3 Things I Hate About You

[GoktimusPrime]

Perhaps a good way to describe the military featured in Transformers is: A real world like cinematic version of the military if they had to fight giant alien robots.

That's what I meant by "reasonably," but perhaps I should've said "relatively." Meh, the joys of posting at midnight. And I'm really referring to most of what we see the background extras do rather than the actors who played Lennox, Epps etc. - I know that much of what they do isn't realistic. Cos according to the behind the scenes stuff on the DVD, Bay mostly just told the off-duty military personnel about what was meant to be happening and just told them to respond as per their training. As you said, as realistic as it gets if the army were fighting giant space robots. And the military were shown as being somewhat effective and not utterly useless like in most other TF series. Anyway, it looks relatively realistic to me, but admittedly I've never served so you would have a better appreciation than I would.

But I watch a lot of other movies where soldiers are fighting monsters (which is really all the Decepticons ever are in the live action films) and you see scenes where soldiers lose their cool and do utterly stupid things that get them and/or their teammates slaughtered. In the TF films we see the the military responding to the Decepticon threat as trained professional soldiers - at least, that's what it looks like to me (again, the background extras - the main actors behave far more amateurishly, screaming and carrying on etc. ).

[FatalityPitt]

I like the IDW Transformers comics.. But I hate:
1) ... that the art can be so bright and cartoonish at times.
2) The dialog can be so long and wordy, and you have to remember seemingly insignificant events and conversations from previous issues to make sense of what's happening now. But in some ways it's also a good thing because it gives the stories a lot of depth and demonstrates the amount of detail the writers and artists invest in their stories.
3) Chromedome is my favourite G1 Transformer, and though he has a more prominent role in the IDW-verse; he's not MY Chromedome. I prefer my Chromedome to be brash, reckless and fueled by burning justice!

I dislike the Unicron Trilogy Cartoons (actually I dislike the Movie-verse more, but I'm trying my best to be original)... But I like:
1) The complexity and depth of the characters; like Starscream, Hot Shot and Wheeljack in particular.
2) The lore is quite rich, and there are detailed story arcs around concepts like mini-cons, Cyber-Planet Keys, etc. It even introduced us to uber-powerful characters like Vector Prime.
3) Never in my life has Transformers fiction ever made me tear up - referring to the episode where Unicron disintegrated Starscream.

[canofwhoopass_87]

Movie scenes where they drop the "soldier" line during dialogue always makes me cringe

Officers and NCO's never call their soldiers "soldier", except in Hollywood movies

ARA or chocs Jetfire?

[GoktimusPrime]

• Series: Beast Wars

• My Overall Consensus: Like it

• 3 Things I Dislike About It:
  1. Early toys had no faction logos.
  2. That theme song.
  3. Some pretty lame names. Cheetor the cheetah, Rhinox the rhino, Dinobot the dinosaur, Insecticon the insect, Waspinator the wasp... so Gobot This is what happens when you let toy execs create names instead of comic writers (as G1 names & bios were made by Marvel writers). Then there's Tarantulas. First of all, that's not a name it's a plural. Secondly, his beast mode is a non-tarantula spider, so...
  yeah.

==============================================

• Series: Generation 2

• My Overall Consensus: Dislike it

• 3 Things I Like About It:
  1. The comics gave us some great stories. Even one of the characters from these comics has made a recent comeback in the IDW comics.
  2. There were some really innovative toys.
  3. Its title is the very reason why the term "Generation 1" exists.

And now to really challenge myself...

• Series: Animorphs

• My Overall Consensus: Hate it

• 3 Things I Like About It: (hoo-boy...)
  1. They were easy to find in stores!
  2. A lot of people like the books (which admittedly are unrelated to TFs)
  3. One episode of the TV series featured a Beast Wars video arcade game

[GoktimusPrime]

• Series: Masterpiece

• My Overall Consensus: Like it

• 3 Things I Dislike About It:
  1. Ex-pen-seeve.
  2. All the Jets are based on the flawed Kawamori MP3 mould. While the MP11 retool improved its robot mode, it's still essentially more of an overglorified transformable display piece rather than a fun-to-play action figure.
  3. The Coneheads are massively overpriced limited exclusives. They really should be regular store release figures at half their RRP. TakTOM released Road Rage and Delta Magnus as regular store releases - which are still shelfwarming, but not the Coneheads?

