Revenge of the Fallen SPOILER discussion thread - expect SPOILERS inside!

borg72 · Post by **borg72** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:27 pm

Brimstone wrote:Good...'cause it's a crappy poster.

still better than the real one

Springer007 · Post by **Springer007** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:33 pm

Even though I like the "official" one, this one is a bit better in the sense it might draw the audience in at first glance of what the film may be about. Even if it is a fake...

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 7:33 pm

borg72 wrote:still better than the real one

I haven't seen the real one yet, only the teaser poster...which is pretty sweet, I think (for a teaser).

borg72 · Post by **borg72** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 8:26 pm

Brimstone wrote:I haven't seen the real one yet, only the teaser poster...which is pretty sweet, I think (for a teaser).

thats the one i was on about. total waste of paper. does nothing but state the film exists. a child and a marker pen could do that. can you tell marketing gets me angry?

numbat · Post by **numbat** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 10:43 pm

I actually like the teaser poster. It has a sense of dread, and is very dark. It drew me in at the cinema (as many do with such a style). It looks like a symbol, but you the realise it's the head of some archaic machine. Pretty cool...

Plus, with the tag line, it's positively chilling!

Shield Strike · Post by **Shield Strike** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 10:58 pm

borg72 wrote:thats the one i was on about. total waste of paper. does nothing but state the film exists. a child and a marker pen could do that. can you tell marketing gets me angry?

Well what do you want a teaser poster to do? Give detailed spoilers etc? I think its a bit daft to say its a waste of paper when it does exactly what its supposed to, create interest in the film.

S_Windell · Post by **S_Windell** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 2:58 am

TURBO CHARGER wrote:If I am not mistaken he says "Let's get to it." Through the radio after the Allspark shrinks down to size. And Lennox responds with something like "He's right, we can't stay here with Megatron in the other hangar." So yeah, he does have a chance to say something. Unless he just decided for some reason he was going to keep talking through his radio until the Decepticons were defeated.

That was a totally different voice from the one he uses when he legitimately speaks at the end. (Sounds a bit like Tone Loc, actually...)

secretcode · Post by **secretcode** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 1:49 pm

http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-new ... en-166878/

SPOILER! (select to read)
As if there was any doubt, Orci has confirmed Megatron WILL be in RotF.

TURBO CHARGER · Post by **TURBO CHARGER** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:39 am

S_Windell wrote:That was a totally different voice from the one he uses when he legitimately speaks at the end. (Sounds a bit like Tone Loc, actually...)

My point was he had a chance to talk but wasnt able to. He had to use his radio the same way he was using it through the entire movie so far. If his voice was repaired by the Allspark he could have just said it and not used a sound byte from the radio.

borg72 · Post by **borg72** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:59 am

Shield Strike wrote:Well what do you want a teaser poster to do? Give detailed spoilers etc? I think its a bit daft to say its a waste of paper when it does exactly what its supposed to, create interest in the film.

only to existing fans. does nothing to draw in a new crowd - at all - that the name of the movie itself doesn't do.

'revenge is coming' adds nothing to the title revenge of the fallen. we already know its coming, its implied by the fact the movie is, uh, coming.

the glowing eyes might look pretty, but to the casual observer, are just another pair of glowing eyes. someone who doesn't know 'The Fallen' from adam is non the wiser.

Shield Strike · Post by **Shield Strike** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:19 pm

borg72 wrote:only to existing fans. does nothing to draw in a new crowd - at all - that the name of the movie itself doesn't do.

'revenge is coming' adds nothing to the title revenge of the fallen. we already know its coming, its implied by the fact the movie is, uh, coming.

the glowing eyes might look pretty, but to the casual observer, are just another pair of glowing eyes. someone who doesn't know 'The Fallen' from adam is non the wiser.

A teaser poster isn't designed to encourage new viewers to go and see a film really, its designed to say "Look! New film!". Therefore cinema goers who arent massive fans of transformers now know that a new film is on the way. So the next time they see a trailer for ROTF they'll be thinking "Oh yeah, there was a poster for that."

As for your " we already know its coming..." bit, not everybody does know the movie is coming and thats why a teaser poster in needed.

I think you are assuming too much knowledge on the part of the general public. Not everybody wil be trawling the internet looking for info on the new movie, the only way they'll be exposed to ROTF is posters/billboards in their local town and trailers on TV or at the cinema. If you do away with teaser posters and trailers all you are doing is restricting your audience and reducing anticipation.

Word of mouth also goes a long way to promoting a film, someone may see the poster around and say to their friend the next day " Hey, theres a new Transformers film out soon, I saw a poster aound town" or something to that effect.

People don't have to know who every character is and what their motivations are to be interested in going to see a film. The casual cinema goer wont care who The Fallen is before they see the film, all they are interested in is going to see a film with giant fighting robots in it.

borg72 · Post by **borg72** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:45 pm

Shield Strike wrote:A teaser poster isn't designed to encourage new viewers to go and see a film really, its designed to say "Look! New film!".

...

The casual cinema goer wont care who The Fallen is before they see the film, all they are interested in is going to see a film with giant fighting robots in it.

