Sparky Prime wrote:JediTricks wrote:I cannot think of another significant action/adventure movie this vapid with its protagonist.
There are plenty of movies with these types of characters. How about Danny Madigan in "Last Action Hero"? Itself a movie that points out how ridiculously over the top action movies can be, even for people that have training by the way. And then there's Helen Tasker in "True Lies". Or John Conner in any Terminator movies aside from 'Salvation'. Barbara Wilson (Batgirl) in "Batman and Robin". Anakin Skywalker in "The Phantom Menence". Sure he has his pod racing experience and is strong with the Force, but with out any Jedi training or starfighter experience he gets
extremely lucky during the final fight of the film. Heck, even Jar Jar Binks who is inexplicably named general of the Gungan army despite having zero experience or skill
bumbles his way through the battle. Luke Skywalker in "A New Hope" is awfully lucky having only a few lessons from Obi Wan and little pilot experience. And unless political school on Naboo involves combat training, I doubt Padme would really know what to do in a combat situation, yet she seems capable of handling herself. Even something like Spider-Man, still being so new to his powers, I doubt he'd realistically be that effective at crime fighting right off the bat.
Really swinging for the fences with some of those examples.
- Last Action Hero was garbage, it's a bad movie, it's not a significant one (I know, I paid to see it in the theater), but IIRC, Danny (who is the sidekick, not the protagonist) has the knowledge of cinema to give him an edge.
- Helen Tasker in True Lies is being guided and coached by professional spies (at first she doesn't know it), really all she does on her own is get out of the way of major action and at one point throw a punch, the rest she's helped by Harry - such as escaping the limo.
- John Connor explains early in T2 that his whole life has been his mother training him for the coming apocalypse in survival, defense, strategy, and so forth.
- Ugh, really, Batman & Robin's version of Batgirl, we're going to dig that deep into the trash can? I cannot remember anything redeeming about her or that movie, but it is significant only in being expensively terrible.
- Baby Anakin Skywalker's luck is very bad, The Phantom Menace itself is a pretty miserable piece of crap movie in part for stuff like that, but Lucas actually didn't write Anakin to be so damned lucky, the script has lines to explain that he actually is making choices like the spinning trick based on his piloting skills. He's still lucky, but there's less of it. Why Lucas had those lines tossed (and I am pretty sure they were shot and edited out) I couldn't say.
- Jar Jar is another character that really doesn't help your argument, he's considered one of the worst pieces of shit in cinema, so to bolster your argument for Sam with that seems like arguing that horse turds aren't so bad because elephant turds are worse. Anyway, Jar Jar 100% lucks and bumbles his way through the film, there's no excuse for it except that, again, the movie is bad, but he's a Representative and a General pretty much because he was able to bring the 2 cultures together, and nobody I guess noticed that his battlefield successes were all goofs.
- We don't see how much training Luke gets, we don't know how long that journey aboard the Falcon is, but he's given broad strokes and uses them, it's not like we see Luke being a great Force user in the end of the film or the beginning of Empire Strikes Back -- Luke uses the Force to feel the right shot at the Death Star just as Obi-Wan taught him to use those feelings against the remote on the Falcon, but the rest of his Force skills come after he's trained for an unknown amount of time with Yoda in ESB.
- Padme's battle skills are mentioned as training from Captain Panaka, I don't remember if that's in the final cut of the movie or in the script and secondary elements, but I vaguely remember it from the film. It's thin, but it was always intended. And again, she's not a great movie character, TPM = sucks.
There are plenty of bad movies out there, and they are not all big budget corporate movies at that.
Yeah, but the ones that aren't backed by big corporate budgets and fall into that territory generally end up straight-to-video or straight-to-SyFy-Saturdays.
Anyway, I agree with you he's not that well written of a character and he's very shallow as he only one thing on his mind in the first movie, but there is a bit more too him than I think you're giving credit for. Such as, he does show some drive to be successful in school. He did have to get the grades in order for his parents to help him afford the car (as I recall Sam had to pay half, which I doubt he got all of just by peddling family heirlooms) and he was able to somehow get into an Ivy League College on his own merits.
He did have to pay for part of the car, they never even hinted at him having a job, and they did say he was already selling heirlooms when we get to the glasses among other things. The college thing I think someone else explains in the thread was from the government, and his grades were only supposed to be half-good, and he basically had to beg the teacher into giving him a pass there (which says nothing good about his teacher).
The Fallen could just as easily have wanted that Star Harvester power for his personal use, or to destroy the planet which wronged him before, or to start anew on a different world he could populate himself. Then again, nothing in ROTF made any damned sense anyway, and lots contradicted the first movie.
The Fallen didn't care about Earth. He intended on destroying it either way by harvesting the Sun's energy. Granted the movie wasn't that clear on what he intended to do with that energy, but what else would he do with it at that point? He was already said to be the most powerful in the Dynasty of Primes, and the only thing he feared was another Prime killing him. And the Decepticons really didn't show any interest in making another planet their home. Otherwise why not just conquer Earth? They seemed to have the resources for that already. They'd mentioned Megatron wanted the Allspark for conquest in the first place, but really all we saw was them trying to do was restore Cybertron.
