tile_mcgillus wrote:I think you are trying to be a realist. However, It seem more like a case of lowered expectations.
It's my response to people saying the Transformers movie seemed like a 2 hour toy commercial, which is apparently bad in their opinion. I personally don't feel that way. I was actually very surprised at how seriously the movie folks took the Transformers franchise. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and if that's what a 2 hour toy commercial looks like, then sign me right up for #2 and #3. I'm game for another 4 hours of toy commercials if that's what people want to call them.
I believe I'm looking at the facts that time has ultimately revealed about the Transformers brand. I think the movie folks went beyond the call of duty and did far more with the Transformers brand than I ever expected anyone to do. If the movie experience from the past 4.5 years has done anything to my thought process about the Transformers ... it's opened my eyes to looking at the Transformers brand as a business process. With every decision the powers-that-be make with this brand, I try to ponder why they made that decision. It certainly is never to piss us off, which many fans would have you believe. There's always a reason and I find myself wondering more and more about the real-world business decisions that drive this hobby more than wishing that someone would treat Transformers like Star Wars.
Maybe it's because I've met or know so many official people in the hobby so it's difficult for me not to think like that. Instead of wondering why IDW or Dreamworks or Hasbro made a decision to do something a certain way like I did a few years ago, I now ponder things like "wow, I wonder who was in the meeting where that was decided" or "I wonder why Robby Musso used that approach to tell this part of the story" or envisioning Tom and Don pitching the movie to Hollywood or Brian Goldner in a meeting with Michael Bay discussing this or that decision about the movie or Aaron Archer and his crew at Hasbro talking about the next series or pitching their new ideas to their bosses or picturing the Activision guys discussing parts of the game development process at their offices. The more people I meet, the more fascinated I become with the actual process behind this brand.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Transformers on that huge epic Star Wars scale. But that's not the formula that has made Transformers work for the past 23 years. So I guess I am being a realist. I don't consider that lowering my expectations. Transformers is a toy line. It will always be a toy line. Everything about the Transformers will ultimately be geared toward maintaining and/or increasing product sales related to the Transformers brand.
It is what it is. And that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing.
