[jeffafa]

Overall opinion of the movies:
My feelings for what it has done for the hobby:
This is a toy line that has lasted almost 30 years now. The movies have to have brought in enough fans to keep the line going for a lot longer.

[Jason X]

jeffafa, on 23 March 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

Overall opinion of the movies:
My feelings for what it has done for the hobby:
This is a toy line that has lasted almost 30 years now. The movies have to have brought in enough fans to keep the line going for a lot longer.

That's about all I'd have to say on the subject. Well put.

[Lord Atmo]

i can agree to that. The movies raised the bar for future toylines (Even Animated!) and paved the way to better tv shows (prime!)

on their own, they were plot hole swiss cheeses with faltering character designs that sometimes didnt do their previous incarnations justice. And the human leads were bad...REALLY bad.....

[W13]

I'm personally glad that thanks to the movies (which I thought were good), the franchise has been put in the limelight. So, hopefully it'll keep going and not become stale.

[Shadowpanther]

Lord Atmo, on 26 March 2012 - 10:44 AM, said:

i can agree to that. The movies raised the bar for future toylines (Even Animated!) and paved the way to better tv shows (prime!)

IMHO,The animated toy line was inferior to previous TF toy lines like AEC,Rid,classics & the 2007 Movie toys.

I can agree that the TF Prime toys are raising the bar & are decently designed TF toys but the Animated toys were awful.

Most animated toys looked & felt like highly stylized hasbro/play school Go-Bots toys. they were either too toddler looking in sculpts or they were badly mis-proportioned TF toys. most head sculpts had toddler friendly simplistic smiley faces or frowns.

Lord Atmo, on 26 March 2012 - 10:44 AM, said:

on their own, they were plot hole swiss cheeses with faltering character designs that sometimes didnt do their previous incarnations justice. And the human leads were bad...REALLY bad.....

I agree 100% here... The main problem I saw was as follows: the actors who had talent & huge acting resumes were reduced to back ground characters. while the actors/actresses who had no talent & short acting resumes were given the star core leads.

As far as story goes,it might have been decently written in the first draft. but micheal bay ordered re-writes to add in all his sick twisted humor. like potty/toilet humor,perverted/stoned parents humor. stero type humor,rascist humor.

It's a well known fact due to shia le bouf's one dimensional acting skill which is grammar school/middle school humor. all three TF movies got written tailored to shia le bouf awful/amateur infantile comedy acting skills.

Another problem is hasbro approaches the TF francise as a "all ages" media/viewership. meaning we get everthing thrown into one huge pot pie. we get toddler humor,highschool humor,adult humor,senior citizen humor etc...

This post has been edited by Shadowpanther: 25 April 2012 - 10:26 PM

[Jason X]

John 14:6, on 26 April 2012 - 10:20 AM, said:

For all the complaints of plot holes, I have yet to hear a large one that can't be easily explained...

For those as commited to whining as some of these guys are no explanation would ever be good enough. They had their minds made up long before the movies debuted.

[ShellformerV1]

The Bayverse films and toylines alternated between bright promise and utter disappointment.

The movies and toys introduced some killer ideas: insectoid, multi-and-uni-legged construction vehicle colossi and wheelsnakes. As a whole, I can't really find fault with most of what has been released stateside. As for the movies..? I've gone on and on about the movies. The first movie was an effective and enjoyable--if somewhat puerile--kickoff point, and DOTM was the TF movie I have always wanted to see. The movie I will refuse to name that occupied the middle slot, however, was unadulterated...well, pick an expletive. Trust me. It'll fit. From a filmmaking standpoint, I'd have a harder time finding the good (the forest fight scene, most of the scenes involving Ravage, most of the scenes where the humans were absent) than identifying the bad. It didn't know its own continuity, and the jump cuts and haphazard editing made me feel like I was having a seizure or came down with tourette's or something.

If that horrid monkey in the middle had been at least decent,it would have tied the series together better. As it is, it's broadly like comparing Jaws: The Revenge or Jaws 3D to the first Jaws movie. There is no comparison, and the films somewhat feel as those they are not even in the same continuity. I still feel that Michael Bay wanted to kill my ass with that movie. I will say this, though, to be fair: the first movie started off with a fair amount of promise (great designs, memorable fight scenes, the initial strike by Blackout is so strong that I feel this is a necessary starting off point for any TF story, Shia and Turturro were at their best, good performances from Duhamel and Gibson in particular and a decent story that provided a considerable amount of wiggle room to tell a 3-part story), and DOTM ended the trilogy in grand fashion. My only real complaint is the treatment of Megatron. In all other respects, I feel that DOTM is one of the strongest action films of the last 20 years.

Leonard Nimoys' treatment of Sentinel Prime was so potent that it made me pregnant.

Twice.

[Lord Atmo]

That's just it. The toys had potential for great ideas and innovation...Yet so often, they were horribly executed. Rampage much? And Demolishor wasn't too great himself...

[Shadowpanther]

Lord Atmo, on 04 May 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

That's just it. The toys had potential for great ideas and innovation...Yet so often, they were horribly executed. Rampage much? And Demolishor wasn't too great himself...

My main problems with the movie verse toys were Two main key factors. (1) the robot heads were so ugly. the robot heads needed to be more cute & kid friendly. (2) the mangled/distorted arms/legs looked awful,were hard to pose in decent poses & some were extremly loose in the moving joints.

[ShellformerV1]

See, I'm the opposite. I thought the designs were well executed, with some elements that either have become--or should definitely be--canon. I don't know how "realistic" the designs were, as various structural elements are doing things that metal/plastic should not be able to do under the banner of "realism," but then again this entire exercise is all about the suspension of belief. And some of these toys are spectacular from an articulation standpoint. I mean, what can't you do with ROTF Mixmaster, for instance? Now, the movie did tend to give the Decepticons much more of an insectoid feel than the Autobots proper, but when hasn't a franchise of any sort overcompensated for its stable of villains?