Cliffjumper wrote:TBH, the more I think about Starscream in the second two, the more his competence in the first one looks almost... accidental. A lot of it was rather open to interpretation in the first place - I liked to think the way he flitted in and out of the Mission City battle was down to him not particularly giving a shit if Megatron won or not, but allied to the other two films it looks more like he's rubbish.
That's pretty much the only way to take his characterisation in a consistent way really. It's a slight shame as the plane jumping bit in the first is still one of my favourite moments and probably the best use of transformation in battle in all three films, it'd be nice if it was intentional rather than accidental brilliance on the characters part.
Did Laserbeak make it? I lost track of him a little bit after Bumblebee gatling-gunned the office. If not, I make it about none of them [in terms of guys who've been named in films... No idea if some of the guys in Chicago have toys named after Armada Minicons or whatever].
Laserbeak definately died, IIRC he got his head ripped off didn't he? Oh, and personally the possibly unintentional piss take of stock fembot design (pink!) in his one disguise was brilliant.
That's a fairly brutal clearing of the decks really isn't it?
I'd be interested to see what they do with the films now... They'd have to give it a bit for a reboot. Most cinemagoers have only just acquainted themselves to Transformers, compared to Trek or Bond which've been running for decades.
Yeah, assuming the final totals make another sequel worthwhile and Paramount being keen to keep up the momentum the films have built up I think the smart money would be on a 2014 release for the forth, nice big cross promotional tie in for the Anniversary as they've done successfully with Trek on two occasions (and Eon are about to do for a second time with Bond), and that would be far to soon to completely revamp it.
The films have shown they're unafraid to stray from the old G1 names for a bad guy (Fallen/Sentinel), meaning we could have a bunch of Decepticons arrive led by Bludgeon or Thunderwing or Windrazor or something.
My thinking as well, though I suppose there's nothing to stop them resurrecting Megatron or anyone else they fancy bringing back (Bay's "Rules" about such things for this film aren't likely to be considered by the next director).
The other interesting thing is that largely Sam and Bumblebee were a lot less inseperable than the last two films, as if to say they're independant of each other and Bumblebee seems to want more from his life than living in Sam's garage and maybe paving the way for a fourth film without Lebouef but with Bumblebee; they also handled the absence of Mikaela pretty well.
Yep, the only way I can see Lebouef (or indeed Fox and the chap who plays Lennox) coming back is perhaps as a small hand over cameo, at least in the immediate future. Give it a few years depending on how their careers going and they might do a Vin Dissel and come back for the sixth or seventh film. More likely is the bit players carrying on, people like Morshower or even Simmons.
Like I say, though, I won't be gutted if it ends there, though. Only the naive would think the big budget film nature could lead to a Last Stand/Target/War Without End style story, and that it would be successful. We got three respectable action films out of it that tried a few new things albeit with varying levels of success, and that's not bad considering a decade ago we were looking at the ****ing Energon trilogy and Dreamwave as the future.
I'm torn, on the one hand I'd like to see someone else have a go in the directors chair and try out new things, on the other there's always the danger of franchise fatigue setting in, especially if each film starts making slightly less than its predecessor meaning we get a series of decreasing budgets.
Mind, the success of the first two films alone I think will mean more live action films at some point regardless, even if it's in ten years as a complete and utter reboot. One thing to thank (or curse I suppose if you really hate how things have turned out) Bay for is that he's established
Transformers as a genuine Hollywood franchise, and they rarely stay dead, even if they have long periods of hybernation. And the appeal of it from a franchise perspective is that it's one of the very few film series that isn't dependent on a main cast. All the humans are replaceable, as are the voice actors (Cullen's the only one with enough lines where general audiences might notice the difference, but if they got Kaye or Chalk in how much would it really affect the films?).
Wasn't there some shit about how Silverbolt was meant to be in this, voiced by some guy from Fresh Prince?
I've seen various places claim that, but unless I'm mistaken the only direct source for it is that interview someone posted a while back where, IIRC, he wasn't very specific on what he was doing the voice for, could be a computer game,
Prime or something similar. Though I suppose it'll take a check of the credits to see if he wasn't doing a voice (well, grunting) for a generic Con that might have been called Silverbolt at some point.
Cliffjumper wrote:I think Sentinel might have worked better if he'd struck the deal after being revived - say, he learns that the Decepticons have the rest of the pillars and wants Cybertron back and joins up with them then after realising there's no way Optimus will help him at the cost of the Earth. As it was, I'm not sure quite what the need was for him to go quite so mental - why not just break into the safe at some random point rather than just blowing the shit out of everyone? Great drama, but it didn't make much sense.
That might have helped. IIRC The Vault actually makes it sound like he went crazy after being on the Moon alone for so long and that's what made him evil,if that's taken from an earlier draft they may have been thinking more along those lines at some point. Oh, and Star Trek on TV was cute, the Enterprise gag was tollerable, having him actually quote bits of Khan was a bit much.
As for the Decepticons shooting the Arc down, I think the most likely explanation is the ones firing didn't know about the alliance, if it were a top secret thing. They probably thought they were doing a good job. Shame a line like that couldn't have made the film though.
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