Seibertron.com Energon Pub Forums

Rodimus Prime wrote:
And did Starscream resemble Reactivate Screamer in his scene? I noticed Shockwave looked like FoC Shockwave.

I actually felt like he was closer to Gamer Edition than Reactivate.

It doesn't look like a TF story,more like an action-comedy:the kind you see with talking animals or ROBOTS from 2005,more violent apparently.
Why not.

Saw it thursday and I'm not hyped. I had a lukewarm reaction.

Positive:
It's set on Cybertron!
It looks like a lot is going on besides robots being robots
Workers, just transformers civilians

Negative:
Humor, oh god thick with humor, hopefully not more than 40%
Animation, the character models are fine but the movement is very quick and kid cartoony. For those who played the War for Cybertron games, the designs look similar in lighting but the animation is heavy which looks way better than cartoony
I would've loved Optimus, Megatron and Bumblebee to have a more young voice

I just hope we get a good story, okay characters and not too bloody much humor. Especially cheap Marvel humor.

And I hope there's a combiner in there somewhere which will get a toy release. And some cool cameo's from the games and other shows.

Rodimus Prime wrote:

Dominus Prime wrote:The way I'm gonna view this movie is to look at it as a stand-alone feature. If you try to tie it in with whatever continuity is your preference, you will more than likely be disappointed. I say watch it as a stand-alone and enjoy it for what it is. I'm sure it'll be entertaining and have a few cool things to it. Will it be what I'd like a Transformers Origin movie to be? No, it won't, but I'll enjoy it for what it is.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I probably won't even consider it a movie, just a really long cartoon episode, probably a 5-parter like Five Faces of Darkness, since there will be Quints in it. I just hope they didn't jam all the fun parts into the trailer.

And did Starscream resemble Reactivate Screamer in his scene? I noticed Shockwave looked like FoC Shockwave.

I didn't notice.

I'm gonna be honest, this happens every single time we get the first reveal of another new show or movie that has a lighter tone, and I'm sick of it.

Transformers is, has been, and always will be a family-friendly property meant to sell childen's playthings to youngsters, first and foremost. And many of us adult fans were once part of that original age group, and we LOVED it when we were that age. We loved it so much that we're still here with it so long after we've aged out of that age group, because no matter how much taller and deeper-voiced we've become on the outside, we're still just a bunch of kids on the inside.

That inner child has stuck with us because we've defied society's peer pressures that have told us to "grow up" because we're "too old for toys/comics/cartoons/etc." And because we've embraced our inner child, we have become what society has come to refer to as "geeks", "nerds", "dorks", "fanatics", "enthusiasts", "afictionados", and so on. And most of those terms were once derogatory, meant to label us as societal outcasts and abnormals. "Freaks", if you will. Yet, as the years have gone by with the growing rise of nerd culture, we "geeks" have come to wear those labels on our sleeves with pride and dignity, having risen past the derision and bullying that were once (and, sadly, still are) common reactions from those outside of geekdom.

So when I see so many of those supposedly self-proclaimed nerds and dorks who openly collect and geek-out about children's toys and cartoons reacting so negatively to the next new thing in Transformers that has even a slightly lighter tone (e.g. - Animated, Rescue Bots, Robots in Disguise 2015, Rescue Bots Academy, Bumblebee, Cyberverse, BotBots, EarthSpark) and isn't some miserable grimdark edgelord "Gritty and Mature" depression-fest (DOTM, Prime, AOE, TLK, Machninima's Prime Wars Trilogy, Netflix's War For Cybertron Trilogy), I see nothing but hypocrisy.

I'm not saying everyone has to like everything, but we should all at least recognize that we're fans of something that is still intended for children, and have no shame about that. If those same naysayers give the super-wacky lighthearted G1 cartoon with all its goofy-voiced Saturday-morning-cartoon characters a pass just because of rose-tinted nostalgia, then I'm calling out the hypocrisy where I see it.

Even Beast Wars lived and breathed Looney Tunes style humor. "The Low Road" wasn't an isolated case of silliness. The whole show made use of Bugs Bunny-styled and Tom & Jerry-styled comedy gags to get around the US networks' broadcast standards and practices for violence in children's television. Even Beast Machines, as dark and mature as that show was, still made occasional lighthearted quips, jokes about sports and music, and even pop culture references. Oh, and Prime had Miko; I shouldn't even have to say anything about how super-wacky she was.

Every time Transformers has produced a show or movie that was uber-dark in tone, it's always, ALWAYS, been a depressing piece of garbage. Like, why would anyone want to watch something so miserable? Where's the fun in that? What kind of inner child just wants to watch the world burn? That's horrible.

