Transformers: The Last Knight (Post-release)

Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

I wanted to be excited for one, but Bay showed absolutely no interest in the lore of the universe he was handed. These are inorganic extraterrestrial lifeforms with seriously advanced science. He vetoed any subspace technology or mass shifting, which is pretty vital to prevent what we ended up getting -- shambling piles of polygons that are broken up into so many indistinguishable tiny bits that they all look alike -- especially in the murky gloom of so many of the battle scenes. We never really see Cybertron. The Cube is poorly explained at best. All of the rich mythos of the G1 TF universe is absent. So yeah, I would dearly love a reboot. Ditto G.I. Joe. Even better if both get incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they're part of the comic universe (Spider-Man's been in both comics). Plus, I trust Marvel to capture the characters properly and tell a far more compelling story with them.

This film? To borrow from Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation... Their policy seems to be that if you beat a dead horse vigorously enough, its constant twitching and juddering will at least give a semblance of activity. After the hollow caricatures of the various Transformers in the first film, after the Racist Twins and Devastator's Swinging Robot Balls of the second, after the incomprehensible staggering-coincidence-after-staggering-coincidence "plot" of the third one, after the utter waste of the "Dinobots" in the fourth one... Any hope I have for this one can only be measured in negative numbers. There are shades here of both "Dark Awakening" and Nemesis Prime, but I hold out hope for neither, as that would mean the writers had actually done some research into the extant material of the cartoon universes.

--Jonah
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

heh... wahlberg is back.... is that ultramagnus at the end?

I don't know... it's not like any of the Bay-formers resemble their cartoon counterparts.

If you go to IMDb it has posters of some of the characters. One is Hot Rod, but the casting list doesn't show him or who is voicing him.
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

All of the rich mythos of the G1 TF universe is absent.
This film? To borrow from Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation... Their policy seems to be that if you beat a dead horse vigorously enough, its constant twitching and juddering will at least give a semblance of activity. After the hollow caricatures of the various Transformers in the first film, after the Racist Twins and Devastator's Swinging Robot Balls of the second, after the incomprehensible staggering-coincidence-after-staggering-coincidence "plot" of the third one, after the utter waste of the "Dinobots" in the fourth one... Any hope I have for this one can only be measured in negative numbers. --Jonah

Well said. Like most movies that have a nearly endless amount of source material, I hate how they cherry pick from it. Kind of like the X-men movies. Plenty of perfectly useable source material that would very easily translate to a film... but NAH!!! Why use that when you can substitute story and depth for explosions and cheap, hackneyed gimmicks.
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

Just a thumbnail gestalt of what cna be gleaned from the G1 cartoons and comics, with inclusions from the Japanese continuation after the series ended here in the States...

Primus and Unicron are disembodied, anthropomorphic personifications of the abstract concepts of order and chaos. They existed from the beginning of the universe. Primus realized their struggles were so devastating they threatened to destroy the young universe before it had a chance to get going. He plunged into a coalescing planetoid, imprisoning himself, and knowing his adversary. Unicron thought this was a ploy and immediately did the same, lest he find himself in a weaker position. Thus entombed they drifted apart into the great cosmic dark. Over the eons, each learned how to rework their prisons in subtle ways. Primus was eventually able to generate powerful subspace turbulence to shield himself from outside approach, a maelstrom of wormholes and spatial eddies. He also influenced the elements of his planetoid into generating life, which, over time, evolved into an elegant non-carbon-based ecosystem, minutely directed toward a form that could act to thwart Unicron on a scale that wouldn't lay waste to the universe. Unicron took a less imaginative approach, transforming his planetoid into a new physical body for himself.

