Hey there Stooges---
There’s a lot of good stuff to tell you about showing SHOOT-EM-UP to the studio and them loving it… about another project that looks like it will happen… about something I so desperately wanted to do in 2002 but got wronged by a friend, and now the karma turns. Like I say there is a lot of good stuff to tell you.
But let’s talk Transformers shall we? There has been a lot of leaks of photos, scripts, tidbits both true and false. Roberto and Alex spoke on a webcast this week. Lots of things coming out which are costing people their jobs. Good stuff, bad stuff.
But you know what? You haven’t actually SEEN a damn thing yet.
Now the negative ninnies out there, the people like Bowspearer who just live in a cesspool of hatred, will say “We’ve seen enough. This isn’t my Transformers.” To those people who are so old school and stuck in their ways I say the following- Go away. Seriously. We don’t need you here. You hate and you haven’t SEEN a damn thing yet.
Oh sure, Prime doesn’t look EXACTLY like he did in the cartoon. The Autobots are only five. The Decepticons don’t have Soundwave. There are complaints out the wazoo. Well you know what?
I have complaints too. There are things I wanted in this film which are not going to be in there. But I know what some of you know- filmmaking is not a democracy. Hell, Adam Goodman is in charge of production at Dreamworks. He’s the guy who BOUGHT this film. He is working day and night to get this ready for July 07. There are things I know he wishes were in the film. But they aren’t. You’ve talked online here to Brian Goldner. He owns the property but everything is not EXACTLY as he wishes. Tom Desanto is the most devoted producer out there- I know there are things he wishes were in there. You saw that Alex and Bob didn’t get everything they wanted. And Michael Bay, who spends 16 hour days shooting this mega-film? Michael Bay who sets up every shot himself and oversees to the point of operating the camera at times? He’s made a zillion compromises to get a great film he can be happy with.
No, filmmaking is a series of happy accidents. When Tom and I shopped this project around every studio passed, including Dreamworks and Paramount. When those two studios and others came around, we ended up with Dreamworks because Steven Spielberg and Adam Goodman (and creative VPS John Fox and Marc Haimes) knew that this was a BIG cool idea for a franchise. Hell, those guys wanted it in cinemas THIS summer. It’s now 07 because everyone wants to get it right. No one is trying to make anything but a great film here.
When I say you haven’t SEEN anything, think about it. You’ve seen a toy mold. A truck still. A Bumblebee model with a guy underneath it.
You haven’t SEEN Bumblebee transform. You haven’t SEEN Optimus walk or Megatron awaken. You’ve seen sketches, designs and stills. Most of you get it when Brian Goldner says “We are doing something here that has never been done.” He’s right. The technology is there to make a LIVE ACTION Transformers film. To make several of them. But this is not a cartoon. There are cartoons already. Hasbro is making more. This is something new and different. LIVE ACTION robots.
So you negative ninnies- I’d like you to give us a break. And if you don’t, I’d like you to go away for a while. Seriously. Come back in six months. Wait until you SEE something that Michael and ILM and all of us have done. Not some leaked bullshit from some coward. Wait till you SEE the magic that I believe will be Transformers the Live Action Movie. Then if you don’t like what you see, hate away. Till then, I challenge you to be a grown up and reserve judgment. Even the majority who seem to like what you see have a right to hate later on.
We’re trying to do this right- to appeal to the fans and the rest of the world. Cullen is hired. Welker is going through the process. Other things are being reviewed and considered.
There will always be someone who wants to hate. That’s so easy.
But I challenge the haters to wait until they SEE a Transformer in Live Action.
And the rest of you, most of you, thanks for the many suggestions and kind words. It continues to be a surprising and fun ride.
Hang Tight Stooges, Hang Tight.
I have to agree with Murphy (and no not kissing butt cause frankly why bother) on this one. Patience is the watchword. Its simply to early in the process to have all this hatred. Look at X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, well the list goes on. The more the fans seem to think they know what is best, the more we seem to be wrong.
I personally like what I have been seeing so far and I was not just come lately fan. I have a collection of G1 on up toys that would make many green with envy. I also have the original DVD collection of the G1 Transformers cartoons and the movie. Trust me, they are not nearly as good as you remember them to be. Go back and watch them with the eyes of an adult. The very LAST thing you want them to do is copy the cartoon and those designs. If did that, then it might as well be the Brady Bunch, why waste the effort if you can just pretend its 1984 and basically make the movie a joke.
