatron heads to earth before the other transformers in search of the AllSpark, this thing that brings life to transformers. Optimus hid it there because Megatron wanted to use it to rule all of Cybertron. However when he lands on Earth, he lands in the artic and gets frozen over. Then some dudes from some secret organization called Sector Seven find him and take him for studying.

 

there's a prequel comic that's out that talks about the war on cybertron and stuff. There's also a prequel novel that's out called Transformers: Ghosts of yesterday. The setting for that is 1969 and Sector Seven created a shuttle called Ghost I from reverse engineering the technology they found while studying Megatron. The crew goes into space and somehow get warped to some distant galaxy, right between the Nemesis and Ark.

[Prime]

Starscream is recognizable enough. As I said, he has a lot of similarities to his cartoon designs.

I really don't see how you can say that this...

 

 

is recognizable as this and this...

 

 

They could certainly make the design very different yet immediately recognizable. Why deviate so drastically?

 

however since they're not using the mass shifting that made all the transformations look weird in G1, the design has to look slightly different and they have to compensate his huge upper body with a smaller lower body

I'm not sure if the mass shifting explanation holds water. The toy above doesn't have mass shifting at all, yet it clearly looks like the Starscream from the cartoon. Saying that they want to get rid of mass shifting in no way prevents them from having a design that is reflective of (but not necessarily identical to) the original characters.

[Curt-Man]

Live with it, I'm pretty sure the designers aren't surfing our forums taking our advice, no point in complaining about it.

 

But the movie still looks so amazing.

[Spider AL]

Heheh... I don't think Prime posted his thoughts here in the expectation that the design team on the film would read them, Curt-Man.

 

Therefore there's as much of a "point" to Prime's evaluations as there is to your response. More of a "point", actually. Just because you think the movie looks "so amazing" doesn't mean that people can't criticise aspects of the trailers/concept art that they find negative now, does it. Of course it doesn't.

 

-

 

Starscream is recognizable enough. As I said, he has a lot of similarities to his cartoon designs.

He's not recognisable at all, as I've previously stated, and as Prime has proven with his images. He's a totally different alien robot.

 

If that's "recognisable enough" for you, that's good for you, but it's not sufficient for me, as is obvious from my posts.

 

As for the many "similarities to his cartoon design"... The old Starscream transformed into a plane. The new Starscream transforms into a plane, albeit a different one. That's basically the only meaningful similarity between the two character designs.

 

plus, when he transforms in the tv spot, he looks badass.

That's not up for debate, as far as I'm aware. He may look "badass", he may not... but the point is he doesn't look like Starscream. And the question I've posed is: "why not"?

[Black Knight of Keno]

Hugo Weaving is doing the voice of Megatron

 

Oh, that's great. Now I'll think Agent Smith has taken over the Decepticons when I see the movie

 

And yes, I'll have to agree that most of the Transformers will ned to get used to, but still, changing someone from a Beetle to a Camaro is just wrong. It's like changing Megatron from the classic gun into a fighter jet; You can adapt, but it's hard if you've learned to love the classic

[Lightsaberboy]

And yes, I'll have to agree that most of the Transformers will ned to get used to, but still, changing someone from a Beetle to a Camaro is just wrong. It's like changing Megatron from the classic gun into a fighter jet; You can adapt, but it's hard if you've learned to love the classic

Well in G1, he didn't have a choice on what vehicle to pick, since Teletran I did all the selection. In this movie, they get to select their own vehicles, so why would someone want to pick a measly VW bug as their alt form . Besides, there's gonna be a bunch of high-speed chases in this movie, and quite frankly it would look a bit off seeing a VW beetle zoom down the road trying to look cool. and besides, a gun wouldn't work on the big screen. not only would mass shifting make it look dumb how a huge towering robot transforms into a teeny tiny gun, but he has to have someone else operate him. Not much of a threat there.

 

I'm not sure if the mass shifting explanation holds water. The toy above doesn't have mass shifting at all, yet it clearly looks like the Starscream from the cartoon. Saying that they want to get rid of mass shifting in no way prevents them from having a design that is reflective of (but not necessarily identical to) the original characters.