Which brings me to the question of "Where's your inner child?" People are saying this movie looks like it's only aimed at kids and has nothing of value for adults, when if you looked past all the jokes (which the director admitted were crammed into the trailer on purpose because of how serious and real the movie gets as it goes on), you'd recognize that this movie is likely going to tackle some serious subjects, like free will, the rights of the oppressed, the social inequities and moral injustices of a class-based caste system, slavery, the amount of power and control that entities of social authority and governance should have over the people, and so on. That's a bunch of stuff that would go right over the heads of little kids.

If we really want to feel "grown up" and "mature", then whining about a children's property making something that isn't Grim & Gritty isn't the way to go about it. This whole attitude of "I DEMAND to be taken SERIOUSLY and that MY children's media be the Transformers equivalent of SIN CITY!!" just reeks of juvenile insecurity. I mean, we like a children's property but not when it's being a children's property? That doesn't make any sense! Are we geeks or aren't we?

Though this isn't a Disney movie, I'm reminded of a quote Walt Disney once said that I feel still applies to this film:
I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty. Call the child "innocence". The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.

Sabrblade wrote:I'm gonna be honest, this happens every single time we get the first reveal of another new show or movie that has a lighter tone, and I'm sick of it.

Transformers is, has been, and always will be a family-friendly property meant to sell childen's playthings to youngsters, first and foremost. And many of us adult fans were once part of that original age group, and we LOVED it when we were that age. We loved it so much that we're still here with it so long after we've aged out of that age group, because no matter how much taller and deeper-voiced we've become on the outside, we're still just a bunch of kids on the inside.

That inner child has stuck with us because we've defied society's peer pressures that have told us to "grow up" because we're "too old for toys/comics/cartoons/etc." And because we've embraced our inner child, we have become what society has come to refer to as "geeks", "nerds", "dorks", "fanatics", "enthusiasts", "afictionados", and so on. And most of those terms were once derogatory, meant to label us as societal outcasts and abnormals. "Freaks", if you will. Yet, as the years have gone by with the growing rise of nerd culture, we "geeks" have come to wear those labels on our sleeves with pride and dignity, having risen past the derision and bullying that were once (and, sadly, still are) common reactions from those outside of geekdom.

So when I see so many of those supposedly self-proclaimed nerds and dorks who openly collect and geek-out about children's toys and cartoons reacting so negatively to the next new thing in Transformers that has even a slightly lighter tone (e.g. - Animated, Rescue Bots, Robots in Disguise 2015, Rescue Bots Academy, Bumblebee, Cyberverse, BotBots, EarthSpark) and isn't some miserable grimdark edgelord "Gritty and Mature" depression-fest (DOTM, Prime, AOE, TLK, Machninima's Prime Wars Trilogy, Netflix's War For Cybertron Trilogy), I see nothing but hypocrisy.

I'm not saying everyone has to like everything, but we should all at least recognize that we're fans of something that is still intended for children, and have no shame about that. If those same naysayers give the super-wacky lighthearted G1 cartoon with all its goofy-voiced Saturday-morning-cartoon characters a pass just because of rose-tinted nostalgia, then I'm calling out the hypocrisy where I see it.

Even Beast Wars lived and breathed Looney Tunes style humor. "The Low Road" wasn't an isolated case of silliness. The whole show made use of Bugs Bunny-styled and Tom & Jerry-styled comedy gags to get around the US networks' broadcast standards and practices for violence in children's television. Even Beast Machines, as dark and mature as that show was, still made occasional lighthearted quips, jokes about sports and music, and even pop culture references. Oh, and Prime had Miko; I shouldn't even have to say anything about how super-wacky she was.

Every time Transformers has produced a show or movie that was uber-dark in tone, it's always, ALWAYS, been a depressing piece of garbage. Like, why would anyone want to watch something so miserable? Where's the fun in that? What kind of inner child just wants to watch the world burn? That's horrible.

Which brings me to the question of "Where's your inner child?" People are saying this movie looks like it's only aimed at kids and has nothing of value for adults, when if you looked past all the jokes (which the director admitted were crammed into the trailer on purpose because of how serious and real the movie gets as it goes on), you'd recognize that this movie is likely going to tackle some serious subjects, like free will, the rights of the oppressed, the social inequities and moral injustices of a class-based caste system, slavery, the amount of power and control that entities of social authority and governance should have over the people, and so on. That's a bunch of stuff that would go right over the heads of little kids.

If we really want to feel "grown up" and "mature", then whining about a children's property making something that isn't Grim & Gritty isn't the way to go about it. This whole attitude of "I DEMAND to be taken SERIOUSLY and that MY children's media be the Transformers equivalent of SIN CITY!!" just reeks of juvenile insecurity. I mean, we like a children's property but not when it's being a children's property? That doesn't make any sense! Are we geeks or aren't we?

