Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
- Thread starter SHIELD Agent 47
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I'd only really see that as a "racially tinged insult" if Lorenzo Di Bonaventura said something like "people like you should be grateful to work on this project."
That seems pretty clear cut.
But even if it was just "someone like you should be grateful to work on this project" that could just easily mean "Steve Caple Jr is a talented but young and fairly unknown director who would benefit from the exposure a Transformers film starring an A-list actor would afford him."
Lorenzo Di Bonaventura sucks and is probably the single biggest factor holding back the live action film series. I want him gone but shaky accusations of racism without a concrete accusation seems gross.
If Steve Caple Jr comes out and goes "he said XYZ to me" I'm more than willing to believe him, but right now at this juncture? I'm guessing the blowup between the two was creative with Caple Jr wanting to build on Bumblebee and RotB as a new thing and Di Bonaventura insisting on a connection to the Bay films.
Or it was money.
One can hope, but I feel like the pull of Michael Bay era success will keep them trying every few years. It's probably the reason we're still stuck in this situation where Bonaventura keeps trying to say this is still all in the same continuity. They're refusing to let go.
Hopefully TF One is a hit enough for them to put live action movies on pause and just go with animated movies for a while that tell the story of the War on Cybertron from its early days as the Decepticons rise up to the day that both sides have entered into a stalemate and energon resources are disappearing, thus both sides depart Cybertron and go off in various directions, not just Earth but other planets, showing that the war has spiralled out of anyone's control as the Decepticons fractor upon the exit of Cybertron leading to them have multable leaders with different ideas of what they should do, thou most would involve conquering planets with energon resources and not having the abilty to fight back as that would make for some spin off series with some different Autobots who are roaming the galaxy with no plan or goal in mind, while the movies could focus upon the battles on Earth, the spin off could just be a general adventure series that set within the same universe but not staying on Earth
Eh, it's basically a gig economy. You go where the work/money is, at least until (if) you make it big.
On the flip side, a single bad (or just underperforming) film can absolutely torpedo a whole career. How confident would you be getting involved with this franchise at this point?
I mean, the live action transformers has always been *basically* a TF and GI Joe crossover in all but name only. The concept will always worm, but it requires GI Joe to integrate and graft itself in to Transformers, not the other way around.
It can be really incredible, but someone has to want and care enough to craft something actually compelling.
It can be really incredible, but someone has to want and care enough to craft something actually compelling.
Trouble is that this is Hollywood, and most folks in Hollywood are just out for a quick buck. The writers, the producers, the directors...
Forgive my cynicism, but I get the feeling that a lot of people in the entertainment industry would rather rush out a bad or mediocre or okay product than take their time and wait for a good project to get made. Or they have their own ideas of what makes something 'good', and end up hurting the project as a result. And I also get the feeling that they get away with it, or are allowed to get away with it, because the audiences let them.
And in other news, water is wet.
Nah I can't get on board with that. Yes, I'm sure there are producers and studio execs who want to make as much money on a cheap product as possible (horror films are super easy to get greenlit because of that) but do you know how many people are involved in the production of a movie that sees a wide release?
Craftsmen, technicians, makeup artists, costume designers, effects artists, concept artists, writers, ghost writers, dialogue coaches, choreographers... that's before we get to the directors, actors, and producers.
And I've seen enough behind the scenes material to know these folks are Hollywood robots or something where they're all looking for a payday on a half-hearted effort.
A lot-I'd be very confident saying most- do their best to ply their craft and do their part to bring a movie together.
Bad movies happen, yeah. Sometimes it's a producer who wants to take shortcuts or has weird mandates that hold the film's story back. Sometimes it's a director who's either wrong for the project or just bad. Sometimes the actors... well... just aren't good, or just aren't right for the roles they've been cast in. Sometimes a creative vision just isn't want general audiences want.
A lot can happen to make a movie bad, and I think multiple causes of bad movies have plagued the Transformers film series.
I just don't think the small army of professional filmmakers and artists involved in a shoot are all going "let's put in a quarter effort so we're done by lunch."
Most of them go in trying to the best they can in their area of expertise.