==============================================

• Series: Beast Machines

• My Overall Consensus: Dislike it

• 3 Things I Like About It:
  1. Some incredibly well crafted toys. Not necessarily great Transformers action figures, but speaking purely from a craftsmanship POV there are some really nice design elements in them. e.g. Deluxe Optimus Primal has an incredible level of detailed sculpted muscle fibre, that internal brain that can only seen because of the transparent plastic used for the head, and the really nicely done airbrushed metallic paint apps. It's a not a good Optimus toy but a well crafted action figure.
  2. Quite interesting story with really interesting themes and motifs with character-driven plot. Again, not a great Transformers story, but as a stand-alone series it's actually quite good.
  3. Much improved animation quality over Beast Wars. Shadows!

Basically, Beast Machines was a good series in its own right, just not great as part of Transformers.

[Jetfire in the sky]

Movie scenes where they drop the "soldier" line during dialogue always makes me cringe

Officers and NCO's never call their soldiers "soldier", except in Hollywood movies

ARA or chocs Jetfire?

ARA
Out now, thank the Gods. 13 years.

[Jetfire in the sky]

But I watch a lot of other movies where soldiers are fighting monsters (which is really all the Decepticons ever are in the live action films) and you see scenes where soldiers lose their cool and do utterly stupid things that get them and/or their teammates slaughtered. In the TF films we see the the military responding to the Decepticon threat as trained professional soldiers - at least, that's what it looks like to me (again, the background extras - the main actors behave far more amateurishly, screaming and carrying on etc. ).

Agreed.

[GoktimusPrime]

Mind you, making people carry on emotionally does add drama. Take Apollo 13 for example. These astronauts were portrayed in the film as being highly strung out, and understandably so considering that their very lives were at risk in the middle of space during a failed moon mission. But if you listen to NASA's recordings of the actual broadcasts, even during the most critical stages the astronauts constantly remained calm, collected and entirely professional. And boring for audiences. One simple change: the astronaut who said, "Houston, we've had a problem." - this is what he said IRL. It was changed in the film to the present tense, "Houston, we have a problem." Historically inaccurate but boy does it build drama! But in reality these astronauts actually trained for every conceivable emergency, so they were actually reasonably prepared when the proverbial hit the fan. It wasn't like in the movie where they were like, "Aw crap, the rocket's falling apart, what do we do?!" panic panic panic. IRL it was like, "'Kay, no worries, we've practised this. Follow procedure."

And movies aren't documentaries - their intention is to entertain audiences. So I think that, within reason, we can cut filmmakers some slack in terms of deviating away from realism (e.g. sound in space!). Not so far away that we can no longer suspend disbelief, but yeah.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Series: Animated

Overall: Liked it

3 things I didn't like:
*Prominent characters with no toys: I'd kill for an Animated Omega Supreme & Constructicons!
*The Headmaster: most annoying villain ever. In fact most of the human villains were irritating
*Bulkheads character change: Goes from bumbling lummox to space bridge expert despite it never being even hinted at before that he has those skills - lazy


Series: Unicron Wars

Overall: Disliked it

3 things I did like:
*Awesome toys which were plentiful, had decent transformations and were a good size.
*Comics: I thought DW did a good job with Armada and Energon
*Primus transforming: You get to see Cybertron as a robot - truly the ying to Unicrons yang


Series: Movieverse

Overall: Like it

3 things I don't like:
*Character names used at random with their personalities and physical characteristics having bugger all to do with their namesakes (Hot Rod in the new movie looks like he will encapsulate this)
*So much of the movies focusing on the humans - waaaay too much human focus!
*Pretty much everything all the other fanboys have said over the past decade (the difference being I only felt the need to say it once )

I love the Generation 1 Cartoon
I hate the continuity errors, lazy artwork (at times) and no good English dub of the JP only series'.

^This

[GoktimusPrime]

*Prominent characters with no toys: I'd kill for an Animated Omega Supreme & Constructicons!

↑This so much! Especially Omega Supreme who was just an awesome character.

*The Headmaster: most annoying villain ever. In fact most of the human villains were irritating

I see your Headmaster and raise you a Professor Princess.
Most of the human villains were stupid. The only ones who were okay were Nanosec and Meltdown. It'd be cool if the current RiD series could introduce a Not-Circuit Breaker character. A memorable human villain from G1 - just give her the same powers but with a different look and name. Marvel can't claim trademark on a power (hence why Quicksilver and the Flash can both have super-speed). Circuit Buster? Electro Buster? <shrugs>