f13.net

Trailer for Transformers 3(D) released yesterday.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/transformersdarkofthemoon/ (http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/transformersdarkofthemoon/)

Personally, I'm looking forward to this about as much as being kicked in the balls. YMMV.

You Tube trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwTvF2pEgn8)

I'll roll my eyes as Unicron is defeated in some inane and implausible explosion without eating any planets, but I'm 36 and understand it's not for me.   The son will adore it, though.

But.. but... ITS IN THREEEEEEEEDEEEEEE!!!!

Oy.

Yeah, that looks like a winner....

You know, the sheer awfulness was such that I only noticed after the fact that they had a trailer for international distribution say thinks like "Our nations greatest achievement" rather than, say, "mankinds greatest achievement." Oh and made national US heros, Niel Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, out to be fucking liars.

So, its a trailer built to piss off everyone on the planet. Nice one marketing!

Stuff like this never matters outside of internet forums. Independence Day is pretty much the most "Woo America!" sci-fi action movie of all time, and it made two-thirds of it's money overseas.


Man half the dipshits in this country couldn't even tell you who landed on the moon, much less take offense at the idea that they kept a giant space robot secret.

Actually most people went to independence day to watch the white house get blown to shit. Seriously that scene got pretty much Universal cheers.  :grin:

But yeah ok. Good point.

(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/youtube.png)

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_f3SZ5Tu916o/SlHi8zH7piI/AAAAAAAANeQ/nhEv7ZHW-UE/s400/ironhide_facepalm.jpg)

I dunno. I kinda want to see if Bay can turn this shit around. I liked the first movie well enough, hated most of the 2nd, so... gah.

No doubt it's going to make bank though. Bay could film himself taking a shit and make several hundred million dollars.

This is why he gets to make these movies however he wants.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Trailer HD 1080p (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mAEb7S0mhg)

Yep. The only way to fuck up a movie about a huge invasion of earth by Decepticons is to have Michael Bay direct it.

It can't be any worse than the second one, right? Right?

Bay has said that the writer's strike was hard on the story, and that he's going to have a lot less goofy crap in the third one. The wigger twins are gone, for example.

We'll see though. He might just find new ways to fuck it up.

It's still more about the humans than the fucking transformers(which don't seem to even be transforming anymore) so it's gonna suck.

That's an intentional shift.  The audiences complained there was too much about the robots in #2 and not enough focus on Spike or something like that.  I'm not remembering where I heard that, though.  You have to remember they've been financially sucessful because they HAVEN'T focused on things that geeks want to see, because those repel or confuse the larger audiences.

It could be set on Cybertron and have no humans at all and still suck.

Exactly. That's why I think (and hope) Unicron never shows up. He's just too neckbeardy a concept for the mass market.

The first movie was successful but how big was the second? I'm willing to to bet there was a drop off which will even be more pronounced in the third. I'm not the biggest transformers geek but I still don't recall anyone looking fondly on the second one and even the first doesn't get higher praise than " it was good"

According to IMDB, the 2nd one was $130 million dollars more successful than the first one... which made $700 million worldwide.

Yep.

Oh, and I found at least one reference to refocusing on humans. A LeBoff interview:
http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/109/1090073p1.html

Also: The woman replacing Fox isn't nearly as attractive(imo), but still isn't bad when you find shots of her not dolled-up in creepy faux-teen ways. 
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

This really baffles me because I don't ever hear people praising these movies.

It's a Summer Blockbuster Movie -- it doesn't have to be "good" just mindlessly entertaining.

Yeah. The question is how good of a Transformer movie are we going to get mixed in with our mindless summer action event flick.

(http://i778.photobucket.com/albums/yy65/kaelasgifsandcrap/gifs/vxdu7r.gif)

Oh Dear God.

Words, none.

I will offer one praise to these movies, the police car's motto was pure fucking gold:


"To punish and enslave"

Yeah, but that was in the first movie.

The first movie was fun. Hell I even have it on DVD somewhere.

The second movie was pure shit from start to finish. I can be mind numbingly bored and flipping channels and I might pause for half a second if I see it's Transformer's 2 then change the channel to something more intelligent like Jersey Shore. Ok, I lie. I'd never watch Jersey Shore but you get the point.

I agree.  The first one, while having flaws, wasn't that bad.

2 was Brain Cancer.

While I do agree that 2 was as a whole, shit, I did really like how they had the long CGI fights that did not involve constantly cutting from different angles and keeping one perspective for good 30 seconds straight

oh yes, i love two piles of nearly identical mechanical parts tumbling around in such a way that even without the camera moving I can't tell what the fuck is going on.

^ Yeah, that. ^

Um, well in the only fight I really remember between Optimus Prime you could tell the difference between the two robots because one was blue, the other wasn't.  

And I didn't say the camera didn't move, I meant the camera didn't constantly change between different camera angles, there's a difference.  And again, I was commenting on the style of the directing for the CGI fights, not the actual fight themselves.

*edit* I think too many movies that involve a lot of CGI rely on camera cutting to mask the fact that they suck at doing realistic, long-lasting animation sequences in action movies, and I thought that at least one scene of Transformers did very well on this part.  Other then that the movie sucked, and the fact that this one scene is all I really remember from the movie is telling.

You don't remember that one scene with Shia LeBouf running while shit explodes all around him? Or that scene with Megan Fox while shit explodes all around her? Or that other scene where Marines fire uselessly at robots while shit explodes all around them?

