Kurona wrote:Oh true, characters are certainly important and AoE making its Autobot cast stand out a lot more compared to the previous movies was certainly an improvement - while action should be prioritised, one should also make an effort to have the characters stand out a little and be enjoyable and likeable. Nothing groundbreaking or full of depth; but just someone that you might be able to relate to on some small level and someone who you're rooting for when they're taking the fight to the bad guys. So you can certainly criticise these movies for not having likeable, enjoyable characters if that's how you feel (it's personally how I feel; I find Optimus in these movies to be an extremely unlikable character for instance - but that's not the point I'm making here and I won't bore you all by going into why).
What I was getting at is that a lot of people seem to criticise the movie for having plots and characters that lack depth. But, as I keep saying, that's generally how action movies work best. It's not where you look for your deeply impactful stories or something that will re-define cinema for generations or have characters the like of which you've never seen before. I mean hey, maybe these movies do do that for you; I dunno. If they do, all the power to you! But for those complaining that they don't... this is a summer action blockbuster. You go in, you have fun, you get out. That's generally the point, so I don't see much worth in complaining that the first movie's story was simple or that Hound doesn't have a deeply developed backstory. One of the few points I'll agree with Bay on is that ROTF having an overly-complex mythos was a detriment because it's distracting from what should be the focus; the action.
I like Optimus in the movies it's a different take on the character without being too far off although like many others the "Give me your face!" line was a bit jarring but I just chalk that up to bad writing due to the writers strike Optimus has not said anything as extreme since besides the "I'll kill you!" line he says to a random drone in Aoe which I can ignore a bit since saying you'll kill someone doesn't necessarily mean their blood thirsty.
A problem I think many people have is that they expect the same amount of story (or lack of), personality and lodes and lodes of characters of a 50 or more episode cartoon compressed into a two hour or longer movie.
Unless you keep with a small cast of characters like Aoe or Movie 1 there isn't going to be enough time or budget to concentrate on every specific character while moving the plot forward.
Also people keep thinking that human characters and Transformers are something to be judge separately and although it's easy to fall into that mindset human characters are still an important part of the Transformers franchise and there are main human characters with the Transformers.
For example main characters of movie 1: Sam, Mikaela, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Lennox and Megatron(ish) most movies only have about 2 to 5 main character and as much as we love all the other Transformers most of them have to be side characters in the context of a movie.
Same with the G1 cartoon most of the Autobots were not main characters with the exception of thier spotlight episodes which not even everyone got (Where were Sideswipe, Prowl or Skywarp's) with the human Spike being more important then most of them since he was one of the main characters.
Edit: Just wanted to say that at least when Bay or a script writer (They exist too not all the blame should be on Bay) make a mistake they almost never repeat them for example no Wheelie humping or Devastators wrecking balls in later sequels.
