TRAN5FORMERS: The Last Knight

[Keith]

I loved it, 100% delivered on all I expect from Bayformers.

[M'Kyuun]

Well, the good news is that the domestic opening weekend box office is the lowest of any of the Bay-former films, so it sounds like they're losing their appeal here in the States. The Asian market is still going strong, though, esp China. However, the bad news continues, as there's to be a live action Bumblebee movie (a girl and her car this time around, supposedly set in the 80's) set in the Bay-verse.  It's still just more of the same, IMHO, no matter who they get to direct, write, what have you. As long as they keep the Bay-verse alive, I think the live action movies will be plagued with the same issues as the main line films, b/c they're going to try and keep the same feel, humor, and look as Bay's movies. Aside from Keith, the appeal of these films appears to finally be losing momentum (I didn't like the first one, and have found the rest to be unwatchable as well). I've only ever paid to see one Bay-former film, DOTM, in the theatre, and I'll never repeat that mistake again. It's just so incredibly far from what I want in a live action Transformers movie, and just far from what I want in a generally mediocre movie. These films are so poor that mediocrity would be an enormous upgrade. My $.02, of course. YMMV.

 I'd love to see a whole new team and a new vision for the live-action films, with roots in G1, and a feel closer to Transformers Prime. With Orci and Kurtzman writing Prime, and a Bay-former derivative look, I initially balked at it and watched it with no little bias. But, it was a damned good show, and quickly won me over. They did a great job of developing the characters, both bot and human, even if Miko was a bit annoying. But it made me stop blaming Orci and Kurtzman, in part, for how bad the live action films were, as they demonstrated their passion for Transformers as well as their ability to write a compelling story in Prime. In short, my feeling is that had a different director been using their live action scripts, we'd have gotten much different movies, i.e. ones that made sense, had character development, better plots, more attention to the bots as characters rather than props, and maybe a far more appealing aesthetic. We'll never know.  But, if the upcoming Bumblebee film does poorly, perhaps Hasbro and partners will consider a new direction for the live action films. If that happens, hopefully they'll choose a director who's a legitimate TF fan.

[UN Spacy]

 

[TangledThorns]

Surprised and annoyed that members here paid for this movie.

[captain america]

I've seen all the previous Transformers films and actually enjoyed them. This one I did not. I thought it was tedious and found myself staring at my watch, hoping it would end... A really bad sign. Aside from the fact that the film felt as if it had no solid plot, no clear objective, there were some major, silly and otherwise inexcusable plot holes.

Spoiler

 

-Why did Optimus go back to Cybertron to find the creator(s)??? They left that planet ages ago, and it even came in for an orbital visit in DOTM. Not only did Quintessa NOT make an appearance when that happened, the Unicron horns on Earth didn't activate. Why did they randomly appear this time?

-Better yet, why did the "creators" choose Earth to seed Transformium in AOE? Would that not have raised Unicron's proverbial hackles?

-Lockdown mentioned creatorS, plural in Age of Extinction. Yet there was only Quintessa. Also, no explanation as to why the "creator" hand we see in AOE was organic and she was fully metallic.

-The Decepticons, which felt, looked and sounded evil and scary in the first 2 films were reduced to caricatures of their former selves in this film.  

-The "Last Knight" Cade Yeager didn't do anything particularly impressive in the film. Had he had a direct hand in slaying Quintessa it would have made more sense. He was just another human bystander with no useful purpose.

-If the Primes were the creators, why would Optimus have no recollection of that if he's a Prime? Also in AOE, Lockdown tells Prime he wasn't born, he was BUILT. Do Primes build other Primes?

-Where was Hot Rod for all these years when his Autobot bretheren desperately needed him? Also, why did Bee never mention nor remember him?

-Am I the only one who thinks that the Unicron character was utterly and completely wasted? I would have much preferred to see Cybertron transform and slug it out with a G1-style Unicron robot. And frankly, I think what would have made much more sense than what they actually did.

 

I'm sure there are many more plot holes, but these are the ones that jumped-out at me. 

 

[Roy Focker]

Red Letter Media also did a 2nd review on it.    

[peter]

[Mommar]

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Surprised and annoyed that members here paid for this movie.

Why?  They're allowed to do whatever they want.

[JB0]

10 hours ago, captain america said:

Also, no explanation as to why the "creator" hand we see in AOE was organic and she was fully metallic.

Pretender shell last time.

[Graham]

This will be the first Transformers movie that my son and I won't go to see at the cinema. Thankfully he's lost interest in Transformers, so I don't have to go and suffer through it.

Fool me 4 times, Michael bay, shame on you, fool me a 5th time, shame on me..........Hahahaha!

