DOTM didn't win any "Academy awards",what a surprise,most TF Fans saw this comming a mile away.

 

Hopefully this sends a message to hasbro & micheal bay.

Look back at the history of the Academy Awards. Most times, it's awarded to an obscure film that barely hit anyone's radar. Crap like Fargo or Traffic. I thought they were horrible movies. Yet they won awards.

 

A blockbuster movie like any of the TF movies rarely gets Oscar accolades. If they do, it's some secondary award like SFX or musical score. But I'm sure the directors, producers and studios know this by experience.

Even the Academy thought that Shockwave was a waste of visual effects.

I thought the real surprise was that it was even nominated, for anything. No dig at the movie, just surprised they took anything seriously.

A lot of things make a lot of money. That does not necessarily mean they were worth the money. But that does not really matter.

 

DOTM really did not add anything that the first two movies had not already done visually or otherwise. So though DOTM was nominated it is understandable that it did not win, IMO anyways. Now if DOTM really brought something new (and not just bigger) than it might have.

DOTM made $1,123,746,996 dollars. Academy what?

DOTM made $1,123,746,996 dollars. Academy what?

 

 

No one's expecting the movie to be nominated for Best Picture, it's far away from that, but DOTM was nominated in both sound categories and visual effects and didn't win anything.

Just saying. You could win awards all day but a successful movie is in the money it made. The consumers dictates the real winners, not some hoity toity group of critics.

 

Which is sad considering the video game Bulletstorm sold a million copies as of March 2011. At $60 a pop that equates to $60,000,000 dollars. Even when you pay the development studio of People Can Fly (which is just about 20 people FYI) and probably a fair amount at Epic Games and promotional deals, it's hard to believe that 60 mil can't turn a profit. Regardless it was a game that was received well by both gamers and critics, yet still is revered as a failure just because of the lack of revenue it pulled.

As many others have said, Hasbro and Michael Bay purely measure success in dollar terms. Which is really sad and shallow, but that's the way it is. To both parties, all that matters is making lots of money - from Hasbro's POV all that matters is keeping their shareholders happy. It's all marketing over art and taking any pride in their work to consistently produce quality product.

 

Bay doesn't care about the fact that DotM has low story substance and plot holes big enough to sail the Titanic through. All he cares about is how much money it made. Hasbro continues to support Bay because is IS very good at getting bums on seats in cinemas and generating truckloads of box office sales. I like the way one critic described ROTF and DOTM -- it's like dangling keys in front of a baby. The baby is enthralled and delighted by the dangling keys at first - but after a while, it soon tires of it; the entertainment value is shallow and lacks long term engagement. The same can be said of ROTF and DOTM... I'll admit it, when I first saw these films in the cinemas I quite enjoyed them and I walked away from these films feeling buzzed. But when I watched them for the second time in cinemas, the buzz wasn't quite as high as the first time. The buzz has dwindled since to the point where I really don't feel the hype that I did when I first saw it. This is so different from watching say the original Star Wars Trilogy where I still get the same thrill when I watch these movies again and again, even though I've seen them for as long as I can remember. In fact, multiple viewings of these movies helped me to understand and appreciate the story even more -- hence the joy of owning the movies on home video format. But when I watch the Transformer movies I don't walk away with a deeper understanding or enhanced appreciation of what I got from the first time I watched it. At best I might notice a few minor things here and there that I didn't notice the first time, but nothing really significant. In fact, Star Wars has been widely studied as a film text by school students, but I would be surprised if any education board prescribed Revenge of the Fallen or Dark of the Moon as a text for senior high school students to analyse. At no point does Bay seem to deeply care about his ART -- i.e. using film medium as a means of telling a STORY.

 

Hasbro doesn't care either. The DOTM hype has really died down now, yet we have NO Mirage figure and the already produced moulds for Quejack, Soundwave and Leadfoot aren't being used by Hasbro - thankfully for me I was in Japan earlier this year so I was able to get them for myself - but I'm still jolly frustrated that Hasbro won't be releasing them and nobody's gonna get Mirage. :( :( Even if we get these figures later on in some "Generations" line later this year or next year... it's too late. These figures should have been released when the DOTM movie hype was buzzing - strike while the iron's hot - not when it's stone cold. If Hasbro does release these toys later, a lot of kids aren't gonna care about DOTM anymore. Yet Hasbro's more than happy to released more and more and more BUMBLEBEE and OPTIMUS PRIME repaints! We've had dozens of DOTM Bumblebees and Optimus Primes but NO Wheeljack, Soundwave, or Mirage (and the only Leadfoot we got was a Legion Class). *massive.sigh* But from Hasbro's POV the DOTM has already proven very profitable for them -- they've already made lots of money from this line, so at this late stage there's no real financial business incentive for them to release these toys. They pumped out lots of Bumblebee and Optimus Primes instead to make quick and easy sales from them -- and when I say profit and sales, I mean that retailers have purchased these toys. I walked into my local Kmart earlier today -- pegs and shelves are still overflowing with shelfwarming and pegwarming DOTM figures from >>>November!!<<< They've been gathering dust for 1/3 of a year now! :o And of course as a result retailers aren't keen on restocking with new TF product until these things move... which they won't any time soon. Consequently Hasbro AU decided to completely skip TF Prime First Edition and only recently has TRU started stocking TF Prime Robots In Disguise (and I think only a few days ago people started sighting them at other stores - but currently few and far between).

 

So it's a rather short-sighted policy -- only caring about getting the stock out of warehouses and distribution centres and into the hands of retailers... but not really caring if the stock shelfwarms (or what retailers call "dead stock") which in turn leads to a decline in retailer orders. *sigh*

 

Both Bay and Hasbro need greater vision and scope. I wish they would understand that if they make quality products that consumers will love (not just fancy "dangling car keys" that will appease consumers in the short term) then it will make them even more money in the long term. Think of it this way, when you see a lacklustre toy, like say Combiner Class Devastator, a lot of people think, "Eewww, I'm not buying that." When they release a really good product, like say a lot of the Classicsverse figures, people are more like, "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY!!" <---this is the reaction you want from consumers. Needless to say the same goes for films too (e.g. Harry Potter).

 

But I wouldn't hold my breath for any real change. I predict that Hasbro and Bay won't make any fundamental changes for the next film and its related toy line -- Bay will churn out a visual spectacle that will attract a lot of people into cinemas and Hasbro will churn out lots of toys - lots of Bumblebees that people won't buy - make a motza off retailers who will suffer with shelfwarmers... and that's it.

 

Man I wish I could predict the outcome of horse races with such accuracy (alas I cannot :()

Money makes the world go round. It might be sad, but it's true. Who cares about everything else where you have money?

 

*Not my personal view*