Transformers: The Last Knight

Its amazing how these movies just rip-off concepts from all over the franchise yet either adds nothing interesting to them or waters them down so much their barely recognizable & have to be told what they are.

God its fucking disappointing how long this shit has lasted.

It's times like this where I love being an nerd from the turn of the millennium. Means that you're an generation older than the current and that you've seen an few reboots here and a few cancellations there. In this case, Transformers relies on the same personalities when it comes to the Autobots in the cartoons.

For the villains? You need one power-hungry, benevolent, leader. One asshole who doesn't know the true burden of leadership. Throw in someone sane enough to keep the operation running. Rank and file: Lunatics and those with an violent criminal record will receive full dental benefits in six weeks...If you live through the season.

So we know the Bumblebee movie is coming soon, right?

We might (MIGHT!) be getting the first trailer on June 5th!

Bump.

I started a thread for the Bumblebee movie.

So if anyone wants to talk more about that movie (whose trailer is coming tomorrow), you can sound out there.

Looking back there is something extremely satisfying about watching Starscream leave the planet in the first movie. It's a shame the later films never had moments like that.

Interesting; if you slow down the clip, you can actually hear Starscream say "It's not over Prime."

Edited by FOFD on Jul 18th 2020 at 11:45:21 AM

Man. I'm a huge Transformers fan and it's telling that I just cannot bother to watch this one. I have access to it for free. But I just cannot be arsed.

It's terrible, but Cogman was actually kind of funny.

Also a really good toy.

I forced myself to watch Age of Extinction and The Last Knight before I watched Bumblebee.

Boy, what a mistake that was. I almost fell asleep during AOE, but I actually ended up liking TLK when I started to view it as an unintentional parody of the films.

Don't get me wrong, it's a horrible movie, but it's hilariously horrible.

TLK is essentially the flanderisation of the series itself instead of the characters.

That is a horrifying statement.

So horrifying I can't exactly comprehend it but I still recognize it as really, really bad.

Really as much as this series is hated, it does have a lot of good concepts. But it fails horrifically in execution for every single one.

In terms of plot, maybe. But technically they're pretty great. The special effects of the robots even in the first movie still look amazing (... even if the actual designs of them are YMMV) and it absolutely earned its nominations for Sound Editing and Mixing.

I would say "bad designs, immaculately executed". I was really impressed with the F/X in 2007, but by the time Revenge of the Fallen came out, the shittiness of the character designs was a liability. Like a review at the time said [and I'm paraphrasing], "You could tell me there are 12 or 46 robots in this movie. I would honestly believe either."

That's part of the reason why people appreciated Bumblebee so much; the Transformers actually had distinctive designs and it was easy to tell them apart. And some of them still had the aesthetics of the earlier films (particularly Shatter and Dropkick), but they stood out from each other thanks to their bright color schemes.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Jul 22nd 2020 at 11:26:28 AM

The best designs are usually the ones that tell the audience their character.

Blackout, for instance, is a big, hulking brute of a Decepticon with the helicopter rotors on his back folded like a cape.

But Starscream needed to be thinner and tall looking to emphasize his weasel and haughty personality, which is why the movie Starscream didn't really stand out from the other Decepticons unlike his animated counterparts. This is why removing the mass shifting aspect of Transformers had several drawbacks.

The best redesign of any Transformers for me was Soundwave from Transformers Prime. Now that's a prime example of doing a radical design of a well established character while still being true to his character that it remains memorable enough for people even to this day. In fact, I like it more than the G1 Design used in the Bumblebee movie.

Edited by Shadao on Jul 22nd 2020 at 11:46:58 AM

I thought that movie Starscream stood out because he had the wings of his jet form making up his shoulders.

The things that stand out the most for Starscream's design in the Bay films are a) his head looks like a bird to me and b) he has the proportions of a Dorito.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Jul 22nd 2020 at 11:58:58 AM

And if you're involved in the toy community, the fact that he has digitigrade legs.

... holy shit the fandom tore itself apart over that.

I totally agree, as most good redesigns should aim for if you're keeping the basic original elements intact. In fact, I could level this philosophy about Prime's character design as a refined take on their Bayverse counterparts in general. It took the Bayverse's idea of avoiding mass shifting and "realistic" complex designs and made them far more focused and readable.

Some of the Bayverse's unorthodox designs I do like conceptually, like a quadruped vacuum combiner with Devastator or the unicycle Arcee triplets, but then they're executed with really unnecessary junk cluttering around (sorry).

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Jul 24th 2020 at 11:08:15 AM

I swear the Arcee triplets is one of the most incredible concepts I’ve seen.

Way more media should use it, it’s a really good concept.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 24th 2020 at 1:12:36 AM

You know, say what you will about Bay's TF films, but I at the very least find the first and third films to be quite entertaining. I'll just let this vid explain why.

Did you seriously bump an old thread to drop a video and leave without explaining its content?

Alright, let me explain. The video is basically going over why the third TF film became such a huge hit, despite the poor critical reviews. He basically says that, no matter his faults, Bay knows how to deliver epic moments that are worth the price of admission, and that his talent even garnered respect from filmmakers like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and Christopher Nolan.

Edited by LDragon2 on May 20th 2021 at 4:39:19 AM

I'm glad there's someone out there that notes these films are allowed to be entertaining, expensive, visual masterpieces without being particularly intellectual, revolutionary films.

Sometimes you just want to watch robots punch each other and not reflect on how this represents modern society, or how this film follows some antiquated narrative structure.

ROTF is still hot garbage, but T1 and DOTM I would give another watch with family and friends.

Edited by FOFD on May 19th 2021 at 8:27:34 AM