[kajnrig]

I just now saw the little 5 peeking out from within the thread title. Touche.

[Kanedas Bike]

14 hours ago, kajnrig said:

I just now saw the little 5 peeking out from within the thread title. Touche.

Dude.

Was that always there????

I didn't notice until you said something.

-b.

[Negotiator]

been calling this thread "tran five formers" in my head

[peter]

On 6/26/2017 at 9:03 AM, Mommar said:

Why?  They're allowed to do whatever they want.

Lol, I'm sure he knows that, he's just expressing his opinion.  

I stopped downloading TF movies after the second one, but I guess part of me still hangs on to a little hope that each new one won't be $hit.

Every new TF movie thread on here seems to get worse than the previous one, and this one by far seems to be the worst, with even Bayformers fans not being happy with the latest installment.  

 

[anime52k8]

I would love it if they rebooted the current movie series with something super slavishly G1, and then it bombed so badly that it bankrupts Hasbro and somehow manages to drag Takara down with it.

[Thom]

I'll watch this one on TV, even though I've already seen spoiler reviews and pretty much know what happens. I didn't pay for the last one and I'm not paying for this! Bay only got me three times.

What I would love to see is either Bay out of the picture and something new in these movies, rather than continually retreading old plots without any major progress/advance in story line.

Or just do a live action remake of The Transformers Movie from 1985! That is still the best Transformers movie ever!

[Fusion]

What I dislike about all the Bayformers are how vulnerable the bots are. They make the humans superior in firepower even though you would think a alien being who was able to travel space to get to earth weaker.

[peter]

What a Valkyrie would look like if Michael Bay did a live action Macross:

[treatment]

6 minutes ago, peter said:

What a Valkyrie would look like if Michael Bay did a live action Macross:

 

 

More like this, actually...

[peter]

19 minutes ago, treatment said:

 

More like this, actually...

Lol!

[Firefox]

This one seems to suffer some budget cut. Most of them didn't actually showed transforming, except for Megatron. Otherwise, when they were about to transform, the camera cut away. If you slow down the clip where Nitro Zeus transformed into Gripen, the jet parts just pop up put of nowhere. The overall design of the transformers seem to make CG easier to create and render rather than realistic and believable. 

It would be really great if some can reboot the whole franchise using the G1 like design. 

[Thom]

On 6/27/2017 at 6:31 PM, treatment said:

 

More like this, actually...

I would pay more money to see this being put on the big screen rather than T5!!

[Thom]

The one. The Only. Optimus Prime!

[peter]

4 minutes ago, Thom said:

The one. The Only. Optimus Prime!

From the Dreamwave comics?  I have a few of those, just awesome renderings of G1.

Edited June 28, 2017 by peter

[peter]

 

Edited June 28, 2017 by peter

[peter]

http://orig07.deviantart.net/af88/f/2015/340/7/e/g1_devastator_vs__michael_bay_devastator_by_omnicidalclown1992-d9j89fe.jpg

[anime52k8]

4 hours ago, peter said:

From the Dreamwave comics?  I have a few of those, just awesome renderings of G1.

Can't be dreamwave, there aren't enough random lines and Prime isn't squatting like he's trying to take a power dump.

[mikeszekely]

6 hours ago, peter said:

From the Dreamwave comics?  I have a few of those, just awesome renderings of G1.

Probably not Dreamwave, they went under in 2005 and the signature looks like "Milne 2010".  That'd be Alex Milne, and the pic is on his DeviantArt page (markerguru).  So it's either IDW, some other Tranformers work he's done for Hasbro or a con while he's with IDW, or just something he drew while working at IDW.

Speaking of IDW, yes, the Bayverse designs are terrible, but I'm ok if a hypothetical rebooted movie continuity wasn't slavishly G1.  I rather like Don Figueroa's IDW Optimus... which has also been drawn by Milne.

[M'Kyuun]

On ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 11:43 AM, anime52k8 said:

I would love it if they rebooted the current movie series with something super slavishly G1, and then it bombed so badly that it bankrupts Hasbro and somehow manages to drag Takara down with it.

A bit harsh. As a TF fan, I'm still in the hobby primarily for the toys. I dislike Bay's movies, so I don't go see them at the theatre (except DoTM) which  sucked.  I have quite a few Bayformer toys, and I like most of them; the two credits I'll give Bay are that his movies have generated a lot of revenue for Hasbro (to keep pumping out toys) and that the Bayformer aesthetic challenged Takara, and Hasbro by default, to really expand their engineering well beyond anything we'd seen in Transformer toys. Out of that we got Classics (Generations), Animated, Prime, and Masterpiece, as well as three Bayfomer films' worth of interesting toys. AoE seemed a turning point, and the toys for the last two films just haven't been as interesting or complex.

