What is Hasbro trying to achieve with this shared movie universe? Their Transformers films are films that the toy-buying target audience can't see and shouldn't see, same with GI Joe 1. Are they going to continue making toy-based movies for people 17 and up (mostly with the minds of 14 and down) and selling product to children?
Onslaught Six wrote:JediTricks wrote:ROM is getting a new series with IDW, so that's never gonna be in the MCU.
Yes, because Hasbro owns him now. Which is the travesty. (Plus, you say "never" right now, but a year and a half ago people said we would "never" see Spiderman in the MCU.) I realize the current arrangement means it's likely to not happen, but my point is that ROM should have never been allowed to fall into Hasbro's IP hands in the first place. (How the hell can Hasbro own ROM but I am literally buying a comic called "Venom: Space Knight?" You know what, forget it, I don't care.)
I can safely say never on ROM in the MCU because there's no real demand, it's a handful of older fanboys and nobody else, not worth prying a character loose from Hasbro's clutches with greased cash. The Venom Space Knight is a loving homage/parody title. The reason Hasbro owns ROM is because Hasbro bought Parker Bros who was the producer of ROM, it's the same way Marvel doesn't own the GI Joe ARAH characters or Transformers characters despite creating their fictions - it was work for pay.
Hell, I was one of them. I'll still defend that movie, too--it may not be an ideal iteration of GI Joe as a franchise, but that movie holds up to technical scrutiny more than any of the Bay TF films, and even its most cringey "humour" is still miles ahead of TF's "let's make masturbation, weed and statutory rape jokes" level. Retaliation is actually even better at this though; of all the Hasbro movies, it damn near approaches respectable.
Technical scrutiny? That first GI Joe was so bad on every level, and that's coming from one of the few defenders of the sequel. Do you mean its in-universe technical stuff or its moviemaking technical stuff? I would deny either, even with Bayformers being the benchmark.
Honestly, my problem with the TF films more and more is less "there are some arguably stupid plot points" and more "the humour is entirely forced and inappropriate in tone." When Tony Stark makes a joke, it is 9/10 funny, relevant to the situation, and appropriate for the tone of the movie.
In IM1, when Pepper first "catches" Tony in the Iron Man suit, he says, "Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing." It's clever, it's appropriate for his character, and most importantly, it aims higher up. Pepper doesn't catch Tony and say, "Oh my God, Tony, are you masturbating?! You know what, we don't have to call it that. We can call it Iron Man's Happy Time." Nobody in the MCU gets high on pot brownies. For all the arguments about how much or how little screen time or character development Black Widow is getting, we never get an intentional upskirt shot of ScarJo, and we never get a scene where Hawkeye and Captain America argue over who gets to rescue her. (That literally happened in TF4 in case you forgot.) We don't see endless shots of military jargon-spouting bullshit and shots of faceless troops mobilizing like it's an Army recruitment commercial. This is the kind of shit that makes me embarassed to like Transformers; that someone sees these things and says, "Oh, that's what you like?"
Well said. I don't think that's the TF films' biggest problem, but it's a biggie (and you highlighted several, none of which are the top of my list, yet they all rate highly as massive flaws).
Actually, that gives me a thought, I'll post at the top.
Actually, a LOT. Most of it are weird connective tissue in action scenes that actually make it clearer what's going on; Firefly actually has a huge part in the final escape scenes that got cut to shit, for example. The other thing is a lot of character building stuff that got axed for reasons I'll never understand--one of the biggest complaints I saw from military nutballs (who always care about useless bullshit like "Lady Jaye technically outranks Roadblock according to the 1985 filecards, why isn't she the leader?") was that Flint has no reprimand for replacing the foreign flag with a GI Joe flag in the opening sequence; the next scene in the extended/original cut is the entire cut bar sequence (which showed up in some trailers and even the finished film's end credits, what the fuck!) where Roadblock literally reprimands Flint for disobeying orders and jeopardizing the mission. The other big cut scene was one in the makeshift base in the gym where Roadblock and Flint argue; Flint thinks Roadblock is going too far and Roadblock is like "I watched everybody die and I'm gonna make President Zartan pay." Which is also more character development for Flint. Without these two scenes, Flint comes off kind of as a cipher in the finished film; he's just another army guy who does stuff.
Ugh, Flint. Casting ruined Flint before any of these cuts. I can see why they'd cut anything to do with him.
It's still by no means perfect, but the added footage only adds up to maybe 10-15 extra minutes in total and really does add to the movie. If the release hadn't been delayed for a year because Avengers (I refuse to believe anything else) and the final theatrical cut had been this one, I think the reception would have been a lot stronger.
They wouldn't pay an exorbitant fee to do post-production 3D conversion and do reshoots just to avoid missing an embarrassing release date. They knew the movie was too much fanservice and not broad enough for general appeal, plus they had this talent in Channing Taters whose name had become huge since the first movie and wanted to exploit it with a few more scenes. The irony is that they would have been fine with fanservice and shouldn't have even worried about keeping OR losing Tatum, Duke could have been in a coma again or off on a different adventure or even captured for part of the film, people who wouldn't have seen it on opening day would have gotten buzz about it being a fan movie and seen it anyway because people are generally sheep now and are hoping to get in on the next big thing.
Dom wrote:The fact you outright forgot about two whole movies kind of exemplifies my biggest complaint about the Marvel movies as a whole. As somebody else said a while ago (either Prowl or O6), the Marvel films have a base level of "not sucking". That is fair. But, they are also not terribly memorable.
Bullspit. I remember clearly most of the MCU: IM, Incredible Hulk (which is becoming more re-absorbed into the MCU with Civil War film), Thor, Cap 1, Avengers, Ant Man, Avengers 2 and Cap 2 (being lesser-than sequels that somehow get a lot of buzz), Thor 2 (which in some ways was better than Thor), Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones. I forgot about IM2 and 3 because ugh, and Guardians because I just didn't really dig it or hate it but it's very disconnected.
The more crass elements of Bayformers are arguably why those movies have been more successful. Bay's single greatest advantage is an ability to identify what a large segment of the audience wants. It arguably says more about movie goers than Bay. (This is a poor defense. But, it is something to consider.)
Not sure that TF is appreciably more deficient in technical terms than the Joe movies. Both, have a few good moments and plenty of bad ones.
Bay's films are hucksterism at its finest, he knows how to make films look massive and epic, he throws in lowest-common-denominator humor and characterization, he uses the same script and character beats every time, and gets away with it by changing settings to fool an audience that has been trained to actively try not to think about their entertainment. The fact that ROTF made that much money proves how bad it is.
That might be a trade-off. Bay gives the military time to shine in return for access. (He is known to have an excellent working relationship with the military. Product placement like the scene where the Air Force mobilizes against Scorponok cannot hurt that dynamic.)
Bay uses jingoism when it sells, always has, but now that China is becoming a significant financial component he's eschewing jingoism for international appeal, even shooting alternate cuts for them.