Somewhere along the way, another race of inorganic beings, the Quintessons, stumbled across the rogue planet Primus had become, figured out how to navigate an approach through the subspace turbulence wall, and conquered it. They so thoroughly subjugated the populace, they came to believe the Quintessons had created them and that they were reliant on the Quints to perpetuate their race. The Quints, meanwhile, were trying to find how these beings had arisen on such an unlikely world. There was a strange energy source emanating from the planet core, but their attempts to reach it kept being thwarted. They had just succeeded on their eighteenth approach vector -- Vector Sigma* -- when the enslaved populace finally rose up in rebellion. The fragment of the coalesced energy matrix they found there that they managed to contain and bring to the surface had a curious effect on one of the laboratory servitors when he picked it up, altering him into a more powerful and commanding form, the first Prime.

[*Generally, the computer on the Ark translated the different stages of Cybertronian language evolution based on what it gleaned from our history -- with the most ancient form of the language represented as Greek, the middle period represented as Latin, and the "modern" stage of the language as English. Thus the names we get.]

In the ages folling the expulsion of the Quintessons, the planet, now called Cybertron, went through several more ages, each defining and being defined by its Prime, a leader who was both political and quasi-religious. And, when needed, military commander as well. Some short time after the Great Revolt, a movement started that felt the only way to avoid being conquered again in th efuture was to go out and conquer, themselves. They called themselves the Destrons and won many eager adherents. Those who opposed them adopted the old brand logo and name the Quintessons had used -- Autobots -- as a rebuke. The Destrons used cyber-medical methods to alter their power consumption, augmenting their offensive capabilities at the expense of "less essential" systems (one notable aesthetic effect was that lowering the cyling rate of their sensory systems resulted in the spill light from their optics often shifting to the longer red wavelengths). Always on the defensive, the Autobots focused on guile and innovation to keep abreast. They invented transforming as a way to hide in plain sight among the many semisentient creatures and drone vehicles populating Cybertron. The Destrons found out and eventually acquired the technology for themselves (their tendency to use it for covert information-gathering led many of the civilian population to begin disparagingly calling them "Decepticons").

After a civil war lasting for an entire age, the planet had seen it's once-sufficient energy sources nearly exhausted. The Prime of that era, Optimus Prime, launched a daring expedition though the turbulence wall to find new sources of energy. The Destrons found out and intercepted them. The resulting interference with the ship's course plunged them both into a wormhole that dumped them out over Earth several million years ago. The ships separated in atmosphere, the Destron ship crashing in the Pacific Ocean, the Autobot ship crashing into Mount Saint Helens. The occupants went into stasis-lock (equivalent to a coma) until successive eruptions of the volcano finally pushed the ship close enough to the surface that the 1980 eruption exposed it to sunlight once more and it reawakened.

In the intervening time, back on Cybertron, the lieutenant the Destron leader had left in charge had managed to finish imposing Destron rule on the planet, while the Autobots maintained a valiant underground resistance. The nascent technology to merge more than one Cybertronian onto a gestalt being had matured, and the de facto leader had sent out probes to find planets that could be mined for energy. The probes had protoforms that would take shapes appropriate to the worlds they landed on, set up an energy collection station, and activate a retrieval beacon. If something larger or mor epowerful than initial scans detected threatened, the expeditionary team would be able to merge together into a giant robot that could repel the threat and protect the energy-collection station. This would be the origin of the Predacons, Seacons, and Horrorcons. A probe would actually land on Earch after the ships had, but it was damaged in the landing and only three protoforms remained viable (the Insecticons). The Destrons had also developed the transforming technology further into the triple-changers -- being as they were somewhat subconsciously obsessed with threes.

That's not even getting into post-Awakening events. That's a hell of a backstory to mine for some pretty epic storytelling. It amazes me that absolutely none of that made it into Bayformers. Hasbro originally just licensed the comics and cartoons to hawk their toys. The comics were originally just supposed to be a four-issue miniseries, and anyone who's watched the three-part "first episode" of the G1 cartoon can see how self-contained it was. Hasbro had no idea it would catch on, let alone to the extent it did. And the people who subsequently got involved with the property gave it a depth and richness that I don't think Hasbro themselves ever realized, understood, or cared about.

--Jonah
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

In short... quantity over quality. Money trumps all.
That's some seriously deep story telling just in that post. More than the target audience of 5-11 year old children could wrap their heads around.

