DOTM - not excited? [possible spoils]

[GoktimusPrime]

I grew up with G1, looking back on it now, Season 2 and 3 were pretty bad. Still have a great love for Season 1 and the movie.

The G1 comics were better than the G1 cartoon IMO.

With that in mind, what Bay did with the first movie was fantastic.

The first movie captures the spirit of the G1 cartoon really well.

The second greatly upset me. I can't help but feel his "expert" advisors with their "encyclopedic" knowledge of the Transformers woke up one day and thought they'd try their luck. Autobots do not arbitrarily destroy anything, even Decepticons in hiding. Seems they were hiding for 100 years too without incident based on the photos Sector 7 had, yet never took a stand when us humans developed weaponry capable of hurting them.

Actually, there were lots of incidents that occured since the discovery of the "Ice Man," from Bonnie and Clyde to reverse-engineered Nazi mecha in WWII. Humans developed weapons capable to effecting Cybertronians because of this history of encounters (and of course, studying NBE-1).

Wasn't 'til the Autobots showed up that the war started.

Again, see the Sector 7 series that's currently on sale now!

Also, why bother breaking into military facilities, even Air Force One in the first film, when Soundwave can just hump a satellite. This just ruins the whole reasoning behind the first film.

Do we know if Soundwave was floating around in Earth orbit during the events of the first film, or did he arrive some time after?

When I heard Jetfire was in it, I got really excited. To see him include a walking stick in his transformation made me retch. I was all set to cast this disgust aside when he merged with Prime (wished there was an 'Optimal Optimus' reference, but no)... only to have Jetfires parts just cast aside like a piece of trash when he was done using him. No send-off or appreciation for the sacrifice. This isn't what Autobots are.

Hey, Optimus Prime totally mourned for Jetfire.









For about as much as he mourned for Jazz. (at least it's consistent )

This brings us to the upcoming one. Going by the trailer, lets say the government was able to cover up the existence of a space-ship on the moon. Wouldn't the Autobots have picked it up on their way past in the first film?

Not if it's inactive and not giving out any signals, energy signatures etc.

Or Starscream and that Fallen joke in the second?

When I first heard that the movie was called "Revenge of The Fallen," I got all excited, cos I quite like the original Fallen character from Neo-G1... then when I saw him on film it was kinda like... oh. That... wasn't quite what I was hoping for... (he's not even on fire all the time...)

Having just seen TF:Prime, it really puts in perspective - the movies are crap. Plus a Megatron without Welker isn't a Megatron at all.

I think Weaving Megatron is fine.

My main gripe about TF2 was that the writers changed Optimus from being the iconic 'childhood hero' that every other version has been to past fans. This one was cold, callous and calculating... pretty much Decepticon in his behaviour, from killing a disabled Decepticon without hesitation at the start, to using and then dumping the body of Jetfire like trash at the end.

Yeah, I thought ROTF Optimus Prime was much like Dai Atlas from Transformers Zone, and for anyone who hasn't watched it yet STOP READING NOW!




(spoiler space)









Dai Atlas is a character who has LONG been widely disliked by Japanese G1 fans. The main criticism against him was that he's too ruthless and incompassionate as an Autobot Commander. If you watch Transformers Zone he takes no prisoners and kills every Decepticon who comes across his way. Japanese fans have often felt that he does not adequately carry the true spirit of "Convoy," of an Autobot leader... that he should be more compassionate.

But having said that, Dai Atlas was usually not as bad as ROTF Optimus Prime because Dai Atlas only every killed enemy combatants in battle. Most of them were not defeated and defenceless opponents. Dai Atlas' most cruel moment was probably when he killed Predaking -- because Predaking was retreating at the time he dissected him with his sword. But at least Predaking wasn't utterly defeated and helpless like Demolishor was. Predaking _could_ have turned and fought Dai Atlas, but instead chose to flee like a coward.

And since he was dead for most of the movie, he was certainly not one of the Hero elements of TF2.

...dead characters need to stay dead...

Those are the sorts of characteristics that Hasbro has power of veto over (one of the few things Bay doesn't have absolute power over in the TFs brand), with their small number of historically iconic characters, so this darkening of Optimus' character and removal of his 'hero' status would had to have been approved by Hasbro. Or else Bay is just making them so much money that they don't care what he does now.

Hasbro seems to be very lenient in approving almost anything with this film franchise. If you watch the DVD interviews you can see that some of the writers etc. were pleasantly surprised at how much free reign Hasbro gave them. A bit too much free reign perhaps.

From what I can ascertain, it seemed the only few times that Hasbro intervened was when:
+ Insisting that Optimus Prime needed to have a red chest. Michael Bay explained to Archer that this would be difficult to film, so a compromised was reached - thus the chopper flames.
+ Certain character designs were redone at Hasbro's request if they felt that it would be too challenging to engineer as a toy. e.g. Optimus Prime's tires were originally meant to split and come right off the wheels; this was redone at Hasbro's request, so the tyres still split slightly, but remain on the wheels. Having said that, Hasbro still let them get away with really WEIRD designs for characters like Reedman and Alice... which Hasbro has yet to make toys for. It seems that they don't seem interested in making toys of them. This irks me... I wish Hasbro wouldn't approve Transformers for the film that they have no intention of making toys of.

I actually liked this change.
I looked at it as if he had started as the hero type and the war had changed him. Made him lose touch every now and then and in the heat of battle he forgets and just goes from the kill.

This is way more than just losing touch in the heat of battle. Optimus Prime is meant to be a seasoned veteran combatant, not some random civilian conscript who's recently taken up arms. Put it this way, when professional soldiers abuse, torture or execute defeated or captured enemy combatants they would be prosecuted for having committed war crimes.

My general distaste for ROTF can be summed up as such.

Devastator was killed by an off-screen cannon.

OFF
SCREEN
CANNON

Weak man, f'ing weak.

tru dat.