Transformers Trailer...

http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/transformers/


Yah or Nay ? Not sure. I love Transformers to bits, and the new designs seem very cool, but a bit too Hollywoody. Still, it should be a good way to kill a few hours / brain cells next summer...

I can't really take seriously a movie that has robots from outer space transforming into Ford Mustangs and such. No matter how adult they make the content, it's still an overblown commercial for Hasbro, which is why the original cartoon was commissioned in the first place.

On July 4th, I can watch a robot toy movie by America's most talented director, Michael Bay , or I can watch Bruce Willis Yippe-Ki-yay some mutherf***ers all over town in Live Free or Die Hard.

Hmmmm...

I don't have to take anything seriously to be entertained by it.

I will be watching both (Die Hard trailer is superb...), I just need to work out in what order...

Some TF fans are alledging they have got copies of the script and have apparently said it's a bit pants.

For what it's worth I hope they are wrong.

Yep, I'm one of them, it leaked all over the net! Its ok actually, I quite enjoyed the read and thought it would make a good action flick, although I did read an early draft. They reference the source material well enough, and the characters of the Autobots are spot on.

At the end of the day, its just a dumb summer movie about big robots blowing each other up, and it looks like it will deliver. If you want something else, go elsewhere...

A lot of the flack from uber-fans comes from the fact that it will not slavishly follow the designs and plot of the cartoon series, never mind the fact that there have been around 15 different re-tellings of the same damn simple storysince then.

The cartoon was very badly animated with terrible plots. I think most things would be an improvement on it, even a Michael Bay film. If I am going to be obsessed about a cartoon show from my childhood, I have at least learnt to take a reality check now and then...

My best memories are of the UK Marvel transformers comics, which I read from around the age of six upwards, which pretty much got me into comics and sci-fi full stop. They took a cheap toy advert franchise and turned it into a great sci-fi space opera saga thingy. If this movie can at least echo that, i'll be chuffed with it. Tom de Santo is producing, which is good news given his work on X-Men.

I can't really take seriously a movie that has robots from outer space transforming into Ford Mustangs and such. No matter how adult they make the content, it's still an overblown commercial for Hasbro, which is why the original cartoon was commissioned in the first place.

On July 4th, I can watch a robot toy movie by America's most talented director, Michael Bay , or I can watch Bruce Willis Yippe-Ki-yay some mutherf***ers all over town in Live Free or Die Hard.

Hmmmm...

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I think that's pretty unfair. Its not like Spiderman or Superman make much sense either. And even though I'm sure Hasbro will make the most out of this, it doesn't mean that all Transformers fiction is shallow. Check out the new IDW comics, or the old Marvel UK comics, they have excellent storytelling and characterisation, and are in no way dumb stories for kids about toy robots. And watching this trailer, I'm not sure how you can get this impression either - sure, it will be your typical summer blockbuster, but so will Die Hard (which I'm also looking forward to - see both on the same day!) and some of the stuff in this trailer looks pretty nifty.

As for the trailer, it looks surprisingly good, although we know trailers can be misleading. I deliberately avoided the leaked script when it was doing the rounds on the Internet, though I didn't hear great things about it. It wasn't the final version though, so maybe they fixed some of it.

I stand corrected. I read that's not a Mustang, but the new retro-styled Camaro.

Like I said, I don't doubt that they will try to make this a somewhat serious and "adult" film for the mass market. The story may indeed be edgy; I'm just saying that at it's core, it is based on a cartoon commissioned to sell a toy, and that element is still firmly in place.

And to quote the talkbackers at AICN: FLAMES ON OPTIMUS PRIME!

The Transformers cartoon itself was based on a treatment for the Transformers by Jim Shooter, Bob Budiansky and Denny O'Neill at Marvel comics. Hasbro had bought a whole range of transforming toys from various toy companies in Japan, mainly Takara who produced the Diaclone range, where most of the original Autobot cars came from. The characters, their names, the general basic storyline were all created by Marvel, which they used in their comic book, and which Sunbow then used in their cartoon (yes, a 20-minute toy commercial) - the cartoon actually debuted after the comic. So if we're going to be precise/pedantic (delete as applicable) the Transformers movie is actually based on a treatment by Marvel comics.

Sure, Hasbro are going to sell lots of toys on the back of this movie – hell, I'm going to be adding a lot of them to my collection – but I think we should take the movie on its own merits, and not sneer at where it has come from. I just think that we get sneered at enough by non-genre fans without doing it to ourselves too. And whatever you think of Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, I don't think they have much interest in toys.

Anyway, yeah the new Camaro is Bumblebee (he actually begins as an old'70s Camaro before getting modified). And I kinda like the flames on Prime, though I guess some fans don't like to see changes. How good will this movie be? We'll just have to wait and see. I'm open-minded at the moment.

The cartoon was very badly animated with terrible plots. I think most things would be an improvement on it, even a Michael Bay film. If I am going to be obsessed about a cartoon show from my childhood, I have at least learnt to take a reality check now and then...

My best memories are of the UK Marvel transformers comics, which I read from around the age of six upwards, which pretty much got me into comics and sci-fi full stop. They took a cheap toy advert franchise and turned it into a great sci-fi space opera saga thingy. If this movie can at least echo that, i'll be chuffed with it.

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Agree with you 100% there. I collected pretty much all of the UK comics as a kid. The first few issues rendered the robots as they appeared in toy form, but later artists took the wiser decision to make them look more like the cartoon.

The Transformers cartoon was pretty cheesy, but you did get one thing that was abnormal for a kids cartoon - the good guys didn't always win.

But yes, the UK comics were inspired. They showed a lot more character, were a lot more sensible and were quite gritty. The characters being robots gave the writers opportunity to be gratuitously violent - depicting fatal decapitations, robots having innards ripped out and the like.

I must confess that as a kid, I thought that Circuit Breaker was really hot (for those who didn't read the comics, don't worry I've not got a robot fetish - she wasn't a robot, but a human who worked on one of G.B. Blackrock's oil platforms who was paralysed following an attack by Shockwave, she managed to regain movement and power over robots by wearing a very skimpy figure hugging metalic "costume".)

Most people (and they seem to be US folk) treat the cartoon as canon, I prefer the comic as canon as it isn't nearly as hokey.

Simon Furman was consulted on the movie, and is actually writing a prequel comic for IDW.

And I like the flames on Prime...

Where I work, this is what we call a transformer trailer.

I was hoping the live action movie would just be a word for word/scene for scene reproduction of the animated movie. Nah just kidding...but seriously folks..onto Circuit Breaker. I thought she was pretty hot too.

I prefer her in later editions of the comic. She's less of a robot domination queen and more of a tortured soul in those... and the art is better too.