Forbes published an article this past weekend that places the highly anticipated Transformers: The Last Knight within the larger context of Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s recent underperfoming film offerings, contending that Paramount needs a win. Among the key points:
So now, after 18 months of one miss after another, it falls to Optimus Prime and Bumblebee to not just save the world but arguably save [Paramount] studio. This is not a good place for any film to be in, no matter how much of a guaranteed cash cow it might be. It’s also Paramount’s last release until October, with the exception of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power in late July, so if it underperforms around the world it’s going to sting for awhile.
Will The Last Knight perform above expectations? Already have your tickets purchased for this film? Sound off on the 2005 boards!
Autobot Burnout
Are you serious? I was talking about the big explosions and shit.
'Connecting with the audience' is not something I generally attribute to Bay. J. J. Abrams or del Toro? Now we're talking.
Autobot Burnout
Then the films would deserve to fail because then the actual problem these films have is the complete and total failure to characterize the very aliens the films are named for. Sure, Prime gets a shitload of screen time as does Bee and Megatron…and nobody else. Or if they do, it just gets wasted by the end of the film because they die and all the attention earlier was to give meaning to a semi-important character's death.
Battleship made it very clear that trying to emulate Bay's style ends in failure.
Bingo.
Curious…why is the audience rooting for the humans? Why aren't they rooting for the AUTOBOTS?
GirlBot
…hadn't we been there and done that already?
knoted
Yeah, I was talking about those people.
Sort of. A person would need to be incredibly thick to not see how
Sammy boy or Cade are going to rip through Megatron like he was soft butter, with the flavor-of-the-week plot device.
Shark
By "general audiences" I mean the majority of non-Transformers fans who enjoy these movies as they are. Who, by the way, DO root for the human characters in these movies.
knoted
The crux is not about omission of the human factor in Transformers.
Crafting a potentially good Transformers story which would appeal all audiences, is about having a story and style of narration in which you could actually root for the human characters.
So far, none of the Bay movies have made the audience actually give a fuck about the human characters. Plenty of other stories/movies in which the human loss and pain is palpable with no magical way out of troubles, like a
human boy running around with a box of WIN.
Because for every glooming over-the-top-apocalyptic story arc he displays, it always becomes incredibly predictable in these movies how the main human characters simply sail through these ordeals
unscathed coming out on top, blessed with the most unlikely but predictable amounts of plot armor and plot devices – and oh yeah…. the Autobots helped… a bit too.
WishfulThinking
I'm a pro-rebooter…and human-free, all on Cybertron would be stupid. All I want is for the Transformers to remotely look and act like the characters they were originally based on. I don't think that's too much to ask for. And that said, I'm glad that, aside from Hot Rod, the movies are largely introducing non-former-G1 characters to its lineup. That unshackles this old fan's expectations of certain characters that I know even going in will not coincide with what I remember.
Shark
Y'know, if this franchise ever DOES get rebooted, you know what I think will happen? They'll come out with the human-free, on-Cybertron film series that a lot of the pro-rebooters always wanted, but the general audience won't care about it because there won't be any good-looking human actors in it, so it'll end up a box office flop and thus the series will get shelved after Movie 1. And then this franchise will slowly die. The End.
Not saying it would definitely happen, but……it would be just our luck, wouldn't it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Dirge121
I mean if you're talking about their other under performing releases then yeah you're probably right. Between the start of 2016 and now only 8 out of the 20 Paramount released films broke the $50,000,000 domestic box office total.
Buuuut if you're just saying that with regards to the Transformers franchise specifically then the statement is simply not true when the international box office has shown steady growth movie after movie. Even AOE (which showed a decent decline on the domestic box office compared to their previous entry but still remained their 11th best performing movie to date) was a bigger international success than its predecessor. Critics and fans might have complained but people just keep turning out to see these things in droves, so you really can't say that they aren't providing a product that the general public wants to see.
If that is the case then what you meant to say was more along the lines of 'Paramount put themselves in this mess by not listening to the hardcore fans on their top performing franchises, a franchise that has taken a domestic total of $1,319,187,682 and shows consistent growth in the international market'. Or more simply 'I don't like the movies'
But yeah by all means lets celebrate a fantasy of an entire studio going under and the loss of employment for all those working there.
Anyway, as you were gentlemen. I shall not bother you with totals and percentages any further.
Autobot Burnout
The problem is it sounds like you're talking about everybody at Paramount, when ironically the people actually making these decisions are the executives and they'd be sitting pretty on large, fat sums of money in the bank and wouldn't be too put off by losing Paramount – they'd just get hired somewhere else. Hell, the guy who used to be in charge of Disney's entire theme park chain is now running Cedar Fair (Cedar Point, Knott's Berry Farm, etc.).
The only people who would truly suffer Paramount's closure or breakup are the manual workers who have no say in what film they are producing.
Terradives
If they have put out so much crap that their company hinges on the success of one movie in a franchise with a history of bad movies, they deserve to lose their jobs. Competition is a lot tighter this year and I don't see tlk hitting the numbers of the last movie. Paramount put themselves in this mess by not listening to audiences
TFXProtector
I'm really, really trying here. I don't want to cross any lines, I don't want to violate the rules…. Oh, the things I want to say to you.
I'll just reiterate, wanting people to suffer is horrible and you're not a fan, not even a bad one, this just makes you a bad person. You should never wish for the suffering of others because they made a movie (or in this case, movies) that you don't like.
Shame on you. Grow up.
Niv3k
I'll see the movie atleast two times. Depending on how much I like it that amount will increase. If it turns out that I don't like the movie that much, I won't spend more money just to help Paramount.
Incepticon
Aww, poor Paramount, are your constant bad decisions catching up with you?
Heh, now I'm more motivated than ever to not contribute to the box office tally of this one.
Murasame
Exactly.
Metroplex79
I haven't kept up.
Are we getting a Transformers movie or a Transpixels movie?