They weren't remotely clear in the film what he wanted to do with that energy, but they made it clear that by using the harvester he'd be destroying the planet.
Onslaught Six wrote:There are 7 billion humans on the planet, the Decepticons think of them as insects, does it really seem likely that they're going to be able to track ONE guy down while hiding and running, and with no true gain gathered from the action should they succeed?
They did it pretty damn well in the second movie.
They did it so well that one has to entirely discount it. Apparently they seeded Alice into that college BEFORE Sam gets there on the assumption that Sam actually will show up, and that he'd end up in her specific dorm, and that if he did end up in her dorm that he'd be interested in her, and that if he were interested in her that she could seduce him, and if he were interested and she seduced him that she'd be able to then extract the Cybertronian knowledge he had in his brain, although that of course also assumed that the Decepticons knew that AFTER Sam started packing for college that he'd end up being struck by the shard of the Allspark and that it'd affect him in that way, even though nobody actually knew the shard existed, so they must have been tracking him for revenge alone, but if they were able to find out so much about his plans they probably had a 'Con close enough to his personal life to have just killed him at any point before ROTF even started. And the Decepticons had to pull that all off while running and hiding from the Autobots and humans. What a stupid scenario. May as well chalk it up to an evil wizard.
THAT was really dumb, and I chalk that up more to Michael Bayifying the second film's script more than anything else.
I'm no expert on Bay films, having stomached only a few, but I cannot remember anything remotely like that in his previous films. He's more direct usually IMO, I suspect that was Ehren Kreuger or Orctzman (I can see it being Orci / Kurtzman based on some of the more ridiculous bullshit they crammed into the later portions of Hercules, Xena, and Alias).
"My dad said bring home 3 As and $2000. I got the $2000 and I got two As." Sam says this to his teacher giving him a B-. Sam obviously got the $2000 from somewhere, and at the beginning of the movie it's clear he hasn't sold even a fraction of the crap he's got from his family, so if you ask me he probably had a part-time job somewhere.
They showed no sign of him having a job, and I don't remember the film showing that he hadn't sold a fraction of the crap he was selling, but even if that were the case, for all we know it was just as likely from his bar-mitzvah money and he sold his Nintendo and conned his neighbors.
I still don't know why since all Prime did was punch the shit out of him and Mortal Kombat Fatality him. (Although some of the adaptations take care of that nicely, like the ones where Prime 'opens up a black hole and throws The Fallen into it.')
So nobody else could pick up The Fallen except Optimus, then? That's not a better fix!
Sparky Prime wrote:There is no reason for anyone to go to Cybertron in any of the movies, everything they're fighting for has been on Earth. As such there is absolutely nothing to indicate the habitability of Cybertron. They can survive in the vacuum of space for crying out loud.
The beginning of the first movie makes a clear statement as to Cybertron's habitability, and then the rest of the film Optimus brings it up including at the end. Why Cybertron is no longer habitable to them however is left unclear, but he says it is so it is, I guess they need more than barren rock to survive -- not that the moronic movies would bring up something like fighting over needed energy sources though, they leave that to 20-year-old children's shows which they claim are beneath them yet outthought them on a shoestring budget and told far more compelling and cohesive tales.
And again, the other movies make it apparent the Decepticons still believe they can rebuild Cybertron even with out the Allspark.
I don't remember anything of the sort in ROTF.
o6 wrote:Or at least you believe they would! It's interesting to note that in the films themselves, we never actually see an Autobot save a human that they don't already know. Prime tells the Autobots not to hurt the Sector Seven dudes in the first movie, but after that the only interaction with humans who aren't central characters seems to be when the Autobots are 'threatening terrorists' for a few seconds in DOTM.
Seriously, through the entire movie trilogy, no Autobot goes out of his way to save a human that isn't Sam, Mikaela/Carly, any other human character they interact heavily with (Simmons, Leo, etc.) or an Army/NEST guy. Not once!
Damn, that's true, they barely go out of their way to save the humans - look at the people in that shop in Shanghai! The first movie they cursorily attempt to show the Autobots saving people, but it's pretty thin.
and then just happened to have Grindor pick up the car that Sam and his friends were in
Oh snap, I forgot about that piece of miracle-tracking!
Sparky wrote:Yes, Optimus calls Earth a new home, but that's the thing... Why don't the Autobots even try to rebuild Cybertron without the Allspark? If the Decepticons of all Cybertronians still have hope and are actively trying to revive their home planet, why aren't the Autobots? It doesn't cast the Autobots in a good light for giving up so easily on their home planet while the BAD GUYS haven't (albeit through plots that would sacrifice another planet).
