Transformers is silly.
Not just the Bay films, or the shoddy attempts at more animated series, but the entire franchise is silly. Christ, the animated movie was (and by some (including myself) still is) adored, but even that featured this!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was even worse! Setting aside the fact their primary antagonist was a nasal hentai off-cut riding around in an '80's sex doll, with a pig, a rhino and Uncle Phil as his sidekicks, there were the musical specials, the live-action TV show, the second and third live-action movies...look, just watch this:
(or, for something far more in-depth, this)
The swaths of silliness that permeate these franchise and others - be it He-Man, GI Joe or the myriad comic-book franchises with adaptations old and recent - are often brought up in defence of some of the adaptations that spawn from them:
"You think Devastator's scrotum's bad, you should see the episode of the cartoon with the golden pond!"
"What do you mean the new Shredder's stupid? Don't you remember Super-Shredder?"
"How can you think Duke in a super-suit's daft when the toys included a heavily-armed windsurfer?"
The argument being that, if we could put up with the weirdness of the source material and still love it, why is it such a big issue that they completely changed the Turtle's origins?
For me, the problem is one of potential. The Transformers lore is rich and epic, and packed with some awesome characters, yet when given the go-ahead and budget to finally bring it all to life on the big-screen, we got a relatively small-scale, earth-bound shoot-out, focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the towering, warring robots to the background. Where the cartoon gave us a transforming city, an underwater battle with robotic piranhas and a planet-devouring monster, Bay gave us Skids and Mudflap.
As for the Turtles, while the 2nd and 3rd live-action movies were pants, the first did a great job of not only bringing the characters to life, but of creating an atmosphere that settled nicely between the cartoon and the early comics. The only real issue with it (aside from a spot of slow pacing) was technological restrictions: impressive as the costumes were at the time, they haven't aged well, and in retrospect, encumbered the ninja action.
To revisit the property with the benefit of today's technology could have resulted in something fun, fast-paced, and visually unique and spectacular. Instead we got some generic rip-off of Amazing Spiderman (of all things), focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the weird-but-badass ninjas to the background.
The reception of these films is also a problem. Bays Transformers films are crap, but because explosion-porn makes money, we're stuck with his take on the franchise for the foreseeable future.
On the flip-side, the last Turtles film bombed, and so we're due a reboot. On the surface, that should be great news, but for all the problems with the films, they did at least get the Turtles right (love-or-hate visual design notwithstanding), but current Hollywood reasoning dictates that if a film doesn't do well, it's because everything about it was wrong, and the only way to save it is "gritty realism".
Just look at Superman Returns: a half-arsed attempt at recapturing the magic of the first two Christopher Reeves films it might have been, but for all its problems, Brandon Routh was an inspired casting choice, not only looking the part, but also able to give two distinct and convincing performances as both Clark Kent and Superman.
Contrast that with the dour, miserable, misguided Zack Snyder films, and poor Henry Cavil who is mostly unconvincing as either.
Okay, the gritty reboot thing worked for Batman following the horror of Joel Schumacher, but the reason it worked for Batman is because it's freakin' Batman! A gritty reboot of Superman makes about as much sense as one for the Fantastic Four.
But I digress: the point of all this is, yes we still have the cartoons to watch; yes they had their silliness and spawned some utterly baffling off-shoots; yes there was a moment in our naive youth when it was just about acceptable to randomly have Vanilla Ice rapping about ninjas, but they had the opportunity to do something great! To finally bring these memories from our childhood to life in such a way that was new and spectacular, while still paying homage to the best of what they were, eschewing all of the unnecessary baggage that had built up over the years.
And instead we got Bumble Bee pissing on a Fed, Devastator balls, a mech-suited Shredder, a crappy rip-off of a crappy reboot, Skids, Mudflap, Shia le Boufant, Megan Fox, Marky Mark and the Wooden Bunch, and Michael fucking Bay.
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