Live-Action Transformers Film gets Home/Release Date

ZShade · Post by **ZShade** » 2004-07-24 01:07am

The comics used the visual appearance of the Matrix of Leadership from the movie, yeah, but the Creation Matrix from the comics predates the movie if my memory serves.

Before the movie was released, the Creation Matrix could give life to Transformers, and was something intangable. After the movie, they said, "Oh, the Creation Matrix has a physical form, Prime just forgot to tell anyone about it before he commited suicide and they fired his corpse into space."

As for Thunderwing, well, Furman likes taking minor characters and giving them personality. Look at Bludgeon. He was one of the second wave of Deception Pretenders, wasn't that great of a toy, but he's a fairly popular character thanks to the comics.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-07-24 01:12am

'Robots in Disguise'?? That reminds me of one of the first eps where Hounds says they transform 'for disguise' or something like that. Thats so dumb... but I guess Soundwave turning into a lamppost worked well, so maybe they're all stupid. A better description would be 'for practicality', since robot mode isn't good for load carrying/flying thru space/battle etc. Of course *after* they went to earth it was for disguise, but eh.

And Thunderwing was insane, just like the long line of other popular nemeses of Prime I could name...

And the comic Matrix wins on both magical and bash-quotient counts. And there are no finger holes to confuse Ultra Magnus!

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-07-24 01:45am

ZShade wrote:The comics used the visual appearance of the Matrix of Leadership from the movie, yeah, but the Creation Matrix from the comics predates the movie if my memory serves.

That's what I meant. I read all 80 issues of the comic during their initial run, even though it never really appealed to me as much as the cartoon and movie.

ZShade wrote:As for Thunderwing, well, Furman likes taking minor characters and giving them personality. Look at Bludgeon. He was one of the second wave of Deception Pretenders, wasn't that great of a toy, but he's a fairly popular character thanks to the comics.

But Pretenders? Why, oh, why give them any more "screen time" than absolutely necessary?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-07-24 02:08am

One of the few Transformers toys that I actually owned happened to be Bludgeon, although since I wasn't really into Transformers (all I knew was that I wanted Optimus

), I didn't have any idea who he was. I only found out about a month ago when I got the Ultimate Guide...

I should root around and find that little bastard. someday.

Shadow WarChief · Post by **Shadow WarChief** » 2004-07-24 02:45am

SirNitram wrote: So why do I care about the dumbed-down ripoff of the backstory, precisely? You don't seem to get it, so I'll walk you through. The comic backstory came first. It is not the dumb kiddified crap. All your screeching about 'divergent continuity' applies only to the cartoon.. So go sit on a spike and spin.

Well tough shit. Beast Machines didn't violate its continuity line at all, no matter how much you prefer the comics over the cartoon. It's separate from the comic, so you still have your precious little "lifeless asteroid" version of events intact and unchanged.

So I'll ask the original question again: What's so bad about Beast Machines?

SirNitram wrote:Of course, I could be the renegade asshole who points out this is all sliding in to fit with the Armada way of things nicely. After all, none of those Transformers had the size changing problem.

......How do you mean?

At Stark: Have you even watched Beast Wars? You do know he's a different Megatron right?

On Pretenders: Bludgeon was a bad ass. Sure I never got to read the last 15 issues of the comic because I've never been able to find them online, but the way he simply back talked to G2 Megatron without breaking a sweat makes him one of the only G1 Decepticons I have respect for.

Adrian Tullberg · Post by **Adrian Tullberg** » 2004-07-24 03:02am

Howabout stuff from the Dreamwave line of comics?

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-07-24 03:28am

DPDarkPrimus wrote:More news from Don Murphy.
We are working to get permissions for REAL vehicles so that Bumblebee turns into a VW for example.

Wahoo!

Bumblebee was my favourite. He was the only Transformers toy I had.

I just hope it doesn't get really silly with that, eg: all of the Transformers imitating the same make of cars.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-07-24 03:34am

Adrian Tullberg wrote:Howabout stuff from the Dreamwave line of comics?

Nah, some of the Dreamwave stuff is real junk. Only The War Within and G1 Ongoing from halfway through Volume 2 onward are any good.

Good luck for them getting Volkswagen to give them the rights to the Beetle, since they want to avoid any connection with war themes. That's why they're not participating with Takara and Hasbro for the Binal Tech/Alternators line.

Oh, and from what I read earlier, it's good that Takara is in charge of creative development.

Adrian Tullberg · Post by **Adrian Tullberg** » 2004-07-24 03:44am

What sort of storyline should it have?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-07-24 03:51am

I think that the best and most obvious storyline it should follow is the basic gist of the cartoon's pilot trilogy "More Than Meets The Eye."

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-07-24 03:53am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I think that the best and most obvious storyline it should follow is the basic gist of the cartoon's pilot trilogy "More Than Meets The Eye."

That would work pretty well for a movie actually. And it'd leave it open for a franchise.

Also, "More than meets the eye" had better be the tagline.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2004-07-24 11:43am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote: That actually has a perfectly reasonable (and official) explenation (with a good deal of support from the cartoon), and it happens to be something I like about Tranformers in general.