I must admit I did love the scenes where the humans would have a missile strike a meter behind them, showering them with concrete blocks and then keep running.  There was even a scene where Megan got sconed with an ancient egyptian sandstone block the size of her tits right on the bonce and she SHRUGGED IT OFF.

Tough, Tough Motherfuckers.  Alternatively, immersion breaking bullshit.

You decide.

Also, Jazz.  Funny.  Alternatively, downright fucking stupid.

I enjoyed the other movies and I will probably enjoy this one. I am however a fan of giant robots and explosions. I don't really need much plot or storyline if there are enough explosions and shiny moving objects. In fact i would say there is a nicely curved scale. As the ratio of explosions and shiny moving objects goes down my need for plot and storyline go up.

^ Yeah, that. ^

Everytime Prime's sword comes out and he slices something off, or rams it into somethings head, need for plot and storyline drastically plummet.

I'll confess to loving the Prime fight scene across the highway with the blade in the 1st movie.  That and the fight at the end of 1 with Megatron where Peter Cullen once again delivers "One shall stand, one shall fall" were the best parts of both movies.  Too bad they were both in the first movie.   :drill:

Robots with big knives...  :oh_i_see:

Seriously.. swords? Glad I have seen any of these movies. Well, except the first one, the true first one, circa 1984,

You must have not seen any of the cartoons, either.

(http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/c/cf/Shermandam.jpg)

The biggest immersion breaking BS in the second one was the "open the hangar door at the Smithsonian Air and Space Annex (which they even said IN THE MOVIE is in D.C.), walk outside the door and BAM! you are in Arizona at the airplane graveyard."

But the whole movie was just bad. Glad I paid nothing to see it (I netflix'd the DVD because of this thread, actually, you bastards).

Oh I was a huge fan of the cartoon, but the trauma blocked out those stupid episodes. GUNS > swords... Indiana Jones taught us all that.  :awesome_for_real:

NINJAS > ALL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhs1Z8Rwnk)

That's not a ninja in your video :oh_i_see:

Posts like this and all the existential shit in the tron post crack me up.  Transformers is about GIANT ROBOTS, there's nothing serious about it.  There never was - it was a cartoon made to sell toys.  Tron was a movie made to sell video games.  Action escapism who's secret message is capitalism.  If you don't realize that going in... what the fuck are you thinking?  If you want some semblance of reality, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

That's what they want you to think. DUH!

Or that part in the 1986 animated movie where Megatron busts out a lightsaber against Optimus. Or the part in that same movie where Hot Rod is practicing with one aboard the ship. Or the part where the Junkions attack the Autobots with nets and hatchets. Or the part where Springer busts out a sword during that same fight.

Transformers was always chock full of improbable melee combat. Always.

Yeah and it was fucking awesome.  Megatron gutted Prime like a fish with that lightsabre too.

But, yeah, when Prime put the sword through Brawl's head in the first Bay one :  Pure Gold.

(http://thefilmnest.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/dinobots.jpg)

Rule of Cool beats out realism. As long as it's got versimilitude.

There is only one robot I will allow to have a sword.  :grin:

(http://images.wikia.com/voltron/images/0/08/Voltron345.jpg)

This. My mind can usually absorb small plot holes, but this was beyond baffling.

Voltron I believe wasn't a robot so much as a giant mech. In that, he had no AI and was just piloted.

Then a tank would definitely beat him with superior armor and firepower.

Oh god. What have you done???

How does a tank have superior armor and firepower than voltron? he's a giant lion mecha who I believe also has some ranged capabilities. You gotta be more specific than just "a tank"

Uh oh...

Swoop is always getting his ass kicked. Poor Swoop.



-edit- What was the Brontosauruses name again?

I know the Triceratops is Slag, and the Stegosaurus is Snarl and Grimlock is Grimlock, but I can never remember the Bronto one.

That's because Swoop is mentally deficient even by dinobot standards.

The brontosaurus was Sludge.

Sludge!  :heart:

I'm going straight to combat unicycles and beating the rush.

(http://spiral-zone.com/bandai/proto3.jpg)

Not sure if sarcasm but just in case : Have fun (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15275.210)

A tank of similar tonnage, built with the same level of technology.

(http://aussie-dave.gallery.netspace.net.au/albums/World-War-II-Zone/baneblade_1.thumb.jpg)

That thread is fuckin money. Picasso wept in heaven on reading it.

Honestly 99% of science fiction would get curbstomped by the US Army circa like 1965, when we were cranking out nuke-tipped everything. Nuclear artillery shells and air-to-air missiles would fuck up a lot of AT-AT walkers/flying robots/whatever. Not that you'd want to build a house near where all the nukes went off, but it beats living under the yoke of King Zarkon or something.

Yes but voltron can fly which would give it far superior mobility. Can this tank fly?

(http://i.imgur.com/YYDK1.gif)

This turns out not to be the case.

I was going to ask you to explain, then I went and read Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoop_(Transformers)

I don't know if that was applied to all the comics or just the UK ones.  Over here, he was pretty much an idiot on the show and I always saw him as the comic relief.

Probably just the UK ones.  He had some really good stories as he was the intellectual of the dinobots and pretty much never 'fitted in'.  He also had an intriguing backstory with a rivalry with one of the Predacons that turned out to have a twist in the tail that proved Grimlock NEVER considered him an outsider and appreciated him being the cleverest of them.

Zod should not be spouting this sort of nerd minutiae.  :why_so_serious:

But no one gives a shit because the UK Transformer comics all sucked ass. Ask some middle aged dork about the transformers, and 9 out of 10 mention the cartoon. The 1 in 10 is the guy jerking off in the corner to "Matrix Quest" and pretending that toy robots are shakespear.