I like G1, but I don't think  a reboot necessarily need be 'slavish'. Nor do I think a slavish G1 movie, if well written, would bomb. G1 Prime is still probably the most recognizable robot figure  in the world, and many of the other G1 characters continue to retain a semblance of their original look in the comics. The Masterpiece line, which has been primarily G1 based, is a success for Takara.  Third Party toys. Titans Return. There's still a lot of interest in G1. That said, if they rebooted and went more of a TF: Prime direction, I'd be fine with that, too. Honestly, whatever aesthetic they choose for the bots, I think it'll be accepted if the rest of the film is well crafted, and  different from the Bay films.  For starters, let's make Prime heroic instead of a psychopath, make the Autobots a team who like and care about each other, and make the Decepticons  the bad guys again, and necessary to the plot.

[captain america]

Just a reminder to all those wearing their rose-colored nostalgia glasses that the original 1986 Transformers The Movie, the "Holy Grail of Gee-Wun" was both a box-office and critical disappointment.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Transformers#tab=summary  <5.9 million gross after 30 years after a DVD & Blu-Ray release. Clearly G1 is where it's at! 

People are a fickle bunch. All the critics at the time of release despised the film and many labeled it a 90-minute toy commercial. Fan-boys I spoke to when I started going to cons circa 1991 also hated the film, so there's something to be said for films not being appreciated in their era. Same with Star Trek: Wrath Of Khan. Two or three decades on, the very films the fan-boys once rued and reviled are now lauded and held aloft as the shining points of light of their respective franchises.

Fact: the The first 4 Bay films crushed it at the box-office. This fifth installment will likely be the first to not achieve the same financial success (and with just cause!) as the rest, but may still turn a profit. It's barely a week old as yet. All things considered, that's a pretty good winning streak.

Face it, people vote with their wallets and in that respect the Bayverse Transformers have been a resounding success. FYI, they actually tried G1-style designs when they were doing 3D animation tests for the first film. They found that the robots looked silly, and I agree with them: however fond you may be of the old 80s designs, they just wouldn't work for a wide-release live-action big budget film. 

With that said, hate and rage to your heart's content. Watch the movies or don't, you will always have your fond childhood series/movies immortalized on celluloid and digital format to watch and re-watch to your heart's content. The newer generation will have this re-imagined incarnation, and it's not going anywhere. With time, age and wisdom, you may come to appreciate these films for elements you never noticed when you first viewed them, and perhaps even regret your criticism of them. Maybe.

These films do contain pearls of esoteric wisdom, but perhaps only those who know not how to read nor write, but only know how to spell are truly capable of appreciating them.  

[peter]

45 minutes ago, captain america said:

Just a reminder to all those wearing their rose-colored nostalgia glasses that the original 1986 Transformers The Movie, the "Holy Grail of Gee-Wun" was both a box-office and critical disappointment.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Transformers#tab=summary  <5.9 million gross after 30 years after a DVD & Blu-Ray release. Clearly G1 is where it's at! 

People are a fickle bunch. All the critics at the time of release despised the film and many labeled it a 90-minute toy commercial. Fan-boys I spoke to when I started going to cons circa 1991 also hated the film, so there's something to be said for films not being appreciated in their era. Same with Star Trek: Wrath Of Khan. Two or three decades on, the very films the fan-boys once rued and reviled are now lauded and held aloft as the shining points of light of their respective franchises.

Fact: the The first 4 Bay films crushed it at the box-office. This fifth installment will likely be the first to not achieve the same financial success (and with just cause!) as the rest, but may still turn a profit. It's barely a week old as yet. All things considered, that's a pretty good winning streak.

Face it, people vote with their wallets and in that respect the Bayverse Transformers have been a resounding success. FYI, they actually tried G1-style designs when they were doing 3D animation tests for the first film. They found that the robots looked silly, and I agree with them: however fond you may be of the old 80s designs, they just wouldn't work for a wide-release live-action big budget film. 

With that said, hate and rage to your heart's content. Watch the movies or don't, you will always have your fond childhood series/movies immortalized on celluloid and digital format to watch and re-watch to your heart's content. The newer generation will have this re-imagined incarnation, and it's not going anywhere. With time, age and wisdom, you may come to appreciate these films for elements you never noticed when you first viewed them, and perhaps even regret your criticism of them. Maybe.

These films do contain pearls of esoteric wisdom, but perhaps only those who know not how to read nor write, but only know how to spell are truly capable of appreciating them.  

I'll agree to an extent.  For me, there hasn't been a really good animation to live action adaptation that stands out in my mind.