Though this isn't a Disney movie, I'm reminded of a quote Walt Disney once said that I feel still applies to this film:
I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty. Call the child "innocence". The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.

Sabrblade wrote:things

Hell yeah, I'm a 45-year-old guy who's been a fan since 1984; in other words, I am a vanishingly small part of Hasbro's market.
I am distinctly not the target demographic for new TF media, and that is absolutely fine.

Hopefully the new stuff will be fun; hopefully it will be well-made; I like when they throw in nods and easter eggs that I can enjoy as a long-time fan. Signs are generally good on all fronts.

Honestly, every time this happens, it sounds like a lot of people in this fandom have never watched anything that didn't have characters constantly punching and shooting each other all the time. And if so, then that's just sad.

I've watched the trailer twice.

Both times I've been left unimpressed. There's a lot about it I don't like.

But it's not for me. And from the comments I've seen here, on Facebook, and on Twitter, it's appealing to a lot of people. So that's fine.

I'll make the effort to see it, it's Transformers, of course I'm going to consume it, and hey, I may end up enjoying it, who knows, I've only seen the trailer and that's a far cry from the entirity of the movie.

My reaction to this has been a bit weird and varied, on one hand, I have that optimistic aspect of my fandom I get excited whenever there's any kind of new media to consume and ultimately absorb. My slightly more negative slant to my point of view is regarding how drastic the vocal characterizations are from both Peter Cullen's and Frank Welker's performances. Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry are great actors, but they sound nothing like what Orion Pax and Megatron should sound like here in this. They lack the familiar hallmark of those characters' voices and it seems the characterizations just frankly, don't match at all.

I think that's the reason why I have a slightly negative slant towards it because I would've preferred some attempt in the voices to sound similar to what would be Peter Cullen's or Frank Welker's vocals for their characters albeit younger sounding. At least the War for Cybertron Netflix series made an earnest attempt at that, which you know...says a lot. Transformers One does not attempt this though, whatsoever.

It's not so much the fact they're changing the origin story yet again. They've done a different origin story more times than I can count already, it's like Optimus Prime dying and coming back to life level of being done and back, a hallmark of the series. It's the voices I have an issue with and why I'm a little less enthusiastic about the film. The characters sound more like the actors voicing them than the character's they're supposed to be and that is honestly terrible. I'll give it a chance, but out of the door here and now we're not off to a great start and it will impact my overall stance on the film.

I don't disagree about the notion of casting celebrities over regular voice actors who do this kind of work for a living. That's always gonna be irksome for fans of voice-over acting.

But, to be fair to Chris Hemsworth's Orion Pax not sounding like Peter Cullen, the original Orion Pax sounded nothing like Peter Cullen either, as he was voiced by Laurie Faso.

I just chuckle at the idea that people actually thought we were going to get the rather grim/serious War For Cybertron/Fall Of Cybertron games but on the big screen for an entire movie.

Video Games are not movies, they typically last for more hours and are aimed at more niche (by comparison) audiences that are usually lone-adults or teenagers unless your like Nintendo which even then doesn't exclusively do kids games.

Movies like these are for a wider audience such as families including children and parents who typically aren't going to relish watching a WFC/FOC movie or otherwise get upset at taking their kids to such things.

The Cybertron games also happened in a past era where games were cheaper to make compared to now, which is part of why we haven't gotten any big video game for a long time and part of why I presume Transformers Online, uh I mean Rise, oh actually I mean Reactivate is currently struggling with it's development.

As silly as the idea is to consider, I don't believe this franchise is exactly big/successful enough to warrant that kind of film as of now, and unless Hasbro/Paramount turn things around that ain't gonna happen any time soon in any of our live times.

anyone remember this from 16 YEARS AGO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN5RkRYsru0&t=333s

Cause thats what we SHOULD be getting

partholon wrote:anyone remember this from 16 YEARS AGO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN5RkRYsru0&t=333s

Cause thats what we SHOULD be getting

No thank you.

Sabrblade wrote:

partholon wrote:anyone remember this from 16 YEARS AGO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN5RkRYsru0&t=333s

Cause thats what we SHOULD be getting

No thank you.

Agreed. I couldn't even finish watching the video. Let alone a film based on that.

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

partholon wrote:anyone remember this from 16 YEARS AGO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN5RkRYsru0&t=333s

Cause thats what we SHOULD be getting

No thank you.

Agreed. I couldn't even finish watching the video. Let alone a film based on that.

A movie based on the IDW Megatron's Origins would be much, much more interesting than this War Within thing.

-Kanrabat- wrote:A movie based on the IDW Megatron's Origins would be much, much more interesting than this War Within thing.

Yes it would. But much like the backpeddling IDW did with it. Some people didn't like the idea of the Autobots being the villains of the story.