You mean putting Microman: Microchange toys and Diaclone: Car Robots toys together in the same line =p

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-07-24 11:45am

I was refering to mass transfer.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2004-07-24 11:53am

Hey man, there's "the truth" and the truth =D Never put 1/1 scale toys with 1/60th scale based toys. Don't count out tiny TFs yet. I mean, even Browning from Masterforce was nifty in his own plucky way.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2004-07-24 12:09pm

Shadow WarChief wrote:Why, WHY does everyone hate Beast Machines? It wasn an enormous 2 season story arc with no irrelevant episodes. The writing was good, the plot was good. The only criticisms I've heard about have been "0 nos!!!!! Cybertron is teh 0|2G4N1k. That blows" Is this really all there is to this loathing of Beast Machines, or am I missing something?

They made Rattrap into a sniveling coward, completely robbing him of the badassery that he'd built up during Beast Wars. They also made Optimus into a psycho hippy, when he was a competent leader in the previous show.

And Nightscream must die.

Stark wrote:I don't like the idea of BM (not that I've seen it) because its stupid. Why would Megatron convert everyone into mindless slaves? Whats the point? Where's the pathos? How does this satisfy the guy that wants to 1) build the ultimate weapon 2) destroy the Autobots and 3) conquer the universe?

He didn't convert everyone into mindless slaves. He stole their Sparks and put them into a giant tank. His plan was to merge all the Sparks of all the Transformers into his own, and become a God.

It still doesn't really mesh with his character from Beast Wars, though, who only wanted to ensure that the Decepticons/Predacons became the dominant faction on Cybertron (either by harvesting the energon from Earth or by changing history so that the Decepticons won the Great War). He also never had a problem with this beast mode in Beast Wars, while he considered it an abominantion in Beast Machines for some reason.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-07-24 12:59pm

Wow. BM sounds absolutely craptacular!

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-07-24 01:32pm

I've been thinking a bit, and one thing that I hope is that they at least keep Sparkplug and Spike. I could see them doing a couple of things like bumping Spike's age up to sixteen and maybe introducing Carly from the get go, but they should at least do something like in both the G1 cartoon and comic and not something dumb like Armada did and have three annoying preteens of the correct profiles (a boy, a girl, and a token ethnic).

And for the love of God, please give Sparkplug a real name! They can keep the Sparkplug nickname (maybe have it shortened to just something like "Sparks" in common use), but just give him a name like he had in the comic (originally William, but then mentioned as something else the second time)...

LapsedPacifist · Post by **LapsedPacifist** » 2004-07-24 03:38pm

This thread desperatley makes me want my transformer toys back...

Curse this movie!

LP

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2004-07-24 04:46pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I've been thinking a bit, and one thing that I hope is that they at least keep Sparkplug and Spike. I could see them doing a couple of things like bumping Spike's age up to sixteen and maybe introducing Carly from the get go, but they should at least do something like in both the G1 cartoon and comic and not something dumb like Armada did and have three annoying preteens of the correct profiles (a boy, a girl, and a token ethnic).

Even the token Armada fan agrees here. I'd take wheelchair guy over the kids.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2004-07-24 06:48pm

SirNitram wrote: Even the token Armada fan agrees here. I'd take wheelchair guy over the kids.

Chip.

Bug-Eyed Earl · Post by **Bug-Eyed Earl** » 2004-07-24 08:03pm

I have an idea regarding MEgatron turning into a gun-
have a blur of color come off of him as he shrinks to show he is temporarily shedding enough mass to shrink that much.

It's not mass transfer, but it's a good visual indicator of how it could occur.

And imdb lists Peter Cullen and Frank Welker as being part of the cast, though of course imdb is almost always wrong. But it's nice to see their names there, bullshit or not.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-07-24 08:21pm

Peter Cullen is the voice of Optimus Prime. Accept no substitutes. Period.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2004-07-24 08:27pm

You're making Tessho Genda cry =(

I have an idea. Why not make Megatron a howitzer or something along those lines? Make him a really big gun!

Shadow WarChief · Post by **Shadow WarChief** » 2004-07-24 08:53pm

Drooling Iguana wrote:They made Rattrap into a sniveling coward, completely robbing him of the badassery that he'd built up during Beast Wars.

What snivelling coward? He walked into armies of Vehicons with no weapons with only his friends to protect him.

Drooling Iguana wrote:They also made Optimus into a psycho hippy, when he was a competent leader in the previous show.

And they brought this up. They explicity said Optimus's psychotic hippyness was affecting his ability to lead well. Cheetor tried to depose him. Tankor took advantage his reliance on Oracle-visions. In the second season he admitting that he was fucked in the head for all of the first season and started to be a leader again instead of just a mouth piece for the matrix.

Drooling Iguana wrote:And Nightscream must die

and Daniel.

Galvatron · Post by **Galvatron** » 2004-07-24 09:07pm

VF5SS wrote:You're making Tessho Genda cry =(

Who?