The toy is replicated from the cartoon design, but the cartoon design itself used mass shifting. If you noticed in the cartoons, when they transformed they would shift their weird parts around and everything wouldn't be proportionate and yet when they came in robot form they looked fine and all the robots were more or less the same size, regardless of their alt mode. This movie wants to do away with mass shifting, which means that the size of the vehicle is also reflective of the size of the transformer. When most of them transformed in the cartoon, they came out to about size as one another when fighting each other, but a F-22 is greatly larger than a Peterbilt truck, so when desigining the robot form, they want to make it so that when Starscream transforms, he basically doesn't tower over all of the other Autobots. Already his robot form is 4 ft taller than Optimus and almost twice the size of Bumblebee, but they have to work with what they have. In the cartoon, they didn't care about this proportion stuff and left it to mass shifting. That's the reason they made Optimus a long-nose truck instead of a flat-nose also, so they could have all that extra mass to make him bigger.

 

They could certainly make the design very different yet immediately recognizable. Why deviate so drastically?

They did make it recognizable. You're just not looking hard enough.

notice how his cockpit folds down to his chest just like his old forms. His upper body maintains the same upside-down triangular shape. His wings can be seen protruding out of his back behind each shoulders. These are elements that make Starscream's essential design.

 

 

 

and Besides, all you guys are complaining about is the aesthetics of the Transformers. What's more important is their personalities. As far as I know, Starscream maintains his treacherous personality and will often bicker with Megatron just like in the cartoons. He is still Starscream and acts like him even if he might not look like it to you. Did you guys keep complaining about the batmobile in Batman Begins because it looked very different from the old designs? The X-Men didn't dress in colorful spandex in the movie, did you complain about that too? When they changed Bonds to Daniel Craig, were you guys complaining about how he looked nothing like the classic Bonds you were used to? and what about Superman's costume in Superman Returns? They kept that very similar to the comic design and everyone complained that it looked too goofy, even though the design was very similar to what they were used to.

 

I say we should hold judgement until the movie comes out. You guys are already passing it off because they don't look like the cartoons. When you go watch the movie, you're going to watch with a closed-mind only thinking about how it's nothing like the cartoon designs, and that's gonna make you think of everything negative about the movie when watching it. Don't take the movie as a literal interpretation of the cartoon. This is supposed to be a retelling of the franchise. Just go watch it with an open mind.

[Black Knight of Keno]

Did you guys keep complaining about the batmobile in Batman Begins because it looked very different from the old designs?

Yes

 

The X-Men didn't dress in colorful spandex in the movie, did you complain about that too?

Never cared for the X-Men that much, but now that you mention it Wolverine looks way cooler with the yellow on.

 

When they changed Bonds to Daniel Craig, were you guys complaining about how he looked nothing like the classic Bonds you were used to?

Yes

 

and what about Superman's costume in Superman Returns? They kept that very similar to the comic design and everyone complained that it looked too goofy, even though the design was very similar to what they were used to

Nope. I think the new Superman outfit looks great. Very true to the comics.

 

Wow... I'm a whiny bitch. But at least my whines have a reason. Bring back the classics!

[Spider AL]

In this movie, they get to select their own vehicles, so why would someone want to pick a measly VW bug as their alt form . Besides, there's gonna be a bunch of high-speed chases in this movie, and quite frankly it would look a bit off seeing a VW beetle zoom down the road trying to look cool.

Ohhh you didn't just assert that a pathetic Camaro is cooler than a VW Beetle, (the epitome of retro cool) did you? How provincial of you.

 

Once again, you're making arbitrary value-judgements. Just because YOU think a Camaro is "more cool", (for whatever strange reason,) doesn't make it a good reason to drastically change an established Transformers character. Same goes for Michael Bay.

 

But let's face it, these vehicles weren't changed for any design-specific reason, they were changed because the filmmakers struck a deal with General Motors. Most of the vehicles in the movie are apparently GM vehicles.

 

It's a giant product-placement deal, and therefore it is not an artistic decision, and is arguably reprehensible from an artistic standpoint.

 

a F-22 is greatly larger than a Peterbilt truck, so when desigining the robot form, they want to make it so that when Starscream transforms, he basically doesn't tower over all of the other Autobots. Already his robot form is 4 ft taller than Optimus and almost twice the size of Bumblebee, but they have to work with what they have.

Doesn't compute, Light. Doesn't compute.

