Quote:
Originally Posted by jjwankenobi
I wrestled over questions like these after I viewed DotM 3 weeks ago, then I hap and epiphany: IT'S ONLY ENTERTAINMENT.
It's not supposed to make sense.
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I have to strongly disagree with this too. I think it lets filmmakers off the hook too easily. It also lets filmmakers know that we will settle for crap as long as it is flashy enough and throws enough crumbs on the floor for fanboys.
Look at the huge difference between the Star Wars original films and the prequels. While story and character are not the only issues there, they are big ones. People care about Star Wars because of the characters and the story. People don't care about the prequels because those things took a backseat to CGI, the plot was incomprehensible, and the characters ranged from thin and underdeveloped to flat-out annoying.
Transformers is "about" action, yes. But the reason it has survived for 25+ years is because of the mythos, the characters, and the richness of it all. The G1 cartoon is hardly perfect, but it did attempt to tell stories, develop characters, and show off what it would be like if there were a bunch of giant transforming robots around.
Please don't mistake this as saying "I only want G1". I'll say it again: I don't care if it's G1 authentic. I don't care if Optimus Prime is a neon green submarine or a Mini Cooper.
What matters is what you do with it all. Do you tell a story worth telling? Are the characters interesting? Do they grow and develop?
DOTM is all surface. For a movie "about" transforming robots, few of them have anything resembling actual characters or personalities and their primary function is as plot devices. None of them grow or change. Optimus Prime looks right and is visually amazing but is unrecognizable personality wise.
I think about "Aliens" a lot these days. I can name all the characters, talk about their personalities, their relationships with one another, how they influenced the plot. It was a fairly large cast, and because of that, the characters tended towards "types" and were not Shakespeare deep. But still -- you
felt for them as they struggled and especially if one of them bit it. Every piece of dialogue mattered. Even the most minor character in "Aliens" had more of a character than any of the robots in DOTM outside of Prime and Sentinel.
This, to me, is the potential for Transformers. You can have a large cast (within reason) and still give everyone a personality and something to do so that you
care about them. So that they matter. Not because it's a name we know from the franchise (like Ironhide or Jazz) but because we genuinely feel for the character and his or her place within the story.
You can have this
and have action
and have entertainment. It doesn't have to be just one. But the more people say "it's just a summer blockbuster" or "turn off your brain to enjoy it" or "it's Michael Bay -- it's supposed to be stupid", the more directors like Bay feel they can just shovel any old shit in our direction and we'll lap it up, ask for more, and tell the critics they're being unrealistic.
I don't think it's being unrealistic to ask for more. They've got the look down. Now it's time to find the heart and soul.
