This is my first in what will hopefully be a recurring editorial series. This article will focus on a franchises from old movies, cartoons, and comics. I will bring up their rise and drastic fall. With that lets get our feet wet with the first series that BEGS for better things, the Transformers.
The Transformers was created to be the ultimate marketing tool for American kids, mostly aimed towards the young male demographic. Hasbro created a show that was simply made to sell their product, and it worked. The transformers to me is the most profitable toy line next to Barbie and GI Joe. The premise is very simple; GIANT alien robots that can turn into cars, planes, boats, guns, dinosaurs, bugs, and all other things cool. Their are the Autobots, the good guys who are mostly cars fighting the evil Decipticons who are more of the militaristic types involving tanks, jets, trains, construction vehicles, and a cassette player( GO Sound wave). As their popularity grew, Hasbro realized that eventually they would lose profits if they kept selling the same characters, so they decided to make a movie in the late 80's and KILL off a vast amount of their characters(mostly good) and introduce a new line of characters for kids to have their parents go out and buy. It wasn't a really good movie to say but it was edgy considering that it was violent, killed characters and some profanity(Spike says Sh*t in some edits).
As time gone by we had many anime versions, a cgi animal version, and a recent revival with the animated series giving tribute to the old series(Spike voices Megatron, thats awesome) and we had 2 god awful live action movies. This is where the series has hit a bus crash.
The Transformer movies were made by the king of evil himself, Michael Bay, a man who is not only racist, but has no idea how story telling works, how characters interact, and no concept of REALISM. The films were made for the only purpose of making lots of money and giving up story and plot for toys and profit. The latest schlock we got was so god awful it made a mess load of money. It was incoherent, poor written, HORRIBLY ACTED, and down right terrible. Nothing made sense in the film and didn't deserve to be made. With all this said, how can WE....THE FANS of the transformers get great movies that can be fun and engaging to everyone. I will break down each part that could fix this series and bring it back. Let me start with Directing.
Director: first thing first...Michael Bay should never be allowed to make this film series. He has no idea how it works. All he thinks about it as nothing but giant explosions and racism. Bay is nothing more of an attack dog, point and he goes for it, thats all he is good for, he makes films that are bad but make money because he is good and blowing stuff up on screen. For a series like this involving giant robots and a galactic war that has lasted be ages, the best directors I can think of doing this series any justice is either Paul Veerhoven or Jon Turteltaub. Paul is best known for making Robocop and Starship Troopers. Both of these films are satires of corporations(robocop) and military Starship Troopers) but are entertaining and engaging. As for Turtletaub makes good money for Disney and with the upcoming Sorcerers Apprentice, he can handle CGI action films pretty well...Oh another guy who could do this justice is Timur Bekmambetov, the guy behind WANTED. I loved his takes on Night and Day watch so he can handle CGI well also.
Story: This seems to be the hardest thing for the writers to come up with. HOW HARD IS THIS TO MAKE. It's simple, Good robots vs Bad Robots, have them land on earth and interact with humans, the world, destroy places and have an epic battle, the end. However to make it simpler, just make the Pilot episode of the 80's cartoon into a movie, and set it up from their.
Characters: This is pretty obvious, have the main focus be the transformers. The problem with the 2 bad movies is that we follow the human characters WAY more than the cool robots. Also the human element in these movies are pointless, they have no use other than shouting like crazy or doing something stupid. All the autobots and decepiticons are unique and cool, plus they have so many great personalities and recognizable to all of us.
Style: Now this is more or less dictated by production cost. Do we have a total CGI movie like Pixar movies or do we try and do the Live Actions better justice. I would pick a CGI movie but have Pixar doing it, because it would be so awesome and really well done.
And thats all that I can say on this for now. I would love to see these changes be done to this awesome franchise. Im sure many of you have your POV's and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say. My next, if this is a hit, will be Godzilla, not a bad series, but my hopes for the Legendary re imagining. Til next time BlackAirs out!!!