Transformers: A Factual Mess?

[Josh]

The first time Megtron showed up on screen, I thought to myself, wasn't he a gun in the cartoon? Sure enough I was right, and wondered what else was different when they transfered from the cartoon to movie. So I went to IMDB, and there is literally pages of errors. From continuity to straight up factual inconsistencies. It shows very sloppy writing and directing. I'm sort of disappointed because I enjoyed the movie (on a very basic level - Michael Bay is incapable of doing anything deep) and I was disappointed to see all those errors. I'm still going to buy it, but I wish they would have spent the time making it perfect.

[Sylin]

I dunno... it's hard to translate what essentially amounts to a mediocre 80's children's cartoon to the big screen for modern audiences. (For the record, I think Transformers is cool, but it IS a children's cartoon and IS hokey.) If Megatron had been a huge gun in the film, how would that be appealing, or even sensible in a live-action movie? It would look stupid, IMHO.

The Harry Potter films are a great example of this. For the most part, the movies stay true to the books, but a LOT of unimportant content is chopped off, and certain liberties are taken with plot and characters to translate a book to film. You can't just copy the material word-for-word. This is true of LotR as well--Jackson did a GREAT job making an epic series (fyi - Transformers is NOT intended to be an epic film... it's a popcorn flick), but even still he had to take liberties with the books so it made sense to his audience.

Think of it this way: you don't expect fast food to taste like a slow-cooked, gourmet meal. You are willing to sacrifice taste and presentation for convenience. Same thing.

Many people on these forums think Transformers was a great movie BECAUSE of its differences from the cartoon. If you want the "cartoon experience", well, that's what the cartoons are for. If you want live action Transformers, then MB did a bang-up job!

[Josh]

Beyond the comparison to the cartoon, there is a lot of sloppy continuity and factual (ie, not even remotely correctly) data. Check out IMDB.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418279/goofs

[groovyone]

Factual errors: When Mikaela looks under the hood of the Camaro at the engine, she says "Hey, you have a double-pumper carburetor." The engine she is looking at is obviously fuel-injected, having no carburetor.


I did complain about this one, especially being a car guy. The eBay Bumblebee Camaro had the correct engine that was referenced in the movie, but they clearly showed an FI crate motor in the flick.

[Amon37]

In the cartoon Megatron would turn into a smaller gun and Starscream would then shoot it at people. That doesn't translate at all to the movie screen.

[theknub]

as for the gun thing, i had read somewhere that hasbro would simply not make a gun megatron. there was no ifs/ands/or buts about it. so, they had to make megatron do something, thus the plane.

as for the rest of it, probably. it is michael bay. he's great at blowing things up, car chases, etc