I can agree with that to an extent. Cynical cash grabs do happen though. It's not that they set out to make a bad movie. It's just indifference.
Filmmaking is an insanely hectic nightmare at the macro level, for the people managing the chaos from the top. At the micro level, for the average person involved, it's an incredibly tedious job. It really is just a day at work. "Good enough" becomes good enough.
Filmmaking is an insanely hectic nightmare at the macro level, for the people managing the chaos from the top. At the micro level, for the average person involved, it's an incredibly tedious job. It really is just a day at work. "Good enough" becomes good enough.
I'm sure most people lower down on the Hollywood totem pole are doing their best. Unfortunately, most problems with movies nowadays seem to come from up top, be it poor directing, scriptwork, time management or hell, sometimes the very premise of the movie.
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Yeah, when Hollywood is accused of cash grabs, no one is talking about the key grip or the wardrobe manager. It's a bunch of execs demanding to get Chris Pratt to voice Denver The Last Dinosaur so money machine go brrr.
And, let's face it. G.I. Joe isn't exactly of mainstream popularity anymore. It's really only adults who remember the ARAH cartoons from Sunbow and DiC that still care about it.
No one watched Extreme in the '90s (I was the target audience at the time, and neither I nor any one of my peers ever watched it or had any of the toys), the two Vs. Cobra direct-to-DVD movies ("Spy Troops" and "Valor Vs. Venom") just came and went like a whisper, barely anyone watched Sigma 6, Resolute was mainly only watched by the ARAH-generation of adults, and while Renegades was well made it didn't have any lasting impact on the brand at all (its final episode even had a very cringy gag clip using ARAH footage play at the end of it that treated Renegades like the whole show had been nothing but a strange dream had by ARAH Duke).
As for the three live action movies, well... There really isn't much to say about them. Some Joe fans would even prefer to pretend like they never even happened.
No one watched Extreme in the '90s (I was the target audience at the time, and neither I nor any one of my peers ever watched it or had any of the toys), the two Vs. Cobra direct-to-DVD movies ("Spy Troops" and "Valor Vs. Venom") just came and went like a whisper, barely anyone watched Sigma 6, Resolute was mainly only watched by the ARAH-generation of adults, and while Renegades was well made it didn't have any lasting impact on the brand at all (its final episode even had a very cringy gag clip using ARAH footage play at the end of it that treated Renegades like the whole show had been nothing but a strange dream had by ARAH Duke).
As for the three live action movies, well... There really isn't much to say about them. Some Joe fans would even prefer to pretend like they never even happened.
GI Joe is one of the more frustrating properties, with perhaps one of the more counterproductive fandoms. Steevy Maximus has summed this up better elsewhere (but I think that may have been pre-Allspark outage).
The property at large was one of those that got sidelined in the late 80s/early 90s in the TMNT/video games/etc wave that displaced 80s franchises, and came back in the 2000s with a more adventure-y, science fiction-y bent. This is something that it needed very much, if only to create a "new" (quote marks because it had always had science fiction elements) basis for the brand as the military angle had lost a lot of ground as a selling point since the 80s. But seemingly every step of the way, the fandom got in its and the brand's own way, complaining about neon and ninjas (cool band name) and tech suits and getting away from the "roots" and other such hoopla. Where Transformers' fandom embraced the brand warts and all, GI Joe's seemed determined to do the driving, and only toward a specific direction, mass market be damned. Surprise! The brand needs the mass market. (This did draw my attention to emerging corners of the fandom that sought to be more positive, and to this day I think back to Toys and Tomfoolery and newer blogs like The Dragon Fortress with fondness.)
This would persist into the movie era. Its live-action efforts failed where Transformers' somehow succeeded. But the line kept going, with incredible, cool, quality toys that... didn't seem to do much to move the needle for the brand as a whole however well it catered to those same old tastes. The brand was further held back by Hasbro's Hub era, and some weirdness around the release of Retaliation, then ... The brand as a whole seemed to just go quietly into the night.
Even in the 2010s the natural/understandable automatic question of a Joe/TF crossover seemed like using Transformers to prop up essentially a ghost of a brand, and that's even more the case now. That tease fell completely flat with me at the end of ROTB because of that (and because I felt the Transformers movies themselves need some propping up of their own).
