oh my....well that trailer was certainly....something.

I saw an argument where the person said that anyone who watched this footage and complained about the tone saying that it looked too corny, light, jokey, probably didn't watch or don't remember the original 1984 cartoon. And that is true. That was 40 years ago, but I do remember the original cartoon was very light and seldomly had darker moments. He felt like this was made by someone who loved the original cartoon and this was an ode to it. Hell, I remember Scatman Crothers was the voice of Jazz and he was very jokey. I think maybe some people's tastes have evolved and they no longer enjoy the type of stuff they used to enjoy 30 to 40 years ago? Maybe the Michael Bay movies just embedded in our heads that Transformers is supposed tp be a dark, brooding and violent storyline.

I would argue that the Bayformer movies are more in keeping with this movie, in terms of jokey tone. The old G1 was cheesy, but you were never meant to laugh at it (the Dinobots notwithstanding). Yes, it is the show where Prime's entire mind fit in a 5" floppy disk, but that was because the writers didn't know any better.

I'm fully aware of what the original cartoons were. It's less about the tone and more about the characterizations. Jazz is very jokey, that's his character. Bumblebee too is, maybe not as jokey, but usually portrayed as a very young inexperienced bot. A surrogate for the child's perspective. Optimus and Megatron as goofy bumbling idiots just doesn't really sit all that well with me even if they are Orion Pax and D-16 at this point. I don't know I guess we'll see what the final product is. But so far this seems more like Illuminations and less like Pixar if you know what I mean.

You can totally have a cartoon that can appeal to a very broad audience. I hate the excuse many people like to give that it's just a cartoon aimed at children. There have been plenty of excellent examples of media that can appeal to a very broad audience. Disney/Pixar is pretty good at riding this line. To be more apt Transformers Prime was an excellent show that didn't talk down to it's audience and had a tone that had a broad appeal. The recent TMNT is a perfect example. Yes it's aimed at kids and gaining a new audience but there was something for everyone there and most importantly they didn't sacrifice the characters for the tone. Each one of the turtles were exactly like their character only younger and inexperienced. They didn't betray their characters at all for the sake of appealing to kids.

It's way to early to say what this will be like but so far with what's been shown I'm not really all that hopeful.

I'd argue that the Bayformer's movies were just all over the place in tone. They got it all wrong. The humans behaved more like cartoons than the animated robots did. While the transformers took themselves WAY too seriously. Every scene was about the fate of the autobots, or the earth or cybertron or something utterly overly dramatic. Then you had the vaguely racist transformer that are just better not to mention.

I think Bumblebee nailed the tone perfectly. Setting the whole movie up with an incredible opening sequence to set the high stakes. Followed by plenty of down time to get to know the characters and lots of lighthearted moments that weren't just low hanging jokes. Followed by an exciting but not overly dramatic finish.

It’s funny, but I’m in my mid-50s and was just like 5-10 years too old for Transformers (and TMNT) as a kid, and as a result I have zero nostalgia for either franchise, yet for 35 years I’ve been having these products continuously shoved down my throat. I guess slightly younger people probably feel this way about, I don’t know, The Brady Bunch and Grease, but not to this extent.

I think it's a Generation X thing. If you were born in the late 1960s or later, there was a real sea-change in children's popular culture in the 1970s with Star Wars and KISS. And as those kids aged out of their plastic X-Wing fighters and Mego KISS dolls, the next group of kids got fed Masters of the Universe, Transformers, and GI Joe.

Being in that Generation X age group, I'll go out on a limb and say that we got some really interesting, imaginative toys back then. These things had a really great sense of design and had their own mythologies and stories.

Yeah, we all know about Star Wars. But then you had the Micronauts, which also had a pretty neat sense of design, like stuff you might see in Omni magazine. And Masters of the Universe had a sort of barbarians and wizards with ray guns and spaceships thing going on that seemed inspired by Frazetta and Vallejo. Transformers had some nice mecha stuff, and the robots that can repurpose themselves into cars and jets and dinosaurs was pretty creative -- and that 1986 movie was pretty crazy. And then there was G.I. Joe with all of these personalities and neat military hardware that was sci-fi inspired but still felt grounded in reality. I was a little too old play with the He-Man, Transformers, and GI Joe toys, but I did watch the cartoons in the afternoon after school. It was either that or Phil Donahue.