 

The fact is that they've decided to make him fat, with a huge simian torso, and little short legs. INSTEAD of that, they could have made his torso more humanoid and therefore smaller (as befits the character) and made his legs more humanoid (as befits the character) without making him taller. He's got big long arms. Why? Add that mass to the legs instead. Move some bits around. A child could do it.

 

Cut it how you like Light, this is NOT recognisable as Starscream, it's a new character design entirely, and there's simply no good reason for it. I'm baffled as to why you're denying this obvious fact. If you LIKE the new character, fine, say so... but don't deny that it IS a new character. That doesn't make any kind of sense.

 

notice how his cockpit folds down to his chest just like his old forms. His upper body maintains the same upside-down triangular shape. His wings can be seen protruding out of his back behind each shoulders. These are elements that make Starscream's essential design.

1. His torso was NOT an inverted triangular shape in the original designs. It was a basically proportioned humanoid torso. Proof: http://graysmatter.codivation.com/content/binary/starscream.jpg . There were wings on his back, but they were like a cloak.
    
   
2. This new character does indeed have wings poking out of his back somewhere, but that doesn't offset the fact that his whole body is totally different to Starscream's. Same goes for the cockpit. Frankly, if these nitpicky little minute similarities are the closest you can come to linking the two utterly disparate character designs, my case is proven.
   

and Besides, all you guys are complaining about is the aesthetics of the Transformers. What's more important is their personalities. As far as I know, Starscream maintains his treacherous personality and will often bicker with Megatron just like in the cartoons. He is still Starscream and acts like him even if he might not look like it to you.

Oh please, you have no idea whether they've handled the personalities well yet. If/When they release some footage that shows dialogue or character interactions we'll be able to comment on the way Bay has handled the personalities.

 

Until then, all we can talk about is character design, because that's all we've been shown. And contrary to your baffling protestations, these character designs are nothing like the original transformers.

 

Amusingly presented examples: http://graysmatter.codivation.com/HowToDestroyAChildhoodMemoryInFourPictures.aspx

 

And frankly, the fact that Bay's been willing to change so much about the characters bodies doesn't bode well for what he's willing to do to their personalities. As a fan, it worries me.

 

Did you guys keep complaining about the batmobile in Batman Begins because it looked very different from the old designs?

There were examples of Batman using vehicles similar in design to the Tumbler in the comics. Therefore it was a canonical design choice. I could cite the highly influential "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller as just one example. So what's your point?

 

Let me put it this way: This new character purporting to be "Starscream" is equivalent to removing Batman's bat-ears. Consider.

 

The X-Men didn't dress in colorful spandex in the movie, did you complain about that too?

I'm with Keno, I never liked the stupid X-Men anyway. And the movies were pretty awful too.

 

Still, what they've done to Starscream is like taking away two of Wolverine's claws. The question is: Why would one do it?

 

When they changed Bonds to Daniel Craig, were you guys complaining about how he looked nothing like the classic Bonds you were used to?

Well I wasn't, because as a fan of Ian Fleming's Bond novels, I knew that Daniel Craig was closer to the character as written by Fleming than any of the previous actors who played it onscreen. Connery included.

 

And once again, what they've done to Starscream is the equivalent of giving James Bond a baseball cap. Does it match the character's normal mode of dress? Nope. So why do it?

 

I say we should hold judgement until the movie comes out. You guys are already passing it off because they don't look like the cartoons. When you go watch the movie, you're going to watch with a closed-mind only thinking about how it's nothing like the cartoon designs, and that's gonna make you think of everything negative about the movie when watching it.

Oh take your straw-man away and burn it, will you. Nobody's saying "OMG Starscream's a new character so the entire movie will be awful", so stop suggesting that we are.

 

Furthermore, the idea that we're such children that we won't be able to enjoy a movie on its own merits is just insulting. I for one may enjoy the movie... but I won't enjoy recognising all my favourite transformers... because there are only two recognisable transformers in the movie that I've seen so far.

 

I am saying that this specific design choice is dubious, with negative aspects. Also, that it doesn't necessarily bode well for design choices we HAVEN'T heard about yet. End of story.

[Prime]

Live with it, I'm pretty sure the designers aren't surfing our forums taking our advice, no point in complaining about it.

Where am I complaining that the new designs suck or that the designers should change it? I have said repeatedly that I am open to changes.

 

My point was why deviate so drastically from the original characters, if they are to be reflective of the original characters. My other point was to counter the claim that Starscream is immediately recognizable as the original character.