Why wouldn't it?

Given that Voltron has no apparent means of lift or propulsion but still manages to fly like a motherfucker, sure, why not flying tanks? If you have that sort of technology, fuck it, flying everything.

Except scorpions and spiders please.

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh8puecwQJ1qgfporo1_500.jpg)

I'm just saying we need to be internally consistent here.  Voltron and what-ever techno-magic powers he has are already established.  You can't just make up some super-tank with an S on it's chest and call it superior, at least bring up a reference of where said tank exists in fiction or start with a base tank and expand on it. 

Except that IS the entire argument? Same level of tech and a tank is a superior weapons platform to a giant robot.


You won't find many examples in Sci-Fi because practical and efficient military designs and weapons make for boring ass stories for the most part.



"Observe the action as we launch hundreds of cruise missiles from over the horizon at targets we'll never see with our own eyes."
"Read about the epic tale of the 6 hour long artillery bombardment on radar emplacements!"  :why_so_serious:

But tech isn't organized into clear "levels".

Not sure if serious.  :why_so_serious:

That's the fun.  :awesome_for_real:

And tanks can fly anyway.

(http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture_archive/Southern_Cross/Mecha/Spartas_Hovertank/large/Spartas_Hovertank_35_large.jpg)

I probably shouldn't do this, but I give you The Bolo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_%28tank%29).   Very detailed, well thought out "Super Tank", with a small series of Sci-Fi books to back it up.

I'm saying that if whoever built it had expended that level of technology and resources on an idea more sound than "a bunch of robot cats that fly and turn into arms and feet and shit and combine into a robot dude with a sword" then the result would have been orders of magnitude more capable.


That's almost as bad. An entire army's worth of resources sunk into a single super-vehicle that's expected to be able to defend a planet singlehandedly? Oh but it's got the tired old caveat of "No really in the future armor and defensive systems get really really really really good and weapons never ever ever really catch up, so my big stupid penis-substitute contraption isn't the huge flashing NUKE ME, WIN LOTTERY sign to the enemy it should be!"

Eh, I have never actually read any of the Bolo Books.  My brother has, and he thought they were pretty good (which is the only reason I remembered the name, cause he used to tell me about them).  But a quick skim of the Wiki site seems to indicate that the Bolo tanks went through a signifigant number of iterations as weapons / armor technologies improved, starting with basic Projectile weapons and ablative armor, and evolving right up to super advanced self sustaining particle beam weapons / multi tier armor systems.   I believe they actaully stated that very late model Bolo's were actually capable of takeing a nuke hit and shrugging it off mostly unharmed.   No idea how, but the guy who wrote the books tended to stay away from "handwave magic technology that just works" kind of stuff, so it must have sounded at least as plausable as anything you would find in any decent sci fi book.

The USSR tested a nuke 3000+ times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb in 1961. The only reason nobody ever went larger than that was because there wasn't really any point. A thousand years from now in some horrible war-torn future, with massive genocidal interstellar campaigns centered around enormous individual units? They ought to be able to blow one of those things literally to the moon.

Well, sure.  But once you are running down that kind of a tangent, weapons platforms of any kind just sort of become pointless dont they?  I mean, who cares if you have tanks (regardless of how big) if you can just throw enough firepower at the planet your enemy is on to crack the whole damn rock like an egg.

Ok, who needs to be taken out back and whipped for getting WUA started on his tank vs mech crusade in this thread?

I thought it'd be more interesting than transformers three.

No, not really. As Heinlein put it succinctly in starship troopers:
In the end, it's really fucking easy to just destroy something. Especially in a future tech world with KKV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_kill_vehicle#Kinetic_projectiles)s. Generally, though, you have some sort of objective that requires a bit more finesse. Finding the appropriate tool to do the job is the key, and, in general, giant robots are just shitty tools for all the reasons we talked about in that thread over there that was linked. Tanks do everything giant robots can do, and better, for cheaper. Because of physics.

(http://www.seibertron.com/images/galleries/files/140/tf3-full-trailer-137.jpg)

Let's talk about real mechs!
(http://images.wikia.com/gundam/images/1/15/Wing_Gundam_Zero_CustomW0.jpg)
 :awesome_for_real: :why_so_serious:

You mean gay robots?

GURPS disagrees!

(http://i944.photobucket.com/albums/ad286/VagabondZOD/Sky%20Lords/SkyLords_t289_guardian2.jpg)

Gundam used to be so butch.  :cry:

I know right?

(http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/g/gf13-050nsw.jpg)

 :drillf:

They actually scaled that one down to half of it's original yield too, because someone finally went "we are basically irradiating our own country you know, right?"  :why_so_serious:

Because you might want to keep the planet, and an enemy that disperses its forces instead of piling all its resources into one super-unit is a lot harder to nuke into oblivion without shitting up everything you were trying to conquer.

And what if the mechs are packing nukes?

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UVRoF5dMi7U/TMA4fo5s8kI/AAAAAAAAUQo/EyODT1JdgzM/s1600/9.jpg)

What then?

I think I'll add this discussion to the ones that thought it was realistic for a huge area of space being controlled by 1000 space marine ubermenchen.

IIRC, in the book, the MI were Mobile Infantry.  Their use was mostly in quick strikes, either a quick drop -> raid -> get the hell out of Dodge, or to grab ground that would then be fortified by heavier weapons.  I don't recall Heinlein detailing what those heavier weapons were though.