I get what you're saying (and I concede I am being quite harsh), but the poster doesn't even do that. all it says is 'theres a transformers film', and like i said, i dont (personally) consider thats really very much to say at all in a movie teaser poster.

compare it to the first one: a giant robotic eye, over the earth. this actually imparts quite a lot of info;

- there are definately robots
- definately set on earth
- the positioning implies a clandestine observation of the earth below, by the giant robot eye; thus giving some kind of idea, to the uninitiated, of what it might be about.

in this we have:

- its a sequal
- something that happened in the first is being (maybe) referenced (although even then, the 'revenge' isnt implicit that the original action that is being avenged was in the first)
- theres something with glowy eyes (looking at digital renderings makes it unclear to me exactly how much detail you can see in person on the poster, but i'm guessing not enough to be certain that its even a robot, given the generic similarity to HR Gigers work, and Alien(s) as a whole?)
- the glowy eyed thing, being the only thing in the poster, can be assumed to be the thing that is either seeking revenge, or that someone/thing is seeking revenge upon. theres a whole lot of revenge. hey, the word is used twice in the poster; its revengealific!

so it really dosen't tell you as much as a teaser poster might. this absence of information, and the references to past events/sequelness, seems to assume that the intended audience here has seen the first movie.

Its a subtle distinction if that is the case, but it means that they are already limiting their potential audience by (unintentionally) excluding new viewers. again, its a very subtle thing, but it can make all the difference.

I will be fascinated to discuss comparative market data once this film has been released (no, really, i would, i'm a businessnerd like that). I'd be interested to know how many people watching TF 2 never saw TF 1, and other such details. anyone know a good source of film revenue data? along with pre- and post- market research details?

borg72 · Post by **borg72** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:48 pm

uh, doublepost, damn, sorry.

anyhoo, i see i may have been slightly over-eager... the VERY first teaser posters for the first movie were just Autobot/decepticon logos, weren't they? the eye-over-earth was an intermediary before the optimus/megatron face-off posters.

Shield Strike · Post by **Shield Strike** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:20 pm

borg72 wrote:uh, doublepost, damn, sorry.

anyhoo, i see i may have been slightly over-eager... the VERY first teaser posters for the first movie were just Autobot/decepticon logos, weren't they? the eye-over-earth was an intermediary before the optimus/megatron face-off posters.

Maybe, but as you stated exactly which poster you wee referring to we can skip over that, it makes no difference really.

I agree they could have made the glowy eyes person/thing a bit clearer, but maybe they're trying to make people say "oooh whats that?". In all honesty I think the majoity of people would probably just think "yeah, its a glowing eye person, woo..." and not get teribly excited about the fact. As for revenge being used twice in the poster, its obviously a key point to the film and maybe its in there just to make sure you dont forget about revenge, not that any normal person would need the word repeated twice to realise that from the title.

I have to agree with you that the way the poster is constructed leads me to believe that it is targeting people who have seen the first movie or at least know enough about Transformers to take an interest in ROTF.

However as a way to encouage the casual viewer, who perhaps has seen the first movie at the cinema and may own it on dvd, to take an interest in the sequel I feel the poster does ok. They'll see the glowy eyes and assume its a bad guy, red glowy eyes = evil, bad guys + the word "revenge" = fighting (yay!), the connatations of the word "coming" in the tagline "revenge is coming" suggests that it is imminent and will occur soon, possibly conveying a sense of urgency and excitement.

So yeah, calling the poster a waste of paper is a bit harsh. Its not a fantastic teaser poster by any mean but I feel it gets the job done. It lets people know that yes, a sequel is coming and yes, it's full of revenge. And some glowy eyes.

Summerhayes · Post by **Summerhayes** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 6:59 pm

the official poster has a robot with its eyes on fire
the fake poster has explosions and you can see the robots better but the quality is sub par

secretcode · Post by **secretcode** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 3:04 am

EDIT: Nevermind. Wrong thread.

Tramp · Post by **Tramp** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 9:25 pm

Borg, I think you're missing the whole point of a teaser poster. All they are meant to do is draw attention to the fact that the new movie is on its way. That's it. It's not supposed to reveal anything else.

S_Windell · Post by **S_Windell** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 6:26 am

TURBO CHARGER wrote:My point was he had a chance to talk but wasnt able to. He had to use his radio the same way he was using it through the entire movie so far. If his voice was repaired by the Allspark he could have just said it and not used a sound byte from the radio.

Ah! I simply misread.

Summerhayes wrote:the official poster has a robot with its eyes on fire
the fake poster has explosions and you can see the robots better but the quality is sub par

The fake poster couldn't be more phony looking. (And even if it were pro quality, there's something to be said about it containing nothing but publicly available images.)

The teaser poster, I like it! As I said when it was revealed, it's a bit reminiscent of the first movie's teaser, this time using the Decepticon icon rather than the Autobot. (Which is something I was hoping for actually, though they don't really "bookend" as well as I would've thought.)

SPOILER! (select to read)
And, yes, I do know that's the Fallen's face on the new teaser but, c'mon, it's the Decepticon icon!

And I'll echo what others have said- it's just a teaser, not a marquee poster. For that, we could've gotten less. Many teaser posters only have the title logo or something as insignificant.

Summerhayes · Post by **Summerhayes** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 7:23 pm

S_Windell wrote: Many teaser posters only have the title logo or something as insignificant.

True. On the other hand, some teaser posters are awesome. Look at Terminator Salvation, with the terminator face made of damaged city. That is super impressive without giving much away.
For the first film, an autobot logo was enough to get me excited- i was reminded that a transformers movie was coming. Now, though, I think a slightly more exciting poster would have been nice. I knew TF2 was coming as soon as I saw the sales of the first film. The teaser poster is okay, but I can see why people would want more- just something to show why this is worth getting excited about even if you had your fill with the first film

A.D.Rodimus · Post by **A.D.Rodimus** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:19 pm

Well it is official. the list for which robots are in the movie and whos side they are on has been confirmed at this link http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=24517

Interesting to note that they said there could be up to 60 robots in the movie by the time it is ready for release