Well, we're not even clear on what's wrong with Cybertron, maybe the planet doesn't generate heat or energy anymore, or maybe the other robots who lived there are what OP is talking about and they can't merely rebuild them. Maybe Megatron pulled them all apart the way he did Jazz, and without the Allspark, the planet's inhabitants are what can't be revived.
No there isn't. Not when he goes after Uncle Ben's killer.
No, there is much more to it than that. First there is a fairly lengthy car chase scene, involving Spidey really webslinging for the first time, plus avoiding road hazards and gun shots until he gets the guy to crash into a gate. Then he sneaks around a warehouse until he finally confronts the guy. Not to mention slipping out with out police seeing him. For a guy who isn't even used to his powers yet, that's a feat.
Yeah, but it's not like he's super awesome at it, he does a few basic moves (which he had been shown practicing earlier) to get to Uncle Ben's Olds, he's shown not being terribly great at swinging in the scenes, using anger to push past the mistakes he makes, and then from there he uses the most basic moves to freak the guy out, only to have him accidentally kill himself, which isn't how Peter seems to want it to go down, showing he's not ready for prime-time as a superhero yet.
o6 wrote:Incidentally, Peter's motivation for going to the wrestling match in the film is to get some cash so he can buy a car and impress the girl, which is pretty much Sam's whole motivation at the beginning of TF1!
The only difference is that Peter is willing to work for his money!
Sparky wrote:Fact is, the Autobots make it their top priority and put their lives on the line to protect humans in the movie franchise as well. Optimus makes several speeches about it, in-particular during the first movie when Ironhide questions Optimus about protecting humans.
Talk is cheap, we don't see the Autobots trying to contain the Decepticons' attacks away from the population in "Mission city", aside from Ironhide's flip which could have incinerated that woman for all he knew. And look at Optimus saving Sam from falling off that building, Sam is falling AFTER the chopper, Prime doesn't make any pretense to save the guys in the chopper that might have survived that shot NOR the people in the office buildings around there, he just goes after Sam and the Allspark, and the rest of the humans eat it in the face for all he cares. Hell, the Autobots don't even
help fighting Blackout after Sam is out of the picture! And the little fighting Ironhide does with Blackout involves putting EVERYBODY at greater risk!
o6 wrote:They also sent Alice, and once they had Megatron back, they didn't have all that much problem finding him.
Evil wizardry, remember?
Sparky wrote:The Matrix is shown to bring Optimus back to life, and restore Sentinel, just like the Allspark was capable of.
Then again, unlike the Allspark, while it's reviving Optimus it also brings Sam back to life, and it's part of the power system for the Harvester, so it's not really consistently the same.
Then why do they still put their lives on the line to save the human race in DOTM *after* they were asked to leave?
It turns out to save their own asses, once The Fallen comes on the scene they either fight or die.
If Shia LaBeouf doesn't return for the next film, as he has been saying, they'll just cast someone else for a new main character. The movies can and will carry on with out Sam. He's not *that* important that he has to be in it.
Kinda makes you wonder, if that's the case, then WHY THE FUCK DID WE HAVE TO WATCH 9 HOURS OF THE LITTLE DOUCHEBAG?!?
He's so important to telling a Transformers movie that we have 3 movies about him first and foremost, and then it turns out he's also entirely disposable once a 4th movie rolls along? Yeah, just proves to me how fucked up the priorities are of the people making these movies.
They didn't send Alice until Wheelie signaled he detected the Allspark fragment.
Then how was she already situated in the exact right place well ahead of time when Sam arrives? It's a thought-hole.
Sparky wrote:Oh, it's soooo terrible they help fight terrorists and put their own lives on the line to save the Earth and the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE from enslavement or death at the hands of the Decepticons. Yeah, not heroic at all.
It's not the same, we don't see them saving individuals, they would have fought the Decepticons on ANY planet regardless whether or not it was inhabited. If the Allspark had landed on Mars instead of Earth, the Autobots would have fought the Decepticons there instead.
Maybe you're right. I guess I should pay more attention to the dialogue in Michael Bay movies.
That certainly would make this argument less tedious.
Perhaps, but it'd make LIFE more tedious.
Then why is the Decepticons plan in DOTM to use humans as slave labor to rebuild Cybertron?
Damn I am so glad I stuck to my guns and avoided seeing that movie.
The civil war is to blame for the state Cybertron is in, not just the Decepticons.
Ouch, doesn't paint the Autobots in a very heroic light. You're right too, but it makes the Autobots' claims self-serving, they are nearly as bad as the Decepticons, they want to repair their world in their image. If not for Optimus Prime telling Sam to jam the Allspark into his chest to destroy it, the Autobots wouldn't have a shred of nobility about their actions in this situation -- they leave Bumblebee to twist in the wind, they barely give a shit about Jazz being torn in 2, they have no compunction about destroying the humans' property to enact their goals. Christ, that's depressing, I'm glad I'm at the end of my post finally, that makes me dislike these movies even more.