Also, the MI would carry weapons up to small (10k I think) nuclear weapons.

Wrong Space Marines.

Heh. Yeah, like that that hand carried gun that could blow a large hill to dust.

Also, prior to the large ground battle in Starship Troopers, Heinlein pauses briefly to explain the specific reasons for not just nuking the planet from space. That's the difference between something thought-out and "HUR DUR I MADE EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE RETARDED SO I COULD HAVE ROBOT SWORD FIGHTS!"

The Space Marines don't do the controlling though, do they? I thought they were more of a emergency, shit just got really real force. The Imperial guard seems like the big massive controlling force.

Depends. For the most part, it's the IG. Some imperial citizens will go their whole lives and never see a space marine. But if you live on a chapter planet, you might bump into them all the time. The imperial garrison of Ultramar works closely with the Ultramarines, and the UM's consider them worthy allies. But yeah, the SM's are used for crazy batshit missions, and the guard walk the beat.

Really, it's fear and superstition that keeps the average citizen of the imperium in line. (http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs23/f/2008/008/f/d/WH40K_Space_Marine_Emoticon_by_XenonRay.gif)

Y'all hate because I remind you that we're not really the sort of cool hip technogeeks we like to think we are, but rather the sort of geeks who are never more than a WUA post or two away from spinning off into a straightfaced conversation about military doctrine in Warhammer 40k.

Personally, I find it delicious.

Its not without precedence though...http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Exterminatus

But can goku ki blast pierce gundanium armor at supersaiyajin 3rd form? this is his dragon ball GT version btw, not this adult DBZ universe.

Why would he need to when he can just chill with his best bud Superman?

(http://www.headinjurytheater.com/images/super%20he-man%20superman%20cover.jpg)

Who will win?

Does eternia have a yellow sun?

Yeah, but everybody is magic too.

(http://www.encyclopedia-obscura.com/gphcs/066comicshemansuperman/06.jpg)

"Eh! Your strength is prodigious, man!"

like a 1970's DnD game

That is my new favourite comic book page.  :drill:

I hate how Superman always forgets that he supposedly has Flash-level speed. I know they need to make him dumb in order for anyone to even put up a fight against him, but come on. They could at least quit throwing his speed in our face the rest of the time. I picked up some comic in Borders a couple weeks ago and saw Superman and Flash sitting in a diner having a relaxed conversation at super speed while everyone else seemed to be frozen relative to them. I kept wanting Flash to go "Hey Supes, since you can keep up with me, how did Doomsday ever land a punch?"

This is why Superman was always retarded and I've always hated him (also, because I'm Zod.)

Even Smallville, the only incarnation where I've been able to stand him, comes off as retardly silly, saved only by the fact that the literally has no idea how fucking powerful he is.

I've said it many times. Supes worst (from a storytelling angle) power is super speed. Not only is he better than every other hero, but he can do it all in the wink of an eye, too.

One of the reasons why I hate the "Blur" shit on Smallville.

You know, a few days ago I downloaded an old superman cartoon (http://www.eztakes.com/store/movie/Superman---Mechanical-Monsters-Movie-Download.jsp) from 1941. The animation was actually quite good, but what stuck me was how weak Superman was compared to what we are used to. One wallop from a robot was enough to put him on his ass and he had to struggle to get out of some power lines that he got tangled up in. And they were already starting to disguise the fact that he could not fly.

Very interesting to watch from a modern perspective.

It's also why the Flash gets writer-nerfed even worse than Superman a lot of the time. I mean at least when they forget half of Superman's powers, he's still nigh-invincible and really strong. Everytime I see Flash in anything animated he's getting slapped around by some nobody who can, get this, shoot a beam or some lame shit like that.

Isn't the Flash moving at near light speed these days?

The Flash is faster than Superman, and yes, I believe he can reach those speeds currently.

I remember reading about him evacuating a entire city, 2 people at a time, while a nuke was going off in the city.

Yeah, considering that the Flash can selectively vibrate invididual atoms in his body in such a way to allow himself to pass through solid matter, I imagine simply running at near relativistic speed would likely be a cakewalk for him.

I think that Squirrel Girl could totally take Supes and the Flash.   :why_so_serious:

 :heart:  (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/SquirrelGirl.jpg)    :heart:

I remember reading a nerd-post somewhere that did the math and proved he'd need to move way the hell faster than light to pull that off. But then I youtube a Justice League episode and he's getting punked by some bitch with telekinesis throwing chairs and shit at him.

  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah doing the actual maths on how fast he would need to have been travelling he'd need to have been going several million times the speed of light. But then they also have him outrun death and travel through time so I think really the speed of light is pretty bullshit stuff for the Flash. The insistence that Superman can beat (or even come close to it) him in a race is really fucked up though, especially in that New Krypton arc a while ago where the Kryptonians (all with the same powers) didn't just literally tear the entire earth apart before humanity even realised we were at war. Flash is broke but I just don't understand why Superman needs to be able to beat every other DC hero in every arena the might possibly compete.

Because he stands for Truth, Justice and THE AMERICAN WAY.

And Americans beat everything.

Well, are his powers alway "On"? I can punch through sheetrock (that's my superpower, BTW) and yet I can pick up an egg without breaking it. And eggs are more fragile than sheetrock.

Seems very situation specific of a superpower to be able to punch through sheetrock. I would just trap you in a wooden prison.

That's why I won't tell you my superhero identity.  :grin:

Yes, but can you bull rush through the exterior wall of a trailer home?