All involved are in this weird delicate balance where on ooriginalof the pendulum swing is orginial cartoons and its universe. Lots of great ideas in there. Lots of bad ones to. On the other end of the pendulum swing you have this massive "re-imagining" of crappy worthy proportions (say Miami Vice or Batman and Robin). The goal is the middle of the swing. You take the idea of the orginial that work (real world objects that change to robots at war with each other lead by Optimus Prime and Megatron) but add a modern beat to it (current objects, sharper, deadlier, realistic designs) with what I hope is an entertaining story. So far I have faith that this is being done.
Now to the movie folks I add this, don't assume the vocal minority speaks for the majority. Also, as the Snakes on the Planes (and Serenity) box office showed, the internet does not a success make (anymore then a $20 million a movie star does). The hype machine of the internet is maturing and eventially it will become all that us netizens hope, but that age has not yet arrived. You still have to satisfy John Couch Potato and trying to listen to all of us fandom suggestions is a sure way to fail in that goal. No one being told that but I say again mimicing the 80s cartoon would be an insane mistake.
In the end, thanks for your diligence, I all appreciate the input we are allowed and I hope the vocal minority doesn't cost us that peak we are currently enjoying in the movie making process of this movie. I just want the best damn movie talent and money can buy and from what I have seen, it seems we might just be getting. Us fans just need to have patience to see what unfolds and the movie folks need to have patience with our passion.
- Updated link back to original source of message, Don Murphy's message board. Note to self, tfans.com not fans of sourcing.
Boy, I agree with you. I have the whole series too. And while nostalgic, it in general is pretty poor writing. I was skeptical and irritated at first with the liberties they were taking, but when you think about it, what's the point of a carbon copy of the cartoon? It takes away the anticipation and mystery. If they have to take liberties with the original concept for believability/reality's sake then so be it. I can handle Optimus being a long nose semi, or Bumblebee being a Camaro. In the end it doesn't matter too much.
ReplyDelete...As long as Cullen and Welker are in there. That's mandatory. ;)
Look at X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, well the list goes on. The more the fans seem to think they know what is best, the more we seem to be wrong.
ReplyDeleteYour opinion is your opinion. I will not bother commenting on other stuff you said. This one part however needs to be something said.
Ok, how can fans "be wrong" when there's only 1 version out there? Unless a company actually made 2 version (a fan version and a director version), how can anybody say fan input is wrong? Yeah Spiderman took in a lot of money, but what if Gwen Stacey was the girl in the first one? What if they followed the story closer? We can't say it would have made the movie bomb because we don't know. I feel that it would have made the movie better though.
Transformers isn't out yet so no we can't pass judgement on the finished product, but we can say if we like or do not like the "leaked" stuff. I didn't. They look like other people's properties and not Hasbro's. They look very Lego like. Bionicles as some are suggesting. To reach an audience that may not have seen Optimus Prime in a long time, it would seem more obvious to make the character easy to bring back momories. Not necessarily G1 as some fans are yelling, but something that follows G1 like most of the toys that's been coming out.
Anyway, I just wanted to say, for or against, everyone has an opinion. But we can not say that fan input ideas would have caused a movie to not do as well across the board. We don't know that, but something made the property popular enough that Hollywood wanted to make a movie of it in the first place. That original story had to have made a few fans there so why would it need heavy changes to reinvent the wheel?
im down with everyone "taking liberties" in the creation of this movie.
ReplyDeletepeople just cant seem to get that as with dozens of other comics and cartoon series, there are different universes applied to our fav characters... yes, G1, beast wars and beast machines are all connected chronologically...but what about animes like transformers energon and armada? these are simply alternate applications of our fav characters
characters that are in need of makeovers from their 1980s predecessors. yes, i love the G1 more than any other incarnation, but to rehash them? sry, starscream manhandling megatron in gunmode isnt appealin to me these days.
so no more rehash, kids. there is only re-birth
I Totally agree with that guy, everywhere i go on the web fans are constantly BASHING this film...and no one has even SEEN the movie! it's not out for almost another year and people are making this sound like it's going to be a total disgrace..i for one love how the Transformers look! Those hardcore fans should learn to accept new ideas, so what if Starscream looks more like some super powerful gundam creature? I think it's totally awesome and I for one say keep it up!
ReplyDeleteYou know what.... YAY.... It's about time that someone said something like this.