 

Again, I'm not saying his new design blows or everything should look exactly like the cartoon. So don't put words in my mouth.

 

And we should have any opinions on anything because they won't reach the ears of the creators??? Or just opinions that say there are no flaws? Why is it bad to question why things were done a certain way?

 

The toy is replicated from the cartoon design, but the cartoon design itself used mass shifting.

Actually, the cartoon was used to sell the toys, and the characters were reflective of their toy counterparts, since that is why the cartoon came into existence.

 

In any event, that is not the point. My point is that the toy shows that you can easily design a model that uses no mass shifting (as no toy does) yet looks closer to the recognizable character. I'm saying that the idea that mass shifting is necessary to make the character look more similar is not true at all. I'm not saying Starscream needed to be a copy, I'm saying he pretty much could have been if desired.

 

This movie wants to do away with mass shifting, which means that the size of the vehicle is also reflective of the size of the transformer. When most of them transformed in the cartoon, they came out to about size as one another when fighting each other, but a F-22 is greatly larger than a Peterbilt truck, so when desigining the robot form, they want to make it so that when Starscream transforms, he basically doesn't tower over all of the other Autobots.

But he does tower over other Autobots. If Starscream is 32 feet high, then he does tower over Jazz (13 feet), Bumblebee (17 feet), Ratchet (24 feet), and Iron Hide (26 feet). In the case of Jazz and Bumblebee, he is twice their size. So if their goal was to make him not tower over them, they seem to have failed.

 

and Besides, all you guys are complaining about is the aesthetics of the Transformers. What's more important is their personalities.

I'm not complaining about anything. I'm saying that the statement was that Starscream is immediately recognizable as his cartoon/toy/comic counterpart is a reach at best. That's all. And the question was posed as why that's the case, since other characters, like Optimus, are indeed much closer to their original designs. There certainly aren't any real technical reasons for it, as I have tried to point out.

 

And to say their appearance doesn't make much difference at all, I don't really agree with either. Yes their personalities are important, but they are equally well known and popular because of the toys, which are physical things known for transformations and appearance.

 

Did you guys keep complaining about the batmobile in Batman Begins because it looked very different from the old designs?

No, because it's design is actually closer to the original in the The Dark Knight Returns comic.

 

The X-Men didn't dress in colorful spandex in the movie, did you complain about that too?

No, because Wolverine, Cyclops, Colossus, Storm, Professor X and Co. were immediately recognizable as their comic counterparts.

 

and what about Superman's costume in Superman Returns? They kept that very similar to the comic design and everyone complained that it looked too goofy, even though the design was very similar to what they were used to.

I loved it, precisely for that reason.

 

I say we should hold judgement until the movie comes out. You guys are already passing it off because they don't look like the cartoons. When you go watch the movie, you're going to watch with a closed-mind only thinking about how it's nothing like the cartoon designs, and that's gonna make you think of everything negative about the movie when watching it. Don't take the movie as a literal interpretation of the cartoon. This is supposed to be a retelling of the franchise. Just go watch it with an open mind.

Not once did I say that the movie was going to be bad. Not once did I say I wasn't looking forward to it or thought the designs were terrible. Not once did I say the characters should look just like the cartoons. Not once did I say the movie should be a literal interpretation of the comics/cartoon. You are the one that is jumping to the conclusion that I hate all of it because I disagree that Starscream looks like his old self.

[Lightsaberboy]

But he does tower over other Autobots. If Starscream is 32 feet high, then he does tower over Jazz (13 feet), Bumblebee (17 feet), Ratchet (24 feet), and Iron Hide (26 feet). In the case of Jazz and Bumblebee, he is twice their size. So if their goal was to make him not tower over them, they seem to have failed.

That's why I said they had to work with what they had. an F-22 by itself is already way bigger than all those other vehicles, so there's only so much they could do with the designs.

 

I apologize if I sound like I'm attacking people. It's just that i've heard people complain about the designs since last year so it gets tiring after a while hearing people say the same things over and over, about Starscream this, and bumblebee that, optimus this, megatron that. I loved watching the original cartoons. I loved watching Beast Wars. I know that there is more to the transformers series than just G1. I'm just gonna take this movie for what it is: another part of the overall Transformers franchise.

[Curt-Man]

Remind me never to speak my unthought through thoughts on the forums again