Yeah. In the episode I'm thinking of he's running away from the shit being thrown at him, and there's a blur effect drawn around him, but he doesn't seem to be moving much faster than some dude from Kenya in a real hurry would.

One of the better representations of the Flash's power, comes from the Teen Titans cartoon. Since the show doesn't even pretend to take itself seriously, the episode with Kid Flash has him fooling around with the villains, knowing full well he is basically impervious to any of their attacks.

So while it was done that way to be silly, it's actually pretty accurate all in all! 

Yeah "Kid Flash is in this show now and look how awesome he is!" was the whole thrust of the episode, so it was just him zipping around making a whole team of supervillains look like assholes for 22 minutes. I liked the bit where he grabbed a wrench and disassembled their whole evil laboratory in a couple of seconds. Oh and the part where they have him "trapped" in a cage and he zooms off to grab a sandwich while their backs are turned.

That show was a lot of fun in general, worth watching on youtube on a rainy day or something certainly.


What was this thread about again?  :why_so_serious:

(http://www.lilformers.com/comics/2010-08-23.jpg)

Especially Truth and Justice if they refuse to cooperate.

I think it should be about how Teen Titans was far better than most of the "DC Animated Universe" Super Serious Business stuff. Sometimes you just wanna see Malcolm McDowell get kicked in the face after trying to turn America back into a colony with a ray gun that makes people British, and not be expected to give a crap about the cameo appearance of obscure late-sixties DC superhero Ombudsman Extraordinary or what the fuck ever.

You, sir, are no geek.  :lol:

Dude I am level 100 geek. I just didn't spec Comic Book.

You fucked up your talent tree, I looked and I saw some ranks in she-ra. No one cares if hor-dak was skeletors mentor, he is still stupid!

Eh. TT was fun for a larf, but it was way too animu for prolonged viewing. :3 And then they try to do something semi-serious like the Terra story and it all goes to hell.

I didn't spec Warhammer in the Neckbeard tree so I had the points left over! Quit judging me you elitist poopsock!


You shut your whore mouth.  :why_so_serious:

The serious episodes were fine, and the anime quirks were funny. Running with the whole "Woops guys I'm kinda the Antichrist!" Trigon storyline in a kid's show was pretty ballsy. The thing with TT is that it was basically a kid's show that wasn't afraid of decent writing, and which still managed to wink at adults with stuff like Control Freak. (A fat greasy internet nerd supervillain who ran around telling the heroes they were doing everything wrong. I loved that.) As opposed to stuff like JLU which always stank of being marketed directly at twentysomething neckbeards who know who Big Barda is and think comic books are Serious Business.

Both made by the same dudes, that's why the writing was good.


But yea, TT was specifically made because the guys who made Batman, Superman, JLU had been doing that DCAU thing for like 20 years at that point, and wanted to break out of that.


While on the subject of all things DCAU, there's a new show, Young Justice that's basically a little mix of both. Though it still weighs more towards WUA's hated comic book nerd demographic then the lets be silly TT demographic. It's not part of the actual DCAU canon, its set on some alternate earth or whatever, I can never keep track of these things, need more ranks in Comic Lore :(


Worth watching, all over the youtubes again.

Young Justice is very worth watching. WUA won't like it because it does hit that neckbeardy demographic, but I think it's great. I couldn't stand Teen Titans myself - much too anime and silly.

TT was one of my favorite cartoons of the last few years and while I enjoyed JLU, I did feel it was a little in to itself.   Like that guy at work who won't shut up about the awesome weekend he had analyzing the pitches at the baseball game because, hey he's pitched since he was 10 and knows what he's watching.   :oh_i_see:

One thing I find, no matter the style of show, DC's cartoons always seems to be vastly superior to Marvels.


I just can't get into any of the marvel shows.

Marvel does better movies, DC does better TV.  I think i can live with that balance.

DC hasn't done many movies to begin with really.

Don't make me break out the Justice League of America pilot! I'll do it!  :grin:

Marvel make more movies than DC, they aren't necessarily better though. Marvel make a ton of terrible movies (all the fantastic four films, most of the x-men and spiderman films, the Punisher films, Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider).

I thought the Fantastic Four films were decent, and the X-Men and Spider-Man films were good (except the third of each franchise had serious problems). The rest, though - yeah, those sucked great big hairy monkey balls.

I only liked the first X-men and Spiderman movie, I'll give marvel credit in that the Iron Man films were fantastic, and Thor was passable, and better than a lot of DC's fare (superman movies, catwoman...). That said, in terms of better or worse movies I'd say all the Nolan Batman films are still a league ahead of anything from Marvel, although you could argue that the two houses offer a different aesthetic.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Transformers though, except in the sense that they are all summer-blockbuster types of schlock.

Transformers was a Marvel comic!  :grin:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Transusa.jpg)    (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Transuk.jpg)

Ah, gotcha. I was not aware of that.

It doesn't really help the "Marvel make better movies" argument though  :grin:

The real story of this thread is Lakov's surprising knowledge of She-Ra lore.  :drillf:

Holy shit I still have this one series in storage.  :grin:

edit: corrected

I was a he-man fan or rather, a skeletor one and felt burned as a child when he turned into second bannana just so they could sell a badly designed nemesis in hordak.

Hordak had an army though!

Skeletor had Evilynn.

TT was easily better than JLU. Justice League was already pretty bad, when it became Unlimited it got that much worse. It doesn't help that the concept of the Justice League has always been stupid - you have Superman on the same team as a woman who flies with wings and uses a mace. Really?

