Monday, June 29, 2009

More Transformers Talk from Writers

SciFi Scanner has posted an interview with Transformers 2 writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci as they talk about writing scripts and fandom. Snippet below, full interview here.
Q: Do you think you would have ended up with a different screenplay were you not writing under the pressure of the strike?
AK: No. We had a fairly long postproduction time. We literally finished writing the movie two weeks ago. We were writing robot dialogue right up to the last minute, until they locked picture and sound and they took the print out of our hands.

Q: Do you write a screenplay differently for a director like Michael Bay than you would for J.J. Abrams?
AK: Absolutely.
BO: It's half that and half you're writing to what the franchise is. We're not writing big because it's Michael Bay; Michael Bay is right for Transformers.
AK: With a director like Michael, who's extremely specific about what he does and does not like to do, our job is to backstop him to a large degree and keep on him about plot and logic and emotion. We very rarely get resistance on that. He has such an innate understanding of what audiences want to see. Where he'll push back is if he thinks logic is somehow overriding the fun for the audience.
BO: You've gotta have a pretty damn good reason to tell him why he's gotta lose one of his awesome sequences.

Q: Are Transformers fans as ravenous as Trekkies?
BO: Transformers fans taught us how to deal with Star Trek fans. And they're both heavy-duty. But Transformers fans taught us how to interact, how to turn the conversation constructive a little bit, and not just have it be, "You suck. Go jump off of a building, please."

Q: So when a fan says the Autobot twins are the Jar Jar Binks of Transformers...
BO: My favorite was someone called them Car Car Binks.
AK: Look, I can tell you that Michael designed those characters to reflect what he thought would be funny for kids. And we go with the ride. Literally.

Q: Did you learn anything from writing Transformers 2 that's been helpful in formulating Trek 2?
AK: They're so different. You're putting on a different hat. And the choices that you make in Transformers with Michael as the director versus Star Trek with J.J. couldn't be more 180 degrees in the opposite direction. So I don't know that for me there's a natural corollary between them.

6 comments:

  1. i dont really see how bay thought the twins would be funny for kids...sure they fell down and were idiots but most of their conversation consisted of adult language...as far as i could tell i dont think any of kids really responded to them...most of them are already in love with optimus and bumblebee so you dont really need to create characters just for kids especially when you fail this badly

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  2. These two are the biggest douchebags known to man

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  3. Plot and logic and emotion? I lol'd.

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  4. ok so i think for the third one we need to bring in new writers so we can get a great story and we would already have the action because of bay

    any of u guys agree cuz a great story would would be nice

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  5. I've gotta admit Bay was right about the Twins. I really liked those characters and they were funny as hell.

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  6. I agree with the first comment. I cringed a little when I heard the non-PG13 language because there were quite a few young ones in the audience.

    This site here is for kids, its just collecting and trading cards, but there are some nice flash graphics of Bumblebee and sounds and a secret character revealing: http://www.tf2cards.com

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