Front row all the way, Mythirax!
I like the latest news piece about making the next TF movie with a shared universe in mind. They mentioned they have 30 years of TF stories to draw from and they're all very excited.
Hilarious that they said they have 30 years of stories because im wondering how we ended up with the 4 TF movies that we have now.
And a shared universe only works if people care about the characters. Besides Optimus not one TF had a personality. Not one.
Bay's directing is just awful. I can see how it could appeal to some people but to me its just unwatchable.
Well said. And Optimus Prime only got characterisation in the fourth film. He was basically a big walking caricature in the first 3 films, and an inconsistent one at that. Switching from:
* the fairly G1-accurate compassionate Optimus Prime in TF1. He only killed in the heat of combat defending humans and was willing to push the Cube into his own chest to sacrifice himself over killing Megatron (as Sam chose, and Optimus Prime cried, "No, Sam!"); to...
* the brutally merciless Optimus Prime in ROTF who executed defeated opponents!
They are a technologically advanced race... I'm sure there were humane methods at their disposal to put prisoners into stasis-lock or hybernation, and store their sparks until such time that they could be re-educated or re-programmed to be non-violent.
And what about Optimus enslaving the Dinobots in TF4? He only "frees" them from Lockdown's captivity when he needed them, not as soon as he was free... and then instead of pleading with his "fellow knights" for their help, he starts bashing up Grimlock and holding a sword to his throat stating, "help my friends or die".
That, and the execution of prisoners, is why I would really hope they decide a reboot before starting the "expanded Universe" series of movies, as the first four don't give a solid foundation for future movies to build on. There are just way too many contradictions between them, and character flaws, for a Marvel-style universe to be created.
At least for Marvel and DC, they set out a rough framework to follow BEFORE starting the series of movies... so that they don't have to retcon too much later or leave fans with glaringly obvious contradictions.... something that won't be possible if they look at other avenues of Transformers like prequels, when we have three different origins of Transformers and three different "first contact" scenarios in just four movies.
But there's the inconsistency. It's not as if Optimus Prime had been a merciless take-no-prisoners bad-bot the whole time. The first movie showed him as being more merciful, especially in the way that he was willing to sacrifice himself over Megatron. But then in ROTF he suddenly changed to become a more cold-blooded character for no apparent reason whatsoever. It'd be different if he'd been like this from the first film, but he wasn't.
Dai Atlas has a long history of copping fan criticism in Japan for being a similarly merciless character who never took prisoners. Many Japanese fans criticise him for not being in the same spirit as other Autobot leaders who follow Convoy's example of compassion. But at least Dai Atlas is consistently merciless! It wasn't as if he didn't want to kill Devastator but was happy to kill Predaking -- Dai Atlas killed every Decepticon that he fought! Dai Atlas a ruthless sod, but at least he was a consistently ruthless sod!
The funny thing is... Star Sabre and Dai Atlas' moral positions in Japanese G1 are reversed in IDW. JP G1; Star Sabre = compassionate & Dai Atlas = ruthless / IDW G1; Star Sabre = ruthless & Dai Atlas = compassionate
P.S.: Although IDW Star Sabre is much more ruthless than TF Zone Dai Atlas. G1 Dai Atlas was only ruthless towards the Decepticons but still compassionate towards Autobots and their protectorates (e.g. humans).
Given that consistency and coherence have been largely irrelevant to the franchise so far, it's hard to see why a reboot would be neccessary.
Just take whatever is working, make another movie and call it "TF5: Age of Galvatron". No need to throw the baby-bot out with the cyber-bathwater. There's good stuff here to build on. In fact, it would be nice to see them develop things rather than scrapping everything and starting over. How many characters and TF models have they gone to the effort of creating only to have them stand around in the background or do one scene before they're killed-off or never seen again? Jolt, Que, Mirage... Jazz? Even Ratchet didn't really get a decent spotlight until his demise in TF4. Megatron looked so cool in DoTM so it felt like he was under-utilized with almost all of his scenes just being him standing around being grumpy before getting his spine immediately ripped out as soon as he decides to get involved in the action. Shockwave? Now that was an anti-climax. We get a cool two-headed version of him in TF4 apparently only to further taunt us.