And in Justice League / JLU they STILL fell back on the old Superfriends shit of "well in this episode Superman is on a space vacation, that's why he doesn't just fix everything in two second!"

Why do I keep thinking that this thread will end up being more entertaining than the movie?

We all had Evilynn.  Bitch loved to put out.

Also, oddly popular as fanfic material. I was just browsing the categories here (http://www.fanfiction.net/) by popularity and noticed that the TT cartoon has more stories written about it than Star Wars. Not some Star Wars cartoon, the movies. Of course both of them piled together don't have half as many entries as some silly-ass animes I've barely heard of, but whatever, those people are nuts.

Hey quit looking at me like that. I just can't help feeling a bizzare sort of admiration for the crazy prick who can crank out a half-million-plus words about... fucking... Xena Warrior Princess or some shit.

And I won't have you judging her for that.  You took your turn.

JL and JLU were amazing, for two reasons: 1. They constantly told the audience why Superman was on the same team as a chick with wings and a mace, sometimes several times per episode even, and 2. They didn't take themselves too seriously. TARDS. You all watched some stupid version of it, that was opposite of reality.

JLU was awesome because they'd have nutty scenes where a cowboy, a robot, a woman in a fishnet tuxedo outfit, and a martian would be fighting side by side against aliens or robots or demons or sometimes all three at once.

And the Question. He rocked.

Jeffrey Coombs, fuck yeah!

"The plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces are called aglets. Their true purpose is sinister!"

How many of them are centered around Raven? She hits all the marks to set off the emo poetry gene in teens and pre-teens.

Wow, you're right. Just under 40% tag her as one of, at most, two primary characters. There are little dropdown boxes that let you search by character, so it was easy to run another handful of searches while I was at it. I'll list them by pages of results generated just because.

You guys may want to stop now, I don't think you want to know how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Robin is basically young hip batman, so those are probably mostly self insertion fantasies as Robin. The others are Robin romancing whoever probably.


But yea, Raven is emo nerd fuel, I could write a small paper on how many different ways she taps into that demographic.  :why_so_serious:


Cyborg is also a pretty boring character really, all he ever did on the show was eat, fix his car, eat, whine about being a cyborg and eat. Decent supporting guy, but no one really gives a shit if he's gone either way.

Do too!


Do it!

I wonder if I can TLDR this properly.

She's the dark pretty (but not supposed to be pretty), important, mysterious, introverted, shy-wallflower with unlimited power but a overwhelming desire to be accepted and 'saved', that allows emo nerds to feel smugly superior for picking her as their favorite since she's so 'unique' and anti-establishment or whatever you want to call it. They alone are the one to truly understand her and bring her out of her shell. :forever alone face:


Plus, she has purple hair.

I'm wondering if I should bring up the original Terra from the comics.  :pedobear: (Actually appropriate pedobear in this case.)

Because you've watched any Bay movie? (Ok...not counting The Rock I guess)

The Actual Teen Titans comics are pretty fucked up overall, aren't they?

Hmm yeah, when you put it that way it does seem like a template that's gonna demand that every emo girl watching (and at the age this show aimed for, they're all emo) identify with the character.

Or really, just type 'Raven Teen Titans' into the search field on deviant art. Pictures worth thousands of words and all that.


Deviant Art is NSFW -edit- proper urls.
http://dannysulca.deviantart.com/art/Teen-Titans-and-Aenoch-19484415
http://dark-persian.deviantart.com/art/Commission-Moonlit-Rendezvous-152620925


Where WUA has a fascination with fan fiction, I have one with fan art.  :why_so_serious:

With fiction you can usually tell when something is going to be full of buttsex and bail out before anyone gets their pants off. With art, that's it, once you look at the wrong picture you can't unsee that shit. Anyway, in a saner universe that first picture would just be Raven and some long-lost brother of hers, but this being the internet I don't even need to click the associated fanfic to know what's up.

Of course I did anyway.


/wrists!

Fucking kids.  :awesome_for_real:

I think why I am so fascinated with fan art, is that it takes real talent. Any asshole can write a fan fiction, but you need actual skill and effort to draw something respectable looking. Takes hours and hours of practice and devotion... and then they use that talent to draw shitting dick nipples.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah there's a gulf between talent and taste that's more readily apparent when it comes to drawing. What I enjoy with written fiction are the people that manage to write genuinely good stories about incredibly lame or absolutely batshit subject matter.

Like there's this one guy who writes utterly serious, dark fiction about silly shit like Gilligan's Island and Fat Albert. The funny/shocking/fascinating part is that it's also really good. If he just changed the names and a few minor details he'd have good original stories about island castaways slowly turning on each other, or a fat guy trying to make it in the hood, or whatever, that no one would think to connect to those shows.

You obviously haven't seen most of what's on DA, have you?  Or at least haven't cruised through the anime/manga part of it much.  There is a ton of dreck on there as well, which you end up wading through to find the good and really good stuff.  I'll give those artists props of a sort though - they have the guts to put their stuff out there for others to see.  I wasn't that confident in my own art when it was at that stage.

I did say respectable looking, did I not?  :grin:


I'm not including the folks who can't figure out basic anatomy or coloring inside the lines.

Tiny Titans!

The title of this Ars Technica review is fucking awesome:

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is equal parts terrible and weird (Light spoilers) (http://arstechnica.com/media/reviews/2011/06/transformers-dark-of-the-moon-is-equal-parts-terrible-and-weird.ars)

All that review tells me is that the folks bitching are really just too old for this shit.  There were similar complaints about "not being able to follow the plot" of the 2nd, and when I saw it the plot was pretty damn easy to follow.

