USA Today Article on Transformers Movie, Sequel and Fan Influence

Way to go, Boss Man!!

"It's not like we need to go out and have that expense again of 'How does Optimus Prime transform?' with 10,000 moving parts," he says. "So in the future that expense doesn't have to be prohibitive."

I'm not really sure I understand what they're talking about in the part I just copypasta'd above. Wouldn't a simple solution be, I don't know, NOT having so many moving parts?

Post you Transformers you would like to see in the next film here!

Mine:Prime, Ironhide, Hound, Dinobots, Cliffjumper, Hot Rod, and Inferno or Bluestreak or Sunstreaker

Megatron or Galvatron, Starscream, Astrotrain, Ravage, Soundwave, Shrapnel, Constructicons, and Shockwave

1337W422102 wrote:Way to go, Boss Man!!

"It's not like we need to go out and have that expense again of 'How does Optimus Prime transform?' with 10,000 moving parts," he says. "So in the future that expense doesn't have to be prohibitive."

I'm not really sure I understand what they're talking about in the part I just copypasta'd above. Wouldn't a simple solution be, I don't know, NOT having so many moving parts?

Basically, they had to pay the computer graphics people for extra time in trying to design the Optimus Prime CGI model. Trying to figure out how to make him transform must have taken a while.

Now that they have the model built, they can just copy it for the next film. Save time, save money.

Listening to the fans is a double edged sword. One guy is sensible enough to want more characters like Jetfire, another loon wants Pretenders.

I think the human bits were necessary here. But now that the introductions are out of the way, shift to the robots. And please do SOMETHING with Starscream.

One thing that I said to Anthony at USA Today when he interviewed me on Monday was this: "You have to have the humans in the story. If you take out the humans, what's the point of having 'robots in disguise'?" One of the things I really liked about the movie is that they really played up the "hiding in plain sight" aspect of the Transformers. That's something we really haven't seen since the very beginning of the Transformers ... it's an aspect that I've felt got lost somewhere down the road and it was really great to see the movie folks embrace that so much.

I pray to all that is holy that we the fans have a bigger say in the next movie.

My recommendations:

- Ditch the reams of bad one-liners.
- You have a handful of undeveloped Transformers on your hands. Learn from Beast Wars -- develop them before you pile in new characters.
- Ask people off the street what their fondest memories of Transformers are -- not the "fandom". Particularly since you're just going to alter them to suit your film anyway.
- Put more development into your villains.
- Less cheeze with the Sector 7 guys.

Seibertron wrote:One of the things I really liked about the movie is that they really played up the "hiding in plain sight" aspect of the Transformers. That's something we really haven't seen since the very beginning of the Transformers ... it's an aspect that I've felt got lost somewhere down the road and it was really great to see the movie folks embrace that so much.

I agree with you, to an extent. However, one of my big gripes with the movie was that they made it too obvious when a vehicle/aircraft/whatever was a transformer before it transformed. The only time they didn't was Frenzy, and he was on screen for about two seconds before he transformed. I guess to a lesser extent they did it with Barricade, but that wasn't a terribly surprising transformation.

And I don't mean to say that we, the ubergeeks... uh, fans, should have been surprised by a transformation. I realize that we knew all of the transformers and alt modes before the movie was ever released. But for Joe Moviegoer, he was never totally shocked or surprised by a transformation. I would have liked to see an unexpected transformer or transformation.

all i can say about the sequels is that they better not sell out to the fans. it is too late. thay came up with a look for the tfs and they need to stick with it throughout the sequels. i personaly did not like the way they looked in the first movie. but i want there to be a continuity.

well i doubt people expected that car steering wheel to transform..lol

i mean i figured the whole car would change but nope...just the wheel..lol

Devistator would be really cool. can you imagine a fight at the end against a combiner? that would be sweet. I agree that the human factor should be scaled down. just have Shia and Megan back. they sould also have some reinforcements come from cybertron, new autobots that answer the call prime put out to the universe at the end of the movie. I also like the hidding in plain sight aspect. thats a major part of what makes tfs so cool. I was imagining cars transforming after I saw the movie. I havent done that sence I was a kid! In the 80's when I was like 5 i used to freak out every time I saw a red flat-nosed big rig. I think Prime kinda got punked at the end Megatron just threw him around! I wanna see more of him kickn' decepticon ass! I am baised though

listning to the fans inst a bad idea but not all of the fans just a small amount of the fans will be good for the sequel too many fans opinions might be bad 10% say they wany galvatron another 10 will say megatron be back in a differnt form, 20 dinobots, 40 constructicons, 20 omega supreme, metroplex, or unicron.

if they gave the fans to much power half the fans will like the sequel they will see they favorite robot in the film and the other half will be unhappy there are too many autobots, and only 5 decpticons fighting 9 autobots so they would aloso have to make some deciosions on there own as well on what they think will be good for the sequesl to just my opionion.

More and more excuses about why the robots were under-utilised...

I like that they keep trying to use the "Prime has over 10,000 pieces" argument, but the majority of the Transformers had less than 4,000 pieces, so what's the excuse for not giving them more screen time?

Optimus's screent tiem had nothing to do with how many pieces he had, and nobody has ever said it did. What they DID say was that it was expensive to create the original Optimus model in the first place, and now that that's done they can send that budget elsewhere. Screentime wasn't involved in that equation at all.

Incidentally, for the movie that they did (which was amazing) they did a better job of introducing us to the Autobots' personalities than the series did, at least until more than halfway through the first season.

3 key things for the sequel for me:

bot character development

better movie structure.... i.e no cutting scenes out that leave movie goer's upset asking what happened to a character.

better shooting of fight scenes... i.e. no shaky fight scenes seemingly shot 4 feet away leaving a garbled mess. the movie makes money so quit cutting corners!

YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY for the mention Ryan!

I would like to see no more than 3 more autobots and maybe 4 more decepticons not including megs, starscream, barricade. Too much clutter if any more.

I would like to see the same humor but more focused storyline. These guys have been alive for hundreds of years so I would like to see more backfill on how the transformers relate to each other. Friendships, sworn enemies.. ect ect.

Also I am not a real big fan of killing off half dozen TF's per movie. Disable, yes. But that is just me.

And one last thing: For the love of everything holy... DON'T KILL OPTIMUS PRIME!! That has been done way way way to many times..

Agree with the character development and need for less sector-seven type cheese.

Oh, off topic, one is using the word "IT" as possessive, it is spelled "ITS". For example, "Seibertron.com and its owner, Ryan." "IT'S" refers to a contraction of IT and IS. It is a common typo but is grating nonetheless.

Agree that they didn't listen to us the first time. Doesn't take a genius to figure out they won't listen to us the next time either.