As such, I think our generation was sort of trained by the mass media to respond to these toy lines and their ongoing stories... and they were using these properties to sell toys and cartoons and comic books and other merchandise... so it's not surprising that middle-aged men are still fascinated by them. Our childhoods and adolescent periods define our adult selves.

I think that's one reason why our generation seems to have such a strong sense of nostalgia. We've been completely saturated in popular culture since we were born. We grew up on Sesame Street, wore Oscar the Grouch shirts, and got Big Bird toys for Christmas, stood in line to watch Star Wars in crowded theaters and started buying the toys, bought KISS records and dolls and make-up kits, played Atari VCS games while wishing we had an Intellivision or Colecovision, watched He-Man, Transformers, and GI Joe after getting home from school and collected the toys, graduated up to Commodore 64s and Apple IIs, and got NESes when were in high school.

And now you can go to youtube and see all of these middle-aged men collecting Transformers, repairing old 8-bit computers, and rating Atari games.

Makes me wonder what the millennials are going to be like in the next decade or two...

That's a very interesting thought. I feel like it's only a few generations that really have that strong connection to IP. The previous generation had some movies and some TV shows sure. But nothing like the masterclass of marketing that we were subjected to. Carefully crafted worlds and characters with intriguing stories. Along with comics, TV shows, toys, cereal, school supplies, T-shirts, underwear, bed sheets. I mean it really did define our childhood. Sure subsequent generations have that too. But my kids have grown up in a post shared culture world. There are way more choices now than there were before and so while my daughter might be heavily in to Percy Jackson as well as with her group of friends and cousins. I doubt it if it will ever reach the level of a Transformers where entire generations grew up with the same thing. Because kids today aren't really buying toys. Especially not the IP like what we grew up with. They are much more in to apps or YouTube or things of that nature. The shared experience is gone from our culture. At least to the extent that it was in the 70's-00's. Certainly not like the peak in the 80's and 90's.

Transformers One Has Screened, And People Seem To Agree The ‘Trailers Don’t Do This Justice’

It's getting rave reviews from its screening:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...144221806.html

Much better trailer than the 1st one. Really did sell the story of Prime and Megatron

Yeah, came here to say it is a way better trailer. Now I'm sold on this movie.
Also, I like how they orchestrated the '80s theme song.

I think it looks better but maintain you don’t need to make it kid jokey.

The character designs seem weird, where they made Optimus Prime and Megatron look like kids. It looks like some kind of AI-generated facebook meme.

The voices are a hard sell for me.

Positive review from JoBlo:

For those interested, there is a 5pm Early Access screening tonight. But, only regular screens.

There is also a "Fan Event" premium format screening next Wednesday. I'm going to that one. I haven't been to the movies in a few weeks (vacation and also got sick) So I'm looking forward to catching this one.

https://www.amctheatres.com/events/t...-one-fan-event

You receive a comic, collector's print and keychain.

Taking my nephew Saturday, this being an animated movie, did they change the aspect ratio at all for IMAX? It's interesting, my nephew wants to see it on the IMAX screen, so something in the marketing must've got his attention.

Catching it in IMAX on Saturday.

This looks like those crappy CGI cartoons that air on the cable channels.

I don't think the CGI looks crappy at all. That's actually the reason why I am seeing it in IMAX as opposed to Dolby Cinema. They say that CGI animated films look much better on the IMAX screen than DC. We'll see.

Scott Mendelson posted that this is underperforming and will most likely bomb at the box-office.

And then people wonder why we only get movies that barely acknowledge the source material and/or caters to the fans.

And something's come up tonight and I will not be catching it at the show. I'm also part of the problem.

I'm there with ya. I was planning on watching it today, but I had to go to work instead.