No, it's not deep.  Yes, it's nonsensical.  Just like the animated movie from 1984, which illicited similar "this makes no sense" comments from my parents.   Watching it 25 years later I can see why, but the son loves it as much as I did.

The first one was tolerable, the second one was shit.

NYT seems to agree with you.



Overall the review was positive.

Bullshit.  That's right up there with "you just need to turn off your brain", as far as making excuses for movies go.  I'm sick of people saying that the problem somehow lies with the people who are unable to enjoy bad movies.  I like plenty of immature shit, but the Transformers movies suck.  Are people really still impressed with CG special effects and big explosions to the point where that alone can carry a 2 1/2 hour movie for them?  At least the original animated movie didn't have Shia LaBeouf in it.

I never said they didn't suck, did I?  It's not bullshit, kids like crap.  We liked crap, we just happen to have blinders for it.  Those shows you loved as a child? They were all shit.

It's a valid excuse because it's true, same as 'turn off your brain.'  Just because you can't or won't do it doesn't mean that there aren't millions willing or able to. The box office receipts show that quite plainly, so it doesn't matter what your opinion on it is.

And yes, people are still impressed by big explosions enough that they can carry a 2 1/2 hour movie.  Perhaps you're not familiar with the tradition of blowing shit up the US has.  We have a whole day dedicated just to it. (extending into the nearest week, based on all the noise that's been going on around my place.)

Here's the best way to put it, Merusk. Original Transformers stories were cheesy juvenile escapist fantasy. Gobots was similar but total shit.

The Transformers movies are underneath Gobot level in terms of quality. The recent GI Joe movie had a better plot than all three. Just because you are making a loud, obnoxious, toy tie-in summer blockbuster movie doesn't mean you can just forego plot, or narrative or characters. Well, you can, and based on Bay's ENTIRE FUCKING CAREER, you can make a lot of money with it.

But it's still explosive poo scattered on a wall. I'm sure Bay will feel real bad about that on his football field sized bed made of Ben Franklin's.

Wahh Wahh wahh, You are just as bad as everyone else in this thread on both sides.  Some people like to only watch intellectual movies that have a lot of thought, some people just want to sit back, relax, and not have to think about every twist and plot that's going to happen in a movie and watch giant robots fighting each other with explosions.  And some people can do both and decide what mood they are in and what type of movie they want to watch at that time.  I know, what a concept.

Just because you don't like to watch mindless action movies and instead are more interested in a well strewn together plot doesn't make your opinion standard. 

Here's a real fact for you.  The second movie made a lot of money because a lot of people paid to see it.  A lot of them enjoyed it enough to recommend it to friends which means more people went to see it.  Here's another fact, even though the critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is 36%, it has a 90% rating by viewers. 

Again, just because you don't like something doesn't make it bad, it wasn't made for you.  No one is forcing you to see it.  You are free to watch or not watch any movie you choose.  Get over yourself.

Take that back. The first Bad Boys was the shit.

The Rock would like to have a word with you as well.

Conversely, titanic was a work of art and along with avatar should be lauded as the greatest movies of all time....oh, wait.  Money and popularity do not nor will they ever equate to quality.  Sorry, transformers movies are not good, you're entitled to you opinion as are thousands of movie-goers and it's a shame your opinion is wrong.




(I still did enjoy avatar but high cinema it ain't)

Your position boils down to, "My opinion is more important than your opinion!"

He was right get the fuck over yourself.

My opinion is not more important, it's just the right one.  It's nice to think everything in life is subjective and that we are all beautiful snowflakes and all right in our own ways. Unicorns are also nice.

The vast majority of people I know who saw it either thought it was terrible and regretted it or recognized it was bad but enjoyed it anyway as dumb fun.

I can't think of a single person I know who actually thought it was good, and less than half thought it was even entertaining.

STFU.

I enjoyed both Bad Boys and The Rock, but man, they were some dumb fucking movies with paper-thin plots. I believe Bay actually wasn't big enough yet that people who were producing those movies could tell him to shut the fuck up when he started doing stupid things. Now, however, his box office success means never having to ask for anything or explain to anyone.

I'm perfectly ok with people watching shit movies.  During a Summer where a lot of the movies haven't been particularly good, you guys help pay my bills, so thanks for that.  Anyhow, there are a number of movies I like that aren't exactly high art.  I won't try to defend those movies though by saying that they're anything other than guilty pleasures, and I won't try to say that the problem lies with everyone else who doesn't enjoy them.  That's the point I'm making.  If people want to say "Transformers is a shit movie, but I enjoy it anyway and the kids love it", then whatever.  Saying "the people bitching are just too old for this" is just excuse making though.  Adults are clearly the bulk of the audience, and there are plenty of people here who don't like Transformers, but can appreciate good kids stuff like most of Pixar's movies for example.  Critics being critical of this movie aren't too old, they're just doing their fucking job.


Edit:  Also, for the record there is a middle ground between movies that are intellectual, and movies that require me to get in the mindset of someone with a mental handicap in order to enjoy them.  For instance, I loved 300.  It's an action movie, and doesn't have a particularly deep plot, but it had a unique style to it, there was some humor, the action was easy to follow (in other words, no shaky-cam, or quick cuts to obscure the action), the character's were likable, and at just under 2 hours, it didn't outstay its welcome. 