When you have to dumb things down for both the kids and the grown-ups you end up with Bayformers... the lowest-common denominator will yield the highest grossing in the theaters. :(
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

I don't know... it's not like any of the Bay-formers resemble their cartoon counterparts.

If you go to IMDb it has posters of some of the characters. One is Hot Rod, but the casting list doesn't show him or who is voicing him.

hot rod is one of my favorites, im going to go check now
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

hot rod is one of my favorites, im going to go check now

Just let the disappointment wash over you... :unsure

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Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

Megatron... 2.0, 3.0, I lost count. He's died almost as many times as Prime. It's captioned as Megatron on IMDb

Why did they change the font style of the name?

View attachment 689234

And assuming this is Bumblebee... why does he look like (1) he has cornrows and (2) LIPS?

View attachment 689235

i too was wondering if thats bumblebee?!

- - - Updated - - -

also is hotrod the mercedes or the lamborghini? im hoping lambo
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

i too was wondering if thats bumblebee?!

- - - Updated - - -

also is hotrod the mercedes or the lamborghini? im hoping lambo

It doesn't look like Bumblebee going by the poster.
I'm hoping the Lambo too... that car is awesome.
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

It doesn't look like Bumblebee going by the poster.
I'm hoping the Lambo too... that car is awesome.

i much prefer him to be the lambo, the mercedes heeeeeeehhhhhh.... im really not feeling megatons face. its better then the last film, but i thought he was galvatron by the end of the last film?

my favorite megatron is T3 with half of his face missing and the cloak, wicked cool
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

It doesn't look like Bumblebee going by the poster.
I'm hoping the Lambo too... that car is awesome.



No,no,no,NOO!

There are only TWO(proper) Autobot Lamborghinis: the twin brothers Sideswipe and Sunstreaker....okay, maybe there's room for Red Alert too. But over in the corner by Inferno. No, make that behind Inferno.

Yes, precious...I know Sideswipe was already a 'vette in the 2nd and 3rd movies, likely killed off before the events of the 4th...

Must...have accurate Gen 1 bots....must....ugh...why must you rip out, rearrange and or destroy some of the favorite parts of my childhood Michael Bay:cry? Why did you have to join the ranks of Lucas and Spielberg? The REAL "Axis of Evil" for the 21st century.



*yes whole post is in jest*
**well mostly**
***OK, only partially***
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

It bugs me to hear any of Bay's TF movies defended.

They were never good. Not even the first one.

you're being negative. i'm going to endlessly complain in the hope you become positive.
then i'll force you to see things my way and claim it's the forums way.

sorry, just wanted to join the 'i hate how you do things, wah wah' club' ;o)
yeah, it doesn't feel good to me either ;o)..
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

No,no,no,NOO!

There are only TWO(proper) Autobot Lamborghinis: the twin brothers Sideswipe and Sunstreaker....okay, maybe there's room for Red Alert too. But over in the corner by Inferno. No, make that behind Inferno.

Yes, precious...I know Sideswipe was already a 'vette in the 2nd and 3rd movies, likely killed off before the events of the 4th...

Must...have accurate Gen 1 bots....must....ugh...why must you rip out, rearrange and or destroy some of the favorite parts of my childhood Michael Bay:cry? Why did you have to join the ranks of Lucas and Spielberg? The REAL "Axis of Evil" for the 21st century.



*yes whole post is in jest*
**well mostly**
***OK, only partially***

i understand, but what is the closet car they could use to hotrods car mode?
hotrod2.jpg


i think the lambo shares more physical characteristics then the mercedes

the car form is god awful looking, but i love it!
 
Re: Transformers: The Last Knight

halliwax, I wasn't being as negative about your suggestion as it may have sounded ;).

Bay can't do it right, so in actuality he can do no wrong. If you get my meaning.

As for Hot Rod, I always thought of him as a prototype or concept style car. Real one of a kind. Especially since his demeaner doesn't match his namesake if he was a '34 Ford or such. Maybe a GT40 or similar. But in Bayformers, a lambo would suffice.
 
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