ReplyDeleteWhen we love a property like Transformers, Lord of the Rings, or Superman, we all get tied up with what something is 'supposed' to be.
And we all need to get off of our high horse. You either need to just be happy that Transformers is going to be on the big screen. Or, you need to understand that Hollywood butchers everything in some way, shape, or form.
Bravo! Bravo!
Robert
So just lay down and take the beating instead of fight back? That's a great idea! No when you do not like something you stand up and say it. Hasn't Hollywood taught the "geek crowd" yet that sitting there all quiet and not standing up for yourself only result in your head flushed in the toilet again? Or worse it gets to a point you can't take it anymore and do a freak out the level of some of the stuff we see on the news now.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for people speaking their mind. They just sound do so constructively. To just say something sucks without explaining is wrong, yes. A fair amount of the fans are explaining, it's just there are loud fans that just want to climb the highest tree and yell "It sucks" over and over. Or the other way around, fans who are yell "STF, at least there is a movie being made".
BTW, they did what they wanted with Superman and it didn't fair so well. Instead of putting out a waist of time like that, if the movie would have been good, we would have seen a great relaunch of movies. We'd be able to look forword to the next one to entertain us. Instead we have to fear another one and hope it's at the very least a little better than this last one. I don't know, I'd rather yell out why I do not like whatever it may be so that they creators of said thing can learn and fix their mistakes. We can't just keep our mouth shut and pretend to like something we do not. That's just ingnorance.
Don did post this on his own forum, but he said this is one message he'd prefer was spread to other TF sites.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you here.
ReplyDeleteBut I just looked at the movie Megatron on seibertron.com . It's totally unrecognizable as Megatron. I can understand it being his pre-earth-transcanning mode. But this really makes me wish he would transcan to an earth form and look more recognizable as Megatron.
Regardless, I'm still looking forward to the movie.
I was perfectly optimistic about X-Men, Superman, Lord of the Rings, and Spider-man. Even Star Wars episodes 2 and 3 I was reserving hope. But for this film I have absolutley none. Don Murphy is so out of touch with what audiences want and what actually constitutes a good movie or what made Transformers cool and successful in the first place... and Bay is among the most horrible directors in the history of film... having followed the film's development from virtually day 1 on Murphy's personal message board I can say with utmost certainty: it's going to be crap. True, we haven't seen much of the animatics or special FX.. the fact that Murphy thinks that is going to save or carry the whole picture is more cause for concern, NOT a good reason to be patient. FX do not make or break a movie all by themselves. True we haven't seen a Transformer in motion yet, but who gives a crap, that's just CGI. What we HAVE seen is the attitudes of the executives involved on this picture, we've seen characters and story warped beyond recognition, we've seen all the previous things the creative staff have been involved in. None of this bodes well. This movie will be a trainwreck. But it's too late at this point to change it, and in fact it was too late from day 1, because as much as Murphy likes to say that he is open to any and all criticism and open to ideas from fans, he's not. This is going to be worse than The League of Extraordianry Gentleman and Pearl Harbor put together.
ReplyDeleteSo much hate. Look, the fact is we're all Transformers fans here. We all liked the story, we all liked the characters, personalities etc etc etc and that is what has to stay. We all like the old cartoons sure, but they're cartoons pushing (if not) 2 decades old. Technology has advanced considerably and has anyone considered that if the G1 producers had the effects and ability available today, would they have looked considerably different? You bet they would, who wouldn't want to make a production look as neat and advanced as possible with as many effects available? The point was made earlier that the characters appearance never changed before or after their Earth adaptations (except in vehicle mode) was because they didn't have the ability to show that change. Here we can see those types of details and little things we all as kids had to imagine but never actually "saw" and now we can. Since it never has been done before on screen, who's to say that this is the right vs wrong way to make it look? But aside from all the CGI and eye candy, the real heart of Transformers was the story and character personalities, and aside from some CONCEPT art (which can change and vary drastically, just look at any storyboard for any movie and see the amount of detail and variation goes into a single scene. For any SW fan look at the different concept boards for Mustafar in EP 3...my point exactly) no one here has read a script, dialog, preview of a script, or has honestly any real idea how the characters are going to act out aside from how you would like to THINK they would, not how they really are. Point of all this blabbing is what about all the previous posters here have made, be big, reserve your judgement and wait until you can actually see the finished product for not only eye candy but character depth and personality as well.
ReplyDelete