Also, not directly related to the movie itself, it doesn't help that most of the people involved in the Transformers movies have a habit of publicly making themselves known as douchebags, and who also generally acknowledge that the previous movie was a crap rush job, even while guys like you bend over backwards to defend it, by pointing out the user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and the box office grosses.

That's exactly how I feel, minus all my douchebaggery.  I don't think transformers are good movies but popular and fun? Sure.  To me it really boils down to this metric. "would I sit and watch this movie again if it came on tv" a good movie you'll always find time to watch, a bad movie you'll just go watch tosh.0 reruns instead.

All I wanted to see was giant robots fighting other giant robots.  I left the theater very satisfied.  My only real complaint was that it was 15-20 mins too long.

I think I may have read one by this guy. It was creepy but really well written. If memory serves the skipper ended up making Maryann and Ginger his sex slaves and Gilligan became his sort of cackling insane Igor stand-in. The professor was one of the last sane ones left and it ended with a sort of cat and mouse hunt across the island between the professor and the skipper after everyone else was dead.

Yeah that sounds like the one. I'll just link it (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4927205/1/The_Tale_of_a_Fateful_Trip) for good measure.

Anyway, on topic, there's no such thing as a "guilty pleasure" really. There are only pleasures. If you feel guilty it's because you wish you had better taste than you do, and that's really just your problem.

This is one of those movies you have to turn off your brain before watching and just enjoy the eye candy of explosions and giant smashing robots.

Caught a showing last night -- it was entertaining, but I was not expecting _Tree of Life_ or even _Inception_ (or _The Matrix_).

My assessment definitely nowhere near as harsh as this dude (http://nilesfilmfiles.blogspot.com/2011/06/dark-ages-michael-bay-michelle-bachmann.html):


 :eek3:

While it doesn't totally invalidate his criticisms of Bay, that reviewer is a fucking awful writer.

Was it the copious underscores that gave it away?  :why_so_serious:

That said, he could probably script write for Michael Bay and instantly improve the Baysplosions.

Bay can't even get the explosions and giant smashing robots right. The only thing I can figure about these movies sucesses is that the Nazis didn't go far enough. Make theaters with poision gas vents, advertise "Transformers 3!" and halfway through the movies, start up the gas pumps.

Anyone dumb enough to go see one of these things should be put down before they breed.

What?

That's a really offensive post for absolutely zero reason.  Even for a stand alone movie that comment is  :drill:, but it's the third movie in a series, how about maybe avoiding them?

$372 million worldwide on a budget of $195 million, and the holiday weekend isn't even over yet in the US.

:facepalm:

I thought it was fun.  The plot was meh, but the action sequences were pretty good.  I mean you don't go see Michael Bay films for plot... geez.   :why_so_serious:

Did anyone, anywhere, at anytime, including me who thinks the movies have been ultimate shit, ever think that a Transformers sequel WOULDN'T make obscene wodges of cash?

It's down in attendance although the 3D enhanced ticket prices is making up the difference.

recycling special effects (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7kcqB3thJM&feature=player_embedded)

Oh noes! This must be the first time in the history of EVER that footage from one film has been used in another.

 :facepalm:

Yeah, next you will be accusing them of using the same Bird of Prey blowing up animation from Star Trek 6 in Star Trek 7.

I'm frustrated that the bar for action movies has gone from Die-Hard to Retard. It means less movies that I want to go see. (and I love movies)

Well, I absolutely hated the first one, and only made it about 10 minutes into the 2nd one before killing it.  However, I've heard good things about this one from a great number of people I know, so it might actually be a lot better than the other two abortions.

ackbar.jpg

We've gone from Die Hard to Die Hard 4.0 in that time.

It's not.

It's loud, obnoxious and WAAAY too long. But I do have to admit, it is by FAR the best application of 3D I have seen in a live action film. Mock Bay's little memo, but the colours were really good and bright and the action was fairly easy to follow and I have had a lot of trouble with that with other 3D movies (or action movies in general lately).

Not as terrible as I expected, but still left me hollow when it was over. The criticism of Bay fucking "Carlie" with the camera? Totally valid.  I got uncomfortable a few times and thought, "Shit, this is a kid's movie?"

Ironhide needs to avoid appearing in movies with Lenoard Nimoy.  Fucker.

Prime kicks ass, but can't fly for shit.  Decent way to waste half an afternoon if it's on the tube.

This movie was uniformly terrible.

It took too long to start, spent too much time on what'shisname's personal life, girlfriend, and efforts to get a job.  The action was passable, but there wasn't enough to make up for the entirely long setup that preceded it.

Bleh.  100% regret seeing it.

My sisters one of the best chemistry students in her school, a grad student, and not a video games/cartoons./anime nerd and she enjoyed this movie :ye_gods: I hated this movie and my brain really hurts after watching it.

Final score: Over 1 billion dollars.

(http://www.wildsound-filmmaking-feedback-events.com/images/austin_powers_dr_evil.jpg)

It's even coming back for two more weeks. (http://www.firstshowing.net/2011/transformers-dark-of-the-moon-returning-to-imax-this-weekend/)

Friend of mine said the movie was awesome in a 3D cinema, so I decided to take a peek. It gave me a reminder why I generally don't watch action movies anymore. :oh_i_see:

You people are broken.

Finally broke down and got this on DVD.

I made it as far as the Autobots returning to help the humans, and had to turn it off. I was able to finish Revenge of the Fallen, and that movie was crap. Which I guess makes Dark of the Moon subcrap? If this movie was a meal, I would have stuck my finger down my throat to puke up what I swallowed.