As far as nostalgia is concerned (and this is not the perfect example because it's animation to animation) Yamato 2199 was an excellent series that captured enough essence of the original series, and injected just enough new stuff to capture new fans and not piss of old fans.

Yamato live action was a nice try, but there were a lot of things that felt off about it. 

Yes, this is a Transformers thread, but can you imagine if Michael Bay got his hands on Macross?  It will probably still be a huge box-office success, but wouldn't you be a little upset if Valkyries looked like my earlier post?  Or if the characters were doing things and saying things that were drastically different than what you remember?  Can you imagine if Roy was a total cuck who disliked drinking alcohol?

 

[treatment]

I dunno.

The upcoming Jumanji film already looks like tons better than any and every Bay movies ever made:

 

 

[jenius]

They killed Optimus Prime and upped the violence through the roof so people hated the 86 film. American critics were like "you made a movie for kids but people shouldn't take their kids to this." As adults we can appreciate it more. None of us are going to appreciate Bayformers more, ever. 

[Sandman]

47 minutes ago, jenius said:

They killed Optimus Prime and upped the violence through the roof so people hated the 86 film. American critics were like "you made a movie for kids but people shouldn't take their kids to this." As adults we can appreciate it more. None of us are going to appreciate Bayformers more, ever. 

Amen

[Kanedas Bike]

3 hours ago, captain america said:

Just a reminder to all those wearing their rose-colored nostalgia glasses that the original 1986 Transformers The Movie, the "Holy Grail of Gee-Wun" was both a box-office and critical disappointment.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Transformers#tab=summary  <5.9 million gross after 30 years after a DVD & Blu-Ray release. Clearly G1 is where it's at! 

People are a fickle bunch. All the critics at the time of release despised the film and many labeled it a 90-minute toy commercial. Fan-boys I spoke to when I started going to cons circa 1991 also hated the film, so there's something to be said for films not being appreciated in their era. Same with Star Trek: Wrath Of Khan. Two or three decades on, the very films the fan-boys once rued and reviled are now lauded and held aloft as the shining points of light of their respective franchises.

Fact: the The first 4 Bay films crushed it at the box-office. This fifth installment will likely be the first to not achieve the same financial success (and with just cause!) as the rest, but may still turn a profit. It's barely a week old as yet. All things considered, that's a pretty good winning streak.

Face it, people vote with their wallets and in that respect the Bayverse Transformers have been a resounding success. FYI, they actually tried G1-style designs when they were doing 3D animation tests for the first film. They found that the robots looked silly, and I agree with them: however fond you may be of the old 80s designs, they just wouldn't work for a wide-release live-action big budget film. 

With that said, hate and rage to your heart's content. Watch the movies or don't, you will always have your fond childhood series/movies immortalized on celluloid and digital format to watch and re-watch to your heart's content. The newer generation will have this re-imagined incarnation, and it's not going anywhere. With time, age and wisdom, you may come to appreciate these films for elements you never noticed when you first viewed them, and perhaps even regret your criticism of them. Maybe.

These films do contain pearls of esoteric wisdom, but perhaps only those who know not how to read nor write, but only know how to spell are truly capable of appreciating them.  

It all comes down to personal preference, like everything else. As a kid I loved The Transformers: The Movie and I mostly enjoy it as an adult. 

And I am able to glean some enjoyment from the live action movies, it's hard because IMO the scripts have been pretty bad and while I can wholeheartedly accept these are interpretations of characters that I know from the 80's cartoon some of those interpretations are bad against historical representations (looking at Murderoptimus Prime).

One would argue that the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies are much better, even Into Darkness, when compared against Bay's Transformers, but it's all personal preference and bias towards what we loved as kids or young adults. I bring up Star Trek because I think (please correct me if I'm wrong) you've been a pretty strong critic against those movies, which is perfectly fine. I love the original series, most of the Next Generation-era shows and movies AND the Abrams films. Just personal preference. 

57 minutes ago, jenius said:

They killed Optimus Prime and upped the violence through the roof so people hated the 86 film. American critics were like "you made a movie for kids but people shouldn't take their kids to this." As adults we can appreciate it more. None of us are going to appreciate Bayformers more, ever. 

The key phrase here is "none of us" - which I interpret as those of us that grew up with 80's Transformers. I would recommend chatting with the kids and teens or those that have grown up with Bay's Transformers and I would be willing to bet that they will hold these movies in much higher regard because this is what they know. Not the 80's cartoons - and if we're really honest with ourselves weren't very good. At least not to me when I've tried to watch an episode or two as a 20, 30 and now 40-something adult.

 

 

 

 

My post isn't intended to defend Transformers, it's just to try to add some perspective to the conversation.

-b.