DarkMaze wrote:

Black Zarak wrote: And even if we go past that argument; again, with 25 years of fandom behind it, it would be movie suicide to completely ignore everything that's already established. And that is certainly a valid argument. My point was to differentiate between an obligation to stay true to source material (like adapting a book) and making the decision to cater to a pre-existing audience by including relevant-but-not-required material (as in this instance). With the latter, the important questions are usually something along the lines of "By staying true to the pre-existing material, will we alienate a potential new audience? And will we be telling a solid standalone story?" For example, if Bay's movie was a live action version of "Transformers: The Movie," it would likely have been a disaster. While it would cater to fans, it wouldn't appeal to newcomers because they would have no idea what it was about, what was going on, and who the characters were. SHOULD it still have been more like the cartoons? Of course it should have. Because for all of my talk that it wasn't required, why the hell else are they making it if not for brand recognition? It's when they think that that's enough -- like Uwe Boll does -- that things start to go to hell. But here's the very bottom line. You and I say it's an awful film, right? Well, the studio spent $150 million on it, and so far they've made $700 million on it worldwide. You're going to have a hard time convincing them they did anything wrong.

This is one of those cases where the reward completely surpassed any risk of alienating the already established fanbase. I'm sure it also helped that many Transformers fans either weren't pissed until after they had already seen it, or just decided to go see it anyways just too see if it was as bad as advertised.

But I should note that I have talked to several fans of the series who did actually like the movie. But it seems like for every one I talk to, I talk to two that hate it.

Also, for everyone who was a part of the movie, it's hard to argue with them for doing it after that huge payday the movie had. But then you go back to the old argument over money vs artistic integrity. Like I said before, I'm no expert on the business end, but I would guess a successful movie would need a good balance of both.

DarkMaze wrote:

scamrock wrote: Also, for everyone who was a part of the movie, it's hard to argue with them for doing it after that huge payday the movie had. But then you go back to the old argument over money vs artistic integrity. Are you suggesting that the day player who dresses the set should make sure he's a part of an toy/cartoon movie adaptation that's really true to the spirit of the source material before going to work in the morning? Or even that Cheesy Beefy should do research to make sure that the script is guaranteed to please G1 fans before (1) auditioning his ass off for the part; (2) accepting what could reasonably be considered, for an actor, a fun and challenging role that's guaranteed to get him major exposure; and (3) receiving an enormous paycheck?

That isn't even close to what I meant. First, when I said everyone, I didn't really mean every single person who had anything to do with the movie. I more or less meant the people who had the most control over the project. Probably the people who wrote the script, Bay, the producers, maybe even bigshot studio execs. I really don't know exactly who I meant. What I meant was that if Bay, the writers, producers, or whoever thought they would make more money the way they did rather than by being true to everything that the franchise had been up to that point, it is hard to argue against them because the movie did make so much.

But at the same time, I can't help but think if it were my movie, I would be more concerned with appealing to the established fanbase than maximizing profits. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I wouldn't want to get as much as I could out of the project. It's just for me, pleasing the fans is more important than the money. But that's easy for me to say. I'm not depending on the profit from the movie to feed my family.

I guess I'm saying, as a fan, I'm pissed because money seemed to be more important than artistic integrity, but at the same time, if that's true, I can't blame them for going that route.