And Megatron Origin was originally supposed to be a Dreamwave story related to War Within, before IDW resurrected it and reworked it to fit their continuity better.

It also worked better narratively with IDW than most of Dreamwave's output.

And if we really wanna talk gladiator Megatron origin stories, there's the OG granddaddy of them all: Marvel UK's legendary "State Games" by the one and only James Hill.

From the man himself:

They're all reading a sign.
Pax: "It says... if you can read this, you're a big ugly.... HEY!"

alphatron10 wrote:

muddyjoe wrote:That looks like a big plate of hot garbage and the voices just don't work. This feels too much like those last two cringe-worthy Thor movies.

You mean the Thor movie that is arguably a top-5 movie in the MCU? Ragnarok?

A "top-5 movie in the MCU" is the equivalent of being the smartest kid on the short bus. Ragnarok started ok, but went to slag pretty quick... Tutti-fruity Wattusi is about as crappy a movie-maker as Michael Bay, M. Night-Shama-lama-ding-dong or Rob Zombie.

Sabrblade wrote:I don't disagree about the notion of casting celebrities over regular voice actors who do this kind of work for a living. That's always gonna be irksome for fans of voice-over acting.

But, to be fair to Chris Hemsworth's Orion Pax not sounding like Peter Cullen, the original Orion Pax sounded nothing like Peter Cullen either, as he was voiced by Laurie Faso.

True, I concede on that point. Laurie Faso sounded nothing like Peter Cullen in War Dawn.

Touching on Deadput's point. I don't think I was expecting something on the same level as those games, a 1-to-1 adaptation of them, or even that tie-in novel that was done. I also wasn't expecting the trailer to portray the origin story for Optimus and Megatron like a "buddy comedy" gone off the rails either. I am still cautiously optimistic despite the issues. They aren't deal breakers in so much as just "Okay, this is way different than what we got before." I know both Cullen and Welker are getting older and closer to retirement, so I understand the logistical reasons why they won't or don't want to voice younger versions of their characters. I think both Hemsworth and Henry should have made a more distinct effort to give a performance where you recognize who these characters were or are going to become.

Tyrannacon wrote:I know both Cullen and Welker are getting older and closer to retirement, so I understand the logistical reasons why they won't or don't want to voice younger versions of their characters. I think both Hemsworth and Henry should have made a more distinct effort to give a performance where you recognize who these characters were or are going to become.

To be a little fair to Henry, it's not as if Megatron has really had that much vocal consistency in the past 40 years.

• G1 cartoon: Frank Welker made him sound like a scratchy-throated geezer.
• TFTM (Galvatron): Leonard Nimoy made him sound like, well, an evil Leonard Nimoy.
• G1 cartoon (Galvatron): Frank Welker changed his voice to make him sound like a high-pitched raving madman.
• RID 2001: Daniel Riordan made him sound like a different high-pitched raving madman with a hint of Robert Axelrod's Lord Zedd in his voice.
• Unicron Trilogy: David Kaye made him sound like a grumpier, less charismatic version of Beast Wars Megatron.
• Movies 1-3: Hugo Weaving made him sound like a generic, deep-voiced angry man.
• Animated: Corey Burton made him sound like a grumpy impression of Sir John Hurt.
• Cyber Missions: Tony Gialluca II made him sound like an impression of Hugo Weaving's Megatron.
• WFC/FOC/ROTDS: Fred Tatasciore also made him sound like an impression of Hugo Weaving's Megatron, but a little higher-pitched.
• Prime: No longer able to do the scratchy-throated geezer voice, Welker made him instead sound more like a deeper-voiced Bond villain but with his own occasional bouts of raving madness.
• AOE/TLK: Welker again altered his voice to make him sound deeper but also more robotic and inhuman, more alien, and still very angry.
• Prime Wars Trilogy: Jason Marnocha made him sound like a wonderful impression of the snarky Universal Studios walkaround Megatron character, and even a bit like Bernard Erhard's snarky Cy-Kill from Challenge of the Go-Bots (though, I sure these were both unintentional).
• Cyberverse: Marc Thompson made him sound like a halfway medium between Hugo Weaving's Megatron and Welker's Prime Megatron.
• Netflix WFCT: Jason Marnocha changed his Megatron voice to sound deeper, grumpier, and nowhere near as snarky as before.
• EarthSpark: Rory McCann made him sound a LOT less angry and, well, Scottish.

Conversely, a majority of Optimus Prime's voice actors have been either Peter Cullen, Garry Chalk, or Peter Cullen impressionists (Neil Kaplan, Eric Edwards, Jon Bailey, Jake Foushee, and Hiro Diaz). The only real vocal deviation in Optimus Prime voice actors has come from David Kaye's younger Optimus in Animated and Alan Tudyk's unique Optimus in EarthSpark.