There's a lot that CAN be done with the brand, I feel, and different viable directions to go in (outside of essentially NEST Again). I do hope it gets some media that catches fire with the new, young/diverse generation of viewers it needs.
The property at large was one of those that got sidelined in the late 80s/early 90s in the TMNT/video games/etc wave that displaced 80s franchises, and came back in the 2000s with a more adventure-y, science fiction-y bent. This is something that it needed very much, if only to create a "new" (quote marks because it had always had science fiction elements) basis for the brand as the military angle had lost a lot of ground as a selling point since the 80s. But seemingly every step of the way, the fandom got in its and the brand's own way, complaining about neon and ninjas (cool band name) and tech suits and getting away from the "roots" and other such hoopla. Where Transformers' fandom embraced the brand warts and all, GI Joe's seemed determined to do the driving, and only toward a specific direction, mass market be damned. Surprise! The brand needs the mass market. (This did draw my attention to emerging corners of the fandom that sought to be more positive, and to this day I think back to Toys and Tomfoolery and newer blogs like The Dragon Fortress with fondness.)
This would persist into the movie era. Its live-action efforts failed where Transformers' somehow succeeded. But the line kept going, with incredible, cool, quality toys that... didn't seem to do much to move the needle for the brand as a whole however well it catered to those same old tastes. The brand was further held back by Hasbro's Hub era, and some weirdness around the release of Retaliation, then ... The brand as a whole seemed to just go quietly into the night.
Even in the 2010s the natural/understandable automatic question of a Joe/TF crossover seemed like using Transformers to prop up essentially a ghost of a brand, and that's even more the case now. That tease fell completely flat with me at the end of ROTB because of that (and because I felt the Transformers movies themselves need some propping up of their own).
There's a lot that CAN be done with the brand, I feel, and different viable directions to go in (outside of essentially NEST Again). I do hope it gets some media that catches fire with the new, young/diverse generation of viewers it needs.
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My personal opinion is that GI Joe needs to embrace the Adventure Team aspect as the military one is just too controversial these days.
You can still have Cobra as the villains, you can even have them affiliated with the US government. But you gotta get away from the reliance on the "US military or nothing" mentality.
You can still have Cobra as the villains, you can even have them affiliated with the US government. But you gotta get away from the reliance on the "US military or nothing" mentality.
ESPECIALLY after 9/11 happened.
I like the idea that they were setting up in the last movie. Make them a secret organization that gets called in to help in dire situations where the normal military is out gunned. Give them some of their Iconic vehicles as over-powered compared to modern day military vehicles/weapons, heck you can even go the Crossover route for the TF movies and have the TFs be some of the vehicles. That would work well against Decepticons or Cobra terrorist forces.
Just make it Overwatch, comparisons be damned.
It's weird that '80's Joe and Transformers have diverged so much, because they're almost two sides of the same coin.
They both feature two teams of combatants separated into goody good guys and eeeeevil badguys, made of up characters that have goofy, descriptive names and typically some character quirk or gimmick or special skill. The typical adventure is the bad guys coming up with some ridiculously over the top scheme and then being stopped by the good guys.
One is just cool guy military dudes and vehicles while the other is alien robots that turn into vehicle and tapedecks and stuff.
Understandable though; the 2000's really made the whole "military fighting terrorists" stuff a lot less palatable for easy breazy entertainment.
Makes me wonder what would happen if a bunch of alien robots popped up and started a fight.
They both feature two teams of combatants separated into goody good guys and eeeeevil badguys, made of up characters that have goofy, descriptive names and typically some character quirk or gimmick or special skill. The typical adventure is the bad guys coming up with some ridiculously over the top scheme and then being stopped by the good guys.
One is just cool guy military dudes and vehicles while the other is alien robots that turn into vehicle and tapedecks and stuff.
Understandable though; the 2000's really made the whole "military fighting terrorists" stuff a lot less palatable for easy breazy entertainment.
Makes me wonder what would happen if a bunch of alien robots popped up and started a fight.